As a cradle Catholic who attended Catholic Schools, sin was a significant part of the curriculum.
For me, Maria Francesca (what my mother called me—her attempt at cultural flare), the sin curriculum began in second grade and was highlighted by three major events. First, Sister Therese Marie taught us all about the brands of sin and got us ready for confession. Second, we actually went to confession—that’s where Father Ray erased sins from our souls. Third, there was the whole thing about Fiona Mullens borrowing my sins.
It all began with Sister Therese Marie. Just so you get the picture, Sister Therese Marie was the spitting image of Venus in Botticelli’s famous Painting, The Birth of Venus. It is hands down my favorite painting—you can find it in the art section of your local public Library. She had the same skin, eyes, and copper curls popping out of her wimple during playground duty. Only one difference—Sister Therese Marie wore clothes.
Sister taught us about sin. She told us there were two types of sin: mortal sin and venial sin. These sins are like stains on your soul. Stains that can only be removed by confession because confession cleans the soul. And with a clean soul, you can take Holy Communion – that’s the sacrament where you eat a little slice of God.
Clean soul, eat God.
Sister said the worst type of sin was Mortal sin. She illustrated mortal sin with a diagram of a totally black soul. In the game of life, committing a mortal sin earned you the ‘Go Straight to Hell Card.’ If you died with a mortal sin stuck to your soul? It was hell – forever.
Some examples of mortal sin? Second graders rarely do these:
Murder
Rape
Arson
Inciting a coup
Stealing secret government documents
Committing tax fraud
Paying off porn stars
Cheating on your wife
All earn the ‘Go Straight to Hell Card.’
According to Sister Therese Marie, the second type of sin was Venial Sin. Venial sins are much lesser infractions, sort of like specks of dirt sprinkled all over your soul.
Examples of venial sins from my second-grade sin list included stuff like:
Disobeying
Lying
Swearing
Calling my Brother a Bread Head
Now, Sister said, if you died with venial sins on your soul, you’d go to Heaven’s waiting room, a boring place called Purgatory, which I imagined resembled the waiting room in my Dad’s dental office, complete with torn-up editions of People magazine and crayoned-over Highlights for Kids.
I heard a rumor that Pope Francis canceled Purgatory, but don’t quote me.
After learning all about sin, Sister taught our class about confession. She told us we’d go into a little closet, kneel down, and tell Father Ray our sins. Sins we’d read from our lists.
In second grade at my school, Our Lady of Perpetual Hope (which we renamed Our Lady of Perpetual Motion) meant weekly confession – every Friday.
For confession, you go into the little closet, kneel down, and say:
MF: Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.
This is the spot where you read off your list of sins and then say:
MF: Father, I am sorry for all of my sins.
And Father would say:
Father: Bless you, my child, your sins are forgiven. Now pray two Our Fathers for your penance. Go and sin no more.
And boom, we’d leave the confessional – our souls scrubbed clean – a clean soul that might last until we got home. No problem. Confession happened every Friday.
Sister Therese Marie knew how to brush up second graders for confession. Face it, going to confession is an anxiety-provoking experience for an adult, let alone a second-grade kid.
Telling Father Ray all the bad stuff we did all week? Total terror, right?
Thankfully, Sister Therese Marie was a veteran training second graders for confession. She invented a foolproof method for reducing kid’s panic attacks. She killed performance anxiety with a cunning combination of daily morning sin journaling and a ‘letter of the day’ penmanship lesson.
Daily morning journaling consisted of taking out our trusty brown lined paper and cigar-shaped black pencils and beginning the day by writing down the sins we’d committed in the past 24 hours. At the blackboard, Sister modeled the ‘letter of the day’ – a cursive one that we’d use to spruce up our sins.
On Friday morning, we’d tally up our sins, and with our list written out in good penmanship, performance anxiety melted into simple ear-buzzing – with hardly any of us barfing, fainting, or peeing in our pants. Then we’d take our lists of sins into the confessional and read them off to Father Ray. A real genius method.
Here is where Fiona Mullens entered the sin story. Fiona is my best friend—well, maybe not my best friend—but definitely my most culturally informed friend. Fiona had three older sisters in High School, one of whom we nicknamed Dear Blabby.
Blabby ran a daily broadcast filled with eye-popping, hair-raising information. A solid reason to keep Fiona as a friend.
Examples of vintage Blabby:
Blabby: Guess what? There’s no Santa Claus. (She paused for effect.)
Blabby: Guess what? A girl in my sister’s high school is pregnant from doing sex. (Another pause.)
Blabby: Guess what? Our parents do sex – nude. (Yet another pause.)
MF: No way!
Blabby: Way!
You get the picture. Blabby was a mystery thrasher. It was a daily broadcast—one that I never wanted to miss.
Now Fiona, my quasi-best friend, sat behind me. Fiona was the most neck-craning plagiarizer in our class. Her chin lived on my shoulder, especially during morning sin journaling.
And here was my downfall – Fiona loved my sins. And yes, I fell for the pure flattery of it all – she’d grab a page, devour it, flash me a thumbs up, re-read it, and press it to her heart.
She cracked up. “A pigeon pooped Patty’s head on the way to school? Of course, you laughed! This stuff is funnier than Mad magazine.”
I was writing a scandal sheet, and Fiona adored the material. The admiration went to my head, big time.
However, my sin journal was complicated. I didn’t just list sins; rather, I supplied the backstory and pointed out the pros and cons of why the sin under consideration probably was not even a sin. I wrote six solid pages a day.
And, of course, Fiona loved it. “You’re gonna let Tommy the Magician saw you in half?”
“Yep. I figure if Tommy actually killed somebody doing the sawing-in-half trick, Father Ray will know about it,” I replied, grabbing my sin journal page from her sweaty little mitts.
Sister Therese Marie also approved of my journal. In her morning rounds, checking our penmanship improvement, she’d wave my pages in the air, gushing, “Girl, you got the gift of story-telling.”
Fueled by successful sin journaling, I entered the confessional with more than a mere list of sins. I entered, loaded with questions, discussion points, and emerging dilemmas. Every week, I couldn’t wait to debate the sin field with Father Ray.
MF: Ok, Father let’s look at this whole disobeying thing.
Father, all I did was reorganize my mother’s ironing schedule around my TV-watching schedule.
Father: Watching The Lone Ranger and then finishing the ironing? Not a sin.
MF: OK, Father, now let’s take a look at this lying thing. How could it be a sin if I was covering up for my sister – who actually did eat the last half of the apple pie? Rat-out my sister?
Father: Protecting someone’s identity. Not a Sin.
MF: Now, how about this swearing thing? Sure, swearing out loud is a sin, but what about swearing inside my head, like saying to myself, “Shit, Aunt Bea’s new hairdo looks like crap!”
Father: Holding harsh judgments inside one’s head? Not a sin.
MF: Okay, Father. And back to calling my brother Bread Head, which I do about a thousand times a week? Actually, Father, I feel he’s starting to like it.
Father: Ah, calling him names? Still a sin.
Bread Head – I hated the idea of giving up that nickname! I dubbed my brother Bread Head because his head resembled a loaf of my mother’s freshly baked bread in both color and shape. All my siblings agreed – John’s head looked like a loaf of bread.
Perhaps that snarky tag had something to do with the fact that it was my job to clean old Bread Head’s room because boys in my family were genetically incapable of mopping, dusting, or changing sheets.
So, there I was in the middle of changing his Star Wars bed sheets. When what do you think I found hidden under his mattress?
Correct.
Playboy magazine.
I stood in Bread Head’s room, spellbound by pictures that awakened dreams I didn’t even know I had. Based on the cover alone, I was all in. On this cover was one beautiful woman wearing no clothes. And this woman was, to my 8-year-old eyes, absolutely fabulous.
I paged through Playboy and found other pictures of amazing women and one really big picture in the center of the magazine.
I looked down at my 8-year-old body and then up to where I imagined Heaven must be. I harvested all the devotion of a birthday wish and fell to my knees at the side of Bread Head’s bed.
Folding my hands reverently, I prayed, “God, please let my flat body bloom into something that looks just a little bit like these beautiful women.”
In these photographs, I saw a potential future. How a real woman’s body is a work of art. Actually, better than a work of art because these pictures were of real women while the paintings in the library art books did not look that real. Except for Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Botticelli’s Venus was, to me, hands down, a painting that captured the essence of a beautiful woman. It’s always been my favorite painting. And in my opinion, that Venus was a dead ringer for Sister Therese Marie, even in her nun outfit – a dead ringer.
My trance of adoration was broken by my mother, Bernadette, standing in the doorway, a basket of laundry balanced on her hip.
She sputtered, “Maria-Francesca, what are you doing?” (Again, the flair.)
I showed my mother the treasure. Her mouth opened wide, she gasped, dropped the laundry basket, and spilled underwear all over the floor.
I froze in place, shocked that she didn’t like the pictures.
Her response was so dramatic that I considered the possibility that I might be flirting with the ‘Go Straight to Hell Card’ – a mortal sin.
Hand flying in the air, she cried, “Maria-Francesca, you better go to confession.”
So, what I thought was way not a sin, my mother’s glare suggested, might be a wopper.
Fiona flipped out when she read the story of me finding Playboy magazine in Bread Head’s room.
“This is awesome. Hot. Juicy. Blabby’s gonna love it. It’s your best story ever!”
And filled with the devious sin of pride, I loved that Fiona loved my sins. This was the moment that Fiona, sensing that I was utterly hooked on her spells of flattery, hatched a mastermind scam. Fiona pitched the idea of borrowing my sins.
“See, you go into the confessional and read off your sins. When you come out of the confessional and slip your list of sins to me. I stand in line, and when it’s my turn, I go into the confessional and re-read your sins. Fabuloso.”
Flattered to the core, I consented. For weeks, Fiona’s scheme seemed to work well.
Then came the Friday, I was finally ready to talk with Father Ray about the whole Playboy magazine incident. This confession was a pivotal life event for me.
Having finished my list of standard sins, I hit the Playboy caper.
MF: Ok, Father, now to the really big stuff of the week. Playboy magazine. I found it in Bread Head’s room and checked it out. I’ve got to say, Father, that I am filled with hope at the possibility that someday I might look that great. That beautiful.
Father: Pictures of beautiful women?
MF: Right, Father. Sure, I know they have no clothes on, but that is sort of what makes them so beautiful. Think of this: In Botticelli’s painting, Birth of Venus, Venus is only wearing her hair. And that picture is called Art. Venus, the Goddess of Beauty and Love, is art. Beautiful women. Art.
Father: Art is not a sin.
MF: And by the way, Father, don’t you think that Botticelli’s Venus looks exactly like Sister Therese Marie? Same creamy skin, same golden hair, only sister wears clothes. I checked out the dates. Sister was not born in 1485, so it’s totally not her.
Father: (sputtering) Yes, the resemblance is remarkable. Just to be clear, beauty and art are not sins. But maybe stick to the art in library books – to calm your mother. And, Maria-Francesca, in our culture, we wear clothes for modesty. Women are beautiful with clothes.
Me: They don’t wear much at the beach.
Father: I see your point. Again, cultural rules are more relaxed at the beach. Still, the beauty of women. Not a sin.
My confessions debated the fine points of whether something was a sin or not a sin. Father had a name for these debates. He called them:
Father: Situational ethics – your arguments are always about situational ethics – that’s where a person’s motivations determine whether something is a sin or not a sin. That’s the question at the heart of situational ethics – whether a person intended to do evil or not.
MF: You’ve nailed it, Father, I’m all about situational ethics.
For weeks, Fiona performed my sins; however, she was not able to pull off the situational ethics part, so, in time, Father Ray caught on.
One Friday, as I stood up, ready to leave the confessional, Father Ray called me back inside.
Father: Maria-Francesca, please tell Bread Head he’s got to stop parking his Schwinn in the handicapped zone.
MF: Okay, Father, I’ll get right on it.
I started to leave, and Father called me back again.
MF: Yes, Father?
Father: And tell Fiona Mullens to stop borrowing your sins. First, she can’t pull off the delivery. And second, when it comes to confession, everybody’s got to use their own material.
Years later, visiting family in Milwaukee, I made the mandatory stop at Kopp’s for one of their flying saucer-sized cheeseburgers. Well into my first bite, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was none other than Dear Blabby.
Blabby: Guess what?
Blabby launched into her latest broadcast ignoring the fact that I hadn’t seen her in well over 10 years.
Blabby: Guess what? Guess who I ran into at the Zoo?
Mouth full of burger, I mumbled, “Ooo?”
Blabby: Father Ray. Only he’s not Father Ray anymore. He left. Now he’s something called a civil rights activist.
Shocked, I swallowed a glob of burger, “Eh?”
Blabby: Guess what? He married a nun!!! Only she’s not a nun anymore. Guess what? They got twins. Red-headed ones. Two of them.
“Shit,” I sang inside my head, loving the idea that maybe, just maybe, my Botticelli Venus married Father Situational Ethics.
Now that would be a match made in heaven and definitely not a sin.
MARY-FRANCES SCHNEIDER 