![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/84\/2013\/12\/wyd-confession.jpg\" "\\"wyd")
<\/a>Before Thanksgiving, I visited my alma mater for the Harvard-Yale game, and got to participate in a Liberal Party<\/a> discussion on \u201cWhen Should We Experiment on Animals?\u201d \u00a0The first speaker opened with a quote from\u00a0The Brothers Karamazov<\/em><\/a>, and by the back half of the debate, the room full of students (many of whom had worked in animal labs themselves) had drifted onto the topic of how to handle causing harm or suffering even when you believe it is the best course of action.<\/p>\n We were right on the cusp of a large, secular holiday of gratitude, and I was struck by the absence of secular scripts for penance and reconciliation. \u00a0 Everyone had stories to share about harming someone (animal or human) whether deliberately or unintentionally, regretfully or as the least bad option available. \u00a0But there aren\u2019t times or places set aside in secular culture to share these stories. \u00a0Or, when there are, they\u2019re in the format of a college essay or job interview: \u201cWhat\u2019s a mistake you\u2019ve made or a project of yours that has failed, and how did you learn from it?\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing wrong with looking for opportunities to learn from experience, but there\u2019s a major tonal difference between mourning something you\u2019ve done and recasting it into an upbeat, forward-looking lesson, and it\u2019s healthful to have time for both. \u00a0It would be odd to, at funerals, expect everyone to share stories about how usefully they\u2019ve been changed by Grandma\u2019s death and to find it gauche to simply cry.<\/p>\n This is one thing I really appreciate about Catholicism and Confession. \u00a0When I receive that sacrament, I\u2019m not there to turn my suffering, or the suffering I\u2019ve caused other people into part of a upbeat recovery story. \u00a0I\u2019m simply there to say, I did something that hurt other people, and I did it on purpose\/was negligently ignorant\/tried to pretend I didn\u2019t have a choice\/denied that it was harm. \u00a0I have to acknowledge the gravity of the wound before I can be healed and try to figure out how to patch up the people around me.<\/p>\n Over at Entertaining Thoughts<\/a>, Brienne, an atheist raised Catholic, talks a little about why ritual is important, and takes a crack at designing a secular kind of Confession:<\/p>\n Let me see if I can explain why anyone would ever be motivated to go to Confession out of something besides obligation or fear of damnation. Catholics often say that the Sacraments are \u201coutward signs of inward\u00a0grace<\/a>\u201c. When I was little, coming to understand (some of) what they meant by that had a pretty profound effect. Abstract ideas like contrition, forgiveness, devotion, and faith are invisible and elusive. It\u2019s not always easy to get your brain around them enough for them to impact your daily life.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a bit like when you genuinely believe that it\u2019s a good idea to learn calculus, but \u201ccalculus\u201d feels like such a murky, distant, impenetrable concept that you\u2019re not sure how to\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0anything about it. Sacraments are concrete symbols for abstract ideas and events that help you get a handle on similarly murky things like your relationship with God\u2026<\/p>\n Through concrete actions and carefully designed rituals, you are forcing yourself to encounter something you\u2019d rather flinch away from, and you\u2019re grappling with it\u00a0right now<\/em>\u00a0instead of leaving your future selves to endure a vague and undirected sense of guilt over mistakes you don\u2019t even think about let alone correct. Religious or not, nobody benefits from ignoring problems that need solving, and nobody\u2019s as good at allowing abstract ideas like \u201cbeing a good person\u201d to transform their day-to-day lives as they are at making incremental improvements via specific actions (though those actions may be motivated by abstract ideas). Lofty resolutions are not effective without well-designed mechanisms of action, and rituals are\u00a0awesome<\/em>\u00a0at being that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I can\u2019t think of any secular or national holidays that stand for penance in the way that Thanksgiving is for gratitude, or Valentine\u2019s Day is for\u00a0eros<\/em>. \u00a0Is there anything I\u2019m missing that you commenters are aware of? \u00a0Truth and Reconciliation commissions<\/a> are the closest thing I\u2019m coming up with, but I\u2019d like for there to be something that works at smaller scales than apartheid and genocide.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m on day two of\u00a0a novena to St. Isidore<\/a>,\u00a0my saint for the month<\/a>, and readers are welcome to join in.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Before Thanksgiving, I visited my alma mater for the Harvard-Yale game, and got to participate in a Liberal Party discussion on \u201cWhen Should We Experiment on Animals?\u201d \u00a0The first speaker opened with a quote from\u00a0The Brothers Karamazov, and by the back half of the debate, the room full of students (many of whom had worked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":8388,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-morality-in-practice"],"yoast_head":"\n