2004 LAPSED CATHOLIC
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by Jim Holman.
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NOTES FROM A LAPSED CATHOLIC
February 2004

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CONFESSION

"Bless me, Father. I have sinned. My last confession was in 1968."

That is how I must begin. I imagine he will stop me right there. Ask why so long. Why thirty-five years? Why 1968? Will he ask me my age? Is it possible he will say nothing? It strikes me that his lack of comment would be more unnerving than any casual question. I am second guessing the whole experience and kneeling on one of the northern pews in about the center of Saint Patrick's Church in North Park on a Saturday afternoon. I am beneath one of the Stations of the Cross.

I have been staring at it for 20 minutes and I still could not tell you what is depicted, which incident ascending Calvary was illustrated, whether it was stained glass or a wooden relief, or plaster. I am engrossed in a raw, bitten hangnail, and I don't really see that either.

It is mostly women here. The women are older as are most of the men except for one. The youngest is maybe thirty, of Mexican descent and dressed as if he might be on his way to a job waiting tables. Seven of us all told; kneeling waiting for whom? Father Verber? Possibly. I don't know the other priest's name.

The young man, boy really, seems unweighted if not innocent. Whatever his sins they do not seem to interest him as much as where he must be shortly. This is evidenced by frequent glances at his watch and programming something in his cell phone which makes a video game sound before he puts it away. Possibly I am predisposed to think of the parish as Irish. I ought to know one, I was the only Italian in a mostly Irish grade school and parish -- and it is Saint Pat's. The women, except one, indeed appear Irish. They seem too pale to live in San Diego but two of them have a ruddiness that belies any frailty. They do not look at me. If they did I am certain it would be with disapproval. I imagine them all working in the grade school cafeteria, hairnetted, filling plates with creamed chipped beef, fish sticks, and lime Jell-O. One woman seems apart from the others and again I guess that she is Mexican. From the expression on her face she takes her sins seriously. Something about the laugh lines at her mouth and crow's feet at her eyes say something, it seems to me, of decades of struggle with passion.

Do I look like a man about to confess for the first time in 35 years? I don't think so. I don't think you could guess any of my sins. Or maybe one could all too easily guess the nature of my disingenuous, middle-aged sins by looking at me. In that way much is different about the experience this afternoon as opposed to senior year at Carmel High School for boys in Mundelein Illinois. As a child I was certain that my sweaty little sins were writ large on my forehead and with mortifying exactitude. Do I really remember crying outside the confessional once? At Saint Luke's or maybe Saint Alexis back in Illinois in the 1950s? I remember the emotion; a cross between gibbering spiritual terror and a burning humiliation over some infantile bathroom/peepshow fantasy I had entertained for the purposes of "self-abuse" as it was then called. Now the memory inspired a minor flare of anger: why should a kid be tortured in this way over the biological realities of pre-adolescence: ineluctable hormones?

I could see what I was doing now. If I got angry enough all over again, at the church, I could in a kind of perversion of good conscience, skip this whole charade. I can hear the low tones of the priest. He sounds off-hand, companionable and not intimidating. His tones are low but could he please be quieter?

I try to remember the items that would not have occurred to me had I not read a pamphlet that Father Grancini at Our Lady of the Rosary had given me on the examination of conscience. Items like the lame but, I thought, innocent playing around with astrology, fortune-telling, Tarot cards, et cetera as a young hippie. I had certainly taken the business more seriously than it warranted just by indulging at all. But, like marijuana, I had considered it a harmless giggle. The pamphlet corrected me. Illicit drug use was indeed sinful as well. How much contrition could I muster in these areas? Enough to make their confession valid? I didn't know. Possibly the priest would tell me. I remember commenting recently in print that for the church to appear threatened by parlor tricks like astrology or palmistry was something like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir feeling threatened by a streetcorner Doo-wop singing group. Did this really need any closer examination?

Yes, drugs. There was a real can of worms. Could I really take credit for the fact that again, biologically I had won a crap shoot concerning addiction to any of a number of illicit drugs decades ago and that I eventually set them aside to go forth and sin no more? But alcohol was my true addiction laying in wait, and how much of that might not be considered a kind of original sin after all?

I wonder who it was -- my father, some now forgotten priest? -- who had so impressed on me the necessity of a rigorous and thorough examination of conscience? The concept dovetails neatly with aspects of the twelve-step program I am involved in, and I have found myself in this kind of reflection more often recently. But kneeling here at Saint Patrick's I wonder if I am not exhibiting the kind of tailchasing hypervigilance I was wont to do for a period of time living in Mexico where I had a maid once a week. I would fastidiously clean the house before her arrival, being embarrassed to have her walk in on the mess. In other words I could armchair quarterback my absolution in a kind of pre-emptive, pre-game confession and call it triage for the soul when all I was doing was setting aside the messier, more ambiguous sins (such as divorce from a marriage outside of the Church in the first place) and for example, take credit (by omitting any reference to it) for a kind of chemically induced chastity; Prozac having in large part, eclipsed my libido for years. Yes I could come off as sexually responsible, hardly promiscuous -- except for literally sleeping, with a woman out of wedlock -- and I suppose I need to confess that as well but where is the remorse?

Aren't I just flattering myself with my unique and complicated sin with special circumstances? Judging myself, I've noticed, feels something like vanity. The confessional door remains open. As I stand, I am mentally hefting the word "vanity" as if it is, after all, a kind of handle to that door. It certainly sounds like a start.

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