As part of her sophomore English Literature course, my teenage daughter has been studying The Tell-Tale Heart, a short story by 19th century American Gothic fiction author, Edgar Allan Poe.
For those not familiar, this tale is written in first-person narrative by a character, who (whilst insisting he is not mad) exhibits classic symptoms of monomania and paranoia, if not psychopathy.
He calmly calculates and carries out the murder of an innocent person and, by story’s end, is driven to confess the deed to visiting police investigators.
He is compelled to the admission by the auditory delusion of hearing the victim’s heart beating, louder and louder, even hours after the murder has taken place.
More likely (so my daughter’s teacher pointed out, thus I will not take credit for saying so), he hears, and is driven to confess, by the incessant pounding of his own guilty heart.
The literature course is secular, taken through a secular school board, so there was no discussion about spiritual considerations, but there is at least one obvious lesson for those of a religious turn of mind: we need confession.
Sadly, this self-evident truth is not so apparent any more, even among church-going Catholics.
Priests far and wide lament the bald fact that while throngs of people come forth for Communion every Sunday, the line-ups for Confession are (to be kind) more sparsely populated.
Either we have successfully eliminated mortal sin from the face of the earth, or else there is a frightening amount of sacrilege going on at every Sunday Mass in virtually every parish on the globe.
Many pastors no longer talk about confession on a regular basis, but even those who do are disheartened to see that their words of encouragement and admonition are rarely heeded.
And indeed, the faithful have been receiving conflicting messages for decades. Many years ago, in another diocese, my brother and his wife attended a parent meeting to discuss sacramental preparation for First Penance and First Holy Communion.
The religious sister who conducted the meeting shocked most in attendance by announcing, among other things, that the Ten Commandments were obsolete; children aged 7-8 were incapable of comprehending “sin” and that, at any rate, Confession was “the Sacrament we all hate”.
If only she had been the odd man out (sorry, inclusive language allergy), but she was, in fact, on the Church payroll as the Director of Religious Education for the entire diocese.
I attended many meetings and seminars conducted by her and heard how some of the Church’s practices were ‘stupid’ (fasting) or boring (the Divine Office). For sheer Gothic horror, Edgar Allan Poe had nothing on this lady.
Speak for yourself, Sister, but having my sins sacramentally absolved – entirely obliterated in the unfathomable mercy of God – is an occasion of liberation and joy for which I am profoundly grateful to Christ and his Church.
Pope Benedict has called for sounder catechesis; let us hope the Church heeds.
But first, it seems as though many of our catechists (and diocesan bureaucrats) need to meet Jesus Christ.
On an oblique but related note, I recently attended a Catholic parents’ conference, where one session dealt with the burning topic of social media.
One dad who kept a vigilant eye on his pre-teen daughter’s Facebook account seemed puzzled by the propensity of people, young and old, to broadcast the most intimate details of their lives, whether momentous (“We’re going to Hawaii for Christmas!”) or disgustingly mundane (“Drat! Prom this weekend and I’ve got a pimple on my nose!”).
As a matter of course, people also brag about their latest drinking binge or sexual conquest or, in one rather extreme case, a woman who live-Tweeted her (at-home, chemical) abortion.
Why? Yes, there are the pathologically rebellious among us who rejoice in their misdeeds.
But I think most of us feel, at some primal level, the need to get things off our chest. We need to feel we are not alone in our weakness and stumbling, or even our everyday silliness.
We want to feel affirmed and accepted by the surrounding community.
Above all, whether we know it or not, we want absolution.
But it’s not to be found on Oprah or Twitter.
Come, meet the Lord in the Sacrament of Confession; our tell-tale hearts are crying out for it.