Mid-Lent Confession

Now that we´re smack in the middle of Lent, the Catholic Women Bloggers Network themed their monthly blog hop around "My Real Feelings About Confession".  Appropriate for the season.


Does anybody really like confession?  In theory, I do honestly like it.  But in reality, it seems I only drag myself into a confessional once every few years.  And the main reason for that is that whole "all Catholics in good standing should go to confession at least once a year."  Ugh.  As I´ve mentioned before, if anyone wants to drive me crazy, keep telling me how I "have to" do something.

But, like I said, I like the sacrament, at least in theory.  For starters, it is a sacrament, which means we draw close to God and He draws close to us--what´s not to love about that?  Furthermore, I completely believe it can be a much more enjoyable experience than the chore we´ve turned it into.

When I was barely beginning to explore Catholicism, I had my first, albeit very informal, experience with confession.  I was fresh out of college, spending a year volunteering full-time in New Mexico with the Border Servant Corps.  As part of the program, we set aside one evening a week to intentionally spend with our fellow volunteers.  At one point in the year, we got into a regular habit of going around the group and honestly letting the group know how we were doing--emotionally, physically, spiritually, professionally, etc.

Looking back as I´m writing this, that sounds terribly tedious.  Eight people talking in-depth about four different aspects of what makes them tick every week?  We were a tight group, and I look back on those times as some of the most edifying of my life.

We were close enough that we could be absolutely honest with each other.  Frequently, it was an excellent opportunity to open up with struggles we were having as to ask our friends to pray for us.  Together, we celebrated mundane accomplishments like celebrating that we could finally run for 20 minutes at a stretch.  On the other extreme, it gave us an opportunity to reflect or admit openly if we were struggling with our faith or depression.  As we got in a habit of "checking in" every week, it became routine to follow up on each other, asking questions or encouraging each other through the week, as we really knew what was truly going on in each others´ lives.

Maybe it would help to take down the wall.

As I was beginning to explore Catholicism at the time, this experience gave me ample food for thought to consider the sacrament of reconciliation.  Given my religious background, I had a knee-slap reaction to confession--"well, of course I don´t have to confess my sins to a priest--I can go straight to God!"

While that certainly may be true, this weekly examination with my volunteer group opened my eyes to how beneficial it is to admit some things out loud, particularly to someone with an understanding ear.  And--let´s face it--it´s great to hear that we´re forgiven in the end.

Ideally, I believe this is how confession should be--like this experience my group had, of closeness and frequent contact, so we know what´s going on with others on a weekly (or daily) basis, so we know each others´ struggles and successes, celebrating and praying together.  Unfortunately, if a priest has hundreds of people in his parish, it is rather difficult for him to get to know all parishioners on that kind of level.

However, I´m pretty confident that most Catholics are much like me, and it wouldn´t take much effort to get to know our priests a bit better.  If we were better able to count our priests as our friends, time in the confessional would be less or a chore and more of an opportunity to simply sit back and be completely honest with a trusted friend.

And that would make confession the liberating experience that it´s meant to be.

Come on in!

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Anyone itching for more reflections on confession?

Check out the other posts from the Catholic Women Bloggers Network--it´s an excellent, varied, and thought-provoking assortment, I promise!

Or, read chapter 28 in Matthew Kelly´s Resisting Happiness.  Even before this blog hop, that chapter recently got me off my butt and into a confessional--it´s that convicting!  Even better, the whole book is pretty good.


(If you´re like me, and read Matthew Kelly´s Rediscovering Catholicism and didn´t like it, give Resisting Happiness a try--it´s the book that I was hoping Rediscovering Catholicism would be!  I was pleasantly shocked that this was a genuinely good book.)

Standing in Solidarity (with a little luck)

I pass this two to four times a day.

Every day, I wonder how long my luck is going to hold out.  When is that pole going to slide under my car, flipping it over while spewing live electrical wires all over the street?

It´s been a month now.  So far, so good.

It´s March, which brings to mind St. Patrick´s Day and, consequently the luck of the Irish.  Now, to the best of my knowledge, none of my ancestors were Irish, but today I´m sure looking like I´m pretending I were.

Despite the red hair and ND outfit,
I´ve got NO Irish genes.  

But isn´t that more or less the point of a modern celebration of St. Patrick´s Day?  It´s a day where we all just pretend to be Irish.  I´m not sure how the Irish feel about that, but that´s how we do things in the US.  That, and it´s a good excuse to drink a Guinness.

Very similarly, Cinco de Mayo has turned into a popular celebration in the US.  In the US, people use the 5th of May to celebrate Mexican heritage--and that´s great.  Or, it´s just a good excuse to have some Coronas or a margarita.  But, like St. Patrick´s Day, it appears to be a day that we can all just pretend to be "Mexican" for a day.  Whatever that means.

I do get on my yearly soapbox, explaining that Cinco de Mayo isn´t widely celebrated in Mexico.  However the events of Cinco de Mayo had longer-lasting consequences for the US and, if we knew about them, it would then make perfect sense that we celebrate Cinco de Mayo more in the US than Mexico.  I´ve got more information on that topic here.

But I´m not exactly pushing that soapbox today.  This comparison between how St. Patrick´s Day and Cinco de Mayo are celebrated in the US is striking me pretty hard, particularly this year.  Around 150 years ago, when Irish people were immigrating to the US by the boatload, they were often discriminated against.  They had doors closed in their faces and were openly excluded from jobs, places to live, etc.

While anti-Mexican sentiment has been simmering under the surface of US culture for awhile now, it appears to be coming to a head with the current administration.  What am I proposing here?  I´m suggesting that yes, let´s celebrate Cinco de Mayo this year.  Let´s do it the same way we do St. Patrick´s Day, where everyone pretends to be Irish for a day.  This Cinco de Mayo, let´s all be Mexican for a day.

That doesn´t mean that we all go around wearing sombreros and drinking tequila.  What I´m proposing is that we stand in solidarity with those Mexicans (and other latinos) who live in the US.  We appreciate them for their contributions to our country.  (If you´re not sure what that would be, I´ve got a glaring example here, for those readers who skipped over that link earlier.)

Why do I claim that Mexicans (and other latinos) are being discriminated against?

Trump´s presidential campaign sounded pretty clear to me.  His remarks about Mexico have angered an entire nation.  It´s becoming routine, upon meeting new people here, one of the first questions we´re asked is, "do you like Trump?"  I shudder to think how they´d respond to someone who says they do.  And this new Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement office that trump wants to start sounds benign on the surface.  However, it hints at something larger.  My fear is that it will legitimize discrimination against latinos in the US.


But if that´s not evidence enough, consider:

• We have a system of for-profit detention centers where people are held for months, sometimes years, waiting for their immigration case to be process, often to ultimately be deported. 
• These for-profit detention centers require a MINIMUM number of people to be incarcerated in these centers.  Am I crazy, or should detention centers be run by the government (or at the very least, be non-profit).  Because who is making profits for these detention centers?  Right, the taxpayers.  And probably the people held in these detention centers.  
• Those held in these detention centers, not being US citizens, have no legal rights.  They have no right to representation like citizens or legal residents do.  This in another reason why they can be held for years, because in many cases no one is pushing to get cases heard, and the government has no plans to give these people due process--they just plan on deportation.  After they´ve met the detention centers´ minimum quotas, of course.        
• Entire families are locked up in these detention centers.  We´re incarcerating children.  This is not the kind of thing that makes me proud to be an American.  (Precisely the opposite.)

This Cinco de Mayo, let´s stand in solidarity with the Mexican and latino families down the street.  

That doesn´t mean eating a taco bowl.  Mexicans don´t actually eat those.  

That means contacting your representatives and senators, and speaking up for those neighbors who legally don´t have a voice in this country.  Whatever our stance on immigration, I think we can all agree that people should be treated humanely.  

Locking up non-violent offenders indefinitely is not humane.  Our country can do better.  

This Cinco de Mayo, let´s all be Mexican for a Day.



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Need more reading about Detention Centers?

Check out:

• the ACLU
• Bring Pedro Home (through a facebook group, I became aware of this family.  At the time, the husband was detained (indefinitely, of course).  In the end, he was held for 19 months.  When his case finally went to trial, his US citizen wife was preparing to move to Guatemala, because it was very likely he was going to be deported anyway.  Fortunately, he was ultimately granted permanent residency, and (as he was before his detention) he has been contributing positively to his community ever since. 

An InLinkz Link-up

Father Dan´s "New Friend for 2017" Idea

Flashback to Sunday, January 1st, 2017:

I headed off to mass, all ready to start the new year on a bright, sunny Sunday in northern Indiana.

During the sermon, Father Dan mentioned that everybody in the parish was going to make a new friend for the year.  In the entryway to the church, there were baskets filled with strips of paper, listing a saint´s name and a few facts about that saint.  Whichever saint we picked would be our new friend for the year.

Or, as Father Dan put it, "I like to think that the saint picks us, instead of us picking the saint."

Admittedly, I was intrigued, and liked the idea of getting to research the life of some obscure, little-known saint.  A year or two ago, I had read a memoir, My Sisters, the Saints by Colleen Carroll Campbell.  Colleen paralleled trying times in her faith journey with the life stories of three saints whose examples had helped her in those moments.

All ready to meet my new "friend", someone who I expected to never have heard of before, I plunged my hand into one of those paper-filled baskets after mass.  Unfolding the paper, I read . . .

Our Lady of Guadalupe.

You´ve got to be kidding me.

Out of all the thousands and thousands of names I could have picked, I´m quite confident that I know Guadalupe better than any other.

However, thanks to growing up Protestant, I´ve got a rather strained relationship with Mary, regardless which other name may be applied to her (Guadalupe, Fatima, Lourdes, etc).  Yes, I get the whole "she´s your spiritual mother" deal.  But I´ve been happy to keep her at arm´s length.  And I was absolutely sure she was OK with that, too.

Up until now.

I´m not quite sure what to do with this.  I feel like I´ve got Guadalupe sitting in my lap, waiting for me to do something with her.  But what?

I´ve asked my husband, what the deal with Guadalupe is, and he just responds that he likes having a mother to talk with.  Unfortunately for me for that argument, I was raised in a fairly liberal church.  One day in fourth-grade Sunday school, the pastor was visiting our class, and we must have had something like "Pick Pastor Ron´s Brain" Day.  One of the girls asked him if we could refer to God as  a She.

This was one of the more fundamental moments of my faith formation.  Without betting an eye, Pastor Ron said, "sure."  So, for the rest of that year, I took great delight in shocking my more conservative friends by regularly referring to God as She.

I can´t explain how grateful I am for that answer.  But it also means that I have no need to pray to Mary, taking refuge in a mother-figure, as God Herself is that Mother figure for me.  Let´s face it--no matter one´s opinion of God, for those of us willing to admit that God exists, I´m sure we can all agree that (S)He is too big to get tripped up by gender labels.

I pray the rosary occasionally, and I enjoy it.  But it seems like a waste of time (if not downright idolatrous) to pray to Mary, instead of going directly to God.

I realize I sound rather defensive.  That´s really not my intention!  At this point for me, pulling that name out of that basket was like opening a door.  It feels like I´m opening an investigation into Mary and her manifestations in order to find out what impact she may have on my life.  This is where I need you, dear reader.  For those of you out there, who are more into Mary than I currently am, please explain this to me!  (If you don´t count yourself among that group, feel free to tune out here.)

I´m not asking this to criticize or judge anyone else´s faith.  I genuinely want to know.  How do you relate to Mary?  What does she mean to you?  Your story is your story and whatever your story is, it´s important.  I love learning from others.  So please, share your story with me!  For those not comfortable posting in the comment section, (or if you´ve got more to say than fits in a comment) write me at jilldouglas01@hotmail.com.

Thanks!