23 pages • 46 minutes read
First Confession
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Symbols & Motifs
Sin
“Oh,” the priest tells young Jackie, “a big, hefty fellow like you must have terrible sins” (Paragraph 28). It is amusing to think that a child can sin to a degree that would require confession and absolution. There is a kind of absurdity to the Catholic conception of sin. Can a seven-year-old summon the requisite understanding of the implications of actions to confess sins when psychologists have agreed since before O’Connor’s time that those sections of the brain responsible for decision making and behavioral control are not fully developed until a person reaches adulthood?
Jackie’s catechism teacher threatens him with hell. His sister taunts him for the grave sin of having a perfectly understandable and harmless tantrum over dinner. He heads into the forbidding darkness of the confessional certain of his damnation. But he is only seven, and he is surrounded by adults whose spiritual transgressions are far more serious than his refusal to a stew that repulses him. The young priest does what the Catholic Church, which insists that children make a confession before receiving First Communion because God would be displeased by a sinful soul, refuses to: he gives Jackie’s actions a context. In the end, the story examines the meaning of sin itself and raises difficult questions about when a soul has committed sin.
Hell
The Catholic catechism for the children in Jackie’s class preparing for First Communion centers on the teacher’s graphic and emotionally traumatizing depiction of hell. The old woman, who lives in the richer neighborhoods of Cork, enjoys holding over the children’s heads the idea of eternal perdition, a fire that burns and never consumes, of suffering that is more grievous because the person will realize that they freely choose it. Not the reward of heaven but the threat of hell is the reason to be good.
Significantly, the word “hell” never appears in the Bible, and what exactly awaits sinners and saints alike in the afterlife is a matter of conjecture and speculation. The conception of hell as a permanent blast furnace that is at the same time pitch dark and yet lit by unquenchable fire is an invention of the church. When the catechism teacher tells the children about the hapless man who made an imperfect confession and was sucked immediately into hell leaving behind only the image of his hands burned into his bedframe, the impact is as immediate. The catechism teacher is much like a sadistic camp counselor telling a ring of terrified young campers about a serial killer that roams the woods to keep them from leaving their tents during the night. Which is the best way to get a child to follow the path of virtue: the threats of hell or, as the young priest offers Jackie, a kind ear, a nonjudgmental heart, and inspirational encouragement?
The Confessional
The story moves inexorably toward the confessional box and then irreverently upends assumptions about that sacred space. The confessional could be a most intimidating place. It was (and in large part still is) a separate space within a church or chapel, a box-like closet designed to promote the feeling of solemnity. The sinner can come to terms with the magnitude of their sins and the enormity of their request for absolution. If the church’s nave encourages community, the confessional enforces solitude. As the confessional door shuts behind Jackie, leaving him in the terrifying “pitch-dark,” he notes, “In the darkness it was a matter between God and me, and He had all the odds” (Paragraph 17).
The confessional was designed to promote a feeling of being set apart, of being at least temporarily ostracized pending the priest’s absolution. It was a performance stage intended to subject the penitent to the painful realization of how their sins had separated them from the God of light. There, cast literally into the darkness, the sinner struggled to reclaim the light and emerge from the closet absolved and determined never to sin again.
O’Connor’s story upends these feelings of dread and sanctity. Jackie, convinced of the weight of his sins, forgets how the confessional is set up. In the darkness, he attempts to kneel on the ledge designed for the penitent’s arms folded in prayer. The image of the boy scrambling to kneel on a shelf, trying to show his devotion, conveys to the reader what Jackie cannot see. When it comes to its youngest members, the Church might be taking the confessional protocol too seriously.
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By Frank O'Connor
