[wideawake]

Maintaining those feelings were useful because the only guarantee of absolution from them was via a service offered only by the monopoly.

There never was a "monopoly" (as if a Church whose bishops would even take up arms against one another could ever be a smoothly run corporation). That's a painful anachronism.

And the only requirement for absolution was to show up and say "I'm sorry."

The whole notion of "Catholic guilt" is a modern invention retrojected upon medieval Christianity by anticlericals.

The biographies and autobiographies of medieval Christians are inconveniently free of any corroborating evidence for this supposedly pervasive culture of "guilt."

[FredZarguna]

Yes, there was a monopoly. RC kids are raised to believe that other Churches are heretical at best, apostate at worst, and cannot save them. They are also taught to believe that while they can ask for forgiveness, they are not guaranteed that God will accept their contrition without the confessor.

The rest of what you say is pure nonsense. I can't tell you how many times in my childhood I was told by people in religious orders that I was going to hell. In fact, I can't even tell you how many times I was told that in first grade. If this gun is not a weapon in the arsenal of religion, then why is it drawn so often? Answer: because you're full of baloney.

Address your future posts on this topic to "all" because I won't be reading them. You haven't the slightest idea of what you're talking about, and having a "discussion" with such a clueless ind invincibly ignorant person is a waste of my time. Every child physically and psychologically tortured by nuns and remonstrated without mercy by priests knows exactly what I'm talking about. And you DO NOT.