Sacred Sins

“Twelve.”
    “The whole route. I'm sure the good sisters gave you an admirable foundation.”
    “And a few good shots across the knuckles.”
    “Yes, bless them. They aren't all Ingrid Bergmans.”
    “No.”
    “I don't have much in common with Pat O'Brien myself.” Logan hefted his fresh beer. “Of course, we're both Irish. Lecheim.”
    “Father Logan—Tim,” Ed quickly corrected. “Can I ask you a religious question?”
    “If you must.”

    “If this guy, any guy, came to you in the confessional and told you he'd done someone, murdered someone, would you turn him in?”
    “That's a question I can answer equally as a psychiatrist and as a priest. There aren't many.” He studied his beer a moment. There were times when Logan's superiors considered him too flexible, but his faith in God and in his fellow man was unwavering. “If someone who had committed a crime came to me in the confessional, or sought my professional help, I would do my best to persuade him to turn himself in.”
    “But you wouldn't push the button?” Ben persisted.
    “If someone came to me as a doctor, or seeking absolution, they'd be looking for help. I'd see that they got it. Psychiatry and religion don't always see eye to eye. In this case they do.”
    There was nothing Ed liked better than a problem with more than one solution. “If they don't see eye to eye, how can you do both?”
    “By struggling to understand the soul and the mind—in many ways, seeing them as one and the same. You know, as a priest I could argue the subject of creation for hours, I could give you viable reasons why Genesis stands solid as a rock. As a scientist I could do precisely the same thing with evolution and explain why Genesis is a beautiful fairy tale. As a man I could sit here and say, what the hell difference does it make, we're here.”
    “Which do you believe?” Ben asked him. He preferred one solution, one answer. The right answer.

    “That depends, in a matter of speaking, on what suit I'm wearing.” He took a long drink and realized if he had a third beer, he'd be pleasantly buzzed. While enjoying the second, he began to look forward to the third. “Unlike what old Francis Moore used to teach, there are no blacks and whites, Ben, not in Catholicism, not in psychiatry, and certainly not in life. Did God create us out of his goodness and generosity, and perhaps a sense of the ridiculous? Or did we invent God because we have a desperate, innate need to believe in something larger, more powerful, than ourselves? I argue with myself often.” He signaled for another round.
    “None of the priests I knew ever questioned the order of things.” Ben swallowed the rest of his vodka. “It was right or it was wrong. Usually it was wrong and you had to pay for it.”
    “Sin in its infinite variety. The Ten Commandments were very clear. Thou shalt not kill. Yet we've been warriors since before we could speak. The Church doesn't condemn the soldier who defends his country.”
    Ben thought of Josh. Josh had condemned himself. “To kill one-to-one is a sin. To drop a bomb, with an American flag on it, on a village, is patriotic.”
    “We are ridiculous creatures, aren't we?” Logan said comfortably. “Let me use a more simplistic example of interpretation. I had a young student a couple of years ago, a bright young woman who, I'm embarrassed to say, knew her Bible better than I could ever hope to. She came to me one day on the question of masturbation.” He turned a little in his chair and jogged the waitress's elbow. “Excuse me, dear.” He turned back. “She had a quote, I'm sure I won't get it quite right, but it had to do with it being better that a man cast his seed into the belly of a whore than to spill it onto the ground. A pretty strong stand, one might say, against, ah, self-servicing.”
    “Mary Magdalene was a whore,” Ed mumbled as the booze began to catch up with him.
    “So she was.” Logan beamed at him. “In any case, my student's point was that the female has no seed to cast anywhere or to spill on the ground. Therefore, it must only be a sin to masturbate if you're a male.”

    Ben remembered a couple of sweaty, terrifying sessions during puberty. “I had to say the whole damn rosary,” he muttered.
    “I had to say it twice,” Logan put in, and for the first time saw Ben relax with a grin.
    “What did you tell her?” Ed wanted to know.
    “I told her the Bible often speaks in generalities, that she should