Growing up in a good Catholic family my conscience was constantly getting a work out. The worst thing I could imagine happening to me was to go to hell when I died. I also didn’t want to wind up in the limbo-land called purgatory. This lesson implied that I had to have a system for keeping track of my sins....
Keeping track of sins was quite a burdensome task for a child. I tried various strategies, such as keeping a running list under my pillow. Minimizing sins in the first place was a top priority, but there were many grey areas that kept me pondering. Was it a lie or was it just a minor stretch that didn’t really qualify? Or was it that I saw it one way and another saw it differently? Did I really not honor my mother or father or did I just do a little something that I wasn’t supposed to? Was arguing with my sister and brother a sin? And if so, which commandment did I break? Stealing was more straightforward, and totally out of the question.
One thing was certain; the day of confession was never too far off. I attended a Catholic elementary school called Holy Redeemer. My 5th grade teacher was a rather stern Dominican nun who took the subject of sinning very seriously. She had a way of looking at you that made you feel there must be more sins. I learned early on it was not good to have no sins – sins were expected. If you didn’t have any you weren’t good, you were hiding something. This situation caused its own set of problems, as my sin list was pretty slim but there had to be some.
Each and every month the time for confession rolled around. She would have the class put our heads on our desks and close our eyes. She would read each of the Ten Commandments one by one while we looked inside ourselves and noted down how many times we broke that commandment or sinned against it since our last confession.
I usually wrote down a few extra sins, at least beyond those of my actions I thought might fell into the sinning category; just to cover all my bases. This strategy posed its own moral dilemma. Was the overestimation of sins a lie? Was I overestimating one of the sins I was not reporting? I have recollection of adding another for that, but then where did it stop? It was not an easy task to accurately figure out a sin total.
This was a very personal process, to be shared only at the time of confession. I felt I had struck a balance in this process. There was a certain feeling of safety in erring on the high side.
One day, as our teacher read the Ten Commandments and all in the class reflected on our lives, I completed my list and dozed off a bit. This was not uncommon, as it was quite easy for many in the class to go from soul searching to sleep. I was awoken by a tapping on my shoulder and a quiet voice from the boy sitting behind me, “Mary, you dropped you sins on the floor.”
I was aghast as my heart raced. A rush of embarrassment went through my body. How many of my sins did he see? Did I have more than him? Did I even have a normal amount? Confession, this most personal experience, had now been thrust into public view. I reached down and grabbed my sins off the floor, vowing to make sure that next time I would really work to be more accurate in my reporting as it sure did not pay to just put sins down for the sake of feeling covered. This is when I decided to put the sheet of paper under my pillow and go to my room to mark any whenever I felt I had committed a sin.
Looking back on these times I feel that the exercise given to my conscience was a bit over done. After all, I was basically a very good little girl. On the other hand, the idea of being morally responsible was firmly implanted in my developing mind and thought process. Throughout my life I have made every effort to do the right thing. Did that come from the strict discipline of my childhood? Or was that a decision I would have made for myself anyway?
While this early training may have left some scars, it was really all part of a learning process. And now, looking back, I am actually glad I had to learn to live in harmony with myself based on a sense of rightness and wrongness. I see that so many of the problems people have today interacting with each other, as friends, in relationships, and even in larger groups are rooted in the fact that their consciences just didn’t get to the gym often enough when they were younger.
