As justice becomes more important to a culture, so too does the confession of sins, because those who are unjust need to see what they are, and to mend their ways. It is not unusual that in our era some countries call their prisons penitentiaries. They thereby echo the Catholic requirement of confession and penance; the goal at the beginning of the prison system was to provide a secular means of bringing criminals to penance or repentance. For justice to prevail in a society, there must be more than