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How about a laugh, (hopefully)
Just Want to Talk | Last Active: 4 hours ago | Replies (4174)Comment receiving replies
LOL. Mary, so if you had to make things up in order to confess, you essentially were taught to lie to the priest. 😈 I also went to a parochial elementary school (1960s) where I learned guilt was the driving force behind every waking hour! 😂 “If you’re not doing it, you must be thinking it.”
As a child, that motivation has you flinching with any raised eyebrow, intake of breath or side eye glance from a teacher, minister, parent, etc.
One moment I remember so vividly was in church. My mom and I would always go to 7:30 AM service and right after was my Sunday school. We had a very strict, intimidating ‘old school’ minister and of course, he was also the principal of our school. This was after Easter and he was telling the story of Jesus coming to the Garden to Mary after resurrection. I had dozed off with my head in my mom’s lap and I remember hearing him, with his big booming voice say, “Lori, Wake up!” OMG. I shot up from my mom’s lap and was on the verge of tears waiting him to come down from the pulpit and grab my ear to take me off to his office. (Yes that happened to all of us at one time or another)
As a child, I didn’t realize the minister had said, “Mary, Wake up..,” that revelation came to me years later when hearing the story again at Easter. LOL. I even told my mom who cracked up. She had wondered why I shot up out of her lap like that and…that I never fell asleep in church again!
Replies to "LOL. Mary, so if you had to make things up in order to confess, you essentially..."
I have a lot of stories of growing up Catholic and being the product of 16 years of parochial education. We could form a club here lol. My “sanest” Catholic education was in college with Jesuit teachers, lay teachers and the smartest Sisters of Charity I have ever met. We were treated as young adults after the last president (a nun) retired. Had her in my first year and the restrictions were ridiculous. Everything changed in my second year when she was gone.
FL Mary going down memory lane and then off to the gym
Lol, I was in Mary’s camp! Very small town, no Parochial school existed, one Saturday evening mass, one Sunday morning, and a close knit group of Catholics that our Priest was regular at family and other social events. As children I wouldn’t say we “lied” to the Priest during confession, it’s just that you would have to scrape up the same old things every week that might not have necessarily fallen under the definition of sin per the commandments. A court of law would have thrown the cases out. Sure, the most common confession of “I sassed my parents” fell under not honoring our Mother’s and Fathers, but letting a boy kiss me, not doing all of my homework, and teasing someone are questionable as to where they fell 🤗. Then we we became older teens and maybe things with a boy went past first base, we fell into omitting sins because we knew we’d just never be able to look Father Ed in the eye again when we saw him outside of the confessional! So we’d save those confessions for road trip visits to another Catholic Church. A great religion, I still consider it mine overall, but open confession did strike up an inner turmoil with many of us!
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This thread has me laughing so had the keyboard is jiggling! 1950's & 60's Catholic school girl here.
We used to get "days off" that our public school friends did not - think All Saints' Day (November 1st) or Holy Thursday & Easter Monday. So we would go and stand outside the windows' of their classrooms and yell "Hey Pagans! Nah-nah-nah we don't have school today and you do!" When our (very young) assistant pastor walked by and saw us, he stopped us but never ratted us out to "Father" or (the crabby old pastor) or "Sister" (the principal).
Year later, when he was a much-loved pastor of his own church, he still remembered that and several other incidents from my childhood and we had a good laugh.
Sue