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ARTICLE NAVIGATION: You are presently looking at Part 24  Tom McMahon entitled today's reflection a "walk through the graveyard". Surely, of all the Sacraments, the one in most urgent need of a re-think is the Sacrament of Confession? One suspects the drop off in participation in this Sacrament has been the greatest of all. The people have spoken. Tom shares some observations of priests going to confession in the 1960s. We might wonder if the priestly participation rate in this Sacrament has dropped off in line with the drop in lay participation? Two stories to begin… STORY ONE: In my first year as priest we lived two miles away from the newly-built church. Tuesday night the Irish-born pastor counted the Sunday collection with two charming ladies, myself commanded to be present for this vital clerical task. A woman called and asked to see me and I met with her in the office; the pastor was furious while I delighted in my first "counseling". She was beautiful and she talked about her marital problems. I was spell bound, puzzled that a husband could treat a beautiful woman so poorly and God alone knows what I advised her. She asked if I would hear her confession; the rectory was two miles from the closed and darken church and for safety sake best to hear her in the rectory office. Somewhere, someplace (perhaps seminary) I had heard that a priest must hear a woman's confession only in the confessional box. I knew nothing about "solicitation" — little did I realize that I was going contrary to the regulations of the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, and the notorious pope Innocent the 3rd who did away with clerical marriage. It was around the time of the Crusades that the mind of the hierarchy turned to an obsession with sexuality. The Fourth Lateran Council made it obligatory for lay people to confess annually to their local parish priest; "the combination of these two rules (celibacy and annual confession) was to prove harmful to the morals of both clergy and laity" (DeRosa, Vicars of Christ). It led to the sin of "solicitation", that is, a priest using the confessional for immoral purposes. Now, reader, keep in mind this is 1215, pre-Trent and the sacramental system is not yet defined (1542). What was "confession" like and what were the sins of the day? We know the clergy was corrupt and the bishops busy with military and financial transactions, out of touch with the plight of the laity. DeRosa continues "The privacy of the confessional provided the clergy with ready access to women at their most vulnerable, that is, when they were obliged by canon law to confess every impure thought, deed, and desire. If say a woman confessed to fornication or adultery, the priest made matters far worse if he solicited her. But she was not keen to take this outside the seal of confession. She did not want to lose her reputation." (end DeRosa) Personally I suspect that canon law was used to set a trap for women and lustful clerics. (tmc: sounds like cult stuff to me!) What baffles me here is the pre-history of the Penitential Groups and the category of sins they held in the early church. Early Christians dealt only with betrayal (apostasy), theft of one's wife (adultery) and murder; time spent in Penitential groups depended on the severity of the aforementioned crimes and the punishment was meted out by the community. Communities differed. Early Christianity at times took this punishment system to extremes, often banishing an offending member for life and a death bed return to the community's breaking of bread. This system broke down with the Fall of the Roman Empire, yet remained on the books far into the Middle Ages. (Notice I have avoided the word sin as our modern concept differs radically from the origin of the medieval word, namely an archer's term "to miss the mark".)
Christianity went for 600 years without community and without a system in which the mercy of Jesus was practiced. The shift came from community forgiveness to the forgiveness by God via the clerical authoritarian figure. Trent set in motion the mechanism for forgiveness but was unable to harness all the priests with the gospel gentleness of the Jesus who talked with the woman at the well. This awareness is being restored by the influence of Vatican Two and with people such as Fr. Bernard Haring stating that women's confessions should be heard by women. Where did the system go wrong? Somewhere around the late 1960's I began to advise persons in confession to seek forgiveness from the one they had offended. The 12 step AA program has been far ahead of the Roman Church in this approach. By the 1970's I was using again the techniques of the Irish monks as they brought Christianity back to spiritually decimated Europe. The Irish monks practiced Christianity, not Papal Romanism. STORY TWO: I take you back to a priests' retreat when I am a young clergyman who, still obedient to the seminary-perfecting system, went to confession on a regular weekly basis, as was the seminary practice every Saturday night (I had fine mature-men priests who guided me, aiding me in my quest to remain "perfect"). On this memorable priests' retreat some dozen or more confessors were brought in, religious order strangers to the local secular clergy, priests made available to priests for confession or consultation. On the last night I was shocked to see long lines of black-dressed clerics lined up waiting to enter the confessionals; they appeared to be somber of face and uneasy. I had never seen the likes of clergy lined up for confession. Surely we knew ourselves to be not all perfect … I began to wonder if priests went to confession at other times? And I began to realize the value of the annual priests' retreat … for many perhaps a fresh start in the struggle of life. I began to realize how difficult it was for priests to accept their humanness; there were few (if any?) priests in the archdiocese available who were decent counselors. Sex was out of the question for discussion. The lone wolf priest would have difficulty in accessibility to confession and his personal fear of disclosure. In the pecking order there was a scarcity of priests we called "priests' priests" — the kind we could trust. So many of the clergy lived in lonely isolation or in rectories where there was no comradeship. One classmate of mine lived 300 miles from the nearest priest.
I feel it worthwhile to further quote DeRosa: "In Spain any number of ad hoc substitutes were employed. It might be grating that separated the priest and the penitent, or a handkerchief, a sieve, twigs or a fan". The games people play — even around the sacred… And so you have it my friends, the games people play even around the sacred. (GAMES PEOPLE PLAY by Eric Byrne, a 101 primer for me back in 1965). In our age of widespread education of the general public the Roman institution today faces its first psychological confrontation with the People of God and its ordained clergy are woefully ill prepared; the people are smarter than the priests. The present Vatican system has no understanding of human psychology; no system can stand having such a lack. There are two principles I employ in my psychological approach to human conduct:
I copy here a recent position as stated from the Vatican: "The Vatican identifies homosexuality as a deep-seated personality disorder and psychological flaw; condemning same-sex acts as 'grave sins', 'objectively disordered', 'intrinsically immoral' and 'contrary to natural law'." Even men who have a gay orientation but abstain totally from sex are condemned by the Pope as possessing a "tendency towards an intrinsic moral evil". There are many facets to this statement, calling for open discussion. I view it as an unconscious Vatican confession: they are speaking to their own clergy, masking their own problems while addressing the message to the general public. (Murder will out!) For now I focus only on one aspect of the issue — the social studies today that tell us of the large number of Roman clergymen and present seminarians who are gay and the general policy of "ask not and tell not" that has come back to haunt the US military as well as the Roman institution. A woman at our Senior Center in praising her new pastor innocently added "and I hope he is not gay". Are the people of God now faced with another sexually-orientated secret problematic experience? Catholic persons have questioned me and I can offer them no real evidence of how this issue will play out. We need popular education that gays are not by nature pedophiles. I personally believe that with the obsession to get the abusing clergy the very real issue of sexual abuse by parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, and others is put on the back burner. We think we solve intense problems by getting the identifiable scapegoat; in family-style therapy the identifiable patient is the recognizable one who blows the whistle on the dysfunctional parental system. When the Vatican goes after homosexuality I recognize the Vatican's own inner disorder and dsyfunctionality as it scapegoats. What would Jesus really think about all that has evolved? Personally I need to continue to collect information and be prayerful — what would Jesus do and think? — about it. I know the old confessional system with its secrecy and power vested in clerical hands will be of no help. I don't agree with those who tell me "the church is wise and it will survive". The church is people, some married, some single, and some ordained., some holy, some sinful (and a mixture of all at various times). I believe God has vested in humans the will to survive. The invention of the township is early medieval proof. Powerful landowners, refusing to be taxed fought kings and they built defensive castles; the two sides took it out on the slave peasants working the fields. The township became the survival answer for those who could seek refuge, each becoming a free person if they could live for one year and a day in the protection the town/community offered. The old men in the pointy hats have held material power and the land (dioceses and parishes) for centuries but they no longer hold the people. Along with Andrew Greeley I say that the criminal guffaw over the birth control issue (Humanae Vitae) snapped the loyalty of the people of God. At Runnymede in 1215 c.e. the barons and king signed the Magna Carta starting the ball rolling that eroded the power of the powerful and history spells out the rest — French and American Revolutions, woman's right to vote, etc., etc.. When Paul the 6th betrayed the people he killed the trust of the people and the sacrament of Penance. Today I lament the loss of the sacred sign of Jesus' mercy. I (and there were others) was good for people during my tenure. I became a professional but Rome saw/sees only the isolated values of the monks of 1215 c.e.. Human conduct is evolutionary. A wide- open vocation awaits the person who will generously become trained and offer service to a world people badly in need of mercy-full council. Tom, writing from the sin-full township of San Jose, Ca, and saying again "I have not gone to confession since 1970". I will continue to offer more appreciation of my refusal when we continue this series in the New Year. 12/12/2008  ARTICLE
NAVIGATION: You are presently looking at Part 24 Image Credits: Clicking on the images in the body of the article will take you to the original source.
©2009 Tom McMahon |
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Tom McMahon, a former priest now married, lives a very fulfilled life in San Jose and continues to contribute voraciously to several Catholic discussion lists in the States. He has been an enthusiastic supporter and encourager of the Catholica initiative from the very beginning.
Visions of the Future Breathtaking and confronting BBC Channel 4 series with American theoretical physicist Michio Kaku examining life in the future. The series raises big ethical and moral questions that collectively humankind needs to face and answer. Some of these questions are perhaps more morally difficult than anything we have faced in the past. A "must view" series for anyone interested in the discussions on morality and ethics discussed on the Catholica Forum. Part 1: The Intelligence Revolution 58m34s. Part 2: The Biotech Revolution 58m41s. Part 3: The Quantum Revolution. 18 YouTube segments total 175m54s total. [Catholica Discussion String 26Aug10] | [WATCH THE VIDEO]
Docos 019: 03 Sep 2010
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