The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession Read Free

destined, as priests, to spend much time with children in catechism classes and confession. There was no gymnasium; there were no visits to public swimming pools. We were allowed brief holidays, but not at Christmas or Easter, when we might have come in contact with our wider families. Relatives and friends never visited. Despite much potential talent, there were no musical groups, and we had no record players. There was one out-of-tune piano. There was no television.
    Seminary life in its diurnal routine essentially enabled a young man to avoid the responsibilities that are shouldered by most adults of that age. For six years we were fed and sheltered gratis. We never cooked a meal, washed a dish, or laundered a shirt; nor did we sweep the floor or change the linen on our beds. The most we did for ourselves was to polish the shiny toe caps of our black shoes. We did not serve others, even our confrères : we lived to ourselves alone; yet we would have been astonished had anyone suggested that we were acquiring a warped sense of entitlement.
    Individualism was eradicated by routines of conformity, starting with our dress. Our hair was cut to a conformedshortness by visiting barbers. Being ‘singular’, or ‘ostentatious’, were the buzzwords for transgressing conformity (a contemporary in another seminary, a non-smoker, told me that his spiritual director ordered him to smoke in order to avoid being ‘singular’ among the majority smokers). Our lives, ruled by bells, meant that we made few choices about our day; the big decision about our future, to the end of our lives, had already been made. Even the decision to leave the seminary, we had been told, must be made by our superiors, lest we departed in bad faith. There was little scope for making committed friendships at just that time in life when the forging of significant relationships is crucial for growth in character, personality, generosity, and human empathy. We were encouraged to treat our fellow seminarians with an equal measure of detachment. ‘Special’ or ‘particular’ friendships, as they were known, could lead to occasions of sin. We were conscious, in any case, that committed relationships, apart from being a spiritual imperfection, would be pointless, as we would all be scattered geographically after ordination.
    The most popular, and constantly recommended, work of spiritual guidance was the Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, which counselled ‘custody of the eyes’, avoidance of idle gossip, ‘recollection’ (a sense of constant, serious awareness), repeated examination of conscience, and avoidance of ‘curiosity’ about secular matters—the ‘world’. We were hardly capable of sensible discussions about current affairs, as we had little knowledge of what was current on the outside. The political tendency was reactionary. The models constantly putbefore us were those of St. Jean-Marie Vianney—the Curé d’Ars , and the tragic petite fleurette , St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the simple young French Carmelite nun of the previous century who had achieved heroic sanctity in ‘little things’.
    Our conversations were trivial, schoolboyish, repetitive, and anecdotal; some even had stocks of edifying stories and preachy conversational gambits which even the averagely pious found cringe-making. Given the hothouse atmosphere, and suppressed youthful and sexual energies, there were occasional subterranean infatuations, jealousies, sulks, and periodic tears. On more than one occasion a student stood poised to throw himself off the crenelated central tower, to be talked down by the long-suffering spiritual director. Those with more self-control, or less labile emotions, would manifest a prim exterior of reproach in the face of such dramatics. For some, being priggish was a full-time job.
    Every so often a student would disappear without warning from his place at table and chapel. The ‘defection’, which might well have been expulsion, was