Destruction of self confidence

[arewethereyet]

I remember walking from the school to the church to go to our weekly confession session.  On the walk I would try to come up with sins to confess to.  I was around eleven and just really wasn't doing a whole lot of sinning...but we had to say something so we could get our little dose of advice from the priest and say our standard penance of prayers so that we could take communion on Sunday.

So essentially, I was lying in order to meet the expectation of having to confess to something.  I suppose the next week I could just confess to lying the previous week...and the circle goes 'round and 'round.

Wow, I had no idea Catholicism was like that; the extent of their cynicism, assuming that people are constantly sinning... so that you actually had to make things up to keep them happy. I guess if you'd gone in there and said "I really didn't sin this week" they'd either accuse you of lying or of pride? Sorry you, or anyone, had to be indoctrinated with messages like that (I grew up Protestant so forgiveness was between you and God... no middle man required and no ritual about it, just as and when... don't mean that's any better in terms of indoctrination but it's very different messages).

We were pretty well coached by the nuns who were our teachers...old school nuns in black habits who looked like crows.

It was minor stuff I came up with...I was disrespectful to my parents, I told a lie...stuff like that. Had I been disrespectful to my parents I'd have had hell to pay at home...whatever God may have done to me wasn't all that scary compared to mom and dad in a fit of temper.

The kids I went to school with were used to it. I didn't get there till 6th grade and all my classmates had been there from the time they started school and since they had their first communion at about age 6, it was already expected that they had to confess as we must be sinning up a storm by age 11.

Can you imagine confessing your sins when you were in first grade?