said you committed adultery or coveted your neighbor’s wife the

master knew you didn’t know what you were talking about, Don’t

get above yourself, boy, and moved on to the next penitent.

science for the next sacrament: Confirmation. The priest said Exam-

ination of Conscience and confession would save us from hell. His

name was Father White and we were interested in him because one

of the boys said he never wanted to be a priest at all. His mother

forced him into the priesthood. We doubted that boy, but he said he

knew one of the maids at the priests’ house and she said Father White

got drunk at dinner and told the other priests his only dream was to

grow up and drive the bus that went from Limerick to Galway and

back but his mother wouldn’t let him. It was strange to be examined

by someone who became a priest because his mother made him. I

wondered if the dream of the bus was in his head while he stood at

the altar saying Mass. It was strange, also, to think of a priest getting

drunk, because everyone knows they’re not supposed to. I used to

look at buses passing by and picture him up there, smiling away and

no priestly collar choking the life out of him.

hard to stop, especially when you’re an Irish Catholic boy: If you do

bad things you look into your soul, and there are the sins, festering.

Everything is either a sin or not a sin and that’s an idea you might

carry in your head the rest of your life. Then when you grow up and

drift away from the church, Mea culpa is a faint whisper in your past.

It’s still there, but now you’re older and not so easily frightened.

surface, but your sins create abscesses that ooze and stink. You try to

save yourself with Mea culpa, the only Latin words that mean any-

thing to you or God.

year, I’d take me out for a steak, a baked potato, a pint of stout. I'd