CT Blue

This is what comes of taking the nuns out of the schools:

This just in from the myth-busting department: Roman Catholic teens feel no more guilty than other U.S. teenagers.

If they cheated on an exam, lied to their parents or engaged in serious petting, it’s not bearing down on their conscience, according to a study by UNC-Chapel Hill researchers. At least it’s not making them feel more guilty than their non-Catholic peers.

The emotional fallout of transgressing the Catholic Church’s long list of sins — venial and mortal — may be a thing of the past. Blame the decline of ruler-wielding nuns at Catholic schools, or assimilation into the wider society.

First of all, I must disabuse the obviously heathen writer of a grievous misconception. Catholics never felt more guilty than others about cheating on an exam or lying to our parents. Such transgressions were more or less tolerated by Mother Church. A trip to the confessional, a rote list of sins, a couple of Hail Mary’s and you’re on your way. No, Catholic guilt was built upon the solid, firm foundation of Sex. Sex, sex and only sex. The mere existence of sex. What was most amazing about this was that the Catholic nun was somehow trained (or was it instinct?) to make one feel guilty about sex without ever directly mentioning the subject. In fact, they were able to make you guilty about sex before you were even quite sure you knew precisely what it was. This was an educational achievement of the first order, as I’m sure anyone would acknowledge.

I suspect I was among the last generation of Catholic scholars that got the full guilt treatment, though I avoided the high school version. New recruits eager to become chaste “brides of Christ” were in short supply even back then, and as the years went by the parochial schools became stocked with underpaid lay teachers, who just didn’t have the knack, and probably not the motivation, to do a bang up job at inculcating guilt. They were amateurs in a milieu in which only pros would do.

It’s a shame really. This admirable achievement, the rock upon which the Church was built and so many potentially happy lives were dashed, is now no more. But as the poet (be he ever so minor) says:

“The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Let us say a silent prayer for Catholic guilt, a custom dead before its time, before it could corrupt the world. We can only hope God can find a more benign way to fulfill himself.