The Confession of an Atheist Priest

Sick with his petty life in a small Romanian rural community governed by superstition and having lost his faith, a village priest decides to do something absolutely scandalous for a bearer of the priestly garment… I have worn the priestly garment for a long time now. I have given so many Ressurection sermons, year after year, and talked at many more funerals, each time the occasion arose. My eyes have witnessed so many births and deaths… have read into so many souls, sitting in my confessional, listened to thousands of people pouring their sin-ridden souls out, listened to their sorrows, doubts, failures and all the filth that lives within the human being. When I was ordained a priest, I was but a child. The first confessions I listened to seasoned me. The first funerals I attended jaded me. All these sermons… bored me… to death.   I am fed up with this anthropological study of the religious man. Long ago, it fascinated me, but now, that I have seen so much…