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IN AN INTERVIEW with a Jesuit magazine in 2013, Pope Francis declared, “The confessional is not a torture chamber, but the place in which the Lord’s mercy motivates us to do better.”
This is not how many Irish people will remember their first experience of entering a confession box, at the tender age of eight. The idea of telling a small child to step into a dark wooden box and to share their worst secrets with an old man who is sitting inside always struck me as bizarre.
It reminds me of my young daughter’s fear of entering Santa’s grotto last Christmas in our local shopping centre.
“It’s okay,” I assured her.
“There’s an old man in there with a big beard who’ll give you a gift”.
Encouraging a child into the confessional is a less easy sell when the reward isn’t a selection box but a sentence of three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers.
Roughly 60,000 eight-year-olds across the state will complete their First Confession over the coming weeks. While the relic of the dark, wooden confession box is largely avoided for this ritual nowadays, much of the original tenets of the Sacrament of Penance remain. But why are we still putting our children through this guilt grind in the first place?
Every year, we hear the perennial debate about whether or not the Holy Communion process should be done separately from the school curriculum. We listen to the endless agonising over non-practising Catholic parents who insist on dragging their kids through this system because “it’s a good school.”
Because of this, we are missing the more insidious little cousin of the Communion. The First Confession takes place just before the Big Event. While the Communion has a bit of glamour, with its slick miniature two-piece suits, flouncy dresses and brown envelopes of cash, the anachronisms of the confessional rites linger quietly in the background of all the razzmatazz.
Don’t get me wrong. There is a lot to support in getting a child to examine their conscience. However, the First Confession goes beyond this. Does it not institutionalise guilt from a young age, giving structure to an endless search for absolution?
One priest I spoke with as part of my research for this article said that in his experience, children can feel unburdened after attending confession, and that they leave with a smile on their face. He argued that the age of reason is seven years of age and that he had been blown away by how deep and insightful some kids are during the confessional experience. Another parish I came across had this to say in its First Confession guidebook:
Confession is a wonderful opportunity to get things off our chest. It’s not something we should be afraid of, but rather something we can look forward to.
Is this not the sort of Catholic guilt that has created a population of people who are addicted to apologising, taking a perverse joy in contrition? In Ireland, we have been taught from a young age to be ashamed of things. Just recently, a furore kicked off on RTE’s Liveline over a razor advertisement on TV, which was causing palpitations among a certain cohort because it dared to show an apparently illicit part of the female body.
The shame.
The Archdiocese of Dublin currently offers parents a resource guide as part of their preparation for the First Confession. One particular line caught my attention.
“Encourage your child to say sorry often,” it advises.
Although this teaching is ostensibly intended to provide moral guidance, I worry that it creates a culture of guilt that pushes children to be submissive and obedient.
We are world leaders in confessing sorrow in Ireland. We carry the dogma of First Confession into our adult lives, believing subconsciously that we need to apologise for everything. I remember when I was living in the UK, my English friends would laugh at just how frequently myself and my Irish compatriots said the word “sorry”.
Apologising has been ingrained into us and becomes almost impossible to relinquish. First Confession is the crucible where this guilt is first forged.
A particularly egregious aspect of the First Confession ritual is the continued use of the story of the temptation of Adam and Eve. Grow in Love, the religious education programme used in schools, lists this story in its “Suggested Readings for First Reconciliation.”
This is a story of violence, with God, in typical Old Testament fashion, castigating the woman for being weak in the face of temptation. He tells her, “I will multiply your pains in childbearing; you shall give birth to your children in pain.”
Do we really want our eight-year-old daughters listening to this grotesque, scare-mongering diatribe?
The idea of formalised confession transcends shame and guilt. It is also about control. The Irish sociologist Tom Inglis argues in his work that the Catholic Church once had a “moral monopoly” in this country. The survival of the confessional, despite secularisation, means that it continues to be used as a method of control.
The confession box is a miniature court of moral rectitude, in which a man (and only a man) can dictate over your personal judgement and decide whether or not you have behaved in a way that aligns with the Church’s ideas. If you have failed to meet their principles, then you are sentenced in the form of Hail Marys, Our Fathers and guilt.
The idea that an organisation which has committed a litany of crimes against children, over many decades in this country, can continue as the great arbiter of morality is delusional.
Times have changed since I took my First Confession in 1990. Euphemistic language has entered the Catholic lexicon to help soften the edges. The words “Sacrament of Reconciliation” have replaced “Sacrament of Penance”, while sins are now framed in terms of failing to “show God’s love”. Sometimes, a group prayer of penance replaces individual penance. The most bizarre aspect of the whole thing is how it is framed as a “celebration.”
First confessions usually take place outside of the box itself nowadays, in an attempt presumably to make the whole process a little less intimidating. They happen in the open, but privately, so that the penitent’s sins can’t be overheard.
But one thing hasn’t changed…
The eight-year-old boy or girl will still begin the ritual with the words which haunt some of us to this day: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
Confession is presented as an opportunity to unburden oneself, and if you take it to its logical conclusion, there must be so many priests in the world who are indeed the burdened ones. This is especially true in light of the Confessional Seal, in which priests are obligated under Canon Law to keep the secrets of the penitent confidential. This represents a difficult paradox. On the one hand, all adults who interact with children are obligated to safeguard their interests under the Children First Act of 2015, while on the other, priests are told that the confidentiality of the confessional is inviolable. It shouldn’t be, of course. What happens if a priest hears a confession of child abuse?
In the ‘90s, confession was a regular thing, and if it wasn’t attended frequently, then the shame of this admission compounded the guilt. “It has been two months since my last confession, Father,” we whispered, desperately hoping the priest wouldn’t tut-tut. Nowadays, there only seems to be an obligation to attend at least once annually. Despite this liberalisation, the formal initiation through First Confession persists.
The Catechism states that sin is “an offence against reason, truth and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbour caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods.” As a bunch of eight-year-olds shuffle along a pew, whispering to each other about what on earth they are going to say to the priest when it gets to their turn, the Catechism and the philosophy of sin are likely the last thing on their mind.
And nor should it be. Eight-year-olds, who are still losing their teeth and dreaming about Santa, shouldn’t be burdened with the institution of guilt. Surely, there are better ways to teach our children how to be self-reflective.
Simon Tierney is a journalist and writer.
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