Eve Tushnet on making a confession:

There's an objection that Protestants sometimes pose to Catholics: Why should I confess my sins to a man, when I could simply confess alone, in my room, to God?   I'm sure there are all kinds of theological answers to this question.

But I want to talk about what the presence of the "other person," and the other structural elements of the sacrament, add to the experience and spirituality of confession.  

Praying alone in one's room, recalling one's sins and intentionally holding them up for God to inspect, can be deeply humbling. It can also be an alienating and very lonely experience. There's a joke about an old Jewish man who went every day to pray for peace at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem -- every day for 50 years, even as the rockets roared above him. At last a younger Jew, in awe of the man's piety, asked him, "What does it feel like to speak with God every day for so long?"  

And the man replied, "It feels like I'm talking to a [expletive] wall!"  

The room can feel very empty when you pray. No matter how much you know, intellectually, that God is there, the feeling remains.

Here's the whole thing.