So, I had today off of work as a kind of early Thanksgiving holiday. I noticed that there were confessions in the afternoon at the local parish which offers a weekly tridentine mass. This parish is part of the diocese, not part of a Latin-mass-only or even Latin-mass-encouraging parish like I am used to attending. But, hey, it does offer the Latin mass, so how bad could the confessions be?
Well, that was the first time I have ever been commended after listing my sins.
I am a habitual re-sinner. My confessions tend to be quite similar. And usually I get a little lecture with advice and encouragement for overcoming these sins. The priest is always able to focus on something that needs improvement. Understandably, since I am most definitely a work in progress.
This priest, however, after listening to my ignominious litany, told me, "You know, in the grand scheme of things you are doing great, living a good Christian life, and I commend you for that."
And then I got the smallest penance I've had since I was about six years old.
That's it. No spiritual direction. No advice. Not even (as sometimes happens) a silent "no comment" and an immediate jump to the absolution. No, I got a commendation.
Now, there are three possibilities here:
1.) I'm a saint, and no one has told me before. (I'll mark this one down as "highly unlikely.")
2.) Everyone else at that parish is so terrible that by comparison my sins are as the sweet strains of an angelic choir. (I'll put this one down as "just a wee bitty bit less unlikely.")
3.) The priest wanted to give me encouragement and not let me fixate on sin, because that would cause guilt, which is psychologically unhealthy, and hey, I hadn't killed anyone so "in the grand scheme of things" I really was doing great!
Unfortunately, this last one is most likely to be correct. The result, of course, is that (if I weren't laughing about all this) I would likely leave the confessional thinking that my habitual sins were no big deal, that I didn't have to confess them or work on them, that I didn't have to work to improve myself at all, because, "in the grand scheme of things," I was doing great. So much for being a work in progress.
Now, I know that there is this perception that in the pre-Vatican II Church everyone went around in black, with long faces, fasting on Friday, carrying a load of unresolved "Catholic guilt." But what's wrong with guilt?
The modern world, I've noticed, seems to have a problem with guilt. Psychiatrists do their best to remove it from their patients. Self-help books promise to help you manage it. Guilt is given such a bum rap that anyone who feels guilty is made to, well, feel guilty.
On the one hand, you can kind of see where opponents of guilt are coming from. Guilt is not a pleasant feeling. It sits in our subconscious, nagging at the back of our minds, preventing us from relaxing, telling us over and over again that we're not the perfect person we like to believe we are. It ruins our fun. And that's a bad thing, right?
Maybe not. Not everything that is fun is good. Anyone who has ever been on a diet knows that, while it would be fun to eat that slice of cheesecake, it would not be healthy or good for their diet. Guilt tells them not to eat the cake, and if they heed it, they ultimately benefit by not being so unhealthy. So, guilt can be healthy.
As guilt can aid the body, even more it can aid the soul. Guilt occurs when we know, even if we don't openly admit it to ourselves, that what we are doing is wrong. While this feeling keeps us from enjoying our actions to the fullest, it serves as an anchor, a reminder that there is a right and a wrong and we are, at this moment, on the wrong side of the right.
Whether we heed this reminder or not is up to us. The gift of free will ensures that the choice is ours. But the reminder is there, and if we listen it just might prevent us from doing something dumb.
One of the most tragic examples of guilt disregarded is the case of Georges Remi, also known as Hergé, the author of the Tintin comic books. When I was a kid I loved these comic books and spent a lot of time and effort tracking them down, since they are not as well known in the U.S. as they are in Europe. During my search I discovered a wonderful coffee-table book about the author and the history of his comics. I found that Hergé was born and raised Catholic. He married his wife Germaine in 1932. Unfortunately, he was not faithful to her, and their marriage suffered. For two decades he carried on an affair with Fanny Vlamynck, a young artist at his studio. Hergé and Germaine separated in 1960. Hergé wanted a divorce, but his Catholic upbringing filled him with guilt at the thought. In the 1970s, to cope with this guilt and a series of bizarre nightmares that seemed to spring from it, he saw a psychiatrist, who told him (if I remember the quote correctly), "you must kill the devil of purity in you." Having heard what he wanted to hear, Hergé overcame his guilt, divorced his wife, and married Fanny, who happened to be about twenty years younger than him and who, upon his death soon afterwards, became the sole beneficiary of his estate.
As Captain Haddock would say:
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| (http://habilis.net/blistering-barnacles/) |
Hergé felt guilt because he was screwing up, pretty royally. But he rejected his faith and completed the destruction of his marriage on the advice of a man who saw it as his duty to remove those unpleasant guilty feelings from his patients. That guilt was the only thing keeping Hergé from completely losing his soul. It was his last tie to redemption. And he cut that tie.
It would a long time before I'd be able to read the Tintin books with the same kind of enjoyment I had before I knew this.
However, it can't be denied that guilt can be quite unpleasant and sometimes even harmful, if one feels it in a measure out of proportion to the crimes. It can also be harmful when we continue to feel guilt over something we have already done and cannot undo. The great thing about being Catholic, though, is that we actually have a mechanism to solve this: we go to confession. Bam! Guilt is gone!
A lot of people would call foul at this idea. A spiritualist self-help author wrote online that guilt is "a twisted or manipulative way of seeking forgiveness. It is the belief that if you inflict suffering on yourself for your choices, another will forgive you for them. This belief keeps you in pain because only you can forgive yourself."
The problem with thinking that only I can forgive myself is that I'm both too good and not good enough at doing this. My opinions of myself are subjective and tend to fluctuate. I am very good at justifying my behavior to myself, and minimizing the voice of my conscience. And yet, when that nagging voice becomes too strong, I can mull over my actions, obsess over them, even when they are long past and I no longer have any control over what I did.
The wonderful thing about confession is that it is objective. It does not depend on what I think or feel about it. I know that I am forgiven, because God has given me a visible, tangible means of obtaining that forgiveness. After confession, I am truly able to put my past sins behind me and move on. Okay, yes, I usually end up committing those sins again, but still. As much as I am a work in progress, I have made progress. I'm no longer quite the same selfish bugger I used to be. I still have a loooooong way to go, but I have improved, and what small improvement I have made would not be possible if I were intent on squishing the guilt rather than making the improvement.
Besides, my sins are not sins against myself. They are often sins against others and, every time, sins against God. I have no authority to forgive myself for these sins. But God has the authority to forgive me.
Once I go to confession, the feelings of guilt might linger, but I know I am forgiven. There is a sharp line drawn between before forgiveness and after forgiveness, and I can remake myself from that moment forth. It is a very freeing feeling! It certainly helps me to get over whatever depressed, guilt-laden feelings I might have had about myself before confession. I'm not treating the symptom, after all, but the cause.
The guilt + confession combo is an awesome one-two punch in Satan's face! So the next time I go to confession, I sincerely hope that the priest takes that shiny commendation I earned today (apparently by not being a murderer), tosses it aside, and demands that I get down and do Hail Mary push-ups until I learn not to be such a wimp.
That's the kind of confession experience I can get behind. Sir, yes sir!
