From Harper’s Weekly this morning comes this little bit of “news:”
New evidence suggested that Adolf Hitler was monorchic, or single-testicled, having lost the other in the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
Apparently a WWI German army medic confessed Der Fuehrer’s little secret to a priest in the 1960s. The priest kept note of this interesting tit-bit, and it has now come to light. But this is not news to anyone who has ever sung the words of Colonel Bogey’s March, which go something like this:
Hitler has only got one ball,
Goering has two, but very small;
Himmler has something simmler,
But poor old Goebbels has noebbels at all.
I hope there was no note-taking during my days in the confessional. Not that there’d be much to record. I and the rest of the neighbourhood kids, pushed out of the house by our mothers every Saturday to go to confession, always lined up outside Fr Taylor’s confessional, even when the other pews were empty. He was known as ‘Flash’ Taylor, because you were in and out in seven seconds flat, with three Hail Marys for your penance. Didn’t matter what sins you confessed, it was always the same. One of the local bully-boys used to boast that he’d proved this, telling Flash he’d killed his granny and still being sent away with three Hail Marys.
I’ve always been fascinated by confession boxes.
They just won’t let me in! Apparently I’m not Catholic.
Hi Laura. It’s been a long, long time since I set foot inside a confession box and I hope I never will again. Believe me, you’re not missing anything!
oh…the mystery of confessionals…i wouldn’t make a very good catholic, just don’t like to disclose that much information, at least not in that kind of setting
I suppose there is something cathartic about talking something really bad you have done, knowing it can never leave the confessional. Not much different from talking to a psychiatrist, really. But, since having a reverse Road to Damascus experience in my early twenties and becoming a card-carrying atheist, I’ve not had much experience of things Catholic.