Confession

There’s an article on Slate, http://www.slate.com/id/2130589/?GT1=7407 (I don’t know why I’m plugging them, maybe just because they stirred up some dormant feelings) about confession and why Catholics have stopped going. The author is right in stating that many Catholics have shied away from confession, but I’m not sure if I agree with the statistics provided.

If we step aside and take religion out of it, doesn’t confessing one’s sins or transgressions or whatever other label you want to stick on them make sense? Oscar Wilde, a British author is quoted as saying, “A man's very highest moment is, I have no doubt at all, when he kneels in the dust, and beats his breast, and tells all the sins of his life.”
I believe that any person that can discern right from wrong, upon committing a transgression and not reconciling oneself lives an unhappy life. If one has a conscience and does not reconcile their sins, they will feel like they are carrying hundreds of pounds of excess baggage and in due time this excess weight will do them in.

In confession we open our lives to healing, reconciling, restoring, uplifting grace of the Lord who loves us in spite of what we are. Reconciliation also lifts the heavy weight we were carrying and takes it away.

Chesterton said that, “Psychoanalysis is CONFESSION without absolution.” For any treatment program to work one must feel comfortable with their therapist and in the same manner people choose a priest that they’re comfortable with.

I can recall that, in the Catholic elementary school I attended, every Friday each class at different intervals would be marched from the school to the church in order for us to go to confession. The school had eight grades with approximately 40 pupils to a class. So in a matter of maybe an hour 300 confessions were heard and 300 penances were doled out. The class I was in filled three pews of young boys and girls. Most of us took this ritual serious, but occasionally there would be the giggle or smirk that would arise during the boring wait which the sisters would immediately quell.

I’ll never forget this one particular Friday. I was in the confessional with a priest that will remain unnamed, when all of sudden he raised his voice at me. So from within the darkness and secret compartment of the confessional a voice was heard throughout the church for all to hear. To this day I don’t know why he lost his cool. I didn’t say anything derogatory toward him, I had just confessed that I missed going to Sunday mass and he blew up. I was too embarrassed to leave the confessional and face my peers who were all waiting for me to come out. I can imagine what my face must have looked like as I came out and headed to the altar to say my penance.

I don’t know if the nuns talked to the class before my coming out of the sin bin, but to my amazement no one said anything. No one ever asked what happened in there. Maybe they thought I did something horrible and they were staying away out of fear. Looking back, I probably should have talked to a grownup about it but instead I took my lumps and went on. From that day on I would not go to see that priest any longer and had a hard time with many of them. It took a long time to get over that experience.

Getting back to the article, which mentions that although people have shied away from the confessional, they have no problem going on shows like Springer to air out their dirty laundry or will go on line to a web site to post their confessions? Curiosity got the best of me and I checked out one of the sites mentioned and found that hundreds of thousand of people log on each day. I’m not interested in hearing the garbage that people choose to post on these shallow sites.

Looking back at my experience made me think of the various sports and how they handle “sins” committed by the athletes. Of the major sports, hockey is similar to going to confession in that it banishes the player(s) who committed and infraction to the sin bin, the penalty box. The referee catches the player in the act of doing something wrong on ice and blows his whistle. Play stops, the referee proceeds to the person in charge and gives him the information which is broadcast for all in attendance to hear. Everybody watches as number 5 is escorted to the penalty box as the following is heard, “Number 5, Shifty, two minutes for hooking.” His team is now forced to play shorthanded for two minutes. Sometimes he finds company in the sin bin as another player is serving his time. The penalties doled out match the severity of the infraction. In hockey unlike some of the other sports, penalty minutes, is one of the published statistics. They also reward the least penalized good player with an award at the end of each year.

In soccer, the referee stops play and runs up to the player who committed the infraction and proceeds to hold up either a yellow card or red card right in the player’s face. If he’s red carded, the player has to leave the game and his team is forced to play shorthanded. Sometimes the player will not be able to play the next game.

In basketball, again a referee will point out the offending player and will dish out the penalty which is also broadcast to everyone there. In basketball it’s called a foul and there are various kinds of fouls from non-shooting to shooting to technical fouls determined by the severity. In basketball they allow you to accumulate five fouls per player per game. Anything above that and you are banished from playing the remainder of the game. In this case your team is allowed to send in a replacement for you.

Football is interesting because most of the players are hidden under a mass of equipment and sometimes you never know what a player looks like unless he takes off his helmet. Football has what appears to be almost as many on field officials as they have players. In football you see the referee almost as much as you see the quarterback. Football is also neat in that the referee has to know a myriad of hand signals. Sometimes I think football was invented for deaf people. If there’s an infraction, one of the officials will throw a flag (yellow) – sometimes there are multiple flags thrown on the same play. The officials then will huddle to discuss what they saw and then the referee will announce to the thousands in the stands and the millions watching on TV that “Number 66 on the offense is being penalized for 10 yards for holding.” As the official is measuring and placing the ball ten yards back from the original spot, the camera is now focusing on the player who committed the penalty. You either see on the spot someone denying what he did by shaking his head or apologizing to his teammates for his “sin.”

Just imagine if life was like a game with a referee. In an office environment, as John Small walks off with two pens, he hears a whistle and a referee comes out and fines John $5 for illegal use of hands.

Or how about the employee that calls in sick and then heads out to play in a golf tournament on the cape, as he’s about to tee off on the first hole a referee in a golf cart throws a yellow flag and whistles him to go back to work, “illegal substitution.” His foursome will have to play one man short.

It would make life interesting. That referee resides in us in the form of a conscience and we need to confess and reconciliate. As Publilius Syrus said, “To confess a fault freely is the next thing to being innocent of it.”