While I’m still in my nostalgic mood, I thought I’d break another Blog record, and post a third piece in three consecutive days on the way we were. Five questions you won’t read anywhere else. When you read them you may say “No wonder !”
— “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It is one week since my last confession. I had impure thoughts nine times.” How old do Catholics have to be to have said those words in Confession ?
— What on earth did I say in my First Confession ? I was seven. Perhaps I confessed smoking my First Cigarette. The story is told in Chapter One of my book “From Illusions to Illumination”, sacrilegiously associating my First Cigarette with my First Communion.
— Was the challenge of coming up with “sins” to confess an aid to the development of my imagination ? As a Franciscan student, confessing to “breaking the silence” or having unkind thoughts about a psychotic professor, must have bored the confessor, unless he happened to be the professor in question.
— Did I seriously believe, as a confessor myself, that that adulterer on the other side of the screen would go to Hell if I did not absolve him ?
— As our A380 nose-dives into the China Sea, will believers who know my (hi)story beg me to pronounce the magic words of a General Absolution, knowing that such words are just as effective coming from an ex(communicated) priest as from one in good standing ? (“Just as effective”, indeed . . .).
Voilà a few random questions on the rebaptized Sacrament of Reconciliation, one of the surviving absurdities of Catholic faith and practice.
RIDENDA RELIGIO
Blind Faith: Blind Folly 
It is indeed reassuring to learn that if/when I get sozzled during our next lunch here in Oz and fall under a bus as I stagger off into the twilight, you, Frank, can absolve me of all my deadly and not-so-deadly sins and thus ensure my priority entry to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Back to reality – I too remember my first Confession when still a 7 yr old kid at the Presentation nuns school at Five Dock. I confessed to pulling my sisters’ hair. I don’t recall what Penance received – probably Three Our Fathers, Three Hail Marys and three Glory Be(e)s.
Harmless you might say – but damaging nonetheless in that it fostered the notion of “guilt” and easy forgiveness. Many of the child abusers would have derived comfort from the forgiveness they received in the confessional. One could be forgiven for doubting the “determination to not sin again” of those penitents who became serial offenders.
Frank would be familiar with the “canon law” requirements for the efficacy of the Sacrament of Penance (or Reconciliation as it is now called).
Just another example of the plethora of unreal beliefs and teachings for which the Catholic Church in particular is renowned.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We joke about “priestly power” and the absurdity of ex-priests giving Final Absolution. Some Catholics are afraid when they see me go into a bakery. If you don’t know what THAT means, ask one. Yuval Hariri has a seminal sentence summing up the silliness : “We are blinded by the fictions and stories we create or other people create and we believe.” Someone today sold the Sydney Harbour Bridge to a visiting tourist. Trump succeeds in getting people to believe in “clean coal”. I believe that one day the whole world will read this Blog. What is your Credulity Quotient ?
LikeLike
“Every time I hear a newborn baby cry
Or touch a leaf
Or see the sky
Then I know why
I believe”
Frankie Lane in 1946 had it all summed up.
Beautiful lyrics – nonsense logic.
LikeLiked by 1 person
We all loved Frankie, his unique voice and the songs he sang, especially this one. We had never heard of “Positive Thinking”, but reminded ourselves that though rain could spoil a picnic, it made flowers grow. We wanted to believe that we could always count on someone ready to help us when we needed it, and, of course, that there was Someone Up There listening to our prayers. Movies in those days always had happy endings (except those weird, arty, depressing French ones). Frank Capra made us feel good. We never imagined that religious terrorism could exist and never suspected that priests’ pedophilia already did. History will underline the sea-change, no, the revolution in thinking that challenged our naïveté. Some regret the “good old days”. Others like Thom and myself, in spite of the many new threats to our well-being, security and even survival which “progress” has brought us, consider ourselves lucky to have lived an epoch that allowed us to question our credulity and rid us of the illusions many still have.
LikeLike