Thinking Inside the Box – Charlotte Allen confesses her sins.

One of my most vivid memories of growing up Catholic before the Second Vatican Council is my second confession. Not my first confession. That was a pro forma ritual that took place just before my first communion, just as it does nowadays. My more memorable second confession, on a searing Saturday afternoon in Southern California’s tormenting July, was different. School was out for the summer, there were no coaching nuns to be seen, and the kindly old priest who had heard my first confession seemed to have vanished on vacation. Worst of all, I now had serious sins on my conscience, “mortal” sins that I was certain had eradicated every modicum of God’s saving grace from my soul. I had missed Sunday Mass at least twice, probably more. Catholics regard willfully missing Mass as grave because it is an insult to God.

My parents had a lot to do with the missed Masses. They were baptized Catholics but not at all religious, and they liked to dress up and go out on the town on Saturday nights. When school was out, our family gave Mass a pass or showed up so late that, according to the nuns, our brief appearance didn’t even count. I could have pinned the blame for my mortal sins on my parents, but I knew that I could have bicycled to church by myself or nagged my parents to take me.

As the summer dragged on, my conscience was biting me so badly that I prevailed on my father to drive me to confession. The plan was that he would wait outside in the car while I made my amends with God inside. So I entered the church, creaked open one of the doors to a confessional booth whose red light told me that a priest was inside, and knelt down in the dark to wait for the grille to open. I waited some more. And then more. And more. After a long time, an aperture opened, letting in a flash of light. It was my father. “What the hell is going on?” he inquired. Then he rapped on the priest’s door — “You’ve got a customer here” — and went back to the car. “You should have let me know you were in here,” grumbled the priest.

My father found the episode hilarious in retrospect. “Charlotte’s confession” became a standing joke for my parents. But for me, at least from a human perspective, my second confession was a humiliating disaster. The priest, probably already grumpy at having been caught short by my father, wasn’t into today’s theories of “cognitive development” that stretch irresponsible childhood well into post-adolescence. He treated my repeated failures to attend Sunday Mass exactly as he would have treated them had they been committed by an adult: with a stern lecture. I was so rattled that I not only forgot how many times I had committed this sin but also forgot the words of the Act of Contrition, an essential remorse-affirming element of the confession rite. That triggered a second stern lecture.

From a perspective not so grounded in the human, my second confession was a valuable lesson. The experience reinforced something that the nuns had taught: the palpable reality of sin. Even many Catholics these days are confused about the purpose of confession and think that it is a free psychotherapy session. As Father Jerry Pokorsky, a Virginia priest, says, “It is not uncommon for a priest to hear someone say, ‘I just don’t feel close enough to God.’ The immediate response might be, 'Well, join me and every priest and Mother Teresa and, I would dare say, Pope Benedict himself. We all do not feel close enough to God.’”

Actually, the purpose of confession is the forgiveness of one’s sins. The name of the game in confession is J’accuse, and the object of the accusation is ourselves. In turn, the sacrament of confession, culminating with the priest’s words of absolution, opens the sluice gates of God’s never-exhausted mercy and floods us with the grace to start anew, the slates of our souls wiped truly clean.

Here’s another confession story of mine, from only a few years ago: the time I hid the Wall Street Journal of a co-worker who was getting on my nerves and then watched with malicious glee as he searched for the newspaper. A little later, feeling remorseful, I rushed to a church near the office and blurted out the incident in the confessional. The priest could have said, “My dear, we all have our failings, and I know that work can sometimes be stressful.” He didn’t. Instead, he uttered these words that I’ll never forget: “You should be grateful that God is more patient with you than you are with other people.”

Priest of my second confession, you live!