Mea Maxima Culpa - by Ozy Brennan - Ozy’s Fiction
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Mea Maxima Culpa<br>gay Catholics in space argue about absolution
Ozy Brennan<br>Jul 17, 2024
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[content note: description of war crimes, sympathetic portrayal of a torturer, homophobia]
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The first thing that Tochukwu noticed was that Mikkjal was beautiful.<br>Tochukwu had never been especially motivated by beauty. He knew he was a homosexual and accepted it without concern. Celibacy had been an easy practice for him to adopt. It felt like more of a joy than a sacrifice to lay his sexuality on the altar for the Lord, to sublimate it into taking care of the flock at Our Lady of the Three Moons and the city of Kanibur and the endless, endless refugees from the war.<br>He wasn’t a man given to much speech; he didn’t have the way with consolation and condemnation that the other priests did. But many of a priest’s daily duties were set down in words thousands of years old, and the Church always had more work than men to do it. And so Tochukwu began work when Skaeri’s rings caught their first morning sunlight and ended it when they were an arc, black as a cassock, across the night sky. Each day, he performed the 7am early-morning Mass and the 11pm sinner’s Mass. He gave holy unction and last rites to those too sick to notice if he spoke. He baptized babies born deformed from the chemical weapons, more and more of them every day, until the words of conditional baptism no longer made tears fall from his eyes.<br>He had, through considerable work, become good with children. The traumatized ones found something about his silence comforting. He learned to keep candy in his pockets.<br>The familiar words of the Mass brought Tochukwu comfort, as he hoped they brought comfort to his petitioners. But far too often, when Mikkjal was in the audience, his mind turned from thoughts of God to thoughts of Mikkjal: Mikkjal’s hair, loose and soft and so blonde it almost matched his white skin; Mikkjal’s wrists, delicate and thin as a bird’s; the LED tattoo Mikkjal had gotten in a wealthier time, and which still glowed on occasion under his shirts.<br>The second thing Tochukwu noticed was, perhaps, unvirtuous to notice, related as it was to his longing to accidentally brush his fingers against Mikkjal’s palms or tongue. It was that Mikkjal never took communion. A week or two wasn’t abnormal; sometimes people had a preferred confessor, or had broken the fast before communion without thinking. A month wasn’t uncommon for the scrupulous.<br>In eight months of attendance, Mikkjal didn’t once take communion.<br>The third thing Tochukwu noticed was that Mikkjal was always there.<br>Very few people attended Mass weekly, even before the war. They had shift work, tantruming toddlers, nasty stomach flus, Sunday morning sports. Tochukwu didn’t judge and he didn’t believe God did either; to be present at the sacrifice of the Mass as often as Tochukwu was a blessing often denied to the laity. Once the war had begun, well, judgment had even less of a place.<br>Mikkjal came hungover; Mikkjal came drunk; Mikkjal came with his pupils blown out and his face flushed from some designer drug Tochukwu didn’t recognize because a priest who talked more ran the addiction support group. Mikkjal came in sweatpants stained in takeout; Mikkjal came in miniskirts and eyeliner; Mikkjal came in glittery articles of clothing so skimpy it was impressive they were street-legal. Mikkjal ran in frantically twenty minutes after the service began; on one memorable occasion, Mikkjal managed to catch only the recessional hymn. Mikkjal came and kept nodding off until he finally fell asleep; Mikkjal came and paced back and forth in the narthex because he couldn’t sit still. Mikkjal came with a black eye and a missing tooth; Mikkjal came with his wrists bandaged; Mikkjal came and sat in the back and puked every five minutes in a bucket he brought along.<br>But, every Sunday and every holy day of obligation, Mikkjal came.<br>Mikkjal never committed to the Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, almost as if he were worried he’d never make it. But Thursday afternoons he was there nonetheless, kneeling before the tabernacle, Rosary in his hands.<br>“Bless me Father, for I have sinned,” Mikkjal said. “It has been a year, six days, and I think like four hours since my last confession. These are my sins.”<br>Tochukwu couldn’t repress the joy in his heart, not all of which was at Mikkjal being able to participate in the Blessed Sacrament.<br>“Just so you know, I’m not sorry. We need to get on the same page here.”<br>The wise canon lawyers and theologians of the past two thousand five hundred years had failed to address this case. Tochukwu eventually settled on, “Why are you making a confession, my child?”<br>“Canon law says to,” Mikkjal says. “One confession, once a year, before Easter. It says nothing about having to be sorry during your confession. I looked it up.”<br>Tochukwu tried to always give a verbal response to what people...