The church I visit for confession is an immense and elaborately decorated space that tends to attract a certain kind of very traditionally-minded Catholic; the environment can sometimes make me uncomfortable, but the times for confession (mercifully abundant) fit well with my schedule, so I come regularly. I have a habit of choosing the first booth on the right side, the one with the warm and chatty older Jesuit, rather than either of the ones on the left: the quiet priest who offers no advice and gives the penance of an Our Father without fail, or the young priest whose “tough love” made me feel so ashamed at one point that I resolved to never came back.
This morning I am running late, so when I enter the church through a door near one of the side chapels and walk to the back of the line, there is a sizeable line. I am distracted, and scroll through social media on my phone, feeling vaguely guilty that I am not praying a rosary instead. Time passes swiftly, and I move from leaning against the wall, to sitting on the wooden bench trying to block out the voices drifting out from behind the velvet curtains. When the second booth opens up I am not willing to risk it, so I whisper to the young woman behind me that she can go ahead. Finally, the curtain swishes open, a figure leaves, and the occupied light switches off. I pull the curtain aside and enter, make confession, and leave smiling.
Before I can exit the church, I hear someone calling in a stage whisper, trying to get my attention. I turn around to see another young woman with a veil who had stepped out of line and smiling at me, pointing to my hands. “I love your nails!” she whispered again, and I suddenly remember that they were an almost Robin’s egg shade of blue. My confusion turns to delight. “Thanks so much!” I enthusiastically whisper back, placing my hand over my heart.
…
I am two drinks in at a friend’s house. A late night conversation about love, romance, and sex—the kind that calls for unvarnished honesty.
Of course, my sexual ethics come up; it was only a matter of time. Two of them—a gay married couple, both agnostic, with whom I am close—know already and have hinted as much at in their chatter, but the other one—a spiritual-but-non-religious and deeply sex positive bisexual woman—will be confused. She turns to me and asks me to share. I take a deep breath and tentatively begin: “I believe sex must always be connected to life.”
She sighs and exclaims, “That is so beautiful!” I am almost certain she does not fully understand what I mean. I do not want to explain. The conversation moves on, and I am relieved—but later, I feel guilty for not being more forthright. I wonder if I would have felt better if there had been the catharisis of a confrontation, so that I could know I was understood.
…
I am sitting in the back of the chapel, listening to the homily half-heartedly, starting to think that I might leave the retreat early to work on the homework I was unable to finish before coming. Almost all the other retreatants are older men, and over the past few days I have felt increasingly isolated, more and more aware of the differences between their experiences and my own.
The priest turns toward expected themes of marriage and family life, and so I zone out—until I am brought back by a word that resounds sharply in my ears. “That’s effeminacy according to St. Thomas, by the way. When you blow up at your family, you are being less than a man.” Effeminacy. I am unable to stop my skin from prickling and my face from burning. I begin an imaginary argument with him in my head that keeps me from hearing fully what he says next, but from what I gather, his basic points are fine: treat your wife and children with kindness, work to control your anger, etc.
I turn to look at another man sitting in the back row, a tall, muscular middle-aged man who seems especially convicted by this homily and is weeping quietly to himself. My imaginary argument with the priest stalls, and I begin to with the fact that as painful as the homily is for me, it has had a positive spiritual effect on someone; maybe it is not my place to say anything. I think about how unexpected and difficult this charge of “effeminacy” must be for a man like him: to suddenly have the unshakeable sense that somehow the charge—at least in the way it was intended by the speaker—is true.