Mass Confession

Well, my only fear is that my book's gonna be out of date before it really gets a selling in this country. We're changing a lot of things in the church, and one of them is gonna be the confessions. It's gonna be one of the first things to go. You know, 'cause we don't make any money in the confessional. It's not like, you know, we can charge you $2 every time you come to confession. It's free, everything else will get paid for. You know, weddings, funerals, everything. Even last rites, you know, sometimes people in the family can slip us a couple of bucks or something. By the end of the confessional, you know, nothing. And it's hot in there... and it's so boring, you know? Little kids come in, you know, and you know... they say stuff, you know, "I disobeyed my parents" and stuff. Y'know, and you have to act real serious, y'know: "yes you did, yeah". Come on, please, you know? Junk...

Well, we're playing around with this idea, it's called "mass confessions". And the idea is that people will just all holler up their sins at once, and the priest then, he can just forgive them in unison. Right now, we have it in test market in Bologna and Akron, and it's going very well from what I understand. And uh, if you wanna give it a little try here tonight, I'm more than willing. What do you say, you want to do it? (Yeah, let's do it!) Okay, well, first I'll just give you a couple of minutes to examine your consciences. You know, think of the sins you've made in the last week... or hours, I don't know what you've been up to. So what I'll do now, is I'll count to three, and on the count of three, just holler up your sins and we'll go from there. Okay? One... two... three! [dead silence, then laughter]

I didn't hear nothing, but some laughter there. Maybe some of you are a little shy, you know, you think someone's gonna listen in. Maybe hit on you later, something like that. Y'know, maybe what I should do, is like, go over some sins, and if I come into something, you know, might be a little bit familiar, just raise your hands. Okay? How about masturbation? None, nobody? I've done enough, it's really popular with nuns in Italy. How about a S&M, anybody into? Sado-masochistic stuff? I see somebody pointing at, nobody I know [?]. Maybe she knows something... I think maybe I misjudged this crowd a little bit, you know? How about like, eh, leaving your room without turning out the lights? 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11... I knew it, I knew it! 12, whoa, she looks embarrassed there. The way everone's looking at her, bet you do it all the time, huh?

Wel, I don't know how this is gonna work, mass confessions. I guess we'll have to just wait and see. We're changing a lot in the Church, and people don't seem to be able to take it. You know, we like, changed from Latin — people got so upset. It was amazing, you know, no one liked Latin. First thing you change it, and they're upset, you know? You'd think it was their family language or something, you know. So many things we find out, we just don't wanna tell 'em, 'cause we think they'll take off, join another religion. You know, would've hurt- hurt the old pocketbook.