The first time I lied to a priest I was just eight years
old. Possibly even seven.
It was a Wednesday - after Mass at school. Perhaps they thought that our Sunday performances
at church didn’t quite cut it. So every
pupil in the school was corralled into the assembly hall for an excruciatingly
long Mass, which was followed by the ritual confession of every sinner in that
god-fearing catholic institution – the youngest among us about six, the oldest
barely eleven.
My fellow sinners and I shuffled nervously along the
corridor, nudged ever closer to the confessional by the painful jabs of Sister
Josepha’s cane.
My turn next. Only Declan
O’Leary in front of me now. Declan is
naughty. With luck, he should be in
there for ages.
What shall I say? I
haven’t done anything wrong. I know I
haven’t because they tell us everyday about everything that’s wrong. I’ve tried hard to be really good. I don’t even know how to be bad. I regularly stick all my pocket money in the
spastic society doll’s head outside the paper shop. I can’t say that though can I? I can’t say, “Sorry Father, I’ve been
good…”. I’ll have to make something
up. I’ll have to lie. But lying is a sin. I can’t commit a sin! I can’t!
And then I remember … last week … in Sister Francine’s class …
I felt the swish of her
habit as she floated past my chair. I
held my breath, hoping that she wouldn’t stop and look at my work. The page, empty but for the stupid title, “Where I went on holiday”, staring back
at me. We hadn’t had a holiday this
summer, so what was I supposed to say?
Should I lie? Should I pretend that I went to Filey with my
friend Theresa and stayed in their caravan?
Will she know I’m lying and punish me by making me stand on the chair with
my hands on my head like she does when I get my times-tables wrong? Which is every week – every Friday, at the
mental arithmetic test. Even worse, will she hit me across the hand with her
ruler? Or the cane? I hope not.
That always makes me pee myself.
The busy scratching of
pencils on paper was the only noise in the room. Everybody in the whole class must have been
on holiday except me. How I hated my
parents at that moment!
Sister Francine was
shouting at Declan O’Leary. He was
holding his pencil wrong again. Poor Declan
was always in trouble.
Oh no, she’s coming
back! I gripped my pencil, positioning
my finger exactly half an inch from its point as we had been commanded and
bowed my head low over the paper so she couldn’t see that I hadn’t written a
single word.
In that instant I
decided to risk the wrath of God and lie my head off. Filey it was.
A far-off fairy-tale place. I was fairly sure there was a beach so I
could take it from there. Bucket and
spade; donkey-ride; ice cream. Sorted.
I’ll confess on Wednesday
and then everything will be all right again.
But God knows I lied.
He will kill me. He is vengeful,
unforgiving and cruel. He’s not like my
protestant friend’s God who does nice things in bible stories - like helping people
who have fallen by the side of the road.
My God doesn’t do that stuff. My God
talks about hell fire a lot, damnation, purgatory and endless punishment.
But even so, I can’t tell the truth about my lies. I can’t!
The priest will tell on me!
Oh no! Declan is
out. I’m in the confessional, which
every other day but Wednesday is the sick room.
It stinks of Dettol. I wonder
fleetingly what happens to the kids who get sick on a Wednesday. And then, suddenly, I’m on.
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It is one week (yes, one week) since my last confession, and these are my sins…”
From behind a blue curtain, a soft, Irish lilt says, “Go on,
my child.”
Oh well, here goes…
“I’ve had bad thoughts about my big sister.” Stupid! That’s so naff! And then,
“I washed my baby brother’s face with the floor cloth!” No I
didn’t, my big sister did that!
I hold my breath. I
wait for the bolt of lightning and the question from God’s representative about
the pretend holiday in Filey. Maybe
he’ll make me tell him the name of my imaginary donkey.
“Well, that’ll be two ‘Hail Marys’ and three ‘Our Fathers’
for you my child. Now off you go.”
I flee to the praying pew in a panic. If I get these prayers said quickly before
God realises I’ve made up lies so I didn’t have to tell the truth about the genuine
lies then I might be all right. I did my
penance, and threw in another three ‘Hail Marys’ for actually lying, and
another two ‘Our Fathers’ because the lies themselves were really quite
embarrassingly poor.
And then, nothing happened.
Nothing.
It was at this point that my devotion to Catholicism started
to wane and my long held desire to become a Nun was gradually replaced by more
devilish ambitions.
By the time I was eleven I was free of my faith and had
become an accomplished liar. I was so well behaved in reality that I was
obliged to inhabit an imaginary world of naughtiness. I spent many entertaining hours conjuring up
sins and practising bad thoughts so my confessions would sound plausible and
interesting for the priest behind the curtain.
Unlike many others, I never suffered abuse at the hands of
the ‘Brothers’ and the ‘Sisters’. But
there was a point when my young mind was imprisoned so completely by doctrine and
unquestioning devotion that, I am now uncomfortably aware of the profound and
unjustifiable nature of destructive religious dogma and can understand, when in
the hands of extremists, how people can be driven to strap bombs to their
chests in the name of their Almighty God.
Now, it will take more
than a few Hail Marys to sort that!
