Happenstance events entangled two church families
in a most unhappy situation.

I can’t imagine what’s recalled this story, unless it’s the weather.  It was about this time of year, 1974 or ’75, when I was home from college on summer vacation and read about these things in the papers.

I grew up in a fairly large congregation of upper-middle class people.  We would get 200 on a Sunday.

Ron Roberts and his wife and children came.  There were about seven children.  The oldest were a few years younger than me; I never knew them well, but they seemed to be good kids.  I nicknamed their mother Zelda, ’cause she was kind of wild-looking.

Sam Smith and his wife Louise belonged to my father’s generation; they had been pillars of the church for decades.  They had a daughter Linda, whom I somehow never knew.  She married one John Jones.  They had a daughter Becky, a few years younger than me, just about the cutest girl I ever met.  She eventually married one of my pals from the youth group.

One night in January, two junkies broke into a hardware store.  They tripped a silent alarm; police arrived; there was a gun battle.  A police officer got killed.

John Jones was charged with felony murder.

Unknown to anyone before all this came out, Zelda had found part-time work as a belly dancer.  At Jones’ trial, she testified that on the night of the break-in, she performed at a house party where Jones was present.  Following her performance, the two of them retired to a bedroom, where they proceeded to have sex till dawn.  She testified to this at length, in graphic detail.

John Jones was acquitted.

I never saw the Roberts family again.

Where I attend church now, we celebrate the Mass every week.  We begin with a rite of corporate confession and absolution.  The people recite:

The priest pronounces absolution:

Amen.