Grand themes are in the air -- sin and repentance and forgiveness -- but Americans seem willing to settle for soggy confessions and therapy. We may yet pay the consequences for the moral vacuity in the land. PNS editor Richard Rodriguez is author of "Days of Obligation" and the forthcoming "The Color Brown." He is a regular essayist for the News Hour with Jim Lehrer and the Los Angeles Sunday Times.

Listening to Bill Clinton's admission of sin, the other day, I remembered the Irish-Catholic nuns of my youth. What those nuns knew is that the confession of sin is only the first step; there must follow something called penance. It was not an easy prospect for a kid to imagine.

Today, sociologists flatter Americans by telling us that we are among the most church-going of nations. But in the aftermath of the President's confession, it's clear that popular religious understanding (of the sort that gets voiced at a White House breakfast) is sentimental and thin.

Most of the ministers and priests who commented publicly on the President's speech have spoken of the holiness of forgiveness. One Catholic priest on CBS News even compared the President to the Prodigal Son in the Bible.

That's good enough for many Americans -- if the polls are to be trusted. Besides which, many Americans say, we have more to worry about than the President's sexual life. We should be more worried by the state of the Russian economy.

But Americans would do well, I think, to recall one of the greatest novels of Russian literature, Feodor Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment." Russians may not understand how to establish a capitalistic economy today, but at least one Russian novelist understood that the knowledge of one's guilt is only the start of an excruciating journey of the soul that can only be called punishment.

The word, the very idea, must seem dark as old Russia to many Americans. Punishment? Oh, it's true that we middle-class Americans want some other people, not like us, to be punished for their crimes.

Lower-class blacks -- they deserve punishment, when they break the law. And poor whites with blue tattoos -- they deserve jail, too. The rest of us deserve therapy.

When we Americans speak today of the President's "confession," we are not speaking as St. Augustine understood that word. The modern psychoanalytic understanding makes it essential only that one name one's problem. Acknowledging one's fault is tantamount to conquering it.

Not coincidentally, a few days after President Clinton's soggy confession, a woman named Heidi Sonnenberg in Salt Lake City was ordered by a judge to a halfway house after pleading guilty to child abuse. Ms. Sonnenberg (who is Monica Lewinsky's age) gave birth to a baby, let the baby die, and hid the remains in a drawer. Her lawyer argued that his client was "clinically depressed" and needed therapy, not jail.

Not surprisingly, when the President spoke of his need to seek help from others in his distress, several TV commentators supposed that he intended to get therapy. Perhaps the President was suffering from "sex addiction."

But the President was too smart to let his psycho-babble take him to its logical conclusion. No need for a support group. It was enough for him to say the S-word. He understood that most Americans would require little else -- certainly nothing as onerous as punishment (paying Paula Jones' legal fees, for example).

In more ancient societies, the confession of sin would not be so easily disposed of. The admission of guilt brought the knowledge of consequences, some of which could never be repaired. The highways of the Middle Ages were filled with penitents, barefoot, some even crawling toward cathedral towns, seeking a forgiveness that could not be self-dispensed.

Today's American highway is filled with commuters listening to the stern voices of the political right, like that twice-divorced talk-show host, bemoaning the loss of family values. The Christian Right has become the loudest lobby in America decrying the moral decline of the country.

When Trent Lott or Pat Robertson speak of moral decay, however, it's usually someone else's immorality they are speaking about. Indeed, a few weeks ago, before they were forced to consider heterosexuality in the Oval Office, the religious right was happily engaged in attacking homosexuals.

On the other hand, America's political and cultural left has no moral vocabulary to meet the criticism of the right. And were the public's mood to change suddenly -- were Americans to feel a sudden desire for national cleansing -- the left would have no easy way to challenge the forces of the right, massing under the flags of FAMILY.

Gays may yet end up paying the price for the sin of a heterosexual President. For all that the cultural and political left have to offer America is a call for a thin-blooded forgiveness; the jingle-credo of the moment: I'm O.K. And let's get Monica the therapy that she deserves!