V--2nd, Chapter 11 p.324 A room is all that is the case

[Joe Allonby]

As another recovering Catholic, I made note in the past of the
difference in Catholics and Protestants. We were part of a vast
intercessionary network that connected us to God. Protestants had a
personal savior. But Catholicism connected entire neighborhoods (in my
experience either Irish or Italian) as part of a shared experience.
Despite the patriarchal nature of the church, the enforcement was
matriarchal. Your mother made you go to confession. The old ladies
carried the sword of culpability. The nuns were the disciplinarians.
All this connected to what was originally a state religion, the ROMAN
Catholic church. My paternal grandparents were Anglican - the English
version but also a state religion. Both co opted the power of religion
to not only reduce its threat to the state but to also validate the
state. The king is anointed by God.

Protestants didn't go to confession. You were damned unless you were
saved, once again by a personal relationship with Jesus. The minister
and the organization backing him were not required for your
forgiveness, redemption, and salvation. He had more of an advisory
role. I wonder how much this is changing with megachurches and
evangelical political activism. "When fascism comes to America it will
be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross".


On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 5:11 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Michael writes:
> But I think there is a fundamental need for something like confession.
> You can get sanity checks from your friends and family, and that's
> valuable.  If you're in school, the feedback from your teachers helps
> you figure out some of the tough questions and so forth.
>
>
> Someone commenting psychologically on Catholicism I once read
> said it fulfilled our need to confess, to be heard about our weaknesses
> by authority we respected. As MB writes. (this writer also said Catholicism
> was real good about the aesthetic experience of an externalized communal
> ritual---the Mass.)
>
> Whatever. Anyway, I was raised Catholic and I can remember lots emotionally.
> One memory relevant here is a high school one where for some reason---surely
> to force goodness on the bad kids--we all had to attend confession one school
> day. Some kind of retreat in place, I guess.I remember feeling like a wit--not
> that
> common to me--when, after we were all back from confession I ad libbed using
> the old Zest commercial "How does it feel to be really clean?"....Got big laughs
> yet, now, I would say I had the witticism because I FELT that---really clean---
> cause I was an earnest good boy who just had impure thoughts and might not even
> have
> been playing with myself yet, can't remember, who took confession seriously.
>
> I might suggest that the experience of confession, internalized, led, after
> discovering Freud and jung
>  to Pynchon's wonderful offhand truth about self-criticism---it wouldn't seem to
> work but it does.
>
> I always thought the Protestants---I knew no Jews nor people of any other
> religions---
> had it easy. It was all between them and their God one-on-one.
> My earliest crisis-of-faith went like this: Some people feel even their little
> sins more than
> others, so those insensitive buggers, if they don't even think of what they've
> done, can't
> feel guilty so what is there to be 'forgiven'?....Sociopathic bastards, I might
> say now jokingly.
>
> Augustine's Confessions, as Alice cites, must have been read by intellectual
> Catholic Tom.
> I can't relate it to this chapter, maybe cause I never read it all....I feel
> Adams strained through
> Pynchon's added vision via a confessional as influence, but  I would now.
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Wed, November 17, 2010 9:09:43 PM
> Subject: Re: V--2nd, Chapter 11 p.324 A room is all that is the case
>
> alice wellintown  wrote:
>> Grant sez to check out Alaine Robbe-Grillet. Makes sense to me.
>>
>
> I was just trying to think of his name.
>
> Also the confessional angle: a bird, or maybe a gargoyle, has perched
> on my shoulder and keeps telling me this is an important theme in the
> book: Godolphin, Stencil, Eigenvalue, and now poor Fausto.
>
> Not being brought up Catholic, it's always held a certain amount of
> fascination for me.  I remember asking one of my buddies as a teenager
> about it.  He didn't seem nearly as interested in it as I was: he said
> you just say something like "forgive me Father, I have sinned," and
> they tell you to say some Hail Marys.
>
> Then of course I got into riffing on blessed is the Fruit of the Loom,
> and I think he was, not exactly offended, but put off.
>
> But I still imagine sitting in a confessional and telling all the
> stuff I feel bad about, and what would the priest do?  I guess it's a
> little more formalized than that, and there are people waiting in line
> behind you.
>
> But I think there is a fundamental need for something like confession.
> You can get sanity checks from your friends and family, and that's
> valuable.  If you're in school, the feedback from your teachers helps
> you figure out some of the tough questions and so forth.
>
> So the formal church confession could be a prototype of this sort of
> action - deconstructed to a form of primate grooming even, if we are
> into that sort of not-very-flattering analogy.
>
> Stencil's father confessed into his journal, I guess - and there's
> some kind of mutuality intended.  My friend's feeling about it sounded
> to me (although I realize he was probably downplaying it) like the
> interplay of gravity between a person and the earth: I jump up and the
> earth's gravity pulls me down/he confesses and feels better - in
> return, when I land, the earth is jogged a zillionth of a
> centimeter/and the Church feels a minuscule outpouring of grace (about
> as much as the world is moved by my mass when I jump) -- or so I
> pictured it and maybe still do...
>
> Whereas, Fausto confesses to Paola and I think that is actually
> efficacious upon her to some degree, causing her to act differently
> going forward.
>
> But, again, this is a long, detailed confession.
>
> And written, if that makes a difference...???
>
>
>
>
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