All Seeing?

So that’s the Catholic way? Cleansed for your sins if you are honestly sorry? Even knowing, that you only have to be sorry if you get caught, and even then if you don’t, then you need only be sorry and ask for forgiveness, just before you die. How convenient. Hardly the basis for sound, honest religious practices. And, with the current international climate of today’s upheavals and revelations (in the media, not the bibles chapters), probably evidence of why that particular religion is going through such problems? But that is another story, and I believe no religion in the world is free of such similar hypocrisies.

I was however faced with my own moral situation. I had stolen from someone (even though I had shared it out –see blog Jan 1^st 2013, but that wasn’t the point) Regardless of how any religion saw it. Mr Walsh had seen it, and, had spoken with me. He had not yelled or screamed. He had not swung at me nor struck me. He had spoken quietly. He had spoken of history and consequences. He had managed to make me cry, probably because of the calm manner he spoke with, of how I would be treated if others found out. He himself had given the stolen money to the boys, well not the actual stolen money, as I had spent that on the ice blocks. He had given them money, from his own pocket, so no one would know what I had done. Then, he made me sit through the afternoon’s class. I sat, feeling the pressing guilt of my actions. Feeling as if everyone knew I was a thief anyway. Every glance from another student, every comment appeared to refer to my illegal behaviour. Was this what Mr Walsh had meant when he said he wanted me to think about it? To be in a room of people who would think much less of me, if they had known what I had done.

But, he could still tell them all. He could simply in his quiet way, stop at any time during the lesson. Put down the chalk or the pointer. Ask all the students to stop writing. To place their pencils on their desks. And to pay attention to him at the front of the class. Then when all eyes were on him, he could in his quiet voice announce “We have a thief in the class today.” And wait for the reaction of the students.

It is in a way amusing that, when I was even a little younger, I had seen the movie “To catch a Thief” starring Cary Grant and the beautiful Grace Kelly (even as young as I was, I knew she was beautiful). In that movie there is a ‘cat burglar’ character. Climbing about the edges of buildings, down walls, along narrow ledges, very exciting. I wanted to be that cat burglar. I wanted to very much, that when asked on a special day at school, what we wanted to be when we grew up? I had proudly declared, “I want to be a cat burglar”.

(Continued tomorrow)