The unique trait of the clergy and monastic community is that they both spoke confession and heard it. Those familiar with movies featuring Julie Andrews in a pixie cut will know that nuns confess to their Superiors, and their Superiors hear them.
This brings us to Wellesley FML. Begun in the fall semester of 2009, the FML is a public service for the Sisters. It allows us to relieve our guilty consciences of the men (and women) we've slept with, the teachers we've spat at and the homework we've skipped. That is, for those who post on The Confessional.
Others, like the Medievalist, simply read the Confessional and deliver Absolution. Absolution, in other contexts, means forgiveness for one's sins. The confessor gives penance: two Hail Marys, go tell your sister you broke her favorite dish, stay after Mass to help with clean-up, etc.
In the Sisters' Confessional, Absolution is delivered in three ways: Like, Dislike and Comment. The Medievalist just spent too much time delivering judgment on all sorts of sins: dieting, boring summer internships, sexual promiscuities and the lack thereof. The confident Confessors deliver Comments such as, "You poor dear, please come to Stone-D for cookies" or "You %#^&&*% %#$^&, you deserve all the $@#% you get." Stiff penance, in my view.
This public confessional is vastly different from the privacy of the box envisioned by movie directors. However, the Medievalist's professor at Wellesley College informed the class that in early periods (eighth, ninth and tenth centuries), confession was always public. If a member of a church had sinned, he or she would confess that sin to the community.
So Wellesley FML is not the propagation of a post-modern trend towards oversharing private details, nor a venue for intracollegiate gossip. No, instead it continues the medieval tradition of sharing one's burdens and confessing that we always fail to meet the standards of Success.
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