The Sign of the Covenant

We three know it's all a sham

Lord, I am a sinful man

Sham- Joe Gallagher

In 2006 I was going to confession pretty regularly and on this particular day I had a lot on my mind. My obgyn at the time was very anti circumcision and quite smug about it. I started looking into the issue from a Catholic perspective. To my horror, I found out that there were entire organizations within the Church to stop the practice calling it barbaric, mutilation and more.

But...

Didn't God tell Abraham?

9 Then God said to Abraham, “As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. 10 This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. 12 For the generations to come every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised, including those born in your household or bought with money from a foreigner—those who are not your offspring. 13 Whether born in your household or bought with your money, they must be circumcised. My covenant in your flesh is to be an everlasting covenant. 14 Any uncircumcised male, who has not been circumcised in the flesh, will be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.” (from Genesis 17, emphasis mine)

Everlasting? I thought that meant forever...


I had honestly thought when we had boys that circumcision was something that God wanted.



(As a side note, this was my first real struggle with Biblical contradictions and it bothered me for a long time. Why should what Paul wrote overturn a forever command?)



Anyway, this was my hot button issue for the next several weeks. We had just had a baby boy and we had had him circumcised and I was completely devastated that the Church (or at least some members of it) was against what I believed was biblical. It was.




I did lots of reading from the church fathers about this and they all had said pretty much the same thing. Circumcision was for the Jews of the Old Covenant and not only was it an unnecessary sign of the New Covenant, it was downright wrong (at least some of them said that). They cited St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians and to my dismay, there was a case for the uselessness of it (although I believe God said forever) but not so much the morality of it. I needed to ask a priest if what we had done was a sin. Rather than make an appointment or something, I figured I would ask during confession.



I walked into the chapel that Saturday evening to find about three dozen young children in there. There were also a smattering of other penitents, but it was mostly the kids. It was their first confession before taking their first communion the next day.

Oh man, I hope I don't have to wait till all these kids are done. I've got pizza waiting to be baked at home. I hadn't planned on this traffic...maybe I should just leave and do this another time.

Thankfully, the priest let us adults go first and when it was my turn I saw it was Father Myo hearing confessions that evening. He was not my favorite, a Burmese priest who had a very thick accent and sometimes was hard to understand. That day was no exception, although I think it was me he wasn't understanding.



I asked him if having our sons circumcised was a sin. Maybe he thought that I meant if it was required or necessary because he answered that we no longer do that, just baptize them as infants and that replaces the circumcision. When I pushed to get clarification of the potential sinfulness of this act on our part, he seemed to say it was.




He then became visibly irritated with me for taking up so much time and hurried me out of there since he had only an hour and half until Mass and had to listen to the first confessions of a bunch of children. My heart sunk. Not only did I not get the answer I was looking for, but I couldn't understand why this great matter of importance was not told to us in advance.



I did my penance (3 Hail Marys, 3 Our Fathers and 3 Glory Be's) and left the confessional never to go back to the Sacrament of Reconciliation again.




<previous part


next part>