If you think confession is free psychiatric advice, think again:

Confessing in the Catholic church has long provided material for Hollywood screen-writers, with a dark wooden booth, a priest’s stern silhouette glimpsed through a screen and the uttered phrase “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

But, according to the Vatican, real life confessions are in danger of turning into cozy counseling sessions, which is why priests are to be issued with a handbook instructing them to give their flocks a sharp reminder of what sin is all about.

Explaining the initiative, an official at the Vatican office on clergy told Vatican Radio that the declining number of churchgoers who went to confession were confusing it with “a psychiatrist’s couch”. “An ever decreasing number of people see a clear difference between good and evil, between truth and lies and between sin and virtue, and therefore fewer are taking confession,” said Archbishop Mauro Piacenza.

Piacenza said priests would also need to spend more time in the booth. “It’s not always easy to find a priest ready to listen to the confessions of the faithful for hours,” he said.

Recent studies showed that only about 40% of Italian Catholics and 55% of American Catholics go to confession. Of that total, 12% confess once a year and only 2% confess once a month or more.

Instead of scaring off even more churchgoers, tougher confessionals could win back Catholics yearning for traditional practices, said Francis Rocca, a Vatican correspondent for Religion News Service. “About 30 years ago the church started calling penance ‘reconciliation’, which to some Catholics might sound more like therapy than a sacrament,” he said.