Bless Me, Father, For I Have Sinned

"If walls could talk," I said, after he opened his little, sliding window.

"I'm sorry?" the priest replied.

It was dark, a trick for mimicking solemnity.

"Sorry, Father." I cleared my throat. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."

"Go on."

"It's been about 20 years since my last confession."

"That's quite a while."

"Yes, sorry."

"This is the right place to be sorry," he said.

"Yes," I agreed, "I suppose it is."

"So, what are your sins, my son?"

"Well," I hesitated.

"Yes?"

"I've been invading people's privacy."

"How so?"

"I've been eavesdropping on their confessions. I guess that's a sin, right?"

There was an icy pause that put a chink in the dark solemnity. I knew this would throw the air brakes on the usual formulaic dribble he was used to hearing.

Finally, "Here? You eavesdropped in this church?"

"No, Father. Not here."

"Where, then?" he asked, but then caught himself. "Wait--don't tell me. I don't want to know. The fact that you recognize your sin and want forgiveness is all I want to hear."

"But I want to tell you the sins I heard, Father."

"The same thing applies, my son. Just recognition and the desire for reconciliation with God is all you need. Please say a good Act of Contrition."

"I really think you will want to hear what I've heard," I insisted. Again, silence.

Suddenly, he slid his little door closed again, but it wasn't so dark that I couldn't see he was still there. What was he doing? Was I dismissed? I decided to wait him out. To risk a religious cliché, it was beginning to seem an eternity, so I broke first.

"Father, am I waiting for you or are you waiting for me?" The little door slid open again.

"You're waiting on me. I prayed on whether hearing what you heard should be part of your reconciliation."

"And?"

"I think I stand by my first inclination--to just accept your plea for reconciliation and offer you absolution."

"There was a man, Father," I said, "who set his wife on fire. The next day he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound." He began shifting in his seat. All wood--lots of squeaking.

"Go on," he muttered, obviously disturbed.

"There was the woman who drowned her three babies, but she died, too. Fall down the stairs, I think. Shall I continue?"

Silence from behind the screen. The darkness was no longer powerful enough to pull off the solemn, sanctimonious mood.

"Why tell me?" he asked. "For your penance, please recite--"

"You're a bad priest," I interrupted him. "You didn't absolve me of my sins in the name and person of Jesus Christ. You don't do it right."

"It's good enough. It's the way I've always done it."

"Don't I know!" I responded.

Suddenly, the lights went on, my door opened, and there he stood, towering over me. "What's going on here?" he challenged me.

"I said you're a bad priest."

"I heard that already. So, why? Because I don't grant absolution some particular way, by some particular decree?"

"Like in the person of Christ?"

"That goes without saying," he said.

"Not really, does it? Because you don't say it. Look, there are those who say there's a lot of mumbo-jumbo in the Church--magic and make-believe. And there are those who venerate everything about it. But while you've chosen to be someone in that second club, you're not doing it right. Imagine people who feel they're not forgiven in the eyes of God, but are too respectful to challenge you. It's not whether they are or are not forgiven in the eyes of God--that's religion. Your crime has nothing to do with religion."

"And just what is my crime?" he asked, stepping back, which allowed me to stand up and meet his posturing eye-to-eye.

"Your crime was sending them out feeling like they couldn't be forgiven."

"That was their interpretation," he countered. "And how do you know how they felt about it? Are you clairvoyant?"

"Believe me, I know." He grinned and shook his head.

"Maybe in your own head, right? I think you need a referral to a facility," he said. "Shall I call someone?"

"The woman who was devastated by having an abortion only because it wasn't a boy. The man who impregnated his adolescent daughter. The gang member coming to terms with the random murder he did as his initiation. The carjacker who dragged the driver for eight blocks when her skirt got caught in the door. The lifetime gangster, the hit man, the government assassin, the corporate embezzler. Remember all of them?"

He stood ashen-faced.

"And then they all died. Right after seeing you. Accidents and downright murders that were never solved. The police tried to look for some similarities, but all they could come up with was that they were all Catholic. The cops had nothing! This is Boston--I mean, everyone's Catholic here, right? "

"I guess," he mumbled, but he was listening to a whole different transcript being written in his head.

"You guess? You guess everyone's Catholic? Yes, maybe everyone but you." He snapped out of his panic and looked me in the eye.

"How dare you!" he blurted. "I'm an ordained priest. I'm Christ on Earth."

"And would Christ murder people after forgiving them?"

"Me? You're saying I'm the connection?"

I paused. Then, "Y'know, at some point this church will have served its purpose. Will not be considered worth the upkeep. Will be decommissioned. And then someone will buy it. Level it, convert it into a number of condos, or even refurbish it to live in as a private residence."

"I'm confused," he admitted, thrown off by the change in topic.

"I did just that, y'know. I bought a decommissioned Catholic church and renovated it to include five bedrooms, four baths, and a sumptuous study. My wife and kids love it. So much room. The kids can even ride their bikes in the den. But you know what's really cool?"

He didn't answer.

"What's really cool is that the confessionals were left in. Two of 'em. One I converted into a guest bathroom on the main floor. The other I made a great bookcase in the old second chapel that's now my study. Twin bookcases on either side where the people sat to confess, and the middle space that still had the chair--your chair--in it, where I could read. I could close the door to the world there and just read in peace. And meditate in peace. And the side chambers were ample shelving for my many books. But I never got to do that. Wanna know why?"

Again, he didn't answer. He stumbled toward the last pew at the back of the church directly in front of the confessional. He collapsed into it. I followed him to maintain the same eye-to-eye stance. Now it was me towering over him.

"Because it was haunted, that's why. Souls with unfinished business confessing to me all their sins. Begging for forgiveness. Telling me all sorts of horrible things. And when I researched who the priest was, for 40 years, know who that was? Of course you do."

"Yes," he said, solemnly.

"I've already detailed all of this to the police, but I don't have any proof, so they'll just think I'm some kind of nut. Some Catholic nut, dismissed by Catholic authorities in a predominantly Catholic city. Tell me," I asked, "why didn't you just forgive them? Do absolution the right way? All you had to do was say those words: 'You're forgiven.' I'm not saying everything had to be said to the letter for it to count for God or whoever. But hell, they needed to feel they were forgiven. They weren't--they didn't think so. Not in God's eyes. And then they died. The ones who went to you in your confessional--now my confessional. My haunted confessional. Died right after, mysteriously, accidentally, or homicidally. Hmm, is homicidally even a word?"

His reaction was puzzling. I expected a countenance of guilt. Or rage. Or even a steadfast face of denial that was doubling down. Instead, he made the sign of the cross.

"Those people were terrible sinners," he said. "They needed to be forgiven. Do you want to know why they weren't?"

"I sure would like to find a way to bring these poor souls some peace," I answered.

"No, no peace for them. I didn't forgive them because some people just need to go to Hell, don't you think? They came to me but left without their precious absolution. It was my decision. And I killed them. It's really easy, you know--to kill and get away with it. Especially if you're a priest. But I had to do it before they could find some overly merciful pansy priest to forgive them for God. Just so they'd go to Hell."

Now it was my turn to remain silent.

This type of thinking was from the Crusades. Whether you even believe in religion or the sacraments or divine forgiveness doesn't really matter. Everyone must forgive themselves or at least take responsibility, and if a man or woman is deluded enough to think some "vessel" is the only way--that they aren't already forgiven, by intention, then they'll never be able to clear their conscience if they fall for some rogue vessel of the divine.

I also realized my only chance this guy wouldn't be out for me was for me to get forgiveness--or what he felt was forgiveness--from him. I'd be the one who got away. Or, just another of his victims.

"You're right about those people. I get it." I paused, then asked, "Will you hear my confession, Father?"

It was as if all before had not happened. "What are your sins, my son?"

"I am heartily sorry for all the sins of my past life."

"Then I absolve you in the name and person of Jesus Christ."

Perhaps he had just cracked. Or maybe he felt officially forgiving me was a way to get me out of his life. Either way, he wouldn't contradict his personal theology by killing me after he had given me absolution.

Yes, the police did think I was a nut. They questioned him but it led to nothing. Mysterious deaths continued, but they were lost in the generalized murder rate. New souls visited me from time to time.

Then, as mysteriously as they had begun, the hauntings in my confessional at my home stopped. Perhaps, I reasoned, I was responsible in some way for giving them the peace of feeling forgiven. Or maybe they really did go to Hell. I'm not a very good Catholic, so who knows? These were theological issues for smarter people than me to argue.

I was, it turned out, haunted one more time.

It was about a year later. I had chosen to re-read Les Miserablés for a few minutes before bed one night, which is ironic because of its theme of forgiveness. Even though I had installed shelving in the side chambers, I kept the little sliding doors only because I thought it would be cool.

And it was cool, until on this night one slid open.

I looked up from my book. I was long over freaking out about things that happened there, although I realized this was fraught with unpleasant possibilities.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," the spirit said.

"I'm not a priest," I said. "I'm so sorry."

"But I am," it replied. "I need to be healed. Please."

It was him.

It was the Crusader priest from the previous year. The murdering, non-forgiving, Hell-dispatching priest. I did nothing, said nothing. This time, he waited me out, but ultimately broke.

"Father, am I waiting for you or are you waiting for me?"

"If you need to be healed," I said, "you need to heal yourself."

"I can't," the voice said. "I need forgiveness. I need help."

"You will get neither here," I said.

The sliding door re-closed, and nothing but reading ever happened in that nook again. I read his obituary in The Globe the day after he had visited me that evening.