That Forgiveness Part

     Here is another story about the young man mentioned in yesterday's post – a college classmate that I dated (briefly). We were hanging around the biology library one evening - there might have been one or two other classmates there during the course of our discussion. And we started talking about our mutual Catholic upbringings.

     So of course, the topic of confession came up – and we each took turns relating our confession stories. And after a while I said, “What I especially hated was having to go into the confessional, and the first thing I had to do was say how long it had been since my last confession? And it was always a long long time, so I'd get a lecture from the Priest about that!”

     My friend responded, “oh, my mother always told us to say it had been a month since our last confession.”

     And I laughed. Well, I laughed because he had said something funny.

     But he just looked at me and wondered why I was laughing?

     Then I realized he was being serious – and I was in a dilemma – should I tell him why that was funny and as a result end up insulting his mother, or should I just let it go?

     Finally I calmly explained the contradiction of going to confession to list all your sins and the first thing you do in there is tell a lie about how long it has been since your last confession?

     I guess this is just another case of my taking confession a whole lot more seriously (and unrealistically?) than my peers at the time. I don't go to confession anymore – that is, I do not go to a place in a church behind a door with a screen and a human being to hear me.          But I confess my sins all the time, and every day I am consciously trying to do better than the day before. Truth be told, though, it's the forgiveness aspect of confession that seems to get left behind.

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