Bless me, Father, for I have sinned . . .

The chapter in my first book that most readers remember concerns my sin of stealing the neighbors' mail at age five. That sin did not get confessed until I wrote Pocket Girdles.

And, when the book came out, Patricia Gass (aka The Troll and sister to Patrick F.McManus) hosted my first signing at the rectory hall at St. Joseph's Catholic Church. I gave a copy of the book to Fr. Taylor before people began arriving. He was celebrating a Saturday night Mass and promised to read the chapter about the theft and its aftermath. I had asked him for forgiveness for my sin of so long ago.

Later, in the midst of the signing, he came from the church, walked up behind me and said, "You're forgiven."

I had finally received forgiveness for a crime pepetrated 40 years before at 12 mailboxes along our back road. The story goes that since I never had a chance gathering the mail at our house with two older brothers who always beat me to the box, I looked elsewhere for mail to gather. Each day for three weeks, I emptied the mailboxes belonging neighbors along North Boyer and took the contents into our woods. A neighbor, Mrs. Moore, eventually spotted me one day and reported my crime to authorities. They came, I got in trouble and never stole mail again.

When I was eight, the nuns taught us about the sacrament of Confession. They worked us through the routine and spent several days building up to the time when we'd go into the Confessional and tell God, through the priest, our darkest sins. I had determined at a young age---after being taught from our Baltimore Catechism that God knew everything---that if God knew everything, no priest needed to know about my mail pilfering. So, I left that sin off the docket when I went into report my indiscretions to Fr. Dooley.

Along with all that stuff about reporting indiscretions, we Catholics were indoctrinated with a full dose of guilt from Day One. After all, we were guilty of Original Sin, long before we ever had any reasoning powers. We were guilty if we didn't attend Mass every single Sunday. We were guilty if we didn't go to Confession every two weeks and tell all our sins. They found all sorts of ways to let us know how guilty we were for just about every move we made. All of this indoctrination came from priests who set the rules for what would be taught to the little Catholic angels.

That blitz of guilt stuck with most of us. We've spent our lives figuring that we certainly had a part in almost everything that ever went wrong. And now that we are to that stage in life where we're supposed to be content silver-haired sages, how wise but uncontent we've become, thanks to the countless revelations of the past several years regarding those people who had such power over our formative years.

All the while when many of these people, whom we were to revere as the closest thing to God, were instilling guilt deep within our souls, they were also busy instilling more than guilt within souls of many young people. They were instilling a lifelong sense of private humiliation and horror to untold numbers of victims through their vile pedophilia, and then came the lies.

I read a column in the Spokesman this morning about the priest who ran Gonzaga University for more than a decade, who supervised the addition of many buildings on its campus, who taught its students, who gained a name for himself nationally when selected by President Johnson to be on a national collegiate panel. The column was written by Rebecca Nappi who has a lifetime of Gonzaga ties, who remembers Fr. Leary coming to her house because her father taught at the university for decades.

After all his accolades, we now know that this priest---this man so close to God---can be counted among the hundreds of pedophiles who held great power over the faithful in the Catholic Church. And, to make matters worse, we've learned that law enforcement and the local paper, by omission, contributed to the cover-up when he was nabbed for messing up the life of yet another young man. I have another friend who says Fr. Leary was her teacher at Gonzaga. She's horrified, to say the least.

What's to come of all this as we continue to learn of the indiscretions of these "nearer to God than thee" figures to whom we were expected to confess our deepest, darkest sins? Rather than feeling like a silver-haired sage of nearly 60 years old, I'm scratching my head far more than ever these days, wondering just where I fit in this Catholic Church which has had such power over my life.

I guess it's a good move to see that the Society of Jesus has chosen to apologize for the actions of Fr. Leary. That's definitely a small step in the right direction, but will the church have the conviction to examine itself and revamp some of its policies that seem so out of touch and so draconian.

I have the church to thank for my guilt. Granted, my guilt at a young age probably made all the difference in how I've conducted my life since that indiscretion at age five. Although always a bit on the mischievous side, I've tried really hard to live a life of decency, honesty, and respect for laws, truth and the well being of others. That guilt probably made a better person out of me.

I can't help, however, the deep mixed feelings that I now harbor toward my church and its teachings as these revelations of its supreme hypocrisy continue to unfold. I know that I'm not alone in this quandary and I wonder how many other Catholics feel just a bit betrayed. In spite of all this, we remain Catholic, always hoping that the hierarchy will wake up, take action and adjust to policies more in line with the expectations that God probably has for all humanity, including the hierarchy.

If that happens, many of us of the skeptical flock would be so happy to shout out, "You're forgiven."