Reply #3: I think the bigger social construct of religion is [View All]

[sui generis]

to have an administrative basis of power. So you have high priests (popes) at odds with kings throughout history, and still in the 21st century in America where the king is now replaced with a more democratic president we have the church stepping in to try to legislate their particular "morality" to govern everyone's reproductive life.

You have to control who your people marry, and you have to control the behaviors that interfere with reproduction and making your base of power/ideology larger. So many organized religions forbid marriage outside the faith, forbid sex except for the purpose of procreation, forbid birth control, masturbation, and the right to do with your reproductive organs as one pleases. In a disfunctional adoption of this principle, we now have supreme court justices and legislators claiming that the state has a valid traditional and prurient interest in procreation as a reason to deny same gender people the right to marry.

So if violating those principles is an absolute "sin" that requires confession, then failing to have children should also require confession.

What more can we expect from a medieval religious doctrine in the 21st century? I think the original idea of the confessional was that farmer A would confess he had stolen some sheep from farmer B, or lusted after his neighbors daughters when he had a perfectly good wife of his own. But we are not 14th century peasants who require babysitting by our clergy.