In the hush of a warm afternoon, the Rev. Larry Solan waits for sinners.The veteran priest sets aside a half-hour every Saturday to hear the failings of his flock at St. Mark Catholic Church.
On a typical week, he sees two penitents, perhaps three. Some weeks, no one comes.
Confession is not what it used to be in the Roman Catholic Church; cultural and theological shifts have pushed the age-old sacrament aside.
In the mid-1960s, 38 percent of Catholics said they went to confession at least once a month.
These days, just 2 percent do. More than 40 percent never go.
Church leaders have tried to revive interest in the sacrament with tactics as varied as radio ads (in Washington, D.C.) and a strip-mall chapel dedicated solely to confessions (a few doors down from a tanning salon in Albany, N.Y.).
The Vatican has even allowed priests to do away with the traditional wooden confession booth in favor of more relaxed, face-to-face encounters.
Outside the Catholic church too, the rite of confession is being reshaped, this time by Protestant megachurch pastors who see the ritual as a self-help tool for the lost and lonely - and a marketing opportunity for themselves.
Click over to IveScrewedUp.com and a black-and-white, Goth-tattoo-style graphic bursts onto the screen.
You're invited to type in a description of your sins, along with your age and hometown.
Click "send" and it's done; you've confessed - to the Webmaster of Flamingo Road Church, a Florida congregation affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention:
-- "I'm a patholgical liar. About everything. To everyone."
-- "I constantly smoke marijuana while I am supposed to be looking for a job ... "
-- "I've slept with 11 guys and only one of them I actually loved."
-- "Just been a jerk."
The confessions are screened for obscenities or identifying information (but not for typos), then posted for all to read. They fill page after page. Some are wry; some are frightening; many are sad.
"It does break your heart," said Flamingo Road pastor Troy Gramling. He and his staff pray over every confession.
"It makes you realize, even in line at Starbucks there are so many hurting people," Gramling said. "We all get really good at wearing masks."
Several other confessional sites also hold out the promise of catharsis, with a vaguely religious gloss.
The Universal Life Church, famed for do-it-yourself ordinations, offers an online Absolution of Sins Application Form.
A gossipy secular site, DailyConfession.com, arranges sins by categories that mirror the Ten Commandments.
Catholics can try absolution-online.com, which invites you to fill a shopping cart with your sins (choices include calumny, vainglory, disregard for the environment and use of Ouija boards).
The site then calculates an appropriate penance - say, 228 Hail Marys and 43 Our Fathers.
The two biggest church-sponsored Web sites, IveScrewedUp and MySecret.tv, are unabashedly voyeuristic and allow readers to scroll through pages of angst from anorexic teens, abusive parents and porn-addicted pastors; from a Christian who no longer can believe in God; from a student who feels guilty for dropping out of college; from a man who despises his mother-in-law.
It quickly becomes clear that there's no such thing as an original sin.
MySecret pushes the concept of healing even further.
Anyone can comment on posted confessions, starting an anonymous dialogue with the sinner: "you need therapy. get it now." Or: "In the name of Jesus ... I pray for a breakthrough with this family and their pot problem."
The site refers sinners to a long list of self-help books and links to the sponsoring church, a fast-growing, Oklahoma-based congregation named after its Web site, LifeChurch.tv.
Scott Thumma, who studies the sociology of religion, sees sites such as MySecret as marketing tools very much in keeping with modern megachurch philosophy.
Such churches often serve as host to spectacular performances (a Cirque du Soleil-style Easter play) and edgy Web sites (MyLameSexLife.org) to attract "unbelievers who otherwise would never darken the door of a church," Thumma said.
"Their strategy is not to go out, convert and bring (only) saved people into the sanctuary.
The idea is to bring in the masses," said Thumma, co-author of the new book "Beyond Megachurch Myths."
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