All day long I put off writing about sin. I wonder, would I think more about sin if I were sinning? I’m not kidding. I believe that if I were plotting to murder, sin and sin’s consequences would be on my mind.
I wonder if murderers really do confess to priests. And if they do, if they sit in those musty boxes and tell the priests that they’ve just shot a man or poisoned a woman, what does the priest do? Does he have a moral obligation to contact the police?
I’d like to be a priest, just for one Saturday afternoon. I’d like to sit on the priest’s side of the confessional and listen in. Like a substitute teacher, except, a substitute priest. I wonder if I’d hear boring sins — “I yelled at my brother,” “I stole a quarter off my dad’s dresser,” “I used a curse word at my kid.” I’d want to hear the juicy stuff — adultery and robbery. I wouldn’t want any of the crazies — pedophiles or people who plot horrid crimes.
It’s part of my family’s legend, our story, that Mom got the confessional window slammed in her face. It was after I was born, kid #5, and she went into the confessional to say that she was going on birth control. The priest told her she couldn’t do that, and Mom told him she was going to do it anyway.
I sometimes wonder why she bothered confessing. I wonder if she was looking for absolution. Did she expect the priest to say, “I understand, you’ve just had your fifth, you’re tired, you want to make sure, absolutely sure, you don’t have more, and while it’s a sin to use birth control, I absolve you of that sin.”
I think Mom was looking for a good excuse to not go to church. I picture her putting on her lipstick in the bathroom as Dad waits for her — he went to confession on Saturday around 4 in the afternoon. Mom probably planned it out, a way to get out of Sunday mass. An hour a week alone, no husband, no kids. Like getting kicked out of church. “It’s not that I didn’t want to go to mass, just that the priest disowned me.”
I need to ask her about this. I realize I’m missing a critical part of her story.
Now I look at the clock. Time is up. I didn’t write about the 7 Deadly Sins.
-related to Topic post, WRITING TOPIC – THE 7 DEADLY SINS
I like how this Writing Practice went from an overview down to the personal. You can tell you “dropped down” when you started writing about your mom.
So I have a question, ybonesy, does the Catholic Church let women use birth control today? I honestly don’t know the answer.
Your practice reminded me of a friend’s mother in the same situation in the 50’s. Devout Catholic with 6 kids and not wanting to have anymore. She also went on birth control and the priest told her the unborn kids would hang in Limbo. The story also got passed down in her family. And it reminds me how religion sometimes portrays women as sinners, when it puts them in impossible positions.
Women are branded sinners for wanting control of their own bodies. Men are not faced with the same issues regarding theirs. And are taught to bear none of the responsibility for childbirth.
I left this practice wanting to know more of your mother’s side of the story. Many women today are left in the same position. It might seem on the surface as if things have changed. But it seems to me that women are still being restricted by religion about what they can and can’t do, more so than men. I guess it depends on which women you talk to.
I also liked how you wanted to be on the other side of the confessional for an afternoon. It made me chuckle. It’s not something I’d ever be interested in doing. I wouldn’t want to be faced with those kind of moral dilemmas every single day!
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Although I was raised in a pretty agnostic household (with a smattering of Science of Mind and Buddhism), I was sent to Catholic School on several occasions to “straighten me” up or out or something. At Santa Catalina, the protestant girls (we were also divided into two teams-the Navajos and the Cherokees) had to go to Ethics class when the Catholic girls were in Religion. The beginning of my “ease out” of Santa Catalina was when we were being taught that thinking about doing something sinful was just as evil as doing the sin. So I asked, of course, “then if the penalty is the same, why not just do it?” I was back in public school in less than a year.
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Ha! I don’t recall that rule, because, boy, I sometimes think evil things but don’t follow through on them 8) . To tell the truth, even though I went through the Catholic version of Bible Study (Cathecism — sp?), and even though I sat through weekly mass from early childhood to age 16, I don’t recall any of the specific teachings around Sin. I just remember we had to confess on Saturday in order to receive Communion on Sunday.
I think it’s interesting that they recognized your non-Catholic status by putting you Protestant girls in a different class than the Catholics. We have a Catholic high school in Albuquerque that gets a good share of non-Catholics, and I always wonder what it’s like for those kids.
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Franny, that totally fits with my image of you — So I asked, of course, “then if the penalty is the same, why not just do it?” I was back in public school in less than a year. And I’m sitting here chuckling. 8) If thinking is the same as doing, I think we’re all in a heck of a lot of trouble. Then is there any hope for humanity at all?
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I left this practice wanting to know more of your mother’s side of the story.
QM, so did I. I have delved pretty deeply into other aspects of my Mom’s life. For example, she played poker for 30 years, against the strong wishes of my dad, and I interviewed her years ago regarding her motivations, all the details. I wrote a short story on the whole experience, but a fictional one.
This writing practice, though short and fast, really did turn on a light bulb for me as to a huge chunk that was missing. I’m going to sit down with her and find out more about this particular experience, and her experience overall with the Catholic Church. I do know that she grew up in a ranching community, raised on a remote ranch, and that her parents didn’t attend mass. But then she married my dad, who was very religious, twice-a-Sunday altar boy, and that she was going to mass more as a way to role model for us the notion that going to church was what you did.
Re: the question as to what the Church’s position is now on birth control, well, maybe I can convince my sister, who is still a practicing Catholic, to comment. My guess is that it’s similar to what it used to be when I was young, which is that you can practice a form of Rhythm birth control, but that you can’t use The Pill nor any other kinds of methods, not even barrier. BTW, my huge problem with Catholicism is that priests who are sworn to Celibacy and who never can have relationship with women then hold themselves in a position to be able to advise women, mothers on family planning and other issues for which the priests know nothing about.
I love the ritual of Hispanic Catholicism, I love the traditions (artistic, especially), I love the liberation theology that was practiced in much of Hispano Catholic churches before the Vatican rejected that approach and ousted those priests. I can not, for political and personal reasons, accept the teachings as they are today.
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http://www.lesliehawes.com/wordpress/?p=142
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