An excerpt from my book: I Thought I’d Died and Gone To Heaven. More information about this book in the link above.
“I am reminded of one really weird and unexplainable moment
that occurred to me while waiting to go into the confessional to
confess my indiscretions and sinful works and sinful deeds and
equally sinful thoughts. It was a Saturday afternoon, springtime,
around 4 p.m., the scheduled time for confession at our church.
And given that the church was right across the road from our
house, that day or time of day didn’t really cause me an inconvenience.
Run across to the church, do my thing, say the requisite
number of Our Fathers, Hail Mary’s, and Glory Bees, and voila,
the slated soul was clean, snowy white again, all black spots
disappearing into the sinful ether. Then run back home to catch
the latest Tarzan edition on TV or tales from the really dark
continent, awaiting a supper of hot dogs, or better still, Kraft
Dinner—with ketchup!
I am sitting there in the cavernous church: nonplussed, and
wondering what I’ll be confessing. There was that list of sins of
course, both venial and mortal, to contemplate. The church,
being really well organized after thousands of years of practice,
and not wanting to waste anybody’s time, the priest’s or mine,
had a list and that list was all-encompassing. It must have been
quite interesting and comical fun coming up with the list of
venial and mortal sins.
I would have loved to have been part of that Working Group or Ecumenical Council, for certain. Yes, a sinful checklist of remembrance was the way to go. Did I do this? Check! How about that? Check. Masturbation? What is
that? More on that later! Uncheck? Murder? Nope, uncheck
unless thinking about murdering my oldest sister was a sin?
Uncheck that. On and on it went. Meantime, while I was sitting
there waiting to go in to meet my fate head on, I suddenly came
down with a horrific case of the hiccups: bad, violent, non-relenting.
Each hiccup shook my entire being.
Ever try to mask or hide a hiccup in a confined environment
like a church, or worse yet, the claustrophobic confines of a
confessional? It is not pretty. Your cheeks bulge out; eyeballs and
pupils expand outwardly in a Feldman-like manner; the stomach
contracts then expands in rapid succession; and, like an uncontrollable
fart, a growling sound begins its emanational rise from
the lower bowels of the human body, bypassing the stomach then
running up the oesophagus in its belch-like fashion, or in the
Catholic vernacular, like a resurrection. The gut, it hurts. The
whole sensation repeats itself over and over and over again until
those hiccups run their course. With each attempt to mask the
hiccup the sensation becomes worse and deeply magnified.
Embarrassed, I sat out in the pews near the back of the
church not even daring to think about going in to that dark,
dank, and tiny expanse that they called the confessional. The
interior of those tiny cells, abreast of and on either side of the
priest’s chamber, have a unique odour about them. Here, some
fifty years later, as I am writing this, I can still sense that smell.
A toxic mix of incense and sweat, interspersed with a whiff of
stale tobacco and alcohol, for all of the priests smoked and
drank. Once inside and kneeling there was no escape, for the
priest knew you were there given the little panic-type button
that activated a beep for the priest’s sake and a tiny red light
outside of the cell once your knees pressed into the red foam of
the kneeling pad. All the priest had to do then was to slide the
small grated sliding door to the left or to the right as need be
and you were trapped—trapped by the priest’s undivided attention,
until absolution. I am sure that every Catholic knows and
remembers the sound of that small sliding door opening and
closing.
I couldn’t even think of how I would handle that situation.
“Bless me father—hic-up—for I have hic-up—sinned. It has
been hic-up—one—hic-up-ed week since my last hic-up-ed
confession.” Good thing that I didn’t stutter, for heaven’s and the
priest’s sake!
I sat there in the pew for what seemed to me to be an eternity.
As the time marched on my hiccups seemed to get worse. I
prayed and prayed that they would stop but no heavenly dispensation
came my way that day. I held my breath for what seemed
to be minutes but no luck. I looked directly into the glare of the
afternoon sun but again no reprieve. Finally I sensed that I was
the only young soul left sitting in the pews of the church, still
hiccup-ing. Just then the priest came out from his priest-cave,
looked around in the late afternoon sunlit church, with its long
shadows and soft beams of spiritual light accentuated with particles
of floating, flickering dust, and spotted me. It was Father
Docherty. He was a fatherly Father of our church: nice but somewhat
of a lush. Chubby, but not fat, with cherubic features,
weathered and somewhat rustic with a fractured nose and
pronounced limp from his athletic days of playing ice hockey for
the “Holy Rollers.”
His robes hung over him in disarray. He was more of a slob
really, or should I say heavenly slovenly. He always drooled so it
was wise to give him a wide berth to avoid the spittle for, as
mentioned earlier, second-hand spittle was a fate worse than
death or penance for someone as young as me! He had a high
squeaky voice which did not adequately or accurately personify
his physical features.
How did I know he was a lush? Several of my friends were
altar boys—assistants to the priest while celebrating mass. And
Father Docherty always celebrated the 10:15 mass. That was the
time that the semi-high mass at our church was celebrated. And
one dictum that every young lad or lass in the parish knew was
never ever go to the 10:15 mass. It lasted an eternity. And being a
semi-high mass meant more wine at the offertory segment of the
celebration. It was the altar boy’s job to carry the small carafes of
water and wine from a side table hidden from view from the
parishioners up to the altar area such that the priest could mix the
water with the wine. Only in the case of Father Docherty’s
masses, there was no water, only wine, and lots of it, in two
carafes: one being white to resemble water, the other being red to
symbolise the blood of Christ. By the end of the Mass, Father
Docherty’s limp became more pronounced as he began to slur his
words. This was not really a problem because no one in the
church was paying attention by this point in time anyway, and
even if they were they couldn’t understand Latin.
“Morrison,” he commanded. “What’s the problem?”
I thought, isn’t it obvious, Father?
“I have the hiccups, Father, really hiccup-ing bad so I cannot
say my hic-up-ed confession with these hiccups.”
“Come here.”
I obeyed and when I got within reach of his massive arms he
put his left arm around me, chuckled somewhat, and told me not
to worry about the hiccups as he led me to the confessional.
Perhaps he was impatient for this session to end so that he could
run back to his own quarters and watch Tarzan.
And at that exact moment in time, without a doubt and with
no exaggeration on my part, when he slung his left arm across
my shoulder, those hiccups ceased immediately.
Is this a saintly, beatification-worthy moment? Probably not
in the overall Catholic scheme of things, but for me it was an
experience that I never forgot. It was right up there with my
Uncle Rupert’s guardian angel apparition on that dark and stormy
night when he was just a child; or my dad’s miraculous recovery
from cross-eye-ed-ness after visiting Ste Anne de Beaupré’s
shrine outside of Québec City with his mother. Truth or fantasy?
Don’t really know, for I was an impressionable and innocent soul
back in those days. Cynicism had not yet manifested itself or
wrestled away or destroyed my enthusiasm for life nor my innocence
or naïveté as yet. Only happy thoughts!”
Shrinks are God’s way of telling us we have too much money. Catholic shrinks are more hands on.
She resembles my elementary school principle.
Written 2,000 years ago:
Take heed that no man deceive you. Many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.
And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.
St Paul’s letter to the Roman’s – written almost 2,000 years ago. I do not profess to make judgement of any kind here or pontificate but I find that these warnings made by Paul to the Romans about the dangerous trappings of a future world are unbelievable and accurately prophetic when taken into account in today’s reality.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. (Gaia anymore, environmentalist’s creed.)
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
Have a nice day.