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Tom McMahon today begins what he predicts will be a three or four part sub-series looking at the Sacrament of Penance. He suggested we title this sub-series "As the people grow up…" and we've taken up his suggestion. As he suggests, we're in for some humorous anecdotes as well as some serious reflection…

Has the Sacrament of Penance a future?

Our Polar Express slows down as we tip toe through the tulips of a once highly regarded sacrament, still listed as PENANCE and known to the people as CONFESSION. My mother saw to it in the 1930's that the four McMahon children went to confession on Holy Saturday, our souls all spruced up to match our new Easter clothes … and then we could go to the Castro theater for a Buck Rogers thriller. I well remember, when I was three years old, as our family strolled down Mission Street taking a penny whistle from an outside stand and when my mother heard me blow it she made us go back to the store owner and apologize. I may have used this in my seven year old's first confession in 1935, just to tell the priest something. I have not to this day forgotten the look on my mother's face and I would not today steal a penny's worth of gum.

This sacred sign has quite a limited history but seems today to have received a rather unceremonious burial around the late 1980's. Has Penance a future? Let's walk through its graveyard, seeing if we can make some sense out of its current demise…

Perhaps the corpse can be resuscitated? I consider myself as a veteran tour guide, having sat in the confessional box for over 20 years; I amused myself roughly figuring out the hours I spent in these two decades, Saturday afternoons and nights, Christmas and Easter marathons, and endless classes of catholic school kids once a month. My tally: 13,000 hours and 31,600 kids, all primed at the pump by misguided nuns who used their own convent rule of life as criterion. (God bless them; after Vatican Two most have jumped over the convent wall or gone into justice and peace work; I heard convent confessions for ten years, one place where the mother superior questioned each nun as to what I said to her during her confession. I am happy to say that I opened many a door to liberation.) Perfection was the standard for kids and nuns alike … and then the 16th century standard collapsed. The matrix from which Penance grew has vanished. Education and civilization caused its collapse, plus a growing awareness of the human reality of the magic priest. The need to confess dates back to the days of the crusades and the mentally disturbed warriors; today they call it PTS.

Webster's Dictionary has a long list of definitions applicable to the word PERFECT; my 1940's classes in Latin help me to understand the language corruption as I separate the PER — through from FACERE — to do or to make. My 12 years of seminary was a process of "perfecting", fashioning me to the image of another who was considered "complete in all respects, without defect or omission,, sound, flawless, a precise copy" (all from Webster's). On the day of my ordination I was judged to be "perfect" (the priest factory turned out men all baked in the same oven using the same cookie cuter). Looking back I sense that the model was that of a 16th century cleric-monk-pseudo-stern faced Jesus. I was deemed fit to be another Christ by human beings who themselves had gone through the same process of perfection; the chain can be linked right back to the Council of Trent in 1542 … and don't go beyond that date and surely not to the historical Jesus.

The power over the sacred signs that linked humans and their God was transferred from the more perfect one (the bishop: Trentan theology = fullness of priesthood) to the newly ordained. I am aware today that their picture of Jesus was anything but human and their demanding efforts at perfection were cancerous to the Body of Christ. The issue is heavily involved with the man-made theology of Jesus having two natures, the ordained getting a share of the divine. …. this theology I no longer accept. The great flaw in Trent's priesthood theology is the absence of the female; such will happen when males concoct descriptions of an all male deity. We have a different notion of God today. Cf. Michael Morwood as he says: "We are living through the greatest shift ever in Christian thought. New images of our universe and our planet, along with knowledge about the long, slow development of life on this planet provide us with a new context in which to understand the divine presence we call God always present and active everywhere…"

The combination of bishoprics for sale and the disbarment of married men from the clergy in 1139 ce leaves no training ground for priests who were once tutored by one's own priest father (and I might say under the watchful eye of a Christian mother); the secular priesthood falls into terrible disrepair. Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales describes "priest" as "there was a mon of religeon, a parve parson of a towne … a shity mon …". The arrogant and immoral conduct of priests and bishops at the Council of Constance in 1444 is a monstrous disgrace to civilized people. Trent took a rag tag contingent of unholy/unwholesome men (priests only, bishops exempt), forced them into education and seminary morality training and shaped them up under the sacrament called HOLY ORDERS, saying it was all started by Jesus at the Last Supper. Perfect in garb and external conduct the priest was to be a living example of the perfect life led by Jesus (the nature of God overriding human nature); countless others who had fashioned their spirituality on monkish mythologies would pass on this medieval tradition of celibate monks in a heterosexual world. I see little connection to the historical Jesus and his way of life, especially with married Peter the supposed first pope of Rome. Trent's seminary results were good; they saved that day and there were always good men involved. It is from this 16th century clerical system that I am ordained in 1954, expected to live a perfect life after 12 year of seminary training. Problems occurred soon after my ordination as I came into contact with human beings living a human and good way of life and then came the Vatican Two Declaration on Religious Freedom … surely many were more holy/whole than I. Vatican Two returned a psychologically damaged religion, infected with Jansenism to the People of God and a healthy chaos has been our lot for the past 40 years. It would take until the 1970's for the disease of clericalism to be diagnosed, bringing the clerical body to virtual paralysis … oh my God, priests aren't perfect! … and Mrs. Jones I even saw a priest practicing celibacy right in the middle of the street…

The confessional box — the place where innocent Catholics
came to work out their imperfections…

James Joyce's "Here Comes Everybody" really described the confesional line-up. Photo og James Joyce from c 1910 around the time Pius X relaxed the rules to encourage regular confession and communion.

In the meantime the confessional box was the place where innocent Catholics came to work out their imperfections. The model was high, virtually inhuman in expectations with a standard set according to the rules and regulations of the medieval clerical and convent way of life; one might liken it to a parent making a self conscious teenager wear a suit that was too small. There were balanced mature Catholics, scrupulous ones, those who could care less, and of course the innocent kids. James Joyce's HERE COMES EVERYBODY really described the confessional line up.

The situation I encountered in my first parish in 1954 was sons and daughters of European immigrants would make their Easter Duty confession and annual communion; we reminded them after Lent from the pulpit while the kids in the Catholic school were coming for First Friday communion and more often on Sundays. The flood gates opened around the late '50's when fasting laws were changed and we found eventually the whole congregation coming forward to the altar rail. Our ordination class of 1954 was the first allowed to have water and I think something to eat three hours before receiving and we passed this on to the people. Many though would not come to communion without going first to confession as was the custom of their early youth.

Time out for a story: Outside of church on a summer late morning a very pregnant and beautiful young mother-to-be asked this then 26-year-old-innocent-ordained-kid permission to have water before she went to communion. I put my hands on her shoulders and with tears in my eyes I said to her "Yes, I give you permission, because that is what you need to hear but please never ask again; I encourage you to take such responsibility onto yourself and as an adult take care of your health and your little one. Jesus would not want you fasting." People were beginning to grow up and they saw going to communion as their just share of the community Mass and worship.

Now what, Thomas, has this to do with the sacrament of Penance? Good decent people had been taught they were sinful. For the Irish go back to Cardinal Paul Cullen who told my ancestral people that the 1800's Potato Famine was God's punishment for their sinfulness. You know all that stuff of original sin and then venial and mortal and the whole world was going to pot; Catholics could not turn around without facing an occasion of sin and the remedy was the confessional box. I can remember giving series of sermons on how good people were and the folly of Martin Luther's "mankind is a dung hill, saved by the white snow of grace". The increase in confessional use ran parallel to the increase in weekly communion. Unfortunately little tots were told they were sinful and when first communion for kids was introduced in 1910 confession went along as part of the package. How many of you readers made your first confession making up something to satisfy the nuns and the priest (who you might have thought was God in that dark box)? Before the 1900's confession might be once a life time for most Roman Catholics … if the Italian peasant in the Alps ever heard of the practice.

Another story: Ordained seven years I was sent to a parish which had been disadvantaged by a miserly old pastor, the people woefully uneducated in religion. I might have a dozen or fifteen baptisms any given Sunday and at Christmas Midnight Mass the front door ushers would have people enter the small church while other ushers shooed others out a side door. Religion was like a merry-go-round ride, with people going for the brass ring of salvation while I attempted to make some sense out of Jesus. Big feast days were like a circus with an 85-year-old the clerical ring master.

In preparation for Christmas I would hear confessions for five nights begging people from the pulpit to come early. On Christmas Eve I started in the box at 8am and ended at 10.30pm — non-stop except for a bite to eat and the bathroom. I had talked the old monsignor out of hearing confession, telling him that anyone who had been made a monsignor by Pius the 12th, viva voce, should be allowed to rest in preparation for Christmas midnight mass. At 10pm the old man, dressed in his finest robes, appeared in the sanctuary and I can hear his bellowed and broken English words to this day … "KNELLA DOWN, YOU PEOPLE, IN NOMINE PATRIS ET FILIA ET SPRITU SANCTO… ….YOUR SINS ARE FOGIVEN. NOW GOA HOME!" … And I am sure the people believed him … and I staggered out to assist him at the Midnight Mass. The sermon that night was on the 10 commandments with special emphasis on the person who stole the planted token money in the outdoor crib scene; the old man said from the pulpit if he caught the felon he would make him eat glass. (The cops called at 2.30am to inform me that the live sheep had escaped and were wandering down the street; I thanked them and went back to sleep) … one flew over the cuckoos nest … Merry Christmas!

There is a portrait of an American Civil War chaplain at the battle of Petersburg, in which hoards of freshly recruited Irish were massacred; the chaplain's hand is raised in general absolution over the gathered troops. The missing piece not contained in the art piece is his caveat to the soldiers that this forgiveness of sin does not take if they desert. The chaplain goes on to become the first president of Notre Dame University. Desertion would have been sinful for these Greenhorns as obedience was godliness, the same standard of my seminary days. God was a stern task master in those days.

We'll tip toe through the tulips again next week.

Tom here in San Jose, who hasn't been to confession since 1970 and I'll tell you why. Stay tuned. 06/12/2008

ARTICLE NAVIGATION: You are presently looking at Part 23
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PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7 | PART 8 | PART 9 | PART 10
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PART 29 | PART 30 | PART 31 | PART 32 | PART 33 | PART 34 | PART 35 | PART 36

Image Credits: Clicking on the images in the body of the article will take you to the original source.

[Index of Commentaries by Tom McMahon]