Soul Revival: Bless me Father for I have sinned....
An examination of soul, spirit and culture
It’s been a lively couple of weeks, and, to a certain extent, I’ve allowed myself to become distracted away from all things spiritual. My ten day, house-sitting & writing hiatus seems like a life-time away now. Two weekends ago, the weather took a funny turn for the worse on the Friday evening and for the first time I wondered if the weird weather patterns were altogether natural in origin. At any rate, I’ve been in a strange kind of funk during most of the intervening period.
Anyway, last week, I took the notion to rock up to the Franciscan church on St. Francis street in Galway to receive the sacrament of confession. If “receiving” confession is the correct terminology to describe this activity. This is only the second time in the last thirty odd years I have struck upon such a notion.
In fact, leaving aside my current exploration of faith, the last priest to hear my confessions was the school chaplin in St Jarlath’s and as I recall I was fifteen years old. The cleric’s name was Fr. Joe Summerville and this confession took place during my time as a boarder in St. Jarlath’s College in Tuam which would place the year at either 1988 or 1989.
Unfortunately, this same Fr. Summerville has his own Wikipedia entry as part of the Irish Catholic church’s history of child sex abuse and for which offences he received a lengthy prison sentence.