I used to say the rosary as penance for my sins after confessing to a red-faced priest.

He had the jovial, half-present, exceedingly comfortable demeanor of a Bill Clinton or a Joe Biden. A tall, thin, white haired, good natured Irish leader of the faithful. He had the easy smile of someone comfortable being told that he embodies leadership. Not just embodies it, but is supposed to literally be regarded as god’s spiritual messenger incarnate. To live life in his position, he had to gladly accept the idea that it was his natural right to oversee the flock, so to speak. Basically, the guy had the slightly delusional air of someone granted special spiritual power over pretty much everyone around him.

Later I put together that this man’s sweet, sweaty smell was that of alcohol. He was not a bad priest who molested children—he was actually very nice to the children as far as I know—he was just a drunk priest.

It’s not easy to transport myself back to this time in terms of specific memories. But there are plenty of sensory things that I can recall: the thick polyester blend of my navy and red plaid pinafore, almost impossible to wrinkle. The structured leather of my black and white saddle oxfords, which until now I for some reason thought were called Mary Janes (also, I swear I wasn’t a child in the 1960’s, these were actual 1990’s Catholic school uniform requirements). The feeling of a loose lateral incisor wiggling in my mouth. The smell of the smoke wafting from the benediction lantern thing, which I only recently connected to copal incense. The squeak of the smooth and very worn wooden pews as we sat and rose repeatedly. The burgundy, plush, faux velvet cushion of the kneelers. We were always being told to kneel before god via this sweaty drunk man.

When I was a first grader and tasked with penance, my confessions were usually about being mean to my younger brothers or “talking back” to my parents (what a horrible framing of “having a voice” / “having an objection within the constraints of authoritarian rule” to instill in young children and especially young girls).

In dialogue with my therapist as a thirty something, I’ve found there’s a general pattern to my adult “confessions”: I’m not grateful enough. I’m not present enough. I’m not kind enough. If I do that, I’m being selfish. If I don’t do that, I’m being selfish. And the stuff that’s too cringy to even confess to her: I’m not allowed to draw attention to myself. I’m afraid to seem self absorbed (like with this blog!). If I do that, people will think I care what other people think (who doesn’t, we’re social animals! If they say they don’t they’re lying. Like me, they just care to ensure that other people don’t think that they care what other people think.)

Is this all just Catholic guilt, I wonder lately?

One of my best friends from college got married about 7 months before my partner and I did the thing. She also comes from an Irish Catholic family from the northeastern US on one side of her parentage. During the wedding planning process, she mentioned to me that she didn’t like the self congratulatory nature of an engagement party. Me either! I didn’t have one, or a bachelorette, or a bridal shower. And at my own wedding—I was struggling with all the attention, struggling to harness joy and just enjoy. I thought my emotional reaction to it all was because I’m more of an introvert than I realized. But maybe it was something bigger than my measly little personality. Maybe it was conditioned culturally and also inherited generationally. Was it actually my Catholic guilt inhibiting me from fully enjoying all the attention and beauty and excess that was being conjured up in mine and my partner’s honor?

A newer friend of mine, who was raised in Taiwan and with not an inkling of a Catholic background, once told me that I should just “accept my blessings”. This resonated so much at the time that I could have cried at how seen I was in that moment. She saw that I needed to stop fighting a current of shame over being in a good place. She saw that I was trying to veil my happiness with self deprecation, minimizing my own worthiness. At the time I was feeling guilty for having a good life, and specifically for having numerous people in my life who wanted to spend money to buy gifts for the baby that I was growing in my uterus (because what’s more self congratulatory than making your own gift registry!?)

The word “blessing” has always sounded so religious to me. Many blessings to you. Our family is so blessed. May God bless and keep you. God bless this home as we come and go. (IYKYK especially if you have an Irish grandma who cross-stitches.) It was such a churchy Christian word that I avoided using it once I stopped identifying with organized religion around age 13. It was not part of my cultural vocabulary for literal decades. Only recently have I welcomed it back into use (sparingly and deftly, when it’s relevant) thanks to my nondenominationally spiritual friend from Taiwan.

Because the fact is, I do have blessings, by definition. I do believe it’s ok to accept these blessings, and not try to downplay them or wallow in guilt. It’s ok to be #blessed. So sometimes I wonder if the way I was raised—no shade to my parents, this goes beyond them and probably should be taken up with the nuns at St. Malachy’s—is the reason I’m still doing penance over here. Again, it’s hard to remember specifics of what we were told as children in terms of religious dogma, but I do remember things along the lines of “other kids aren’t as lucky as you” and the ubiquitous “we are all born sinners” and “Jesus died for your sins” really drill the point home that, hey, you’re such an inherently flawed being that this martyr had to take the fall for you! And thus, you better be thankful for whatever you get, and not complain, and respect your elders, and eat your vegetables, and don’t expect life to be a party, and work hard, and as my Irish Catholic grandma would summarily say, this that and the other thing. She would also say in the face of any complaint or uncertainty, “well, at least you have your health.” Which, to be fair, is a sound reminder to count your blessings, but only by comparison à la “it could be worse!”

So I think there was a lot of programming done at an early age about what is deserved in this earthly experience, and what is too much to ask. I can’t say that in that cultural context there was an emphasis on things like pursuing life’s pleasures or taking pride in oneself or harnessing one’s own spiritual power. Certainly not in comparison to the cultural emphasis on productivity and punctuality and philanthropy. Pride was a sin, after all, and pleasure was maybe a euphemism for various sins, and god’s power was supposed to be the only power that matters.

I also wonder if this generalized guilt has to do with my gender, and not just my Catholic roots. Our zeitgeist, thankfully, leaves few stones unturned in terms of the ways young girls and women are coerced to make themselves smaller, less significant, quieter, to downplay their achievements and understate their qualifications. Thanks to this cultural dialogue we no longer get called “bossy” anymore (yay for me!) and I’m pretty sure “talking back” is also less frequently used in parenting circles, though I’m a newcomer and not fully versed in the lingo yet. This cultural dialogue also expounds the ways that women’s pleasure has been horrifically disregarded at the prioritization of men’s. So there’s a lot to be said for simply being raised as a woman and having guilt over my own successes and delights, minimizing my powers and maximizing my use of the word sorry.

So now I find myself wondering if people of other cultures with zero Catholic guilt input are better able to celebrate themselves, and accept compliments, and talk themselves up, and welcome gifts without guilt, and just generally accept their blessings in the emotional processing sense. I can’t remove the input from my early childhood, but maybe I can do some unraveling of the tangle of rosary beads in my past, and in that process, some unlearning about what it means to be “put on this earth” and what kind of experience I’m entitled to.