Cradled in a Roman Catholic family in rural West Bengal, I had more reasons than one to be excited about Christmas, or for that matter, Easter.
Beyond the festive cheer or the brief escape from the shackles of a Convent school, it was the endless indulgence in gluttony that excited me the most – cakes, mutton biryani, pork sausages, ham, vindaloo – the list seemed as endless as the wait itself.
But there was one scary thing about Christmas and Easter: Confession.
What is Confession?
The act of Confession, officially known as penance, is one of the cardinal sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church that allows the faithful to have their sins forgiven by god through a priest. Through this process, men and women who are baptised kneel down before a priest and confess their sins.
The priest, however, is not meant to face the faithful and his vision of them is blocked by blinders that allow only sound to pass through.
In this way, both the faithful and the priest can hear, but not see each other.
Why Talk Confession?
But why are we talking about Confession all of a sudden? Well, recently the National Commission for Women (NCW) recommended that the practice of Confession be banned by the Church in India over fears that it could be used to blackmail women.
The NCW made these suggestions to the Centre after a Kerala woman from the Orthodox Church of Kerala alleged blackmail and sexual assault by four priests over the contents of a Confession she had made before one of them.
My first memory of confession goes back to the fifth grade when I was being prepared for my First Holy Communion, one of the many sacraments in the Roman Catholic Church. Every child had to confess a day before receiving the communion and was required to continue doing so throughout his/her life. Except, we didn’t know what to confess!
To add to it, I could never memorise The Act of Contrition – a prayer recited before a priest towards the end of the confession. The fear of blurting out the wrong prayer, that too after having confessed about all sorts of ‘wrong things’ felt mortifying.
Cardinal Sins
The nun who prepared us for the Holy Communion gave us a lowdown of the sins to admit. Lying and deceit, I reckoned, formed the very edifice of a sin.
Now, I was a quiet and shy little boy who had recently lied about a school test, in order to salvage a Sunday trip to Bandel. My mother found found a mention of this lie in my school diary only after we returned home from Bandel. A few thrashings later, out came the borir jhol I’d just gobbled down for dinner, and with it the “misdeed” that became my first confession.
Subsequent visits to the confessional followed a similar pattern – I earnestly apologised for all the misrepresentations, white lies and statistics I had told my long-suffering mother. Other boys were more forthcoming about more scandalous sins (or to be honest, what the nuns considered more scandalous). One lamented the use of cuss words (the horror!), another spoke about fights with his friends (disgraceful!) and others – worst of all – disobeyed their parents (the eternal shame!).
But did such mundane ‘sins’ require a confession to the Almighty (through the priest, of course)? I wasn’t too sure.
The Challenge of Challenging Confession
At home, conversations about the relevance of confession always took a religious turn as opposed to a rational one. Why should I confess? – every time this question was posed, I was reminded of how deadly the consequences of questioning the Church, and thereby God, could be. Think deadly blasts of lightning, eternal damnation, etc.
My father always believed that one should confess before god in prayers, and not make the local parish priest privy to one’s lapses. Lucky for him, he worked abroad most of the time (and continues to do so even now) and so wasn’t at the mercy of my mother and grandmother who would devoutly confess on a regular basis. I wasn’t quite so lucky, and so was forced to do so as well.
At the start of each confession, the faithful must cite when s/he had last confessed. Ideally, there shouldn’t be a gap of more than two months between two confessions – a condition I was always found to be in blatant violation of.
Rumour has it that my paternal aunt’s husband was a badass, for reasons that I cannot disclose. But being a badass couldn’t save you from the disapproval of the priesthood. He once showed up at the church and told the priest that he had last confessed some 20 years back. So angry was the priest, and so powerful his apoplexy, that my aunt’s husband had to make a distinctly hasty dash for the door.
Fearing the priest’s wrath, I would invariably limit the period to a month, even if I hadn’t confessed for over three months.
This went on for quite some time till I reached the eighth grade, by which time my convent school had started organising ‘charismatic retreats’ – three consecutive days of religious lecture, interspersed with gospel-rock, and a lot of talk about how sinful it was to have girlfriends or boyfriends.
The ‘Maturing’ of Sin
During one such retreat organised by my school, boys were told that watching pornography and “the act that follows thereafter” was a sin. Yes, Jesus hates masturbation, it seems.
What had initially started as disclosing the odd white lie and flirtation with falsehood, had to now include girlfriends, pornography, masturbation, smoking and who knows what else!
So convincing were some of the preachers at these retreats that my best friend actually felt compelled to confess to a priest that he had committed the terrible sin of watching porn and, heaven forgive him, had committed “the act that follows thereafter.”
My cousin was in the same school and she came out rattled after a long confession. The priest, she said, had unravelled all the brutal sins of her life with great precision.
I was now a little scared. I decided not to confess and managed to make my way out of it. I was smart enough by then.
Make It Safe, Don’t Ban It
It has been over 10 years since I last confessed. The best friend in school is now an IT professional. Although he feels it’s important to confess, he hasn’t really had the time to do so in over three years. My cousin too has stopped confessing – although, she tries her best to attend the Sunday service regularly.
Although I personally don’t see the need to confess, many, including my mother continue to confess once every month. My late maternal grandmother, for instance, was bedridden for over three years. She probably could only have sinned in thoughts alone, but still had a priest over every month for confession.
More than a compulsion, confession to many is a fundamental part of the religion they follow. It is the belief in its redeeming power that drives the faithful to kneel before a veiled priest, as they repent their sins.
While instances of priests blackmailing the faithful over a confession need to be dealt with in the strictest manner and in accordance with the laws of the land, suggestions to ban it altogether seem heavy-handed.
The anonymity of the faithful, especially women, is crucial, and it can be ensured by devising ways which make it impossible for the priest to identify who he’s listening to. The Church, in this regard, must keep itself open for suggestions and consult the faithful about it too.
But if we must ban something, ban priests who try to ascertain identities of the ones confessing.
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