When the only cure for TigerÕs ÔillnessÕ was Confession

Date Published: {J}

I have a copy of a recent golf publication which shows Tiger Woods’ mansion – and literally dozens of TV vans parked outside. Each has an extendable mast, a camera atop each mast, and every van is fitted with a satellite dish ready to flash any unsuspecting pictures of Woods around the world.

Meanwhile, the cover of the latest edition of Phoenix magazine got the present controversy about right with a composite picture of Tiger Woods and ex-Anglo boss Seanie Fitzpatrick sitting side by side and involved in a rather rueful exchange.

Fitzpatrick is saying “they say I screwed the whole country,” and Tiger is replying . . . “I know the feeling”.

It is one of the cleverer takes on the Tiger situation regarding all those women. It is a controversy which still seems likely to run and run, despite Tiger making a shame- faced return to golf last week, saying he had spent 45 days in treatment for his “illness” and is deeply sorry for what had happened.

That “illness” would appear to be an addiction to sex – something that is common, it would seem, among billionaires and film stars, but known as simply being fond of a bit of the old ‘how’s your father’ among the commoner- garden mortals who people the rest of the world.

I think sports journalist Des Cahill spoke for all of the rest of us when he said that ‘sex addiction’ was widespread among his classmates in school . . . but maybe it was the times that were in it, for nobody thought of bringing us to a ‘shrink’ or a therapist, and we suffered on in the alternate glory and shame of the sin, followed by the repentance of Confession and a firm purpose of amendment that lasted until the next time.

Instead of putting us into therapy, a Christian Brother caught us by the ear, told us we were dirty little devils who needed a damned good hammering, and then delivered the instant therapy with a leather which was kept handy for just such sessions.

Something which made these therapy sessions pretty regular was that all of us had to be in ‘the Sodality’. Non-attendance at the Sodality Mass, or Communion, meant that we were on the short road to hell and had to be saved. Cue more wallops from ’the leather’ as they tried to beat the devil out of us.

In this way, we spent our teenage years in ‘therapy’ – not just 45 days living in the lap of luxury and chatting to a friendly shrink. However, devil the bit of good it did – most of us being particularly recidivist victims of this addiction to sex, randiness, or the thought of it.

We took the wallops, with no apparent change in our ‘condition’. In fact, the only things which seemed to keep the ‘illness’ at bay were lack of opportunity, lack of money, and some dire warnings about the eventual outcome which came in the form of stern reminders from the Brothers about the potential damage to ourselves.

It would appear that – at least in those days 50 years ago – this ‘illness’ from which we plainly suffered, was likely to result in permanent damage to our backs, shortsightedness, and an upsurge in pimples and acne. Which may account for a number of people of my acquaintance and era being chronic sufferers from ‘the back’, not to speak of an utter dependence on spectacles.

Of course this was also the era before there were many of what one might term ‘those sort of girls’ about the place. The vast majority were in the Legion of Mary and trooped into their Sodality sessions exuding manifest virtue.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.