Why Confessional?

I have heard or rather read over internet that Hislop or his continuer Jack Chick credits Baal worship in Babylon with inventing the confessional.

It is also said - technically correct - in the cited Chick tract that the confessional is not in the Bible.

At Vatican II, Catholics (whether still in some sense in the Church despite being now also involved with the Vatican II Anti-Church or not) of certain stripes (not the good Poles, though!) becoming sensitive to Protestant pleas or rather accusations, and also to Greek Orthodox who do confession without confessional, you kneel before a man who is seated visible in front of you, they defend this by this being more caring and personal, and becoming so more and more, decided to abolish confessionals, in many dioceses and parishes.

You can guess what happened next? Yes, sex scandals involving priests.

So, the confessional is a safeguard - protecting both priest and penitent from unduly sexualising the procedure. As you may guess, Poles having uniformly kept the confessional are also very low on clerical sex scandals:

During 2013 the public in this deeply Catholic country became concerned about reports of child sex abuse scandals within the church, some of which reached the courts, and the poor response by the church. The church resisted demands to pay compensation to victims.[104][105] In October 2013 the Catholic Church in Poland explicitly refused to publish data on sexual abuse, but said that, if the data were to be published, the scale would be seen to be very low.[106] Bishop Antoni Dydycz said that priests should not be pressed to report sexual abuse to state authorities, invoking the ecclesiastical "seal of confession," which bans them from revealing what is said in the rite of confession.[107] In November 2013 the Minister of Justice said that there were 1,454 persons in prison for acts of pedophilia, of whom one was a Catholic priest.[108]

Catholic Church sexual abuse cases: Poland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_cases#Poland

Next country:

In the United States, which has been the focus of many of the scandals and subsequent reforms,[109] BishopAccountability.org, an "online archive established by lay Catholics," reports that over 3,000 civil lawsuits have been filed against the church,[110] some of these cases have resulted in multimillion-dollar settlements with many claimants.

Care to guess one country with heavy abolition of confessionals? You have nailed it : US.

No, the Confessional does not come directly from the Bible, except from this verse: But prove all things; hold fast that which is good. [1 Thessalonians 5:21]

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Emerentiana*
23.I.2018

* 23 Januarii : ... Romae sanctae Emerentianae, Virginis et Martyris; quae adhuc catechumena, dum oraret ad sepulcrum sanctae Agnetis, cujus fuerat collactanea, a Gentilibus lapidata est.