<div id="subtitle">Vatican says some faithful mistake psychologist's couch for confessional booth</div><div><p>A Vatican official is lamenting that many faithful no longer confess their sins, and says some confuse a psychologist's couch for a confessional booth.</p><p>Archbishop Mauro Piacenza has told Vatican Radio the sacrament of penance has been experiencing a "deep crisis" for decades. Piacenza, an official for the Vatican office on clergy, says fewer people distinguish between good and evil, and as a result don't go to confession.</p><p>The archbishop said in the interview Tuesday that if faithful don't have a sense of sin, they might "confuse" confession with "the couch of a psychologist or a psychiatrist."</p><p>He says the Vatican plans to publish this year a kind of handbook on confession to drum up enthusiasm among Catholics toward the sacrament.</p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=51752282&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

Copyright 2009  <a href="http://www.ap.org">AP News</a></div></div>