Confession?

In my journey of becoming Catholic, I've had to seriously ask myself if my critical views of the sacrament of Reconciliation/confession are accurate. From what I read on some interesting Catholic blogs, and from what I hear at RCIA, the correctness of the Protestant "stereotypes" of Catholic confession is scarily accurate.
They are accurate in the sense that many (but not all) Catholics do indeed fall into the trap/habit of thinking that they retain their sins until they go to confession. I tremble when I think of all of the Catholic mothers who won't believe that their kids are spiritually off the hook until they go to confession... or the individual Catholics who continue to feel guilty for their sins until they can have them absolved. Even though the Bible does blatantly tell us to confess our sins to ONE ANOTHER, I guess I must have missed the part where we're told that we're not spiritually whole until our sins are "absolved."
In the course of salvation, absolution within itself is neither here nor there. If a person so wills, he/she can put on a good-enough show that the priest, on faith, absolves sins that are not even forgiven. Therein, what's the point of confession?
I do, though, think it's funny that even Catholics are afraid of laying out all of their sins to a priest. This should be the easiest step if they are truly repentant for their sins.

Finally: "We'll have to look that up" won't cut it anymore

While I was dining with some friends today, we got into a discussion, as conscientious Christians often do, about doctrine, beliefs, orthodoxy, etc. and, in the course of that discussion, I brought up a passage from Paul's Letter to the Romans but, despite knowing the book, could not remember the complete reference. The person I was talking to dismissed it with a phrase I've heard a lot in discussions like these: "We'll just have to look it up later." I've come to think that this is a cheap emergency answer in biblical discussions, especially when they become uncomfortable, when we don't want to discuss anything anymore, or when we are afraid that we might be wrong on something -- or proven wrong. Although I suspected that one of these three options may have been the case with my co-conversant, I finally instituted putting an end to "We'll have to look it up later:" I pulled my phone out of my pocket, clicked into my hand-dandy Olive Tree Bible Reader, and proceeded to search for the passage using its powerful search tool. And within a matter of minutes, I was reading the passage I was thinking of to her. In this particular case, it turned out that she and I had very different interpretations of that passage, which is ultimately okay in my mind. I hesitate to suggest that one or the other must be right because, as happens in many cases, BOTH of ours might have been. But I digress.
My point here is that many Christians and churchgoers seem to have an aversion to electronic Bibles. I don't know if it's because they think that electronic versions aren't reliable, or if they're not traditional enough, or if they're not sacred enough, or something else entirely. Or maybe it's just that people don't WANT to have the full text of the Bible following them around wherever they go... and they ESPECIALLY don't want a powerful and accurate search feature that precludes them from being able to legitimately fail to find a passage.
Maybe I just need to stop typing now.
Nevertheless, as I originally intended to do in this post, I believe that electronic Bibles are (if you'll excuse this very trite cliché) "God's gift to mankind." Although the accessibility in indeed fun, I think that the greater good is that this new format of the same text(s) forces us to remain vigilant, humble, and on our toes about quoting, referencing, and misquoting the Bible.

Nobody said being a Christian wasn't dangerous!

I was reading the blog Abba's Little Girl this afternoon when I saw this interesting re-print of a news story about somebody spraypainting "Kill the Cathlics!" [sic] on a church's exterior wall. I'm glad that I live in a land where human life is protected (at least AFTER the umbilical chord is severed), but this reminds me that being an American does not totally protect me from the persecution about which Jesus speaks.

Paul of Tarsus writes to the church at Ephesus, "...Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens. This is why you must take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having prepared everything, to take your stand" (Eph. 6:12-13 HCSB). Even though we are not in a war against flesh and blood, we are in a war all the same: a war against the Antichrist. I believe that we should not delude ourselves by thinking that our Christianity protects us from persecution.