I dont understand the value of it anyway. The pope cant change something that his priests do, yet a priest can tell someone to do penance, and then its ok?
Just as the Bible tells us, keep your self, that is your sins unspotted from the world but we are to confess our sins to one another.
Most of us would not be willing to turn one of our brothers in for something, at least if we thought they would repent and we would not even think of doing that to our father or mother.
Those who follow Jesus are his brothers, sisters and fathers and mothers and they are also each others of the same.
Personally i think there are many people wants other people to think the only sins are those of the church, and as bad as it may be i don,t think they are any worse than the average people, and saints compared to the people who are now running this nation.
So even if i don,t agree with the catholic church and do not entirely agree with most of the other churches.
If not for them i would not even know the gospel of Jesus which is more important to me than all of the laws in the whole wide world.
So what is the value of confession?