An in-house confession that went a sin too far

“So, Timothy,” said Father O in the kitchen of our house, and I call him that not to protect his identity but simply because I don’t remember his name. I was 14; it was a long time ago.

“Would you like me to hear your confession?”

That’s a good question. On one hand, no, I wouldn’t like anyone to hear my confession. Confession, in the Catholic church, allows one to enumerate one’s sins to a priest and in return, assuming that the penitent is genuinely sorry for the transgressions, the sins are absolved. Tabula rasa.

The priest tells the penitent to go and sin no more, but, of course, a young boy will. He will disobey his mother and father, he will take the Lord’s name in vain and all the other penny-ante sins. Maybe the occasional coveting of thy neighbor’s goods. The small theft of a Hostess fruit pie. All because a quick trip to the confessional and the working-up of feelings of sorrow and remorse for the sins will set a person squarely back on the road to heaven.

Here was Father O right in my house, so his hearing my confession would save me a trip to church later. It was handy.

Father O asked my mom if it was OK for him to hear my confession. Father O was a friend of the family. He was the brother of the wife of my dad’s best friend. I’m not sure where he lived in real life, but he was staying at our house for the night. My mom would never, ever, give up a chance to have a priest stay the night in our house, especially one as relentlessly Irish and convivial as Father O. She totally gave the priest permission (although, why did I or O need her permission?) to hear my confession. Nothing would delight her more.

It was late at night and my parents turned in, leaving just the priest and the penitent in the living room, on the Naugahyde couch beneath the olive-colored glass swag lamps.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” asked Father O.

A weird way to start.

Apparently, I did, or at least imagined I did, because I remember telling him yes.

“Do you two have sex?” Father O probed.

A 14-year-old boy, for some reason, is hesitant to cop to being a virgin, especially since virtually all of his 14-year-old male friends have boasted about their many and diverse sexual conquests. This being confession, I  confessed, sadly, that, no, my perhaps-imaginary girlfriend and I don’t have sex.

This same line of interrogation continued. Nothing about swearing, disobedience, coveting of wives or goods — just all sorts of questions about sex, each a bit more graphic and specific than the last, and Father O’s hand slinked onto my upper inner thigh.

It’s nothing new, not now, not then. A sprawling 900-page Pennsylvania grand jury report released last week (Aug. 14) showed that Catholic leaders in the state covered up more than 1,000 instances of child rape, groping and pornography going back to the 1940s.

The misdeeds of hundreds of priests, pretty much throughout history, have scarred, perhaps, millions of boys’ lives.

I managed to extricate myself from Father O’s clutches and escape into my room. I slept until morning when Father O opened my bedroom door. He was dressed for tennis in white shorts and a T-shirt and he was accompanied, somehow, by a young teenage boy. “You care to join us?” asked Father O. “We’re going over to the college to play tennis.”

“God, no!” I told him.

“I told your mom you’re a good boy,” he said, and the two left.

I never saw Father O again. And I never said a word. My mom would’ve laughed at what she’d term my vivid imagination.

The experience didn’t go far enough to leave me scarred for life, in fact, I forgot about it for years, until maybe 2002, when the Boston Globe uncovered similar problems with pedophile priests in that city, and I felt bad for letting Father O disappear back into whatever city he was from without reporting him, because I’m certain he did far worse to others than he did to me.