I knew it was a sin, but I prayed for no one to show up at Church.
Back in The 60s, there was a 3-tier curriculum for teaching “sins” at St. Patrick’s School. The Religion teacher taught the Basics of Sin. Venial Sin and Mortal Sin. A kid in our class started a rumour that Mortal Sin meant you would die on-the-spot. The next level of sin curriculum was taught by the Principal. The highest level of sin curriculum was taught by The Priest during his regular visits. They taught us that intent mattered. Dual meaning. Did you mean to do it? And it was a sin if you intended for it to happen, even if it didn’t. Sin of Intention: praying for a bad intention or even just hoping for a bad intention. No one asked the teacher or the Principal or The Priest what type of sin it was if you intentionally hoped or prayed for a bad intention. We didn’t want to know. We rationalized that not knowing the classification of the sin sounded better and felt better.
I knew that hoping and praying for no one to show up for Benediction was a sin but I did it anyway. The altar was packed for Benediction. The Church was almost packed for every Benediction. Not one, not two, three altar servers were need every Benediction, every…single…Sunday. I prayed for an empty church hoping The Priest would cancel Benediction so we could show up on time for street-ball to prevent being harassed and insulted by public school street-ball teams for going to Church too much. In The 60s, everything was packed, including streets. Every sport, every season. And neighbourhoods were packed with kids—street-ball-aged kids.
Neighbourhoods had their own teams. All teams were territorial. Each team identified themselves with by their level of insults. In The 60s, insults were socially acceptable. And expected. They didn’t start calling it “trash-talking” until the 80s. Before then, they kept it simple. Dual meaning. Simple insults. And they simply called it “insults.” The 60s weren’t complicated. Getting to the point mattered. Being offended wasn’t recognized in The 60s. Insults were governed by an Exchange Rate. You were expected to exchange insults at par or higher. Showing up late for street-ball because of Benediction guaranteed intensity of insults exchanged.
My prayers were never answered. They showed up. Almost packed Church at 1 p.m. Nothing cancelled Benediction. No snow days, no heat days, no storm warnings, no outbreaks. There was no Weather Network. Just 13 channels if you had a modern antenna. And there was no air conditioning. Not one Benediction was cancelled. Not during the pre-season or regular season or post-season. Benediction affected street-ball every season.
Prayers didn’t work. They showed up. We asked ourselves, “Why?” Public school kids asked us, “Why?” Why did they show up for Benediction just an hour after 11 o’clock Mass? It was a mystery to us but not to them. They knew why they showed up. The real mystery would have been if no one showed up. That was answer to “why.” No one wanted to be part of a mystery back then. Being part of a mystery contradicted Culture. Whatever mysteries you had in your mind were private. You didn’t publicize your mysteries in The 60s. Mysteries were to be solved, not avoided, and never participated in. Reason? Alignment and assignment. The absence of mystery led to agreement, to shared beliefs, principles, and values. And vice-versa. Agreement lead to absence of mystery. The Culture Code was simple: don’t be a mystery but be a mystery.
There were no Screen Addictions on The 60’s. You didn’t walk around with screens. You didn’t stare at screens. The only screen that mattered was the one in the confessional between you and The Priest. Alignment and assignment. In The 60s, weekly Confession was the solution to all your sins, intentional or otherwise. The outcome of the intended sin didn’t matter. Even if they showed up, you showed up at 4 p.m. every Saturday. Lined up, fessed up. Sins added up but you weren’t allowed to add them up and go once a month or once a year at Christmas or Easter.
The religion teacher at St. Patrick’s School taught us not to lie about Sin Quantity or Sin Quality. Never diminish the severity of the sin. And never diminish the quantity of sins. Honesty out, honesty in. And vice-versa. Count them up because they all counted. Like with compound interest, lying about the number of sins multiplied Sin Quality. And they taught us that a low number of sins was suspicion of holding back sins. They taught us that The Priest was trained in Sin Credibility. So we padded the Sin List. It didn’t feel like a sin to lie about a higher number of sins. We rationalized that lying about sins you didn’t commit just to be credible to The Priest was good practice just in case you forgot some sins or underestimated the bad things you said or did or didn’t do. It always made you nervous, confessing to praying for an empty Church. You worried about being identified by The Priest. There was enough room on the left side of the screen in the confessional to sheild your face hoping to prevent facial recognition. Other “protect your identity” strategies were discussed with classmates: lowering your voice or whispering; using a fake accent; blocking your face with your hands. Mumbling, like when you forgot Latin during Mass, wouldn’t work because you had to confess that you mumbled during Mass when you forgot your Latin lines.
Even the incense was packed. None of us really knew the purpose of Benediction. If we were taught, we forgot. One reason was that Benediction made you nervous. Some kid spread a rumour that the incense would explode and kill you if you packed too much and too tight. They used to use incense pucks. Then they switched to powder. Or the other way around. They taught you to pack incense up to a line that was visible only on the inside of the Incense Holder that The Priest swung. And you were responsible for tightening the Incense Holder. Some kid spread a rumour that it was a Mortal Sin to play a practical joke by not tightening the Incense Holder. If the incense pucks flew out, you would die on the spot. Public school street-ball teams insulted you for smelling like incense. So did the Catholic street-balls teams. Incense Insults unified religious denominations.
Be careful what you pray for. They stopped showing up. Benediction was cancelled. Nothing is packed any more. Not church, not masses, not confession, not weddings, not funerals, not even streets. Street-ball disappeared about the same time as 1 pm Benediction.
Fifteen years of policing taught me that you can’t solve the mystery of absence with the absence of evidence. And before you search for presence of evidence, you need to identify the cause of absence. All absence boils down to a Relationship Break-up of some kind. There are 26 main causes of all relationship break-ups. The top four causes are:
- Someone said something,
- Someone didn’t say something.
- Someone did something.
- Someone didn’t do something.
Every change in a relationship boils down to a change of words and works. Too much and not enough. Too much of the bad kind or not enough of the good kind. Wrong choice of words, wrong choice of works. Pain versus pleasure. It’s easy to blame change on isolation and in isolation. But in reality, all change for good or bad always happens contextually…there’s always context, there’s always a complex interaction of tangible and intangibles that build an emotional network of inducement that affects intention. Intention to appear and intention to disappear.
All change, good or bad, is promoted by need. Needs change. We change needs. Every human shares a common list of Basic Survival Needs. Then we customize our own individual list by constantly adding and subtracting Personalized Basic Survival Needs. When Basic Survival Needs align, places get packed. When they don’t align, emptiness happens. Multiple meanings.
Change alters needs. And vice-versa. Result? Adaption or extinction. Get stronger or get weaker. Applies on or in any field. The fight between adapting to changing needs and need to change is not won by the weak-willed. Lose the fight and the result is an extreme case of Cognitive Dissonance, defined as the painful inner conflict that burns inside an individual, a team, or an organizations when actions contradict beliefs. And vice-versa. And when works contradict words. And vice-versa. Cognitive Dissonance is inner conflict caused by crossing your heart, by believing one thing but doing another. Knowing better but not doing better. And vice-versa. Left unchecked, the Downward Spiral Effect. Structure breaks. Culture shatters with it. Cognitive Dissonance is a change agent. It forces change to relieve the psychological pain of inner conflict. There are only two choices to relieve Cognitive Dissonance: i) confess. Admit the truth; or, Or ii) justifying by lying, denying, and alibying. One choice raises the standards, the other lowers them.
The strength of every relationship spiritually, professionally, personally, and with self, always has been and always will be dependent on a four-letter word that frightens Post-Modern Society: work. Work strikes fear because of real or imaged pain of struggle and sacrifice. The easiest way to clear out any Post-Modern Room is mention work. Work complicates and threatens more relationships than any other tangible or intangible factor. The more it complicates, the more debates. The more debates, the more chance a relationship terminates. And vice-versa.
Good news. The Plain View Doctrine helps solves any mystery of absence. And of presence. There’s a 90% chance that the most compelling evidence is in Plain View. The evidence in Plain View is directly connected to Worldview and Workview. When attendance is down to a few, the problem is Worldview and Workview.
Good news. There’s a solution. I’ll explain in part 4.
#MuchLove
Blessings & all good things
#peace
Gino Arcaro
February 19, 2025