To be clear, I'm not Catholic, so I hope I didn't get things too wrong here. Luckily for me, poor Father Pruitt is absolutely beside himself. So if you could take any lapse in the ritual as him just not doing his job very well, I'd be grateful.
Millie half expected to be rounded on as soon as the church door was closed, but instead John turned and slowly, deliberately made his way to the little confessional. She realized then, that he hadn't been intending to show her what he was feeling. In fact, he seemed to be quite determined to cling to his semblance of priesthood, to push the emotions down and prevent either of them from acting on them. He was a good man, he knew he had no rights to her.
Ok, then. We'll do this the hard way, she thought.
"Bless me Father for I have sinned. It's been a week since my last confession…before my husband came home."
"Go on," came the controlled reply.
"Father, I made love to my husband last night when I didn't feel the desire to."
She could feel his hostility thick in the air between them, even through the confessional screen.
"Daughter, this is no sin. Within the sacrament of marriage there is the duty to be fruitful and multiply. Sometimes that might mean having relations with your husband without desire. There is no sin in that."
"Yes, Father. But the thing is," she took a deep breath, "I was thinking of someone else. While my husband made love to me. I was thinking of the man I really wanted. I was betraying my husband and fantasizing about someone else."
For a long moment, John said nothing. Even as their affair had been going on, he had remained her confessor. She knew he always tried to remember that she wasn't really speaking to him as himself in the confessional. His role was to act as the conduit between her and absolution from God, and he took it seriously. Her face heated with shame that she was abusing his strong sense of duty by purposefully baiting him. But she was in this now, there was no turning back.
When he finally spoke, his voice was filled with suppressed passion. "Then you have committed a sin of lust and a sin of deception against your husband-" his voice cracked slightly, but he cleared his throat and recovered. "Consider Our Lord's words from the gospel of Matthew: 'You have heard it said, do not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.' Keeping our minds free from sinful thoughts is as important as keeping our bodies from acting out sinful behavior."
It was ludicrous. The two of them were guilty of adultery well beyond thoughts. They had acted out their desires several times in the last month. They had only stopped with the arrival of her husband, home on a short leave. They both knew they would continue as soon as George went back to his service in Vietnam, none the wiser to his wife's infidelity. Millie felt her eyes fill with tears. John's priestly facade was truly crumbling if this was the best he could offer.
"As penance, recite the rosary while contemplating the sorrowful heart of Mary, who patiently bore her suffering in submission to the will of God."
"Yes, Father."
He did not ask her to pray the Act of Contrition or admonish her to go and sin no more. He simply absolved her and said, "Go in Peace."
"Thank you, Father."
She fled the confessional, holding back her tears, but stopped short in the main sanctuary. Through the little church window, she could see her husband, chatting with a neighbor on the front lawn, killing time until she was ready for him to walk her home. She couldn't go out there like this.
She took a breath in, trying to steady herself, but let it out in a surprised whoosh! as she was grabbed from behind by strong hands and pulled back hard against a familiar body.
The verse that John quotes is Matthew 5:27-28 from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.