Let those who say that the confessional was instituted by a priest try sitting in the stuffy confessional boxes of our churches for five or six hours on Saturdays and on the eves of the feast days and of the First Fridays, listening to the routine misgivings and failings of human nature, and he will know it is the most trying of all the priest’s labors—yet sweet because he knows and feels that he is carrying on the blessed ministrations Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949
