I don’t like to repeat myself, but in a recent Café blog I quoted from Homiletic and Pastoral Review [May 24, 2024] Fr. Etienne Huard, O.S.B., who was defending the idea of extending seminary life to nine years and explaining why more and better formation is necessary. As he put it,
 
There are three critical areas of concern: psychological, spiritual, and intellectual health and ability. Psychologically, men [today’s seminary applicants] present with higher rates of anxiety and depression, personal and family trauma, isolation, and lower rates of people skills. Spiritually, men entering the seminary have less familiarity with Catholic tradition, piety, prayer, and common practices. Additionally, men often have a lower sense of worth and being a beloved son of the Father, possessing an obscured sense of masculine virtue and value. Intellectually, men tend to have a diminished ability and desire for critical thinking and expression, especially in writing and the basics of intellectual work. This issue has only been compounded since the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, there is a lower ability for hard, focused, and sustained work.
 
It is my understanding that American bishops are looking at these issues as they consider seminary admissions and components of seminary life. St. Meinrad’s Seminary in Indiana has already added the ninth year, which it describes as an introduction to the clerical way of life, a year of discernment. The term used to describe this new first year at St. Meinrad is “propaedeutic,” which Meriam Webster defines as “preparatory study or instruction.” The preparation is for seminary-clerical life. I have a link to St. Meinrad’s propaedeutic philosophy here. Muted in the discussion is the “winnowing” in the psychological dimension of seminary life. Seminary staff—in coordination with licensed mental health personnel who understand Catholicism and the challenges of the ordained ministry—should follow the psychological health of seminarians over a longer period, with an increasing eye on career prognoses.
 
There is a growing sense, too, that ordained priests do not always know how to take care of themselves, i.e., to rest, to cultivate private and group prayer, to maintain theological updating, to enjoy the arts, to work out, to write, to give presentations and retreats for a change of pace, and to prepare for retirement. Obesity, overwork, and alcohol abuse afflict the mood, ministry, and self-esteem of many priests. Could seminaries train future priests in the good habits and attitudes of post ordination life? This is the hope.
 
The Church, obviously, wishes to improve upon a sorry record of ordaining or incardinating priests who are pathologically unsound. Until recently the Church was suspicious of psychology and depended upon its own observations of a candidate’s life in the chapel, the classroom, and the common room. Seminary life hides as much as it reveals. A factor of seminary secrecy was longevity—if a seminarian hid his true doubts and disfunctions and did not rock the boat, it became harder and harder each year for authorities to dismiss him. Secrecy was a factor for the seminarian, as he came closer to his ordination date, it is harder to confide personal misgivings to seminary officials. Like all people, seminarians can deny their problems. And, in my day [a half century ago] nobody ever asked me about anything. I was in the seminary for twelve years, and I can honestly say that I was never given either a battery of psychological tests or a sit-down with a board of examiners, aside from academic testing for a course.
 
For me, the closest thing to an outside assessment did not come from a staff member or superior. In novitiate [year #7 in my training when I was 21] the novices were required to write an evaluation of each of their classmates before the superiors’ vote for admission to simple vows. “Peer evaluation” was popular back in the 1960’s. Each of us would then meet to review the results with the novice master, who in my time fancied himself as something of a psychologist, which he was not. [He himself left the order and married after my class completed novitiate and professed simple vows.] By some twist of fate, on the night of my review the novice master was away for meetings, and my reviews were assessed by the assistant novice master, an unflappable individual who years later would “transgender.”
 
When he reviewed each point, I was surprised that most of my classmates evaluated me positively. There were about thirty of us left by that point, down from forty-three. We came to one of my last evaluations, though, and I was struck by [an anonymous] classmate’s impression of my life trajectory. He gave me high grades for friendliness and felt I would be an effective priest. But then my seven-year classmate added this: “I do worry that beneath his outwardly positive attitude, Tom suffers from a profound inner loneliness that may became harder and harder to cope with as he ages.” The assistant novice master asked me, “is this true?” I said I wasn’t aware of it, but inside me, I was anxious and unhappy a good part of the time. He nodded and moved on.
 
Did I ever figure out who wrote this correct prediction? I had an idea, and truthfully, I respected him very much over the years. But we never talked face to face about his concern, and I never followed up my doubts with superiors, for the same reason athletes never visit the team doctor. [“They’ll take me out of the lineup.”] Well, three years later we were packing for our solemn vow [lifelong profession] retreat, ten years into the seminary, and my insightful classmate knocked on my door and asked me, “Are you really going through with this?” I answered affirmatively. The next morning, he did not make the trip for solemn vow retreat, and he departed the order to pursue a challenging humanitarian profession. That was 52 years ago. I was sorry to see him go. Perhaps we could have helped each other. Very slowly in my order and in others, the admission/review/evaluation process improved to a point where more open and honest evaluations were a feature of common seminary life; but not fast enough to meet the needs of all candidates for solemn vows and holy orders.
 
PSYCHOLOGY AND FAITH: HOW DO THEY MESH?
 
Seminary rectors and bishops are urged to consider closely in priestly studies three components in the life of every seminarian—psychological, spiritual, and intellectual—as they are interrelated to strong mental and spiritual health. In truth, everyone in Church ministry, indeed all of us who call ourselves Christians and Catholics, deserve regular opportunities to reflect upon our own health, our intellectual hunger, and our enthusiasm for the things of the Holy Spirit. Sadly, we do not talk much about this. One reason is our overkill of “legalism” in the Western Roman Church, particularly regarding the Sacrament of Penance. This sacrament has degenerated over the centuries to a brief encounter climaxed by the formal absolution. Yet, the essence of Penance is rebirth in Christ and a renewal of the spiritual journey along the lines listed above. It can never be trivialized. Church law and practice, in fact, recognizes such a thing as a “general confession” which, in the best of circumstances, includes a retelling of the major sins and moral failures of one’s life with an assessment of how one is living now, at this juncture of life, and how one is engaged in psychological, intellectual, and spiritual growth. One of the most basic principles of the spiritual life: if you are not engaged in growth, you are falling away from God.
 
Does this process of confessional rebirth have a psychological component? Absolutely. For example, St. Thomas Aquinas [1225-1274] defines profound sadness [acedia or hopelessness in his day, depression in ours] as “the pain of the soul.” He warns against excessive sorrow, which can lead to despair and distance us from God, who is the source of hope. Aquinas actually recommends treatments for destructive attitudes and behaviors:
 
[Self] Pity: Cultivate compassion for others.
Anxiety: Trust in divine providence.
Envy: Appreciate the blessings of others.
[Depression] Torpor: Engage in virtuous activities and seek joy. Remember that these remedies can help alleviate sadness and guide us toward happiness.
 
Aquinas adds: "a hurtful thing hurts yet more if we keep it shut up, because the soul is more intent on it: whereas if it be allowed to escape, the soul's intention is dispersed as it were on outward things, so that the inward sorrow is lessened." (I-II q. 38 a. 2).
 
Six hundred years later in1886, a German physician, Josef Breuer, discovered that hypnotized patients talked more freely about their past lives in ways that brought them better understanding and acceptance of the difficulties of their past. Sigmund Freud embraced Breuer’s “Talking Cure” which eventually became known as psychoanalysis, with or without hypnosis. Psychoanalysis is essentially getting to know your true self with the goal of a better lifestyle. As a psychotherapist myself, I can tell you that many patients were reluctant or refused to “go deep.” A typical treatment request: “Teach me some techniques so I feel better.” My MD friends hear “prescribe something” all the time.
 
I need to interject here that the relationship between Freud and the Catholic Church is very strained because of the doctor’s published views on several issues across the board. However, Adam A.J. Deville’s “The shrink and the spiritual director: Freud and the Jesuits” [2019] is a fascinating essay that discusses how the Jesuits—and other Catholic practitioners and communities--have integrated psychoanalysis into ministry. Several years ago, Pope Francis told an interviewer that he himself had undergone six months of psychoanalysis at some point in his life as a Jesuit.
 
Aquinas’s admonishment to promote the verbalization of pain is a backbone of modern psychotherapy. What neither Aquinas, nor Breuer, nor Freud could appreciate in their times was the physical operation of the brain. In 1951 doctors discovered a drug [today called imipramine] which alleviated severe depression and discouragement. Medical science pressed forward to explore medications like imipramine that might alter the neurotransmitters of the brain: by the 1980’s the neurotransmitter serotonin was isolated as the “quarterback of the central nervous system” even though how and why this particular neurotransmitter [the backbone of such drugs as Prozac] aids in management of mood disorder “is still not fully understood,” as that long instruction sheet with the pills is honest enough to admit.
 
A parish minister who enjoys his or her work will inevitably be approached for advice or support about anywhere and anytime. People seek the counsel of the priest inside and outside the confessional, to be sure—but consider deacons, youth ministers, hospital visitors, and the wide range of other ministers functioning with diocesan and parish blessing. Any of us involved in ministry have the same obligation as our medical confreres, the Hippocratic Oath: “Do no harm.” At the same time, we need enough skill to do the right things, too, and this is a skill set that gets neglected in ministerial training.
 
As you may have read between the lines of my recent posts, seminaries are the canaries in the coal mine of pastoral life. The quality of seminarians’ prayer life, learning, and psychological bearings depend on the eight years [with possibly a ninth] in the major seminary. The Vatican and the U.S. bishops are working now to improve that experience, and their measure of success or failure will directly impact the quality of U.S. parish life. It stands to reason that we owe a more profound scope of preparation to parish ministers and Catholic school staff, and in fact to all baptized Catholics, period.
 
Fr. Anthony J Stoeppel of St. Patrick’s Seminary & University in the Archdiocese of San Francisco posted an interesting essay on how seminarians are trained to hear confessions. He notes that “Some seminaries offer courses on pastoral counseling and psychology to present a more complete picture of the human person. Such courses also give seminarians an understanding of mental illness and teach them how to work with psychiatric and psychological professionals to help the penitent fully heal.”
 
Mental health, to be sure, is getting a lot of press coverage these days, particularly the sufferings of the young. Father Huard’s essay above did a good job in isolating several specific psychological issues that seminarian candidates share with their peers and bring to admission, issues in fact that impact a wide swath of society: anxiety and depression, trauma, isolation, and poor interpersonal skills, complicated by a breakdown in reading skills and academic performance attributed to the Covid-19 interruption in normal schooling. Add to that the toll of drug overdose, the “gender issues” and the social divide we live with in this country.
 
While some who approach us will obviously need a step-up to a licensed practitioner, there is nothing to stop us from assisting ourselves and our people in the community of our own parishes. In the next post on this stream, I will discuss how the Sacrament of Penance brings a holistic peace—the kind that comes from knowing and acknowledging one’s true self, and how we can all create the atmosphere where this can happen.

As next week features Ash Wednesday, and with it the annual reminder to make a good confession before Easter, I thought it might be a good time to look at the particulars of the Sacrament as it is observed in the United States.
 
IS CONFESSION BIBLICAL?
God’s merciful gift of redemption to all who call upon the Lord with humility in their hearts is among the very pillars of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. On Easter Sunday evening, according to St. John Chapter 20 Jesus said to them again. “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.
 
It is an interesting thing that Jesus identifies the forgiveness of sin as the primary empowerment from the Holy Spirit, on Easter Sunday, no less. St. Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, in the Pentecost account, affirms John in Acts 2:38, Peter’s sermon to the Jews: Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the holy Spirit.
 
Baptism, as the primordial sacrament of forgiveness and entrance into Christ’s saving community, is the only forgiveness rite per se mentioned in the New Testament. The Church would develop the rites for the forgiveness of sins in several ways over the next two millennia.
 
WHEN AND WHERE DID THE PRACTICE OF INDIVIDUAL CONFESSION BEGIN?
 
[1] IN ROME:
In the second and third centuries in Rome and other European sites, the sins of baptized believers were satisfied by prayer, fasting, and good works alone. However, several sins were recognized as serious enough to segregate a baptized member from his or her saving Eucharistic community. We are talking about murder, adultery, and apostasy [renouncing one’s baptismal membership.]
 
In these cases, the sinner confessed the deed[s] to the bishop directly, and requested admission to “the order of penitents,” a local collection of grave sinners living an austere life of prayer, fasting, and alms collecting which lasted for about a year. These individuals were received back into the Eucharistic community on Holy Thursday through the laying on of hands by the bishop. It was generally understood that one could reenter the full community just once in a lifetime; hence this reconciliation practice was popularly known as the “last plank.”
 
Typically, most Christians would never engage in this intensive personal rite of forgiveness because their failures had not reached a designated level of seriousness, betrayal, and scandal. What I find interesting is that by 200 A.D. the Church already had an early grading system of sins, a practice that medieval and modern theology would raise to an art form.   
 
[2] IN IRELAND:
It may come as a surprise that our “Saturday afternoon confession” format comes to us from the Irish monks of the fifth through tenth centuries. In the monasteries, the prayer format included a daily evening rite called “the chapter of faults” where each monk would come forward and confess out loud before the community one misdeed for which he needed the forgiveness of God and his community.
 
Because Irish monasteries played the part of dioceses and cathedrals in the Dark Ages on that island, several critical developments followed over time from this monastic rite. [1] The abbot’s acknowledgement morphed into the role of what we would call sacramental absolution. [2] This absolution, unlike the Roman style, was repeatable. [3] All sins—not just grave ones—were confessed. [4] Lay persons outside the monastery came to confess their sins. [5] Acts of satisfaction—what we call today “the penance”—were given to each penitent.
 
With all Irish laity now confessing regularly, monk scholars composed books of sins and penances that monk confessors could consult in the ritual for each penitent. These were called penitentiaries, and by 700 A.D. they were quite detailed. Interestingly, the monks did not organize these first “moral theology” works around the Ten Commandments. Rather, they arranged their writing around the Seven Deadly Sins.
 
The Irish manner of forgiveness crossed east into Europe through the end of the first millennium. Not surprisingly, this ritual met with resistance, including in Rome. But by 1215 A.D., at the Council IV Lateran in Rome, Pope Innocent III declared that Penance was one of the seven sacraments and mandated that all the faithful confess their sins once a year using the Irish model during the Lenten/Easter Season. That, and receiving the Eucharist, became known as “doing our Easter Duty.”
 
In 2022 Commonweal Magazine carried a more detailed treatment than I have outlined here, called “How the Irish Changed Penance,” which should be free even if you don’t subscribe. It would make an interesting adult education presentation.
 
WHEN DID CONFESSIONALS COME INTO PLAY?
The confessional seems to have developed as part of the liturgical reform stemming from the Council of Trent [1545-1563]. This Council was the Catholic response to the Protestant Reformation. I have seen many paintings in my lifetime of confessions being heard out in the open church before the institution of confessionals. It could be that the Church thought it would be theologically significant and prudent to designate a particular spot in the church for this sacrament, like the baptistry for baptism. Enclosure of the sacrament in a boxlike configuration would protect the “seal” or secrecy of Penance. You will read in some history books that the barrier between the penitent and the priest [with the little grill for confessing] was instituted to protect women and children from the confessor. From what we know about confessional abuses in the twentieth century, the designers of the barrier confessionals in the seventeenth century may have had the same concern. [See this 2021 essay on women’s contemporary experiences in the confessional.]
 
I have not seen a new church built with wooden confessional boxes in the builder’s design in years. When the Vatican II reforms for Penance were promulgated in the mid-1970’s, confessionals [referred to often as reconciliation rooms] were expected to allow the penitent to confess to the priest seated, face-to-face, if they preferred this to confessing anonymously. And, as the priest was proclaiming the absolution, he had the option of laying hands on the head of the penitent. I believe that laying on of hands in confession has been replaced by holding up the right hand in the direction of the penitent. In the priesthood and in the mental health profession, for that matter, physical touching of vulnerable people is verboten.
 
WHAT CHANGES DID VATICAN II MAKE IN THE SACRAMENT OF PENANCE?
In the Council Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium [1963] the bishops of the council called for a renewal of the rite of confession, but without details. The Vatican Office of Liturgy released the new rite with all its specifics, Ordo Paenitentiae, in 1973. The document ran to well over 200 pages; by the time the document was translated into English in 1974 or 1975 I was already ordained and pastor of a Catholic campus college. Theologically speaking, the most significant change in the Sacrament of Penance was Biblical emphasis. Commentaries remined us confessors that we were to function as an extension of Christ’s immeasurable mercy and love; we were not to act as lawyers or customs officials at the gates to grace. My professors had taught me that already, so my pastoral stance in the confessional was not significantly challenged.
 
I was more taken by the ritual opportunities offered in Ordo Paenitentiae. OP put forward three ways to celebrate this sacrament, outlined here:
 
Rite One was the individual confession of a person to a priest. However, the formula was extended to include, among other things, a reading of a passage from Scripture and a broad selection of “Acts of Contrition.” Clearly, this revised rite would take longer than the old one, and I wondered how Rite 1 would fit, so to speak, in the engrained custom of hearing lines confessions before weekend Masses.
 
Rite Two was a public church service which included hymns, Scripture reading, a homily, an examination of conscience, and a common act of contrition. Then the participants approached one of the priests in attendance, confessed sins, received individual absolution, and returned to the pew. When everyone had confessed, a final prayer and closing hymn closed the service. As far as I could see, Rite 2 was popular during Advent and Lent. When I came to Florida, I was on the road several nights a week during the holy seasons to assist at my neighbors’ penance rites [as well as to enjoy a scrumptious rectory meal and a nightcap after the service with my local clergy friends.] Today I read a good number of church bulletins and I never see such a service posted. I have some ideas about that, for a follow-up post.
 
Rite Three was quite controversial. It was frequently referred to as the “General Absolution” option. It parallelled Rite Two except that there was no individual confession. Rather, full absolution for all sins—mortal and venial—was administered from the sanctuary by the priest celebrant. I found this rite to be highly effective both at my college and later as a parish pastor. In 1986 my parish completed a RENEW program, and I scheduled an evening General Absolution service as a finale. I am told that hundreds of people never even got their cars on the church property, and having given up, moved down the street to Denny’s for an impromptu celebration of dessert.
 
Rite Three caused considerable discomfort at the Vatican, and under Pope John Paul II local bishops were expected to forbid its use except in danger of death situations, such as soldiers entering battle.
 
So, in answer to the question of how Vatican II impacted our penitential situation in our 2024 setting, I would say, “Very little.”
 
__________________
 
I will pick up the Penance questions in about two weeks. If you have “confession topics,” send them to me at [email protected] I have about ten here on my desk I didn’t get to on this run. I am leaving the Café desk now for a week at the beach with my in-laws. Just my luck, my condo is across the street from a very nice Catholic Church. I called to make an appointment for my Lenten confession. I know the pastor to be an excellent spiritual director from previous experience. I pray that all of you will experience a moving Lenten Season with our Savior, Jesus Christ

I was more than pleasantly surprised to find in my electric mailbox last week a lengthy essay from USA Today, “Cheating in sports: Michigan football the latest scandal. Why is playing by rules so hard?” The essay is the first in a series of ten by Dan Wolken which will appear in USA Today over the next few weeks. The essay had come to me via a longtime Catholic friend and fellow parishioner who has combined an outstanding business career with years of lay counsel to Church administrators locally and nationally. As cited above, the essay’s calling card is an invitation to explore the ethics of competition—how and when does cheating pervert the philosophical meaning of sports itself—the drive to excel, to prove oneself the best, to set new goals of excellence.
 
My credentials to tackle the subject? I did earn a master’s degree in theology with a specialty in morality [learned, if not always lived.] On the sports angle, as a high school and collegian seminarian, I tried out for every major varsity sport available in the seminary league and failed to earn a position in any. When I did play pickup football, I would play offensive or blocking guard because I was roly-poly and defensive players grew exhausted running around me to the quarterback. At college, my locker room friends consoled me with the reality that while I would never be an athlete, I was certainly an enthusiastic athletic supporter. And that much is true…at 75 I spent fifteen minutes last Sunday morning reading the gambling line analyses on the Buffalo Bills—Dallas Cowboys game. [Buffalo posted at -2, incidentally, and the o/u at 50. Final score proved to be Buffalo 31-Dallas 10.]
 
Let me get down to business here. Philosophically, I have just one problem with Wolken’s project. He addresses the subject of sports cheating as if athletics is exempt from the world of humanity, which sad to say is corrupt to the heart. If you do not believe me, then let us gather at the river and pray for enlightenment, turning our Bibles to texts that never get much Catholic attention. In the immediate centuries before Christ, a serious pessimism settled over Israel which expressed itself in Biblical texts you rarely or never hear at Mass. For these writings dare to state what most of us privately believe and/or actively suppress: that each of us is sorely imperfect, differing only in degree; that sin mars every human and institutional transaction in an infinite number of ways, and that life after death is a matter of faith, not scientific or philosophical certainty. The Coming of Christ is the coming of unsullied goodness. But until I embrace the Gospel in full stride, I do not know God. Pope Francis gets into plenty of hot water when he reminds us of these hard truths.
 
The Biblical texts I am referring to include the second creation account [Genesis 2:3ff], written in 400-500 B.C. by a religious thinker attempting to explain, in a brilliant narrative, the source of human sin and misery. The message is clear enough: even in the perfect circumstances of the Garden of Eden, humanity fumbled the opening kickoff. And where does this root evil come from? When we were kids, we learned that the talking snake was really the devil—an intruder from another universe, you might say. But alas, this is not the case. The second creation account tells us that “the serpent was the most cunning of all the creatures God had made.” That is unnerving, as if to say that sin and evil are baked into the cake. The creation author here has no answer to that dilemma, but he/she attempts to explain the origins of mankind’s miseries--such as the pain and danger of childbirth and the relentless need to toil under the hot sun to eat and survive—as the byproducts of the imperfect species we are.
 
Other works of this later Israelite era include Qoheleth [or Ecclesiastes]. Written in the 200’s B.C., this work famously begins and ends with “Vanity of vanities, all things are vanity!” But the most famous writing in this schema is Job. The USCCB commentary puts this book at between 400 and 600 B.C. though it strikes me as a later book. I read Job in depth a few years ago; with age I experienced a greater sensitivity to the pain of this work. The theme is unjust suffering. God and the devil get into a fictional discussion about human behavior, the devil’s contention being that men behave well only when all is going well. The two protagonists decide to answer this question by inflicting one tribulation upon another upon a just human, Job, to see if he breaks his trust in the goodness of God and God’s creation. The USCCB or the U.S. Bishops’ Biblical commentary on Job notes that “the Book of Job does not definitively answer the problem of the suffering of the innocent, but challenges readers to come to their own understanding.”
 
One more point needs to be made, this one from the mental health community. There are no identical people. Each human life is enormously complicated. There are one billion cells in the average human brain, each with the capacity to exchange neurotransmitters with a thousand other neurons—that is over a trillion variables possible where thought, feeling, and action are involved. Sadly, the biology of human behavior is enormously understudied; I have read dozens of Catholic morality books over the years. I have yet to see one which integrates the biology of the brain—where most depression begins, for example--into ethical conscience formation, altruism, or religious motivation.
 
Returning to Wolken’s discussion of cheating in sports, we never know exactly why people do what they do. The author is not exactly treading new water here, either. The ancient Greeks have left records of cheating in chariot races [and all these years I blamed Messala in “Ben Hur.”] In the 1936 Munich Olympics, the U.S. Olympic Committee stepped in and demoted two starting U.S. sprinters in the 4x100-yard relay, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, because of their Jewish faith, in an effort not to offend Adolf Hitler. In this case justice eventually prevailed, however, because Glickman was replaced by Jesse Owens, who thoroughly embarrassed dictator and diplomats alike by winning four gold medals [and Glickman became one of America’s beloved sportscasters till his death in 2001.] In 2019 Major League Baseball sanctioned the Houston Astros, winners of the 2017 World Series, for employing a hidden camera in the outfield to capture the opposing catcher’s pitch signals. Baseball is still recovering from the Houston Astros high/low technology scandal of signal stealing involving a hidden video camera and a trash can. And if Pete Rose had bet exclusively on horses, he would be in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
 
Dan Wolken’s USA Today essay focuses as its lead-in an investigation by the National Collegiate Athletic Association [NCAA] of the University of Michigan’s varsity football program. A paid assistant coach arranged for and paid the expenses of scouts to attend the games of Michigan’s future opponents and video the visual signs coming from coaches on the sidelines. I have to say, when I heard this on the news very recently, I thought that was legal! However, as it turns out, there are grades of espionage, some acceptable, some not. [We naughty Catholics who enjoy the comedy of the late parish school educated George Carlin understand the hierarchy of evil very well; George proved, in a memorable sketch, that you could commit seven mortal sins with just one weak moment with Mary Ellen at “second base.”]
 
The fuss that Wolken alludes to has much to do with Michigan’s winning a spot in college football’s final four tournament next week as well as the reputation of UM’s head coach, Jim Harbaugh, who was suspended from his team’s sideline for three games late in this current season for the road spying gambit. The tournament itself is under something of a cloud for another problem—the failure of the tournament selection committee to include Florida State University, an undefeated conference champion, into the final four. The State of Florida’s Attorney General, Ashly Moody, is seeking access to “all communications regarding deliberations from the selection committee” of thirteen members from across the country. Next year the playoffs expand to twelve teams!
 
I agree with the author that every sport has its forms of cheating at every level—individuals, teams, conferences, and ancillary businesses, such as television networks, team apparel marketers, and of late the major gambling houses. In some sports the policing and safety is getting better, or at least an effort is being made. We did not have “concussion protocols” in the NFL until recently, nor rule changes to make baseball games shorter. NASCAR, one of “my” sports, has developed new safety policies for cars and tracks, but only after the death of its superstar Dale Earnhardt, Senior, at the 2001 Daytona 500, several hundred feet from where my wife and I were sitting on that grim February day.
 
We can never know exactly what goes through a man’s mind, morally speaking, but we can speculate on the things that should be running through our minds in human interactions. Wikipedia’s lengthy and excellently researched entry on the Houston Astros scandal includes this: “[Baseball Commissioner Rob] Manfred had cleared [Jim] Crane of wrongdoing at the beginning of his report, saying that Crane was "extraordinarily troubled and upset" by the revelations and had fully cooperated.” Crane happens to be the owner of the Astros. Given that gossip about Houston spying spread throughout the league for several years, I must scratch my head at the thought that an owner knows nothing about his multi-billion-dollar investment. In the 1950’s the New York Yankees regularly hired investigators to monitor the late-night activities of Billy Martin. You know what you want to know and ignore the rest. Sad to say, some of the more famous sports scandals, such as the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” fix of the World Series, bear uncomfortable resemblance to Catholic clergy scandals of later in the century. As the young Boston Globe reporter wailed in the film Spotlight, “They knew…and they let it happen!”
 
What I propose to do for the rest of this essay is provide an overview of some moral issues and/or incidents affecting American sport, to stimulate conversation. Just call them “my concerns.”
 
Human safety and wellbeing: This is a very personal issue for me as I witnessed Earnhardt’s death up close at the 2001 Daytona 500; in fact, Margaret bought me a Dale Earnhardt Sr. cap at a souvenir stand under the track at Daytona for my birthday before the race began. I still have the cap next to my desk. Earnhardt’s death—and the fact that fourteen other drivers had been killed at the Daytona track alone over the years—led NASCAR to overhaul many aspects of safety, efforts which continue to this day. All the same, I gradually disengaged from the sport in the early 2000’s on the grounds that Catholic teaching has, for centuries, interpreted the prohibitions of the Fifth Commandment to include the unnecessary risking of human life. And by no stretch can auto racing be considered a safe sport.
 
In looking at the starting lineups for last weekend’s National Football League games, I was taken with the number of excellent players at every position who were not available to their teams, either on that weekend or for the balance of the season. Some years ago, I heard John Madden observe: “If you participate in one play in the NFL, your body is never the same.” Many players take painful or disabling injuries into their middle age and beyond.
 
What is most troubling is the substantial risk of lasting head injury. Consider this release from the NFL’s news service in 2013: “The NFL has reached a tentative $765 million settlement over concussion-related brain injuries among its 18,000 retired players, agreeing to compensate victims, pay for medical exams and underwrite research…More than 4,500 former athletes -- some suffering from dementia, depression or Alzheimer's that they blamed on blows to the head -- had sued the league, accusing it of concealing the dangers of concussions and rushing injured players back onto the field while glorifying and profiting from the kind of bone-jarring hits that make for spectacular highlight-reel footage.
 
“The NFL long has denied any wrongdoing and insisted that safety always has been a top priority. But the NFL said Thursday that Commissioner Roger Goodell told pro football's lawyers to "do the right thing for the game and the men who played it." The plaintiffs included Hall of Famer Tony Dorsett, Super Bowl-winning quarterback Jim McMahon and the family of Pro Bowl linebacker Junior Seau, who committed suicide last year [2012].
 
“Under the settlement, individual awards would be capped at $5 million for men with Alzheimer's disease; $4 million for those diagnosed after their deaths with a brain condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy; and $3 million for players with dementia, said lead plaintiffs' lawyer Christopher Seeger.”
 
Football, at its heart, is a game of physical dominance, where the “sacking of a quarterback” gets nearly as much cheer as a touchdown. Is it morally justifiable?
 
For the good of the student:
 
Just a year or two ago UCLA and USC, two schools with Los Angeles zip codes, announced that their sports programs were transferring from the Pacific Coast Conference or PAC-10 to the Big 10, whose teams spread from Iowa to New Jersey. [If you do not follow sports, every year the best football team in the PAC-10 has played the best team in the Big 10 in the New Year’s Day Rose Bowl game for about a century.] When USC and UCLA switched conferences, six other PAC schools followed suit. Only two teams remain in the west coast league, the “PAC-2” as my friends call it now.
 
While college football analysts went into overdrive imagining the intriguing new arrangement of next year’s college games, the mental health and education communities looked at another angle of college football realignment, a forgotten population: the college student. College football conferences exist for multiple reasons including economics and the wear and tear of travel for teams--matriculating students who must maintain a certain grade to retain scholarships and eligible to play. I checked Southern Cal’s road schedule for autumn 2024, and its player-students will travel to Baton Rouge, LA [LSU], State College, PA [Penn State], Lincoln, NE [Nebraska], New Brunswick, NJ [Rutgers] and Seattle, WA [Washington]. Each of these games is a separate trip at two-week intervals; on the alternating weeks, the team plays games on its home field. All I can conjure in my mind is exhausted students cramming for Monday exams in the friendly skies over the Continental Divide.
 
As long as I have followed sports there has been conversation over the tension within the term “student-athlete.” But take a step further: there is a lot of money made in college sports, for everyone except the players. In 2021 the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the trend a bit. In “NCAA versus Alston,” the Court ruled that a college student can make money on his or her “name, image, and likeness” or NIL. For the first time, a collegian could make football related dough by using his/her on-field exploits to sell Pepsi, Fritos, or Bran Flakes on TV without interference from his school or the NCAA. However, the NIL policy is hardly an across-the-board windfall; the few outstanding [read “marketable’] college players from big name schools have done well financially. But I checked my hometown college football team, the Buffalo Bulls of the MAC, or Middle America Conferences [that plays some games on Tuesday nights], and the Bulls actually have a web page for individuals or businesses who wish to start a NIL sponsorship for any Bulls player. I need to tell my little brother, who has season tickets to Buffalo Bulls games. As he says, “I’m never doing anything on Tuesday nights anyway.”
 
Government and Sports
 
The magnitude of organized sports at every level means that federal, state, and local governments--our elected officials—will necessarily play roles in the affairs of sport—though the extent of involvement varies greatly. For a century, the granddaddy of government and sports interaction was [and remains] Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption, passed by Congress in the early 1920’s. According to the Sporting News, the exemption “resulted from a 1922 Supreme Court ruling that stated, somewhat incredulously, that the business of Major League Baseball did not constitute “interstate commerce,” thus making it exempt from the Sherman [Antitrust] Act, which prevents businesses from conspiring with one another in an effort to thwart competition.”
 
There were—and are—egregious results of MLB’s antitrust exemption. When I was in college, a black St. Louis Cardinal all-star, Curt Flood, was traded from his team of longstanding to the Philadelphia Phillies over a $10,000 salary dispute. Philadelphia reportedly drew a virulently racist fan base at the time, and Flood refused to go there. He objected to the trade, arguing that under baseball’s existing rules he was essentially “owned” by management [in this case the Cardinals] like a slave, and if he failed to play for any owner who held his contract, he was effectively blackballed from all major league teams.

Flood took his case to the Supreme Court, which ruled against him in 1972. However, the case brought into play a brilliant labor arbitrator, Marvin Miller, who raised new public consciousness of the limited rights of baseball players and strengthened the fledgling players association in its dealings with the pension, base pay, etc. Miller was recently voted into the Hall of Fame for strengthening the position of ball players in their dealings with ownership even as the antitrust exemption remains on the books.
 
It is worth noting here that the National Basketball Association [NBA] and the National Football League [NFL] do not have antitrust protection from Congress. In recent years the Colin Kaepernick case in the NFL demonstrates that, hypothetically at least, players have more leverage to protect their rights. In 2016 Kaepernick famously began his protest gesture of not standing for the National Anthem, to bring attention to police brutality and racism. Wikipedia notes: “In November 2017, Kaepernick filed a grievance against the NFL and its owners, accusing them of collusion in keeping him out of the league. In August 2018, arbitrator Stephen B. Burbank rejected the NFL’s request to dismiss the case. Kaepernick withdrew the grievance in February 2019 after reaching a confidential settlement with the NFL. His protests received renewed attention in 2020 amid the George Floyd protests against police brutality and racism, but he remains unsigned by any professional football team.”
 
Another issue—close to the collective consciousness of Buffalo Bills football fans these days—is public funding of sports arenas. The new football stadium for the Bills is scheduled to open in 2026, 2027, or 2028 depending on your source, at a cost of $1.54 billion, already increased from the initial $1.4 announcement. Who pays? Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was opposed to state funding, but after his forced resignation surrounding personal scandal, his successor, Governor Kathy Hochul—from the Buffalo area--lobbied vigorously for state support. It probably did not hurt that the NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, lives in the Buffalo TV market.
 
It is maddening to nail down precise numbers and facts about Buffalo’s proposed new stadium, but it is clear that until a few months ago the Bills would be receiving the highest public contribution for its football facility in the NFL, $800 million from the state and more from Erie County. The Tennessee Titans may exceed New York State and Erie County with their newly announced $2.1 billion stadium on the board. In both cases, however and many more—there is little public or religious discussion over the moral/ethical questions at hand, not to mention political unrest.
 
In the first instance, is construction of a $2 billion stadium a defensible expense for ten dates of football per year? Have we passed the point of utility and progressed into the world of fetish? Do football stadiums improve the communities in which they are settled? [There was considerable talk in Buffalo of a downtown site for the new stadium before the suburban site was selected and with a dome, which was eventually ruled out.] Do new stadiums make the cost of family attendance prohibitive? And would these public funding grants be better spent on infrastructure, education, housing, health care, etc.?
 
Buffalo, incidentally, is the 78th largest city in the United States, behind Chula Vista, California, and Jersey City, New Jersey. There are forty-two larger cities than Buffalo without NFL teams, many that would like to host one. The shelf-life of new stadiums is becoming shorter and shorter. Forbes reports that, in terms of market value, the Buffalo Bills are worth $3.7 billion, or 30th of the 32 NFL teams. Only Detroit and Cincinnati are lower in worth. Dallas is first, but even the Cowboys are rated at less than $10 billion in corporate value. The NFL is increasing its overseas exposure in South America and Europe, with hopes of establishing permanent teams in Mexico, Brazil, and several European sites. The “Christian Banker” within me worries about the viability of the smaller football markets in the United States and the moral questions surrounding the investment of wholesale public monies into situations with uncertain futures.
 
COACHING:
 
I am focused here on the attitudes and styles of coaches of younger athletes up to and including their college years. Having worked in colleges and followed my favorite schools, I was always puzzled—troubled, really—by the manner of coaches’ interactions with players. It has been my understanding—perhaps in error—that coaches are faculty members or administrators or employees of the school. Consequently, I never understood why so many coaches seem to get a pass on the decorum and respect that we classroom teachers were expected to show our students. I am aware, to be sure, that many professors play God and treat their students with contempt; we had a saying, “Once you close your classroom door, you are God.” I resigned from teaching at Daytona College in 2002, reluctantly, due to my opening a private practice/business. I suspect teacher-student interactions today are somewhat different from my time, from what I read in the papers, but human nature being what it is…
 
If athletic competition is a school for life—particularly in institutions with a religious mission, e.g., Catholic colleges]—then what do we want our students to experience and learn from their time on the school gridiron or baseball diamond? Several things come to mind. Sports is an excellent classroom for students to develop respect, openness, and communication with authority figures, and to adapt to differing philosophies of strategies and life. The reverse is also true. True coaches recognize the distinct personalities of their charges, the distinctive gifts of each, and the best ways to communicate and correct with the varieties of young people still finding themselves. It is often forgotten that Larry Bird began his collegiate career at the University of Indiana under coach Bobby Knight. Bird, an immensely insecure country boy who arrived with few clothes into a Big Ten environment, was so overwhelmed he walked out to the highway and hitchhiked a ride home to French Lick. [Later he enrolled at Indiana State and became the Larry Bird of collegiate and NBA lore.]
 
IN CONCLUSION…
 
Sports are not immune to the problems and controversies of the day. In the past week I have seen in public media mostly anonymous allegations that professional football referees pace their penalty flags to help the teams with the highest TV interest. Others believe that eventually all NFL games will be streamed on pay-per-view at considerable price.
 
Sports are inherently sinful…in the same way we are inherently sinful from the encounter with the talking snake. Within reason, sports are here for us to enjoy and to marvel at both the athletic and the academic marvels of players and coaches. The closer that school sports, professional franchises, and league officials protect the norm of the common good, the more we will enjoy both our viewing and our participating in sports.

Morally speaking:
 

1. Unlawfully calculating the structure of competition to gain an unfair advantage is sinful.

 

1. Recreational activities involving more than reasonable risk is a serious violation of the spirit of the Fifth Commandment. This includes folks of my generation trying to prove they are not old.​ 
   

 

1. The use of untested and illegal substances to enhance personal or competitive performance is subject to a lot of trouble with heaven and on earth.

 

1. Monitor your spending on sports. There are no free prize fights on TV nor $2.00 hot dogs in Yankee Stadium anymore.

 

1. Gambling can be addictive. And you cannot really enjoy a sporting event on TV if you have $200 riding on the outcome.

 

1. In the spirit of the Fifth Commandment, talk to your doctor about a healthy exercise regimen. Sports are not just spectator events.

 

1. Keep informed of sports news which may impact you without your suspecting it. We tend to read about national sports news, but just as often it is local and state policies that impact our taxes, our quality of life, our national reputation. Stay on top of construction, timetables, etc.

 

1. If you are a parent, have an honest, candid talk with your kids who see sports stars making nearly a billion dollars. It is a golden moment to teach them the things in life that truly make us happy.

 

1. If your favorite team is on TV, and your wife asks you to watch a movie with her, watch the movie. In my experience the odds are 5-2 that my team will win if I am a good husband.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
      
 
 
    
 
 

​When Vatican II formally opened in October 1962, most seminaries were still teaching morality as an aid to their future priests for their confessional work in a fashion that was not noticeably more advanced than the Irish monks of the sixth century who invented personal and repeatable confession. The Irish monks composed the first written catalogues of sins and their satisfaction, i.e., “the penance” we receive in the box. These books written 1000-1500 years ago are collectively referred to as “Irish Penitentiaries” for those ordained monks hearing confessions. [Be careful if you google this.]  After the Reformation a thousand years later, the Council of Trent [1545-1563] mandated the education of priests and the establishment of seminaries. By this time the old penitentiaries had been worked over for a millennium and were renamed “manuals.” When you read a history of moral theology today, you will see reference to the “Manualist Era” of moral theology, beginning around 1600 and gradually falling out of favor in the twentieth century.
 
The last published moral manual, per Amazon, appeared in 1962, the year Vatican II began, by Fathers Heribert Jone and Urban Adelman. Jone, I gather, was the specialist and Adelman the translator [Latin/English]. In 1971 I made my annual seminary retreat as a guest of the Capuchin Franciscan Father Adelman at a retreat house where he was superior. I mentioned to him that I had seen his work on sale in the Newman Bookstore, around the corner from Catholic University [as well as my favorite D.C. bar, Fred’s.] Father Adelman looked stricken and exclaimed, “Don’t tell me they are still selling that thing!” It wasn’t until this week that I researched examples of Father Jone’s work and understood Father Adelman’s dismay, and how far from the rest of Catholic scholarly theology and practice the manualist tribe had drifted.
 
During my graduate studies in moral theology my class was exposed to the Irish Penitentiaries for historical background purposes; personal confession in early Ireland, which began as a nightly “chapter of faults” of the monks, was built around the seven deadly sins. The later Manualist Era was built around a rather simplistic structure of the Ten Commandments that tunneled deeper and deeper into infinite possibilities of human misbehavior; the emphasis appears to be the absolute integrity of the confession of all sins “in number and species,” as we used to say then. In fact, the controversial young Catholic-educated George Carlin, of all people, understood the Manualist tradition so well that in 1969 he developed a confessional comedy routine that sliced and diced the supposedly dying Manualist-style confession with amazing precision. [If you care to google “George Carlin Confession” on YouTube, remember this is adult material.]
 
It is fair to say that by the time of Vatican II most Catholic academics, many of whom served as advisors at the Council, had long discarded the Manualist approach to morality. The approach itself was becoming, well, bizarre in its detail. Priests themselves were complaining to Pope Pius XII long before Vatican II that the format of confession had lost its impact as a motivator toward deeper faith and spirituality. The Council Fathers noted the separation of manual morality—specifically the rite of confession—from the fullness of the Church’s theological and sacramental wisdom; thus, on October 28, 1965, Pope Paul VI issued the Conciliar decree “Optatam Totius: The Decree on Priestly Training.”
 
OT was a directive to bishops and seminary rectors to renew and improve the quality of both academic and pastoral training, to raise the bar such that all priests were familiar with every aspect of Church history and thought. OT added that continuing education of priests after ordination was a lifelong expectation and obligation. The Church needed better preachers, teachers, and pastors if the renewal of the Council had any chance of success. This teaching was long overdue. In the United States, for example, the noted Church historian Father John Tracy Ellis shook American complacency about its Catholic universities, colleges, and seminaries. In 1955 he published “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life,” a critique of the poor state of Catholic scholarship in this country. Interestingly, Cardinal Dolan of New York wrote on August 23 of this year that there are too many seminaries and too few excellent ones, and he advocated closing many U.S. seminaries to create regional seminaries of academic excellence.
 
On the matter of moral theology and confession, OT stated this: Likewise let the other theological disciplines be renewed through a more living contact with the mystery of Christ and the history of salvation. Special care must be given to the perfecting of moral theology. Its scientific exposition, nourished more on the teaching of the Bible, should shed light on the loftiness of the calling of the faithful in Christ and the obligation that is theirs of bearing fruit in charity for the life of the world. [para. 16] Put another way, Morality, and the Sacrament of Penance, like all sacraments, needed to pivot away from excessive legalism to its original point of origin: the Revelation of Christ in the Scriptures and the conversion of the baptized to charitable works which bring God’s grace to the world. In my seminary [1971-1974], morality and spirituality [prayer] were joined in one department as a response to OT.
 
However, when I was a student, the post-Council renewal of moral theology—as well as other theological disciplines--was still just beginning. My courses pointed out general directions for further reading, study, and processing. As a morality/spirituality major I did my master’s thesis on “women’s liberation and the Church,” for example, just as the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade on abortion was released in January 1973. Today I can remember only two Catholic woman theologians available to me in print from my bibliography. One was Mary Daly, whose 1968 work The Church and the Second Sex was very radical at the time and her first step in disengagement from the Catholic Church. The other was the more congenial Sidney Callahan, whose Beyond Birth Control: The Christian Experience also appeared in 1968. Callahan has been a prolific Catholic scholar and writer well into this century. I mention these two names to make the point that the renewal of theology called for by the Council for the Church at large was still just beginning a decade later and would take many years. The recently adjourned phase two of the Synod on Synodality cited the need for greater theological discussion on the involvement of women in the Church, a half century after this mediocre researcher plodded his way to roughly the same conclusion.
 
Aware that it is a half-century since I left the theological classroom, I purchased Father James F. Keenan, S.J.’s A History of Catholic Theological Ethics. [2022]. It was a magnificent read, based upon the research of post-Vatican II Church historians, biblical scholars, philosophers, and moralists, guided by Vatican II’s documents. There is energy and unity in the narrative. I marked up my copy and enshrined it in my “working reference library,” though there are many things in the book I need to go back and unpack more satisfactorily. For a reader who wishes to know how the Catholic Church’s moral history unfolded—and what a story it is—this kind of treatment will carry you along, based upon the freshest scholarship available and sensitive to both ancient writing and new moral issues including genetics, gender and transitioning, environmental issues, etc. It also introduces the reader to moral trends and scholarship today in Asia, Africa, and South America.
 
Father Keenan’s 456-page opus is a challenge. I believe it was the late Father Andrew Greeley who said that the Church is reluctant to recommend books to the faithful longer than 100 pages and without pictures. Amazon provides a healthy free sample of the book, including the table of contents. If you scan this information you will come across many unfamiliar names, philosophies, and controversies, but Father Keenan seems to know his audience…this is new material to just about everyone. I had no work of this nature available to me back in the day.
 
You will meet or become better friend with such diverse folks as St. Thomas Aquinas [1224-74], the Angelic Doctor, whose philosophical-theological synthesis still holds a unique place in Catholic scholarship; and you will meet Duns Scotus [1287-1347] who worked to dismantle Aquinas’s principles. Aquinas’s generation of thinkers depended upon, among others, the earlier thinking of the monk Peter Abelard [1079-1142] and his young student Heloise [1101-1164]. Yes, the very same Abelard and Heloise who collaborated on more than just books. Father Keenan quotes Heloise on morality and marriage, in the twelfth century, no less: “A woman should realize that if she marries a rich man more readily than a poor one and desires her husband more for his possessions than for himself, she is offering herself for sale.” [p. 136] I mention Heloise here as a prime example of a woman scholar who is getting greater recognition today, in part because more lay and religious women are embracing advanced study and leadership in Church scholarship.
 
Father Keenan takes us into the post-Reformation Manualist era and the internal wars between the manualist scholars. The most famous of these was over the issue of “probabilism.” To put it simply—as if I could--if a penitent tells a priest confessor that, when presented with a moral dilemma, in good faith he chose option A even though the prevailing moral scholarship of the day would have held for option B, he is judged innocent by a Probablist priest or guilty by a Probabiliorist priest. Many in the Church saw the Probablist position as more respectful of the penitent; those opposed called the position laxist. Fortunately, the Church canonized the moralist St. Alphonsus Ligouri, a Probablist who founded the Redemptorist Order. About St. Alphonsus from Wikipedia: "The penitents should be treated as souls to be saved rather than as criminals to be punished". He is said never to have refused absolution to a penitent.
 
Probabilism has obviously dropped from current day Catholic usage, but the tension between mercy and law is still very much with us. Pastoral care for the LGBQ community was a difficult subject at the Synod this past week. But Father Keenan takes us further beyond United States concerns. His final section, “Moral Agency for a Global Theological Ethics,” addresses an issue I touched upon earlier. “Moralists are no longer singularly clerical priests, their training is not necessarily at Catholic institutions, and their professional positions are not episcopally controlled.” [p. 292] The author does not mention this, but Catholic scholars in general can publish frequently with secular powerhouses like Norton and Eerdmans’s. I get a regular catalogue from Yale University Press. Consequently, the old probabilism debates may continue nowadays on Amazon or your neighborhood Barnes and Noble.
 
Beyond that, Father Keenan examines the state of moral theology around the world and who is teaching and writing today. Except for Antarctica, every continent has sizeable Catholic populations, schools, and indigenous theologians. Catholic moral thinking is diverse, particularly between richer and poorer nations. Building upon the theological teachings of Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis, many Catholic theologians from developing nations are focusing upon the dignity of the human person. To give one example, they are outspoken that climate change presents the greatest danger and suffering to the poorest regions of the world, and they maintain that Church teaching must address the lifestyles and priorities of more affluent societies. Any of us who hang out in parishes are painfully aware that some of our brethren refer to Pope Francis as a “socialist” [or worse] when he speaks of the need of equality for those struggling to survive.
 
Given that we are hours away from Halloween—and my neighborhood is ground zero for trick-or-treaters, who arrive in vans, golf carts, and flatbed trucks—I am going to stop on a dime with the hope that sometime in the near future you pick up this book and explode your mind with an in-depth examination of history and morality that will enrich your appreciation of your Catholic heritage.    

Back in August I posted a photo on the Café social platforms Facebook and Linked In of a peculiar piece of furniture from a venerable Catholic Church along the Danube. I didn’t identify what it was, and I had several readers ask. Here is your answer: it is a confessional, and the bowl extended out front is, if you haven’t guessed, a collection plate. I don’t know if this plate was intended for free will offerings or if there was a set fee for confession—as with indulgences in that time—or higher rates for mortal sins. The architecture of confessionals was intriguing to me. The priest sat in the middle, as today, but in some churches the penitent’s area was richly decorated with life-sized figures which provided a kind of late-medieval and renaissance catechetics of the sacrament. The figure to the right appears to represent a saint reporting to the priest all the sins committed by the penitent, including the ones he is withholding. The figure to the left is an angel imploring…well, I’m not sure what. Perhaps mercy? I guess that is the secret of great art—open to multiple interpretations.
 
I came across a fascinating observation by Archbishop Charles Chaput, the retired Archbishop of Philadelphia, in a piece for the Catholic News Service regarding his views on the Synod. The former archbishop of Denver pointed out that “the most difficult problems facing the Church today are not matters of ecclesial structure and process. They’re tied intimately to Psalm 8 and the question of who and what a human being really is.” His observation resonated with me on several levels. In the first instance, what is a human being? All of us in seminary seeking to become theological masters and priests had to acquire at least a bachelor’s in philosophy before admission to do graduate theology work. I completed my B.A. in Philosophy at Catholic University in 1971, but the school of philosophy was going through a hard transition at the time, and it is only in recent years that I have come to understand how much that turmoil set me back in my first go-round with theology years ago.
 
To enter the mysteries of the life of the Church, or for that matter, to engage in the synodal discussions now underway, we as individuals must come to grips with meaning, the ultimate purpose of everything. Now well into my 70’s, I find that many of the religious controversies within the Church do not capture my soul as intrinsically important as they might once have done. For the first time in my adult life, I find myself asking questions about standalone organized religion and whether it is necessary for the person who seeks God in the stillness of intense meditation. While this is not true around the globe, it seems that decline in organized religion in the United States and much of the Western World is pronounced, and in some quarters with “a good riddance.”  My life and intellectual history makes it fairly unlikely that I would consciously sever an almost eight decade relationship, but aging has this way of moving one’s fixation from the housekeeping of the Church as well as the countless humanitarian injustices I had once hoped to heal, to a position somewhere in my inner cosmos where I feel the hunger to breathe the air between God’s infinity and my finity, if that is a word. [Microsoft Word says it is not.]
 
I would wager that my preceding sentence relates somehow to those we call “Nones.” [Americans who identify themselves to researchers as having no religion; the term is also used widely for Catholics who have left the Church.] Paradoxically, “Nones” is probably the biggest misnomer of the day, for the adolescent who disengages from parochial Catholic life at age thirteen [as research has shown is the beginning age of the typical ecclesial divorce] is developing his philosophical instincts in a healthy stage of his development. Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher, was put to death for encouraging his countrymen to ask “Why? Why? Why?” He perceived about his society, correctly, in many cases, that not only the wrong answers were being provided, but the wrong questions were being asked.
 
The instructions for the Synod called for dioceses to reach out to the Nones and the disaffiliated, but the synodal process in the United States was so erratic I doubt any meaningful answers will come from the results compiled by participating dioceses, which would be about half of the U.S. dioceses. [Results were not released in any case.] The twin questions of why so many have left the Church, on the one hand, and why many who have stayed are unhappy on the other, has been left to the bantering of the press, Catholic and secular, which has highlighted issues on sexuality, ordination, and accountability. Very few, if any, have raised a public discussion over how or if the American Church has picked up the torch of the Jewish psychiatrist and death camp survivor Viktor Frankl’s 1946 classic, Man’s Search for Meaning.
 
I sincerely hope that the Synod is not another housekeeping Church meeting, a “rearranging of the deck chairs on a Titanic that never quite sinks” though Pope Francis has said dozens of times that this is not your father’s synod. I agree with Archbishop Chaput that any aggiornamento or reform of the Church must begin with the most daring of philosophical questions: Why? Why did the infinite God create us and become part of all of us? It was not necessary, after all. Who, exactly, are we? What is the nature of human existence? To which I might add human sexuality. The Catechism of the Catholic Church [para. 2357] admits that, regarding homosexuality, “its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained” but proceeds to label homosexual love as “disordered.” Perhaps the Nones could no longer stay with an institution they perceived as “stuck” with no interest in getting “unstuck.”  
 
This past week I looked at my youthful report cards from Catholic elementary school and six years of the minor seminary, and I showed them to my wife. A while later she observed, “You know, in the seminary you had six periods of Latin per week, and two periods of religion. That’s strange.” I replied that whenever I asked a professor about more religion, he would inevitably say, “You’ve got twelve years of seminary, you’ll get it later.” But here I was, having left home at 14 to live in a strict boarding school seminary precisely because I thought I could pursue a subject for which I had great enthusiasm. Maybe I am a semi-None.
 
For years I was involved in religious education training of catechists, and I still follow the field through friends and blog posts. Someone forwarded me a piece from the late noted astronomer Carl Sagan that describes Catholic faith formation so well:
 
“Every now and then, I’m lucky enough to teach a kindergarten or first-grade class. Many of these children are natural-born scientists - although heavy on the wonder side and light on skepticism. They’re curious, intellectually vigorous. Provocative and insightful questions bubble out of them. They exhibit enormous enthusiasm. I’m asked follow-up questions. They’ve never heard of the notion of a ‘dumb question’.
 
But when I talk to high school seniors, I find something different. They memorize ‘facts.’ By and large, though, the joy of discovery, the life behind those facts, has gone out of them. They’ve lost much of the wonder and gained very little skepticism.
 
Sagan’s analysis could be extended to account for the Church malaise throughout adult life. Perhaps it is that, as much as anything, that lies at the heart of the Nones Exodus. There was no more air left to breathe. We are like Alexander the Great, who reportedly wept when his army reached the Atlantic Ocean, with no more worlds to explore. In Sagan-ese, we Catholics spend a lifetime studying for the test instead of letting our divinely bestowed imagination prod us along the road to the angels.
 
WHERE DOES CONFESSION FIT INTO THIS NARRATIVE?
 
There is one Sacrament that “escaped unscathed” from the Vatican II renewal, and that is the Sacrament of Penance. We can look at the other six sacraments and point to their structure, understanding, and execution as modified [and sometimes reformed] in the post-Conciliar revamping of worship and theological understanding. But Penance/Confession is essentially defined and observed in the same fashion as it was in medieval times. That strange collection plate at the exit of an old confessional might just as easily been designated as “court costs,” for Penance is a sacrament fresh out of Perry Mason’s office.
 
We can thank or blame the Irish for the ritual of confession we still use today. As early as 600 A.D. the abbots and thinkers on the Isle of Saints and Scholars arrived at the template of Penance familiar to us all. The relationship of God to man was seen as a zero-sum system. As God had created us and sustained us, each of our sins incurred a debt to God. The Sacrament of Penance—which most Christians prior to 600 never received—became a regular occurrence in the lives of the baptized, because God demanded payment of the debt. The priest’s role in this sacrament began—and in many senses remains—as the judge of sincerity and, more concretely, as the legal decision maker for what needed to be repaid to God in some significant action. Our “three Hail Mary” penances are tiny, symbolic relics of a day when a sinner might be told to make a journey to the Holy Land—in 600 A.D.
 
During Vatican II there was strong sentiment to renew all the sacraments more closely with the Bible. It was 1974, the year I was ordained, that the new directives for Penance were released, Ordo Paenitentiae. The document and its commentaries—including the 1993 Catechism--reveal the struggle between the judicial mind and the mystical-spiritual mind. The juridical mind addressed confession with razor-sharp precision. The Catechism is awash in the listing of sins and their variants. On the other hand, if you have a moment, look at the Vatican II rite for individual confession provided here by the EWTN website. It is my understanding that the ritual enumerated here is supposed to be used in every confession, and a card or resource should be available in the confessional or reconciliation room for the penitent.
 
[Let me interject here, by the way, that the absolution administered by the priest in the Penitential Rite of the Mass is a valid absolution, juridically speaking, if you are sincerely sorry for your “venial sins.” Mortal sins must be confessed directly to a priest confessor.]
 
When I first saw the new format for confession, I had significant doubts that it would fly, and as it turned out, it was as successful as the U.S. attempt to switch to the metric system which was happening at the same time. I was a college chaplain in the 1970’s and while few ever frequented the confessionals, many would stop by one of my offices to sit and talk about the direction of their lives. They were good kids—not perfect to be sure; but none of us are. They were alive, conscious of role and responsibility and still sorting that out. It was common to talk over an hour about their moral issues as they put them forth, with an eye toward discernment and growth. They were not slaves to the juridical philosophy of confession—no calculated lists of sins on the newly invented typewriter called a computer--but rather, and pardon my odd comparison, they had something of an approach like St. Teresa of Avila, who sought much of her spiritual direction in the confessional.
 
It is ironic, when you think of it, that my generation of seminarians and young priests in the early 1970’s here in the United States never made a connection between the disenchantment with the confessional box—even in its reformed rite—and the “democratization of psychotherapy.” In fact, there was a “human services” course taught at my seminary by a gifted Catholic laywoman, Sandra Sutherland Fox, which introduced us to the various ways of meeting pastoral needs then employed by social workers. She introduced me to basic principles of psychotherapy and in particular Dr. Carl Rogers [1902-1987], then the guru of American psychoanalysis. We hopefully have all experienced those priests in confession or “the parlor” with the gift of reading souls, who win us back to trust and communion with God as our Father, in the fullest sense of the term.
 
It is also interesting that the Vatican, as early as the 1950’s, was getting complaints from priests and bishops around the world who were discontented with the format of confession, most notably the practice of habitual or “pious” confessions, the practice of weekly or biweekly confession where the same list of sins was repeated every time with no notable change of heart. [See Sin in the Sixties [2016] by Maria Morrow.] If I had to guess, many of those priests of the 1950’s may have had much more to offer penitents had the structure [limited time] and the legalistic history of the sacrament been altered. Unfortunately, the Vatican II formula and the times were not opportune to explore the ways that the encounter of Penance might enrich the Church.
 
I must wonder—given that no hard data has been released of the Synod listening sessions—how many Catholics around the world asked for greater assistance in learning to pray, read the Scripture, and receive spiritual direction. I see more individuals seeking regular soul counsel and holy conversation pertaining to their lives, and not a few who are sacrificing time and money to learn the art of spiritual direction at an accredited Catholic university, to become spiritual directors—those with the balance of a healthy prayer life, a grasp of theology, and the art of the counselor. And, has anyone explored the interlocking of the Sacrament of Penance with the art of spiritual direction? The ritual of Penance and the support of spiritual direction both enjoy the same goals: self-understanding [thank you, Archbishop Chaput] and full loving union with the Father.
 
Would someone bring this conversation to a discussion table or two?