I remember how confused and angry and frustrated I felt as a small child attending private Catholic grammar school, taught by old-world full-habit nuns. We - the kids - were prepping for the first 2 sacraments.
It seemed all about guilt and pain and the sins you committed, and being sure to remember every single one, and to “CONFESS!” them appropriately to the Priest. I use caps/exclamation point purposefully because that’s how it felt to me, as if I was just a little bug with all these huge people standing judgment over me, forcing me to cower and cry. I was overwhelmed! Then I learned that we were going to be going to Confession every week, and we had to be sure to “tell all your sins and be heartily sorry.” I remember raising my hand and asking a question “But what if you didn’t do any sins?” The nun was shocked. Absolutely shocked. I was berated, asked if I thought I was perfect… the other kids made fun if me and laughed at me. But I was serious! I couldn’t remember a darned thing I had (allegedly) done that deserved “confessing”, but I was totally expected to debase myself by confessing things that didn’t happen! It was awful, just awful. In my true child-like logic I figured out that gosh-darnit I’d better sin so I’d have something to confess, because I’d have to go kneel inside that dark scary booth anyway and if I said I hadn’t done anything to confess, I’d be labeled prideful and a liar, and I’d be punished by the Priest for that!
I remember learning that saying “curse-words” “hurt God” so I’d play solitary jump-rope and every time I jumped, I would mutter a “curse” under my breath and count them, so I would be able to tell the Priest “I cursed so-many times.” I didn’t even know what a “curse-word” was for! I imagined that when I uttered st or fk that it was like I was making God stub his toe. Seriously.
My sister was 10 years older than me, and she did not treat me well. She was cruel. She would harass me and push me to the point where I would cry, and she’d laugh at me. Finally, I’d strike out and hit her in frustration, and she would then run and tell our mother that I had hit her. I’d get punished and she’s get sympathy. I don’t know if she “confessed” her abuse of me, but I surely had to remember “hitting my sister” and suffering penance for it. Me, not her! In fact, I remember specifically the Priest telling me after I confessed “I hit my sister” that I must have felt anger in order to “do violence” and because I had not confessed being angry, that was very bad as I had tried to withhold a sin from him and I had to tell him everything so he could tell God, and now I needed to perform even more penance. But I hadn’t been angry. I was hurt and frustrated and nobody would listen to me or explain answers to any of my questions! I tried to tell him but he snapped at me to be quiet, said I should stop making excuses, that he’d remember my voice next week and I’d better not be doing the same things again. WHAT?! I thought - then what other sins could I possibly concoct? I was careful to go to another Priest’s section next time. I wanted no part of that Priest and his ledger-book and his hot-line to God!
In spite of all this confusion, I always felt so close to God, but these “rules and regulations” seemed extraneous because no reasons or explanations were offered. It was pounded into our heads what we had to do and not do, but the reasons “why” never came! There was a huge hole in my heart. I wanted to be educated about how all the rules worked, what everything meant, where we were being led and why, and I remember wanting to be a Priest, the most intimate, deep and loving “job” I could imagine, to be with God all the time. My “job” would be to learn all there was to learn, and work with God every day, and I would be nice to the children instead of mean and teach them all they ached to know! I was told that this wasn’t possible because only boys could be Priests. In other words, it wasn’t my place to learn any of the special, sacred, secret things. I could be a nun, though. Um, no. From what I saw of them, that was not my calling.
Someone on these forums once stated (about me, on one of my early posts) that they knew that I had *“…rejected the RCC because you felt your will should have been done rather than the will of God through his Church. I think it is very sad that so many seek to make God the way they want God to be, to fit their idea rather than to seek the truth of God. So many are in love with the ‘magic’ gift that they think the priest possesses when he consecrates the host that they lose sight of the fact that it is the body and blood of Jesus that is the greatest gift of all. You couldn’t have wanted to be a priest that badly or you would never have walked away from the Holy Eucharist. It just seems to me that you traded what you perceived as male worship for your invention of female worship…” *
That was a slap in my face. I was totally misunderstood, just like when I was a child, but I walked away without a response. (After all, “you can’t teach a pig to sing.”) They had absolutely no idea what was in my mind or my heart.
and Alleluia