Bless me, Father

When I was a kid, we were dragged out of class every other Friday morning and marched down the hill to church for Confession. 

The good news was, it got us out of the classroom for an hour or so. The bad news: god-awful tedious and boring. 

I don't think anyone ever confessed to a real sin (actual or perceived). 

The one time I tried to get something off of my conscience, shortly after I made my First Confession (so I was 7 years old), the priest (Monsignor Lynch) sneered me out of the confessional. 

My sin was that I had bitten my fingernails, swallowed a bit o'nail, and went ahead and received communion, even though that bit o'nail - in my fevered little 7 year old mind - meant that I had eaten something and broken my fast. (Back then, I'm not sure if the rule was "no eating or drinking after midnight" or " no eating or drinking for three hours before communion.)

In my fevered little 7 year old mind, breaking the fast and then knowingly going ahead and receiving

communion was a mortal sin. In my fevered little 7 year old mind, my options were sitting there in the pew while all the other kids went to the altar, indicating to all that I likely had a mortal sin on my soul. Or going up to "receive."

I went up to receive communion. And spent the next week or so fretting about having committed a mortal sin. 

So, Bless Me Father, for I have sinned. 

I confessed to biting my nails, swallowing, taking the wafer anyway, and, thus, mortally sinning.

Monsignor Lynch's response: Don't be ridiculous. Don't bother me with such nonsense. 

Okay then.

So that was the last time I ever actually confessed to anything other than the rote, ginned up list that all the kids used: I fought with my sister. I talked back to my mother. 

Yawn.

When I was in high school, when the sinning - at least when it came to thoughts - was a bit more of a thing, I stopped going to confession. (As one of my friends said, once they equated the seriousness of murder with the seriousness of French kissing, they turned a whole lot of believers into doubters. Not that I French kissed anyone when I was in high school. Talk about in my dreams...)

The only exciting thing about confession was when one of the kids in the box was confessing a bit too loudly. Since it was a sin to overhear someone's confession - everything was a sin, by the way, including "walking on the holy grass" around the church, which we were told was a mortal sin, i.e., something hell-worthy - the kids in the pews outside the confessional would all start sliding down to get out of earshot. So very pious of us!

You tried to avoid Monsignor Lynch, as he always assigned Five Our Fathers, Five Hail Marys, and Five Glory Bes as a penance, rather than the curates who might just assign a Hail Mary or two. 

The nuns were, of course, on to us, and would funnel one-third of the kids into Monsignor Lynch's line.

Anyway, after reciting/flying through your penance, however many Hail Marys it entailed, the thing to do was say the Stations of the Cross. Which got you walking around the church, which beat sitting there trying to figure out what was going on in the stained glass windows.

Other than the time when Monsignor Lynch humiliated me, I never got a damned thing out of confession. 

Garbage in, garbage out, I guess.

Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It's been nearly 60 years since my last confession, these are my sins. 

But true believers, I do believe, do get something out of confessing their sins. Forgiveness. Guilt reduction. Free counseling. (You get what you pay for...)

So the behavior of one California restaurateur was pretty heinous.  

The US Department of Labor said an employee testified that owner Che Garibaldi, who operates two locations of Taqueria Garibaldi in northern California, hired a fake priest to hear confessions during work hours and “get the sins out,” including asking them if they had been late for work, stolen money from the restaurant or had “bad intentions” toward their employer. (Source: CNN)

On top of being pushed to confess to a fake priest, Garibaldi employees were - surprise, surprise - threatened with immigration if they reported that "the restaurant denied employees overtime pay, [and that] managers were paid bonuses from the employee tip pool."

Garibaldi and three other restaurant owners and operators were ordered to pay $140,000 in back wages and damages to 35 employees. The restaurant will also have to pay $5,000 in civil penalties.

The Diocese of Sacramento found "no evidence of any connection" between Father Fake and the real priests of their diocese. That's a relief. 

I hope they catch the bum. What an absolutely rotten thing to do. Sounds like a mortal sin to me!