The Cure for Catholic Guilt

4 parts coffee, 2 parts Irish whiskey, 1 part cream, 1 tsp brown sugar, and a dash of cinnamon. Any Irish Catholic knows that this is the first thing that they want after a long mass. After a solid hour of kneeling, standing, being scolded, and struggling to keep your eyes open you need a shot in the arm to regroup.

So why after attending a Presbyterian service do we find ourselves drinking Irish coffee? The lingering guilt of not attending Catholic mass. We know that someone, somewhere is tsking us from their grave on our egregious Sunday morning error.

What brought us to a Presbyterian service on this snowy Sunday morning? Could it have been the promise of coffee and doughnuts? Could it have been curiosity? Could it have been our love of birth control and quest for world peace? Maybe it was the desire to attend a religious service that doesn’t make us feel entirely hopeless because we are already on the fast road to hell.

Being raised Catholic has molded us into religiously conflicted adults. Although we are vehemently opposed to many of the Catholic Church’s teachings on women’s status within the Church, the Church’s view on family planning, and the forced celibacy of priests we can’t help but to feel the teeniest bit guilty when Sunday morning creeps around and we have once again not graced the wooden pews with our sweet asses. Even the promise of wine at communion is not enough to make us pass through those harrowing wooden doors.

Rachel feels particularly conflicted after serving out a sentence in a Catholic high school. It is her thought that she will resume attending the Sunday morning flogging once she becomes engaged to be married so that she can butter up the priest and be married in a Catholic church. She would like to note that her attendance is just not an excuse to drink Irish coffee on a weekly basis. Sarah would be perfectly happy being married in a cave because she suffered through 4 less years of intense Catholic indoctrination.

The threads of guilt are woven through the fabric of our daily lives. We apologize for everything constantly, even if we are obviously not at fault. We are too good at “sucking it up” and internalizing our true feelings so once again we find ourselves sitting here needing second cups of Irish coffee.