“RUSH LIMBAUGH IN THE CONFESSIONAL”: That’s the title of Mark Shea’s latest column for the National Catholic Register. It’s good stuff–sadly, not online. Excerpts:

…I was raised in a household where I darkened the door of a church or Sunday school maybe 10 times before I started seriously trying to understand Christianity in college (and at least one of those times was because there was a meeting or something at the local Methodist church).

I can tell you all about deep-seated guilt. Crippling, unrelieved guilt. …

The amazing thing to me in becoming Catholic was the discovery that you could actually go somewhere and unburden your soul of all the miserable, wretched, shameful things you’d been lugging around for years. To my astonishment, delight and intense relief, God would really take that load away and not only forgive you but also give you the grace to be the new person you wished you could be. I get teary just thinking about it.

Some of the most poignantly sweet moments of my life have come in the confessional.[clipped]

[for the rest, you’ll have to find yourself a “dead tree” copy of the Register…]