Therapy

had to go to confession to him, and he winkled out of them the details of such liberties as they had allowed boys to take with their Temples of the Holy Ghost. It seems very obvious to me now that he was a dirty old man who got his kicks out of prying into the sexual feelings and experiences of vulnerable adolescent girls, and making them cry. He certainly made Maureen cry. So did I, when she told me I mustn’t touch her “there” any more.
     
    If there was one element of the Catholic religion above all others that made me determined to remain a Protestant, or an atheist (I wasn’t quite sure what I really believed), it was Confession. From time to time Maureen made efforts to interest me in her faith, and I knew without having to be told that her dearest wish was to be the agent of my conversion. I thought it prudent to put in the occasional appearance at Benediction on Sunday evenings, to keep her happy and justify my membership of the youth club, but I steered clear of Mass after giving it a couple of tries. It was mostly in Latin (a subject that made my life particularly miserable at school until I was allowed to drop it and substitute Art) mumbled inaudibly by a priest with his back turned, and seemed to bore the rest of the congregation almost as much as it bored me, since many of them were saying their rosaries while it went on — though, God knows, the Rosary was even more boring, and unfortunately was an official part of Benediction. No wonder Catholics burst out of the church in such high spirits after these services, talking and laughing and breaking out packets of cigarettes: it was sheer relief from the almost unendurable boredom inside. The only exception was the Midnight Mass at Christmas, which was jollied up by carol-singing and the excitement of staying out late. Other aspects of the Catholic religion, like the startlingly realistic paintings and sculptures of the Crucifixion inside the church, the terraces of guttering votive candles, not eating meat on Fridays, giving up sweets for Lent, praying to Saint Anthony if you lost something, and acquiring “indulgences” as a kind of insurance policy for the afterlife, seemed merely quaintly superstitious. But Confession was in a different class.
    One day when we were in the church on our own for some reason — I think Maureen was lighting a candle for some “intention” or other, perhaps my conversion — I peeped into one of the cupboard-like confessionals built against the side of the church. On one side was a door with the priest’s name on it; on the other side a curtain. I drew back the curtain and saw the padded kneeler and the small square of wire mesh, like a flattened meat-cover, through which you whispered your sins to the priest. The mere idea made my flesh creep. Ironic, really, considering how dependent I became on psychotherapy later in life, but in adolescence nothing is more repugnant than the idea of sharing your most secret and shaming thoughts with a grown-up.
    Maureen tried to rid me of my prejudice. Religious Instruction was her best subject at school. She had got to the convent and held her own there by conscientious hard work rather than natural brilliance, and the rote-learning of R.I. suited her abilities. “It’s not the priest you’re telling, it’s God.” “Why not just tell God, then, in a prayer?” “Because it wouldn’t be a sacrament.” Out of my theological depth, I grunted sceptically. “Anyway,” Maureen went on, “the priest doesn’t know who you are. It’s dark.” “Suppose he recognizes your voice?” I said. Maureen conceded that she usually avoided going to Father Jerome for that very reason, but insisted that even if the priest did recognize your voice he wasn’t allowed to let on, and he would never under any circumstances reveal what you confessed to anybody else, because of the seal of confession. “Even if you’d committed murder?” Even then, she assured me, though there was a catch: “He wouldn’t give you absolution unless you promised to give yourself up.” And what was absolution, I enquired, pronouncing it “ablution” by mistake and making Maureen giggle, before she launched into a long rigmarole about forgiveness and grace and penance and purgatory and temporal punishment, that made about as much sense to me as if she had recited the rules of contract bridge. I asked her once, early in our relationship, what sins she confessed herself and not surprisingly she