Thursday, August 16, 2018

How it Happens

I was 15 and it was a Saturday afternoon and as a good Catholic boy, an altar boy, I went to confession.
I'm pretty sure the priest knew who I was despite the screen that separated us.
I started out the confession as normal and got to the point where I had to get the heavy burden of my horrible sin off my chest.
I told the priest that I masturbated.
He let me know what a serious deal this was and offered to discuss it with me in the rectory after confession was over.
Probably the only thing that saved me from any abuse was that I was too embarrassed to meet him face-to-face over the issue.
It's interesting to note, that he quit the priesthood a few weeks later to be a shoe salesman.
I wonder how many of my classmates fell for it.
As an addendum, I remember that as an altar boy who served Mass before classes began, we often wondered whether the priest was going to show up for the morning Mass on time. I would often have to go to the rectory door where the housekeeper would inform me that the pastor would be there shortly.
Of course, he had been drinking. We all knew that. Adults did that.
The next priest was interim, and interestingly enough was a friend of the family, Marv Josaitis.
Marv's brother Norm was a priest, also, who went to Rome to work. I don't know what happened to him after that, but a few years later, Marv quit the priesthood and married.
Took up teaching religious studies at college.
Never told us what went down that the former priest quit over.

Update:
Wow. And he passed in 2015.
https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Grand-Silence-Former-Catholic/dp/1613466781


12 comments:

  1. Priests know who is in the confessional. If you didn't hear anything from your classmates, my thought is that none of them fell for the gambit. Maybe one, but I'm betting none.

    I'm glad you didn't show up.

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  2. Only God knows what's in your heart, and mind. Men are fallible, prone to allow their wants to overthrow their morals, and quick to hide the wrongs of their brethren; regardless of final consequences.

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  3. When you don't ask, JEHOVAH for help, sin occurs...Praise be to, G-D, you were protected! Now, a question to ask, how many of those guilty priests were victims, also?

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  4. During one of my confessions when I was 10 or 11 I told the priest that 2 women in the neighborhood had invited me in to give them a sponge bath and I did and was ashamed. He wanted to know who they were but I wouldn't say.

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  5. Interesting set of 'twists and turns' there. I wonder if, like Peter Grant, he just got to the point that he would not/could not deal with the lies of the bishops anymore.

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    Replies
    1. I hope to read the book soon.
      His older brother was in the Vatican and he left too, but I can't find contact info.

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  6. I have to wonder how many priests are predators who get away with what they do.

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