Confessional Booth
Yesterday in The New York Times, I read about a blog called PostSecret, a kind of on-line confessional. Actually, another thing this site reminds me of is the book Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathaniel West.
PostSecret is a blog that publishes postcards from people who want to anonymously confess a secret. The secrets are mostly of the depressing sort. The odd thing is that if someone confesses something happy or positive, such as the postcard that says “I’m happy and lucky but I’ve never told anyone,” one assumes this happy, lucky person is either arrogantly boastful or covering up their pain.
This is really a pretty ingenious site, and the postcards people send to the site are artful and sometimes poignant, sometimes just funny. They can also be depressing. One reader of the site comments that the site is inspirational because it proves that people are “the same the world over.” I don’t see it that way. I find the site distressing, more than inspirational.
At the same time, I feel drawn back to the site, to read every postcard.
In part, I am distressed that there is so much pain among ordinary human beings who are comfortable enough to design an artful postcard, and thus should be in no pain. In part, I am distressed because I know I could never be as honest as them.
As a Catholic (maybe that should be “lapsed” Catholic), I know the value of confession. One of the attractions of Catholicism to me was the ability to confess my sins directly to another person and receive absolution. The problem with confession, as I found out, is that there is a tendency (maybe it’s only my own tendency) to either not tell the whole truth, or to embellish the sin for the sake of a powerful confession.
Also, I often found myself confessing sins I had already confessed before. Also, sometimes I could not think of any new sins to confess, so I would opt for the usual stuff: lust, masturbation, evil thoughts, etc., even though these sins did not really prey on my mind and in some cases, I did not even consider myself to have sinned.
When I first converted to Catholicism, I was a member of a liberal parish in Morgantown, West Virginia. The priest I went to for confession was named Father Mike, a laid back young priest who typically wore jeans with his gray priest’s shirt and collar. I’ll never forget my first confession with him. One has to make a confession before one is confirmed and baptized into the church, and so this must have been just before Easter of ‘97. Father Mike and I went outside the church to smoke a cigarette, and as we stood there, I confessed to him.
At a first confession, you have to confess everything that might weigh on your soul, going back years. Most everything I confessed was of a sexual nature, all which felt odd to admit standing there on the sidewalk in front of the church, smoking with the priest. I watched his face as I talked, waiting to see if a look of disgust or concern passed over his face. His expression didn’t change. As I spoke, he stared thoughtfully down at the cigarette in his hand, and when I was finished he placed his hand on my head and absolved me. He offered no penance. In fact, I never received a penance any time I went to Father Mike to confess. It was a relief to find him absolutely non-judgemental, and I’ve thought kindly of that man ever since. However, in the confession itself I did not necessarily find the relief from guilt that I had hoped for, and so ever since I’ve occasionally felt compelled to confess again the same sins I admitted to Father Mike. One isn’t supposed to re-confess old sins, but I do it anyway. It must be part of my obsessive compulsive disorder.
When I moved to Virginia and joined the local parish, my first confessional experience was totally different. The priest at Sacred Heart was the aptly named Father Knot (no first-name basis with him!). I went to him on a Saturday before services. Confession was held in a small room off of the chancel. There was no confessional booth. There was a red velvet screen and a kneeler. Father Knot sat on the other side in a chair, hidden behind the screen.
When I first went in, I didn’t see the kneeler, and I stepped right around the screen, grinning and reaching out to shake his hand in greeting. He was startled and had an angry look on his face as he shook my hand.
I introduced myself and sat down in a chair across from him. I said, “I’m here for confession.”
He said, “Well, you’re supposed to be on the other side of the screen.”
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know. At my previous church, confession was just a matter of talking to the Priest informally.”
He asked me what church I came from. I told him. He kind of harumphed and said that I shouldn’t assume that all parishes are run the same way. In fact, he said by joining the church in a liberal parish, my introduction to the Catholic church had been totally misguided. I said I was willing to learn the traditional way of confession, but he would have to guide me through it.
Father Knot sighed and handed me a tract which had the confessional script for priest and confessor on it. He then directed me to the other side of the velvet screen, and I knelt and we began the confession.
When it came time for me to confess, I simply re-confessed a lot of the stuff I had been confessing over and over since joining the Catholic church. Father Knot’s reaction was also in contrast to Father Mike’s. He quizzed me in an inquisatorial way about why and in what frame of mind I had done certain things. When we had finished and it was time for him to dish out the penance, he said that I had done some things and had some unclean thoughts that were a real blemish upon my character, and that I would have to devote considerable effort to making amends to God. I was assigned to pray the rosary twice a day for two weeks. I said I did not know how to pray the rosary. Father Knot made a sound kind of like a grunt and reached around the screen, handing me another tract with instructions on the rosary. “Didn’t they teach you anything at that church?” he asked.
It turned out, it takes a long to time to pray a rosary, and so I never completed my penance. But at least that provided me with some new material of an un-sexual nature for my next confession.
I later learned that Father Knot was himself a convert from the Lutheran church, which explained a lot. The joke is that there is no one more zealous than a convert to a religion, and for him to convert from a conservative belief system such as Lutheranism must be relevant to explaining the man’s strict character. He routinely preached politics in his homily, particularly on the abortion issue. He had no problem telling his flock to vote Republican. He seemed cold and had little sympathy for sinners. He could play the organ, however, and when the regular organist was sick he would both play the music for his own entrance processional, then walk briskly to the front of the church to conduct mass.
I gradually stopped attending mass, and apparently attendance dropped off so precipitously under him that eventually he was transferred and a new priest took over. This new priest was more to my liking. He was elderly and Irish and liked to tell stories about being raised Catholic in Ireland as part of his homily. He was funny, warm, the very opposite of Knot.
Confession with him was as easy as it had been with Father Mike. I still don’t know that confession “worked” for me, however. Maybe confession will never work as long as I never forgive myself. The things I’ve done were not even particularly bad, though Father Knot found them disgusting. I know intellectually that compared to what I have done in my life, there are far worse sins. Yet that provides little comfort.
Sometimes I think that if I go to hell when I die, it will be because I have never been able to believe that Christ has forgiven me my sins.
If I were to write a postcard to PostSecret, I think that is what I would write on it.
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That’s quite an interesting site. I’ll have to go back. But though those confessions are artfully done, they’re still not telling their worst bits. At least, I didn’t see the very worst bits. I think I have worse bits than that, hiding away. That I will never, ever tell anyone. Not even the person I get closest to
Those postcard confessions are sad thoughts, thoughts they know are unworthy. But like your thoughts confessed over and over, there is likely no carrythrough there.
Catholic confessions always seemed to bother me, because you can do anything, and just do penance. Though you found that penance too long to do is funny. … Sin, in my atheist mind, is doing actual wrong. Sin is just the convenient word for doing things you know are bad.
Comment by Mel B. — Thursday, 2 June 2005 @ 5:06 pm
Besides, absolution, I think, is something that you can only give yourself. Despite what any priest might say.
That is, if you’re a person good enough to know right and wrong anyway. There’s a difference between normal people requiring absolution of guilt for minor transgressions and really evil people in the world, who will never feel guilt or need absolution. Politicians come to mind.
Comment by Mel B. — Thursday, 2 June 2005 @ 5:26 pm
Technically, the absolution comes from God through the priest; it is not the priest absolving me, except in the most obvious way. I don’t want to start any anti-Catholic arguments about there being no need for a priest to intercede, however, so just let that go please.
The way the sacrament was explained to me at my “liberal” church is that confession to another person brings great comfort, more so than confessing in a whispered prayer in private. I found that to be true, to an extent, but usually my guilt was only assuaged for a little while.
On the issue of Catholics just doing penance…that’s a common charge. On the other hand, I could charge that the Fundamentalist view is also obscene, that all I have to do is confess and all is good. People confess to evil all the time, and it does not wipe away the evil. Catholics would say it is your heart at time of confession which determines forgiveness, moreso than the penance. You have to be sincere in confessing your guilt, and you have to make a genuine committment to try not to sin again (thus the Priest says at the end, “Go and sin no more.”) Father Mike didn’t give any penance. He never stated a reason for skipping it. Maybe he felt that forgiveness from God was not contingent upon me “doing” something to earn it. That is unorthodox among Catholics, but then the church I was attending was unorthodox.
When I was an adolescent Fundamentalist, every night I’d confess to masturbating, and the next day I’d find myself sinning again. My confession was not sincere, nor was my committment not to sin again. Yet I kept confessing over and over, believing that even though I was committing the same sin every day, by confessing the sin it was being wiped away.
Was it?
Well, I don’t believe masturbation is a sin anymore. But I loosely define sin as anything we do which seems wrong to us. That is a pretty relativistic definition, but it’s Biblically based. There’s a passage in the NT in which Jesus tells someone or other that there is nothing wrong with eating meat offered to idols, as long as it does not offend one’s brother who believes it is wrong. Sin then can be defined as that which causes me or someone else offense. If I believe masturbation is a sin and it causes me a lot of spiritual pain, and I certainly did believe that at one time, then masturbation is a sin.
I hate writing about theology because I am so irreligious and lacking in religious education, and I know regular church-goers who read this comment are going to sniff at my ignorance. I don’t like being reminded of my foolishness. But these are the simple, childish beliefs I have about God and religion, and I am too old and uneducated to alter these opinions.
Comment by Matthew — Friday, 3 June 2005 @ 10:05 am
Ok, I’ll leave the priest thing alone. But my atheist view is something different…
Comment by Mel B. — Friday, 3 June 2005 @ 1:20 pm
As a Protestant, I can relate to what you are feeling. I remember in my tortured teenaged years asking for God’s forgiveness over and over and over for the same screw up. As an adult, I now understand that I asked for forgiveness again and again because I could not forgive myself. My dad once told me that as I receive spiritual forgiveness, I must also seek out forgiveness from the others I have trangressed, including myself.
Forgiveness is still something I still struggle with from day to day and do not know if it is something I will figure out, either.
Comment by Brandi — Friday, 3 June 2005 @ 4:09 pm
I appreciate your comment on not wanting to write about theology (even though I agree with your point on sin). As someone living in the Bible belt, I find it difficult even in poetry seminars to approach Biblical ideas as an “outsider”–it seems folks try to “out Bible” each other rather than try to understand the concept(s) behind the quotation.
And thank you for sharing the site. The damaged cards are the most fascinating.
Comment by Tammy — Friday, 3 June 2005 @ 6:01 pm
Mel writes: “Besides, absolution, I think, is something that you can only give yourself. Despite what any priest might say. That is, if you’re a person good enough to know right and wrong anyway. There’s a difference between normal people requiring absolution of guilt for minor transgressions and really evil people in the world, who will never feel guilt or need absolution.”
Giving your self absolution sounds a little too much like making excuses for yourself. And very narcissistic. The problem in this viewpoint is that everyone has a good opinion of themselves (isn’t that basically true?), so what we do is absolve ourselves constantly without having an objective sense of whether we are “good” or “evil.” While we castrate another for not meeting our standard, we make excuses (because we have context) for why we do not.
So, evil persons cannot know right from wrong? Why is that? And, I hate to ask, but as an atheist, how do you know what is right from wrong? (and in three sentences or less!)
Comment by Todd — Saturday, 4 June 2005 @ 9:26 am
Todd, the flip side of what you speak is someone who never forgives themself. Is that any better? I agree with you that absolution cannot come wholly from ourselves, but then where does it come from? If from God, how do we know we have been absolved? If we feel that God has absolved us, how do we know that we aren’t just absolving ourselves and saying God has done it?
It would seem that basic human narcissism would lead inexorably to forgiving ourselves everything in the name of God. This was the Fundamentalist view of confession and forgiveness, I think. I don’t see any way out of this trap you identify, and thus prayer is useless, confession is useless, religion itself is pointless because of our fallen-ness.
Comment by Matthew — Saturday, 4 June 2005 @ 11:06 am
In three sentences or less? And you want the atheist, who is the miniority here, to defend herself? I’ve just wasted my three sentences.
Comment by Mel B. — Saturday, 4 June 2005 @ 5:08 pm
I’m just saying that in the sense of guilt, as Matt was feeling, that going to a priest was doing him no good. Certainly the penance he was not finishing, or not getting assigned, was not doing him good. What’s the point of penance?
If you are feeling guilt about something… assuming that you know or think you know you did something wrong… I think the best way to make peace is not through a stiff, religious process where one priest ridicules you for going to a liberal church. Or another priest appears pretty bored. Guilt is internal, and probably separate somewhat from sin. That’s also what introspection is for, or therapy. Or simply telling yourself you’re going to try harder next time. Or in the case of masturbation, ;-), eventually figure out it’s not the sin you’ve always been told.
This is longer than three sentences.
As an atheist, I did, gosh, grow up with morals. Imagine an evil atheist growing up with morals. I’d like to think I know right from wrong. That’s different from a sense of evil and punishment in going either to hell, or at least not to heaven.
How do I know the difference? Well, my parents taught me, and I’ll admit that in that, I’m not unaffected by religion, as they were both raised to believe in God. I’m also affected by society’s mores and laws.
I guess in another sense, you’re right about an evil person not thinking they’ve done anything wrong. Can’t say there’s any help for that. But people who feel guilt have it in them to change. Or come to realize that the past is the past.
Comment by Mel B. — Saturday, 4 June 2005 @ 5:18 pm
I’m not sure what is more interesting: the blog, the postcard site or the comments of both.
The site was quite depressing. But like you said, it’s also addictive. Like a bad horror movie that you can’t turn off. My favorite was “Everyone who knew me before 9/11 thinks I’m dead.” Now THAT is a secret!
But I don’t think this site serves the idea of confession very well. And I understand that whether it’s through this site or behind the confessional screen in church, anonymity is a big part of confession.
Still, I think to really absolve the guilt, you need to confess to the people you hurt, the people who care about you. THEIR forgiveness is what matters to me. Yet, I’m too afraid to confess some things. Why? Because I don’t want to lose those people from whom I need forgiveness the most.
Comment by shel — Monday, 6 June 2005 @ 8:18 pm