First Confession

 “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

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