THE RELIGION FILES

Yet More Adventures in Catholicism

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DISCLAIMER: This is a humor piece, meant to elicit laughter, or at least a smile and/or some giggles. I am a pretty pious Catholic, and this is not meant in any way to be a criticism of the religion. I wrote it to show that even pious Catholics can laugh at ourselves. But I think you will all figure this out. I give you credit for being intelligent.

Confession

The Sacrament of Confession has lately come to be called the Sacrament of Reconciliation, probably because that sounds less threatening. Actually, this sacrament, during which you confess your sins to a priest and to God and ask for forgiveness, can be a powerful psychological help in many ways. I, personally, am not complaining about it.

To go to Confession — er, Reconciliation, you step into a dark, closet-like room. There is a priest on the other side of a wall with one of those windows that you can’t really see through. This is to guarantee that Father So-and-so doesn’t know who you are. Many modern confessionals are built to allow the person confessing their sins the option to sit and face the priest, but not everyone chooses that, for obvious reasons. I guess it depends on what you are confessing and how well you know the priest.

Anyway, even if the priest knows who you are, he doesn’t care. They’ve heard it all over the years, and chances are you haven’t committed any sins that a gazillion other Catholics haven’t confessed before you got there, unless you killed someone, stole a lot of money, or did something equally despicable. In that case you will get the priest’s special attention, perhaps not in a way you would have chosen. I leave the priest’s reaction to your imagination.

I’m going to back up here and give you a brief lesson in the Catholic idea of sin. To us, there are two kinds of sins, venial sins and mortal sins. Venial sins are the kinds of things that a lot of us do every day that aren’t particularly nice but aren’t terrible, like telling a white lie to avoid trouble, or stealing a couple of supplies from the office, or calling in sick to work when you just need a day off, stuff like that. Mortal sins are bad stuff, like murder, adultery, major thievery, etc. If you die with an unforgiven mortal sin on your conscience, you will go straight to the hot place with lots of fire and no air-conditioning, and the sentence will be forever.

Venial sins won’t send you to that place, but they will send you to Purgatory. Purgatory is unpleasant, but, unlike the other place, you’ll eventually get out of there and into heaven. You’ll get there faster if you have people praying for you. It’s kind of like a plea bargain with a merciful and loving God. You don’t have to confess venial sins, but you are encouraged to do so to lessen your Purgatory time. Besides, if you don’t have anything else to confess, at least you should be able to come up with a couple of smaller offenses.

To complicate matters, you are only guilty of a mortal sin if you know it’s wrong and go ahead and do it anyway, or at least plan to do it.

Have I confused you? You are not alone. Many Catholics are just as confused as you are now. Really, we are. Confusion is a normal state for us. Priests are supposed to help us clear things up, but sometimes they are as confused as we are.

Okay, back to the confessional. When you are in there, confessing things to the priest that you probably haven’t even told your mother, your best friend, or your spouse, be sure to whisper softly enough so nobody standing outside can hear you. The priest is under the “seal of Confession,” and he can’t tell anyone what you say to him there, but you probably don’t want the people standing in line to know that you yelled at your kid for smoking weed, you told a lie to your mother, or you stole some paper from the office. Your sins are none of their business.

After you tell the priest everything you are going to tell him, he will give you a “penance,” usually a few “Our Fathers” and “Hail Marys,” and then you say a prayer telling God you are sorry for whatever you did and you’ll try hard not to do it again, even if you know you will at some point. The priest gives you absolution, and you are free from sin until you commit another one, which you will, because we are all only human.

You are then free to get up, get out of the confessional, hold the door open for the next person, who you hope hasn’t heard any of your whisperings, go sit in a pew, and say your “penance” prayers. Then you are finished, and can go home, run an errand, stick around the church for a while, whatever, free from sin until the next time you flash the bird at another driver, yell at someone, tell a white lie, or whatever else you do.

Well, if you are not Catholic, you now know more about the Sacrament of Reconciliation than you knew before you read this. If you are Catholic, you are probably shaking your head up and down and saying, “Yes!” I hope you got a few laughs, or at least some giggles, out of this little essay.

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