April 08, 2006
An Evening Out with Friends and Catholics
I have just spent the last fifteen minutes looking for the euphemism used for masturbation in the Catholic confessional. I think it is concubicity, but google tells me I'm wrong, by telling me nothing. Addendum : The word is concupiscence
I bring this up because I spent the evening with Mary Gordon and James Carroll. Really I spent the evening with one old friend and two new friends. Over dinner before the lecture, we fueled our oxytocin levels by telling tales of childbirth, pets and waitressing . (The best one was showing up for work at a fancy hotel diningroom, high on mesculin [somewhat unintentionally], and finding out that she was the only one on duty, on Halloween, with some of her customers in costume. I don't have time for the best pet and childbirth stories. Suffice it to say that one of us had an unanesthetized C-section when delivering eight pound twins.)
On to masturbation. After dinner we went to an endowed lecture. Every year or so guests are invited to discuss the interface of psychotherapy and spirituality. This year Mary Gordon and James Carroll were to speak on autobiographical writing, psychotherapy, and spirituality. Mary Gordon made an excellent point when she said that she had difficulty, as a writer, giving up crafting a good story in therapy, since real life is messy and often doesn't make much sense, and that's really what one needs to discuss.
Mary talked about the priest-as-prince syndrome among Catholic women -- unapproachable, often handsome, swashbuckling, romantic figures. She particularly remembered a handsome young priest in her parish who performed the lowliest of duties, coaching basketball, sick call. For a year, when she was twelve, Father W. visited her house each Saturday to deliver communion to her dying grandmother. He also saw that she had more responsibilites in the sickroom than a 12 year old should, and tried to intervene on her behalf.
In the meantime, she had spent much of her childhood in a state of terror, due to her proclivity toward concupiscence. After sinning, she would rush to confession, lest she die out of grace. Since her act was so shameful, and so frequent, she rotated confessors, preferring the old deaf head-of-parish. One hot summer's day, Father W. was the only one cooped up that sweltering little black box. Mustering up her courage she confessed concubicity to him. To her astonishment he told her not to worry about it . He instructed her to have more fun, spend more time with her friends.
Her immediate reaction was most uncomfortable, like a blind man, given sight, when first exposed to the light. Less relief than disorienting shock. She said that she briefly entertained the idea of getting her mother to drive her to another parish where her sin could be properly absolved. She was eventually able to feel the relief from constant terror that came with his kindly deed.
James Caroll responded to her Father W. story by saying how much he identified with Father W. In his own days behind the collar, he considered it one of his main missions to give young parishioners permanent absolution from concubicity, although he did not do as well for himself.
Revisiting the fear and shame around sexuality generated by the Catholic Church, the day after The Gospel of Judas was published for the first time, made me wish that the Catholc Church will see that they have it all wrong. Not that they'll respond in any way to new information, since it's working so well for them the way it is.
Mary Gordon made the point that we underestimate the yearning for sacraments in our society. (As a student of hypnosis, I suspect that many of the rituals around the sacraments in the church have a hypnotic effect, and thus the yearning for them is implanted in the unconscious.) Mary Gordon feels this yearning has been usurped and exploited by the neoconservatives for their evil purposes.
Time to create a little neo tantra in the Christian traditon, don't you think?. What What would Mary Magdelene say? Or Judas for that matter?
Anyhow, I had a swell evening.
Photo note: The young urban virgin dress with prominent cross, a stop light, turned away, and a white delivery truck right in the crotch -- plus a few flowers for you know who. What more could a girl ask in a metaphorophoto/metamorphophoto taken on the same day as the lecture? It's not as pretty as it could be though.
Posted by Dakota at April 8, 2006 06:00 AM