"What good do these perverse confessions do that never result in absolution? They can only inoculate us with a paralyzing poison."

"à quoi ces confessions perverses qui ne débouchent jamais sur une absolution?  Elles ne peuvent que nos inoculer un poison paralysant."

     Rémi Brague, Moderately modern, trans. Paul Seaton (South Bend, IN:  St. Augustine's Press, 2019), 254.  I.e. keep us from "becom[ing] the past of our future":  "respect for the past in no way inhibits preparing for the future.  On the contrary, it is what permits there to be a future.  Why so?  Because we must know that we have been the future of our past, in order to become the past of our future [(Il faut savoir que nous avons été l'avenir de notre passé pour pouvoir être le passé de notre avenir)]" (252).  I have taken the French not from Modérément moderne, but from a different version of this chapter posted online.  Apparently there is more on these "perverse confessions . . . that [can] never result in absolution" in Curing mad truths:  medieval wisdom for the modern age.