Between Mija's post at the Punishment Book and newsgroup pal Domino's story "Secret of the Confessional," a priest/penitent fantasy had been sounding mighty appealing. Then tonight I turned on PBS (yes, I know, I'm a total nerd) to watch "Secret files of the Inquisition" and when they talked about the practice of making repentant Cathars wear a yellow cross (which, in this show, were all women), well, what can I say? I think my spanko fantasies are now going into overdrive.
It's funny because I think one of the reasons that the priest/penitent fantasy works for me is because within the Roman rite (i.e. the vast majority of Catholics in the world), confession is so very different than in the Eastern Church. We have confession face to face, which makes it harder in some ways. Though the priests who have been my confessors (see here, for example) have generally been very kind -- including their facial expressions. The prayers are different. The listing of sins is discouraged in place of focusing on themes (at least in my experience). And, of course, penance is not meant to be punishment but medicinal. Going to confession is like going to the doctor.
So, reading Mija and Domino's posts almost felt like reading about a different culture. A culture that felt uncomfortable to my spiritual self, but tantalizing to my kinky self.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
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2 comments:
Hi Natty,
For what it's worth, confession/reconciliation/penance varies within the Roman Rite as well.
Many parishes offer both face to face and and the anonymous version. Some more conservative groups in the Church only use the anonymous kneeling confessionals. When I was doing some formation with Opus Dei for a while, that was all their priests seemed to offer, which was different for me.
Also -- some of our priests are better confessors than others. Regarding the issue of themes, my priest often recommends over time trying to link back to the deadly sin at the root of the laundry list of sins, comparing it to the process of removing a tree. While you can go after each individual leaf, eventually you realize there are branches in common, and the branches have a trunk and roots in common. So too with sin -- usually all of the seemingly infinite variety of the little ones have 2 or 3 common roots that often can be described using the terms of the deadly sins.
More than you wanted on a sexy blog delving into religion, right? ;-)
Thanks for getting me thinking of confession kink too...
Raven
Oh Raven -- I'm so glad you commented! I meant to read your blog more and totally forgot while I was too sick to be online much. I'm so so so behind in my blog reading...
Wow, you did formation with Opus Dei? Now there's a group that really mixes well with our kink... ;)
Oh, and interesting to know about approaches to confession within the Roman rite. I figured there probably were some. Does the priest put his mantle over you also when he's absolving you? Well, at least in the face to face sort?
And there's nothing wrong with a little religion here. I'm quite happy to see them mix. :)
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