Why Teen-agers Avoid Confession

Teen-agers are beautiful beings.They live the happiest moments of their lives. And because teen-agers are most beautiful and most happy, they are the most misunderstood group of Homo sapiens strolling on earth. They will be seen in places where adults least expect them to see while they are nowhere in sight in areas where they should be. Well, that is why they are teen-agers.

But teen-agers are not just like that. They are many things more which makes them most interesting too. They hate to be called "miniature adults" and they dislike being branded as "grown-up infants". They just want to be known as teen-agers and hope to stay forever that way. For in fact, it is truly pleasing to be a teen-ager because teen-agers are the most responsible people... They are always right even if they are really right at times.

Being always right is good although being always right is being always a teen-ager, and being always a teen-ager means avoiding a thousand and one important privileges.

Teen-agers are awkward. They avoid many things: the adults, the children and yes, other teen-agers like them. By doing so they keep their awkwardness, the mark of a teen-ager... the sense of identity, the feeling of individualism in the already too crowded world.

They avoid the adults because "adults behave as if they never were teen-agers themselves". Adults are very inquisitive. They are dominant. They think they know everything but they always fail to prove their worth among teen-agers, that is why teen-agers hate them. Teen-agers also avoid children because children are ambitious, because children are nothing but "little adults", and teen-agers avoid adults.

Naturally they also avoid other teen-agers, and why not? Identity is an specialty and specialty is individuality. There is no room for a double. However, teen-agers are understanding; they can tolerate what they avoid; they have learned to swallow the bitter presence of others in their midst.

Teen-agers are tolerant but only up to a certain limitation.They can tolerate an adult or a child or even another teen-ager but not someone "too old" or someone too "childish" or something for other teen-agers. Yes, they can tolerate what they avoid and they will always avoid what they cannot tolerate... like the business of going to a priest to confess.

For a teen-ager, there is nothing wrong with confession. What they avoid is confessing. It is too much for them to swallow. First, because a priest is generally an adult, and adults are all alike; inquisitive, dominant and old. Second, because sin is only for children since children are not aware of what they are doing. Teen-agers believe that sins can only be committed when one is not aware of what he is doing. Who can ever argue on that logic? Did I not say teen-agers know what they are doing? Third, because confessing is a very stupid act done only by stupid teen-agers. And so teen-agers avoid confession.

Teen-agers love to be called young in as much as they really are but they can never admit that they are sinners. They will insist that anything they do is a privilege of the youth, a part of the process of growth, a natural phenomenon for them or else they are abnormal. As Ted Kennedy once said: " the misunderstanding between the young and the adult lay in the fact that the youth do not receive satisfactory answers to their difficult questions. 'The old have a tendency of double talking when it comes to dealing with the young'". A priest, for the youth, is not a very special adult and since confessions are handled by priests, they avoid them,.

On the other hand, some teen-agers go to confession. But how sincere really are are those who go? Many are doing it only because of love or a love one requested and certainly, a teen-ager believes that lover or the love one not because of his or her greatness but because he or she is another teen-ager who happen to be in conformity with his or her ideas.

The more effective strategy perhaps is for the priest, or for that matter, any adult, to look backwards to the time when he himself was a teen-ager. In this way, one shall be dealing with oneself.