About The 'Device'

This special ‘guilt attachment’, I’ll call the CGEE (Catholic Guilt Emotion Enhancer) was implanted onto the psyche of the innocent child while undergoing the brainwashing of the particular religion, as they are indoctrinated. I am sure every religion must possess a similar attachment to the children of their faith (some even seem to have the ‘fanaticism’ setting unnecessarily cranked right up). The ‘CGEE unit’ requires constant testing and adjusting of course, to allow the ‘wearer’ to then feel incredible guilt for the smallest of instances when they commit a particular act. Sometimes, it is obviously faulty. There are many who had it as children, but for whom, as soon as it stopped working, failed to get it retested and adjusted (that adjustment time for Catholics, was probably what ‘confession’ was meant to do). I believe there were many such ‘faulty’ adults at the churches we used to attend. Adults who could attend a service standing next to you, loudly, and vocally declaring (through the various rituals demanded by the practice), their devotion and belief in the ‘word of God’. For Catholics, that was the Father, the Son and, the Holy ghost. It wasn’t that you had a choice? Three for the price of one? Actually they were all meant to be the one (explain that to a young child). Then, these holy people who could drive right past us as we walked home from Sunday church in the pouring, cold rain or snow. They knew where we lived, how far away from the church, that we didn’t possess a motor vehicle, but I could count on one hand how often we were ever offered a lift, or at least some of us were offered (the ‘women’ especially).

It was one of the problems with coming from a very large family (numbers, not size). Often there are advantages in being a large family. The sharing of ideas and skills. Always having someone else around to talk to, etc. But, there were also the disadvantages, transport was one, no car, no real holidays, and few special events. Not to mention, always having someone around ….etc. But back to those adults possessing faulty CGEE’s. Many were ‘high up’ in the church. I often wondered about that as a child, because apart from the choir loft, that was about as high as you could get in the church. I once found a door to the steeple, but it was only a ladder and the only person I ever saw go high up was the caretaker with a can of oil.

I definitely had a CGEE, but then, as young as I was, it was still in the early stage of adjusting the settings to align the right levels of ‘guilt’ for a particular circumstance. The constant phrasing from parents and other adults, nuns and priests when you got caught misbehaving, was, “God is watching you!” or “God knows what you did”. This is surprisingly ignorant of the drive of young people. As I said, it didn’t stop you doing bad things, it just mattered if you got caught. Unless, your CGEE was fully functional and running in overdrive, you tested the limits of it.

(Continued tomorrow)