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In another instance, eight-year-old Susan is baptized as a Roman Catholic at the behest of Salvador’s sister Tia [Aunt] Lupita, without her mother’s knowledge. She is eager to receive her First Communion like other Mexican girls her age would be. She attends Sunday school for months to go to confession and she receives the sacrament of reconciliation. When she tells her father of her short-lived conversion, he is clearly not pleased. Indeed, he is “annoyed.” Yet he is seriously interested in the sacrament of confession, which one might think of as an intimate lingual sacrament. | In another instance, eight-year-old Susan is baptized as a Roman Catholic at the behest of Salvador’s sister Tia [Aunt] Lupita, without her mother’s knowledge. She is eager to receive her First Communion like other Mexican girls her age would be. She attends Sunday school for months to go to confession and she receives the sacrament of reconciliation. When she tells her father of her short-lived conversion, he is clearly not pleased. Indeed, he is “annoyed.” Yet he is seriously interested in the sacrament of confession, which one might think of as an intimate lingual sacrament. | ||
Norman Mailer’s fervent reliance on the mysterious powers of language is no secret. His fascination then with confession as an obligation is not surprising. As an act of recounting one’s life as a succession of trials, tribulations, and often failures, confession is of interest to him. He tells his daughter, “Susie, you know what upsets me? That you confess to another person, a human being just like you. Why not just confess directly to God?”( | Norman Mailer’s fervent reliance on the mysterious powers of language is no secret. His fascination then with confession as an obligation is not surprising. As an act of recounting one’s life as a succession of trials, tribulations, and often failures, confession is of interest to him. He tells his daughter, “Susie, you know what upsets me? That you confess to another person, a human being just like you. Why not just confess directly to God?”(60). She lets the reader know, nevertheless, that her Grandma, however, was not nearly as philosophical about learning of her conversion. “I can’t believe your mother let you to go through with this nonsense!” She adds, “Susie this is ridiculous. You’re Jewish, and you are not to go to confession again, you | ||
hear me?” ( | hear me?” (60). | ||
Her Grandma understandably offers a strong traditional defense of her granddaughter’s familial religious heritage. However, in spite of being none too happy about it, her father’s reaction to her brief conversion to Roman Catholicism and its requirement of sacrament of confession is historically and philosophically more intricate and nuanced. He asks Susan why another human being has to listen to her confession and mediate between her and God. The question arises from the depth of western Gnosticism as a philosophical, theological, and transcendent mode of direct knowledge of the divine acquired by embracing and directly addressing the divine without any | Her Grandma understandably offers a strong traditional defense of her granddaughter’s familial religious heritage. However, in spite of being none too happy about it, her father’s reaction to her brief conversion to Roman Catholicism and its requirement of sacrament of confession is historically and philosophically more intricate and nuanced. He asks Susan why another human being has to listen to her confession and mediate between her and God. The question arises from the depth of western Gnosticism as a philosophical, theological, and transcendent mode of direct knowledge of the divine acquired by embracing and directly addressing the divine without any | ||