"YOU JUST CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP" 2025 #3

Last year, every Saturday I featured  a post called "Wisdom for 2024" This year, every Saturday, I will post a series of unusual personal experiences from the past under the title "You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up." Sometimes, names or locations will be changed or disguised to protect the guilty! Besides, I am retired! What can they do, fire me?

ODD TIMES FOR CONFESSIONS

I must confess something that I have told very few people. I went to Churchill Downs race track on my ordination day! After I was ordained, I knew I did not want to go down to my home parish that day because my mother, my sisters and my aunts would all be busy getting ready for my First Mass reception the next day. I also knew that all of those ordained with me would be busy doing their own thing with their families.  

I was stationed at St. John Vianney Church as a Deacon, which was close to the famous Louisville Churchill Downs race track, so I made plans to go there in order to have something to occupy my time! It wasn't like I would be going on a "honeymoon" or anything like they do after a wedding. 

I knew that I had just enough time to change clothes at the rectory and still have time to get there for the first race. When I got to the rectory, I was met by a crying woman who wanted to "go to confession." I looked around for one of the priests that lived there, but no one was to be found! Then it hit me! "You are a priest!" I don't remember much about it, but one thing! She said it had been fifty years! 

I panicked because I couldn't remember what I was supposed to do! I remembered that we practiced in class, but my mind went blank under the pressure. We did get though it, but I don't know who was more nervous, me or her! All I knew for sure was I was going to miss the first race! 

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Eleven years later, I remember another question about an inconvenient confession. I was a country pastor. I had gone to bed early and was sleeping upstairs.  About midnight, I heard a terrible noise that sounded like someone breaking through the front door of the rectory downstairs. I could hear a man talking to what I thought might be another man. I heard the first man say, "Let's try around back!" Without turning on the lights, I peaked out the window at the shadows of what might have been two men. I grabbed the phone and hid in the closet to call one of the neighbors. As I was looking up his number, the phone rang. Not wanting my intruders hearing the phone ringing, I answered it in a very low voice. It was a friend in Louisville. I whispered, "I can't talk to you now. I am being robbed!" Then I hung up and dialed my neighbor who arrived in minutes. He had a bright light and finally found my "intruder." It was not two men. It was a drunk man on a horse who wanted to "go to confession!" My neighbor talked him into going home and coming back "tomorrow." Relieved, I went back to bed, but I could not go back to sleep until I called my friend in Louisville and explained what had happened.

What scared me most was the story I had heard about one of the former pastors there who was robbed of what the robbers thought was the money he had on hand from a recent church picnic. The only problem was, the robbers picked the wrong church! The picnic was held at a neighboring parish. However, they tied the pastor and the housekeeper up, face-to-face, on one of the beds, made the pastor swallow the tobacco he was chewing and left them both there until somebody found them! And I thought I had a problem with my "late night confession" request!