Forgive me Mother, I have sinned...

So I am doing some religious education here at home this summer.  When Thomas takes naps the girls and I are exploring Catholic faith.  Each week we are taking on a sacrament.  So we are only in day 2, so we will see how this goes.  What I am finding, as I prepare, is so much of my OWN baggage.

Eucharist.  I can handle.
Baptism. I got it.
Even Confirmation- I can handle in theory...

But how in the world am I going to teach them about the sacrament of reconciliation?  I have been to confession a handful of times in the past 10 years. Each one of them involved days and weeks of personal reflection and preparation.  I spent time considering what the "root" of my sins were, I considered the things that I actually wanted to put energy into and change. I also considered what places I wanted God's grace to be more manifest.

Then I went to confession and it was incredibly unsatisfying.

All the preparation though. Processing with Sean, my partner, about what I wanted to work on and what I felt and he felt were my points of "sinfulness".  That was profound. That was grace.

Thankfully, my work leads me to "make my confession" with priests I know are good men.

But in my college years I went to confession once with a priest who gave me terrible advice.  What if I had been abused by a priest?  What if someone had assulted me in a confessional? What if I had a traumatic history with multiple men in my life?   There are so many ways the practice of this sacrament is flawed.

Even more, there is barely space for social sin in the context of confession. It is almost all personalized.  In my personal preparations for confession I have considered confessing my racism.  I have considered confessing me bias against some folks.  I have considered confessing some of the stupid things I have said to people of color.  But, the fact is I don't trust a priest to be, "woke" enough to hold it.  I am not claiming that I am "woke." (that's not my call), but I have heard priests say some pretty racist, sexist and homophobic things without even realizing they were saying them.  We are, after all, a product of our culture.

So here I am preparing to teach my children about sacraments when I don't really believe in the form they are used.  It's no a shock really.  It's what happens when you are an exceedingly educated progressive Catholic minister raising Catholic kids. 

I guess, what I am finding in my own reflection here is that I probably need to explore forgiveness with them.  I need to talk with them about God's forgiveness. . . and we will deal with critiquing the form of the sacrament another day...