Many Catholics no longer go to confession: Does it matter?

In the movies, the penitent enters a confession booth, kneels and whispers to a priest behind a lattice screen: 'Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.'

This drama was, for centuries, at the center of Catholic life. But in recent decades, the number of Americans who go to confession has plunged to a shocking degree that church leaders have struggled to explain.

But Father David Michael Moses knows w…