The Middle man
When God hit me over the head with that Solemn high mass freshman year in college the return from apostasy did not happen overnight. It was still just too easy to sleep in Sundays and besides I was in no hurry, was gonna live forever right? After all I was not even 20 yet. It was still college, and still away from the parents so anything goes. The logic of a true apostate, but the hound of heaven dragged me kicking and screaming back into the Catholic church anyway. He even taught Sr. Johanna a few things which you will read later.
Then I graduated from college and moved back with the folks one of which was my very devout Polish Catholic Mother so now the tire hit the road and I began going to the Novus Ordo mass. St. Issac’s was my old grade school and remained my parents parish so it became mine too. Father Spring was the founder, a tough, totally orthodox pre Vatican II priest. He knew the faith, the real faith, not this thing Bergoglio’s got going. This became evident to me in my journey back to the traditional faith. One of my stops on the way was the SSPX Our Lady Immaculate in Oak Park. In those days it was a mission chapel and Ft. Scott was in charge. Once a month he would bless items if you brought them up to the communion rail. I began to wear the brown scapular, which, by the way I made sure were on both of my parents when they passed away. Fr. Scott got to mine and asked if I was enrolled in the brown scapular. I said I wasn’t sure, in fact didn’t even know what that was. He said to ask my mom but gave it some sort of Latin blessing anyway. I did ask mom and sure enough in her words, “Yes you definitely were. Fr. Spring made sure of that when you made your first holy communion”. First communion happened about 1962 for me. Just before Vatican II tore the guts out of the church. I vaguely remember holding our rosary and our brown scapulars up with the class. I remember giggling with one of the guys, and felt a knock on the back of my head courtesy of Sr. Johanna.
Things changed a lot after Vatican II and the church decline accelerated rapidly. Fr. Spring was gone and like many priests in that era retired rather than continue the charade of Vatican II. In his place came the hippie priests who took over SIJ. Last time I was at mass there they used to cover the statues on passion Sunday until Easter. They stopped that practice after I returned. Doubt began to creep in to the minds of once orthodox Catholic laity. My mother who did the first Friday devotions and attended confession at least twice a month stopped confession when one of the new happy hank priests gave a sermon telling the congregation if you only go to confession with venial sins your wasting the priests time. I guess this guy must of had a Saturday afternoon tee off time at Rob Roy. At that point mom stopped going to confession and began to doubt the first Friday devotion to have a priest at her death (she did actually, it was not extreme unction and it was a Novus Ordo priest but I did put the brown scapular on her).
That takes me to the middle man and confession. Being the know it all apostate Catholic I was I saw no need for confession. I’ll just tell my sins directly to God. I started to realize that Hey maybe I won’t live forever so after I started going to the Latin mass I decided to gird it up and hit the box. This was a Novus Ordo parish however and I did this as a spur of the moment thing. I was in the city dropping something off for a relative in the city. I drove by St. Tarcisius . It was Saturday afternoon and this was the parish where my parents were married in the early 1940s and they were married by a young new priest by the name of Fr. Spring his first assignment before he became pastor at St. Isaacs. St. Tarcisius is gone now thanks to Blase Cupich parish consolidation because of lower numbers of the faithfull thanks to all the people he drove away from the church.
It was a disaster, one of those bless me father for I have sinned its been 20 years since my last confession. I unloaded my sins and quickly left. I hear the priest saying wait, wait, as I left. I forgot to stay for absolution! A few weeks after that I realized I was too stupid to stay for the important part.
So I tried it again, this time it was at the Shrine of St. Pius V in Lake Zurich and Old Father Quinn. Quinn was about the same age as Fr. Spring but Quinn stayed to fight the massive changes in the church. This time I stayed for the whole thing and it was truely like an anvil lifted off my shoulders. You see until now I thought in my infinite wisdom that I did not need a middle man after all I had this perfect relationship with God. I am sure God must of had a good belly laugh over that one up there.
Since then I try to go once a week as most TLM churches offer the sacrament for a half hour or so before mass. The only problem here is if you don’t get there early you may not get in because of the constant long lines. I have also refined it using Canon Oconor’s 3-Bs method. B concise, B complete, and B gone. I don’t need to tell the priest my virtues or treat it like a free therapy session just list the sins and if Father has a question he will ask. Or as the Catholic Irish comedian Dave Allen puts it no mucking about. In the end its all worth it to hear Et ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, + et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Something I never got without the middleman do it yourself method.