Many, many many apologies for letting this project sit idle for so long!
My plan was to come back after Christmas, but then after Christmas I decided to go to Italy for most of the month of February, which meant that I’d spend January obsessively researching Italy….
In addition, for much of December and January, aside from travel planning, I was working on a project that I thought might be It. I was satisfied, if not ecstatic about the concept I’d come up with, and I wrote quite a bit. Several thousand words. But as I said, I wasn’t really in the groove, and after Italy, I lurched completely out of it and lost interest in that particular concept.
(I did break up what I’d written, though, and am in the processing of submitting the pieces to various publications. One has been published by Angelus News, another is forthcoming from them, and then another publication will be posting a third sometime in the next month, I’m guessing.)
So it wasn’t wasted time or effort!
March and April has been about doing marketing for my new book, hosting Returning College Guys during two separate spring breaks, then a very long (and good!) Easter weekend with both of them, and now we’re at the end of the school year, looking at a graduation and moving and who knows what with the summer.
And I’m spending way too much time on an essay called The Dogs of Sorrento that I have no idea what to do with at this point. Not the writing but the publication. So we’ll see.
But I’m back here in this joint - I think my goal now will be posting once a month. I was inspired this time by a book I’m in the process of reading, and will finish tonight. I’ll have a post up on Sunday night. I’ll tell you the book and the topic so you can get your memories ready!
Here’s the book: Sin in the Sixties: Catholics and Confession 1955-1975 by Maria C. Morrow of Seton Hall University.
Perfect, eh?
It’s excellent. A model for how to do this kind of history. I wish I’d read it earlier (it was published in 2016) - Morrow does a great job of situating the confession issue the way it should be: in the greater context of traditional Catholic penitential culture. I understand a lot of things that have been mysteries to me up to this point.
I learned about the book through the blog site of one my former teaching colleagues - yes, a long time ago! - Tom Burns. You can visit his site, The Catechist Cafe, here, and I encourage you to do so.
So look for an email from me Sunday evening, and I look forward to your memories of confession and penitential practice, before and after Vatican II.
