I read that Martin Luther believed in the Catholic viewpoint of confession. In the Book of Concord he even makes reference about a person having the eagerness for confession. Saying a person should run for miles to go to confession if they have sinned. I remember this because when I came back to the church, right after my general confession, the priest and I had a little talk. I mentioned to him that I was married and my wife was Lutheran. I told him I hope she will one day be Catholic. So he walked over to his bookshelf and dusted off the Book of Concord. He then made a photocopy of two pages where Martin Luther was talking about confession. Luther sounded like he was praising it. He then gave the copies to me and said I should show this to my wife and to ask her why the Lutheran Church only hands out the small catechisms. If I am correct, the Book of Concord is the large catechism for Lutherans. I wonder if after Martin Luther died, the protestant movement even disagreed with their founder and decided to do away with confession because is was still too Catholic. Also, maybe the Lutheran pastors want their congregation to be in the dark on this topic as much as possible because if they were to reveal this, then their congregation would be looking into it more and possibly be pondering a conversion to the Catholic Church. I know any Lutheran can go purchase the Book of Concord, read about this, and bring it up to their pastor. Maybe the pastors just try and shy away from it as mush as possible and that’s why they hand out the small catechisms. And if someone comes into the truth a little bit and brings this up, maybe the pastors are like, oh well, we got many others who still aren’t in the truth and [b:ys1jyan1]they’ll[/b:ys1jyan1] be here next weekend.