There are two extra torments after you realize you’ve been party to an abusive relationship:
You wonder why it took you so long to realize what was happening.
You wonder why other people can’t see what is now so obvious to you.
When you realize that you’d been duped for so long, you can end up blaming yourself. Surely you should have seen the warning signs. Surely you should have been smarter than to get pulled along with all this.
When you experience the frustration of seeing so clearly what others are still denying, all sorts of other, complicated dynamics ensue.
You might second guess yourself: Are you the crazy one? Are you blowing this out of proportion? You’ll no doubt hear from others that yes, you’re just “being dramatic” or “making a mountain out of a molehill.”
You might feel betrayed by friends or family members who should be supporting you, but instead are loyal to the abuser and are denying anything significantly wrong has happened.
Unless your friends on the other side of the divide are truly magnanimous, you will probably lose friendships. Even if you are still civil to each other, it won’t be the same as before.
It is quite likely that you who have called out the abuse, or who have merely refused to cooperate with it, are suddenly under attack.
***
All these things are the fallout of the nature of abusive relationships.
By definition, the abuser has sought to normalize his or her behavior. The only way abuse gets perpetrated in the first place is by the abuser somehow convincing people the behavior is acceptable. One of the reasons we don’t recognize abuse when it happens is that the abuser has done his or her best to make sure we don’t recognize it.
Another reason is that abusive behavior falls on a continuum. Just how far over the line someone has strayed is not always easy to discern. It can be hard to judge where on the continuum you’re sitting. We all sin. We all have our weaknesses. We have to live with one another, and it’s normal to show mercy and give the benefit of the doubt.
And finally, false accusations do happen. We who are honest rightly want to avoid jumping to conclusions and criminalizing imperfect but not predatory behavior. Those who are dishonest will in turn exploit every weak spot to cultivate doubt about the seriousness of the abusive behavior, and to cast the critics in the worst possible light.
Oh and then there’s the fact that those who have recognized the abusive behavior are themselves flawed persons who don’t necessarily know the best way to handle the situation.
***
So all this stuff happens.
It is horrible.
But it’s not something you can blame yourself for. It’s just part of wrestling with the beast.
Up at the Register this morning, I’m talking about ways to not become a person you hate being, in the aftermath of other Catholics being truly horrid:
Bitterness isn’t born ex nihilo. Bitterness is the festering of a spiritual wound, and many Catholics are infected by bitterness because they have suffered real, penetrating, stinging wounds at the hands of their fellows.
When you see someone being rabidly ugly, that didn’t come from nowhere.
When it’s you being rabidly ugly, it often feels like “righteous anger.”
Hmmn. Are you filled with a sense of peace? Do people generally agree that the way you speak and act is gentle and life-giving? Do even some of your opponents speak of you respectfully, because your are well-known as someone who is rational, calm, and has good sound reasons for your beliefs?
Or is it maybe possible that, fault of the hurt you’ve endured at the hands of people who had no right to treat you that way, you’ve started to get a little bitter?
FYI it’s my editor Kevin Knight at NCR who wins the award for my favorite photo caption ever. That’s his genius, not mine, concerning the ducks. But he is so, so, right. Ducks, guys. Make that #5.
Texas is on my mind, what with friends being flooded and vivid memories of SC’s teeny-tiny-in-comparison floods. Something to know about these disasters: You don’t hear from the worst-affected. In order to post photos mid-storm, you have to have power and internet. In order for you to see photos from disaster crews, the disaster crews have to be able to get into the area. You can reasonably assume the destruction and death in Texas are much worse than what we are seeing now.
Into this, yesterday afternoon I was enjoying a little slice of Heaven: A leisurely afternoon of lunch and conversation with good friends in glorious weather. During which time a friend posed a disaster-preparedness question: In the event of an EMP attack from North Korea, do we need to worry about having an emergency water supply?
On the one hand, the answer among the conversationalists was yes: Well pumps and city water facilities both use electricity, so if that goes out, your water goes out.
But I felt compelled to add: I have no idea whether the North Koreans will ever disrupt my water supply, but I know for a fact the city’s beaten them to it plenty of times. So yes, I store water. Weirdly, thus far we’ve been spared weather-related disruptions even when those nearby were not — but construction crews working near water mains? Oh yes, that gets us every time.
Tip: When you empty a liquor bottle, you have a freshly sterilized container on your hands. Go ahead and fill that puppy up with nice clean city water while you’ve got it, screw the lid on, and stuff it into some corner where you can never reach anyway.
Related Tip: If you are using a vodka bottle, label your stored water. Otherwise, you’ll lose track of whether you’re looking at water or vodka. When you need the one for something, the other just won’t do.
Since water’s something you just can’t go without, it’s something I’m a recreational-prepper for. When a hurricane comes, I turn over the canoe, lay out the kiddie pools, and put out coolers and other containers under the eaves of the house, to collect rainwater in case we lose water afterwards. You want to be able to flush your toilet post-hurricane, even if it doesn’t rain again for a few days.
As footage from Texas shows, though, all your prepping can come to naught. Catching clean rain water for post-storm use does you no good whatsoever if your clean water is under four feet of biohazard-laden flood waters. Storing rice and beans won’t help if your rice and beans are soaked in the flood, or carried off in the tornado, or burnt to ashes when lightning catches your house on fire.
The reason everyone should do at least a little bit of disaster-preparedness is because you have no idea ahead of time who’s going to get hit, when, where, and how. If my neighbor’s house floods — whether due to a hurricane or just a busted washing machine hose — if I have a little stash of instant coffee over at my clean, dry, spared-disaster house, things can be better.
Tip: Instant coffee + a box of UHT chocolate milk = A tiny package of sanity when civilization has receded beyond your horizon.
Double Tip: Even more than coffee, keep a reserve supply of any necessary-to-life medications you take. If you possibly can, make arrangements with your physician to get yourself one month ahead on your refills.
Triple Tip: Many people can’t do this because we have stupid, stupid, stupid laws. Consider lobbying for change in this regard.
The reality is that in a major disaster, everything is going to be horrible. You can’t possibly build the perfect bunker to shield yourself from every misery. But what everyone can do is think ahead and set aside a little bit of provision, according to their means and their needs, so that overall the odds are better that somebody nearby will be in a position to provide emergency relief until bigger help can come along.
Related, three posts from SC’s floods that might be of interest. The first two are particularly apropos if you have young people who would like to drive down post-disaster and help with the massive clean-up:
Once it’s all-clear and you can safely get in to help in a useful, systematic way, in conjunction with some effort spearheaded by locals who know what it is needed — which is going to be a while, and by that time the work is going to be super-nasty — do it.
The third is probably only of interest to a select audience: What’s the Story Behind the Flooding in SC? Obviously, the story behind the flooding in Texas is that Harvey is dropping several giant lakes worth of water on land that would rather be land, thanks. What’s relevant for SC folks, and others who’ve endured similar spot-disasters, is that what we’ve experienced are situations where most people are fine, if inconvenienced, which leaves a very strong community at hand available to assist with clean-up.
Greater metro Houston, in contrast, is getting poured on in a way that’s going to be devastating more people than not. And remember that washed-out roads means that the ability of anyone to get in and help will be hampered for a long time.
So this is a hugely different situation than that time your town was hit by this or that terrible-but-limited natural disaster. And you know from memory that things were plenty bad enough then. This is super-bad.
Fourth of July a fellow on a bicycle saw me photographing the parish war memorial in Sigolsheim. He asked me where I was from, and I told him the US, and he proceeded to thank me for coming. Periodically throughout the conversation he thanked me again, and before leaving he repeated merci about seven times. There was a reason for that, which I’ll get to.
A typical way of inscribing a war memorial in France is to write Mort Pour La France, but in Alsace that’s not usually the case, for the obvious reason. A Nos Morts is the common alternative that glosses over the whole question of whom you died for, and gets to the point: You died. Here’s the memorial outside the parish church in Uffholtz, A Ses Enfants Victime de Guerre:
Here’s Sigolsheim, in two parts. You’ll notice WWII was disproportionately bloodier than WWI for Sigolsheim, including a significant number of civilian deaths:
That’s because the Nazis dug in and held hard, and a giant set of battles were held in the village itself, which you can read about in extensive detail here. When German empires decide to assert themselves, annexing Alsace is the default method. (And why not throw in Lorraine while you’re at it?) This is the reason that headquartering European postwar peace initiatives in Strasbourg is so symbolically important.
Persuading the Third Reich to retreat from Alsace was bloody-difficult, and American soldiers played a major part in that work, which is half the reason the fellow on the bicycle was so profuse in his thanks for my coming to visit and taking an interest in the local history.
Here’s the village of Kayserberg’s thank-you plaque:
The American flag flies above Sigolsheim at this war memorial:
Everything in red on this map of the the Allies’ Alsatian offensive is American forces:
American soldiers aren’t buried at the Sigolsheim memorial (there are American war cemeteries elsewhere). There is a cemetery, though, for the French forces killed in battle in the immediate vicinity:
You’ll notice in the picture above that most of the graves are crosses, and a few are not. Here’s a detail of the rounded-rectangle gravestone in the bottom right:
It would obviously not be kosher (pun intended) to use a cross to mark the grave of a Jewish soldier. It is not only American and native-born French soldiers, however, who were instrumental in liberating Alsace. The Zouave soldiers buried at the Sigolsheim war cemetery have grave markers like this:
In other words, if you’re grateful France is free, don’t just thank an American — thank a Muslim. Ah, but how much did those Muslim soldiers contribute? About like this:
As the video shows, the cemetery is built on a hill in a half-circle, and the graves are laid out in four equal sections. The two flanking sections are Muslim graves, and the center two sections are mixed Christian and Jewish graves. History is complicated.
Whether the fellow on the bicycle would have thanked me so profusely if I were a North African tourist I couldn’t say. I’m not one. What we do get mistaken for in Alsace is German tourists. We look the part and come by it honestly, if distantly. German tourists come up and ask us directions, in German, which doesn’t get them very far. Locals either attempt to speak German with us or else apologize that they have no German (neither do we — how about French?).
So here are a couple of my cute German kids walking towards the gate out of the KL-Natzweiler Concentration Camp, up near the village of Struthof in the Vosges mountains:
People who didn’t walk out might have died here in the cell block:
At which point they would have been incinerated in this crematorium:
When we talk about concentration camps and the evil of the Nazi regime, the usual thing is to tell kids, “If you were Jewish . . .”
Struthof, as KL-Natzweiler is often called locally, is different, in that it was chiefly used not for eugenic purposes but for those who resisted the Nazi regime. Thus more to the point for our nice German boy in the photo above: Let’s talk about the draft.
His great-grandfathers were all about his age (17) at the start of World War II. They had the luxury of being second- or third- or more-generation Americans, and they all volunteered and served in the War for the US. It was not a difficult decision. They were the age your brother is now, I told the girls.
Had he been seventeen and American, the boy would have signed up too, I’m fairly certain. But what if he had been seventeen and German — which, after a week of being mistaken for a German tourist (or an Alsatian local), is not at all a stretch of the imagination? He would have had to decide between going into the Nazi army, or going to Struthof.
Which is why a guy on a bicycle, about my age, resident of a nearby village, passing by on July 4th evening outside the war memorial in Sigolsheim couldn’t stop thanking me for being an American who came to Alsace. He saw I was interested in history, and started suggesting sites. “Do you know there’s a US war memorial up on the hill?” he said.
Yes. Just came from there, actually.
“And have you seen the three castles down by Eguisheim?”
Yes. And the other one, and some other ones . . .
“Let’s see, so maybe you should go to –”
“Well actually,” I tell him, “we only have a few more days here. We’re going to try to go to Mont Sainte Odile and to–” I try to remember the name — “Struthof–?”
He stops. “Oh. Struthof. That’s hard.”
I know.
But you can’t really appreciate the significance of the war unless you know the whole story.
“The concentration camp,” he says. “Struthof.”
“Yes.”
“My grandfather was there.”
Flowers at the Sigolsheim war memorial, in bloom on July 4th.
As a man with a physical disability, I need a lot of help to perform many basic daily activities. I still consider myself to be an independent thinker, but my physical independence is substantially limited by my severely reduced muscle strength. I need help to drive my van, get dressed, prepare my meals, and complete other daily tasks. For me, this is life. For many others, this level of dependence is motivation to consider bringing life to an end.
If you are wondering why the supporters and detractors of the Fearless Girl both seem to have a point, the point is implied by Schmoll: We are suffering from a fortitude-deficiency.
I give the benefit of the doubt to writers who create super-fighter female characters. Aren’t all superheros a stretch of the imagination? It is not necessary to have a feminist agenda to identify with a girl-fighter character. There is the appeal of the underdog; there is the charm of the unlikely hero. Quick art relies on facile stereotype: If you want “artistic tension” write yourself a hulking ballerina or a grandmother who hates crochet, done. Thus one can object to fighter-girls on the grounds of bad artistry, sometimes. To my mind, the main offense of the female super-fighter character is that she’s mostly hired for the job of over-filling her super-bikini.
Girls are not for that.
I know girls who fight with swords, or play rugby, or do other things that require physical toughness. They do not fall out of their clothing. Also, they are women, not wannabe-men.
It should require no proof or explanation that men and women are different from each other. Faced with a culture determined to argue against the self-evident, conservatives sometimes lapse into stereotypes in order to make that point. Stereotypes fail because men and women resemble each other intensely. We all have wrists and necks and breasts and jaws and feet, which tend to be different between men and women, but the tendencies are not absolute. It isn’t that women have flippers and men have tentacles; we all have hands. A male hand and a female hand resemble each other far more than either one is like a dog’s paw or a horse’s hoof.
So it is with human emotions, human reasoning, and human passion. There are differing tendencies between men and women, but other than motherhood and fatherhood and your part in the act that gets you there, there is nothing in the human experience that is the exclusive province of only men or only women. A man is sensitive and compassionate and nurturing in a masculine way by definition: If it is a man expressing those traits, he is doing it in a way that men do it.
Women identify with traits likes toughness because toughness is a feminine trait as surely as it is a masculine one. Like hands or feet or ear hair, there are differences in how that toughness tends to express itself in the lives of women compared to the lives of men. But it is certainly there.
If you do not think women are made for feats of intense physical difficulty and danger, I fear your parents owe you an apology: That story about the stork is just a myth.
You are here on this earth because a woman gave birth to you.
Oh, but that’s not the same as manly physical difficulty and danger! No, it isn’t. A man’s body is made to express its strength and daring in a different way. Strength and daring are not male traits or female traits; they are human traits. As with hands or feet, there tend to be differences between men and women in the embodiment of those traits. But if we try to say that physical toughness and daring are solely the province of men and not women, we don’t end up with a definition of masculinity; we end up with an argument for abortion.
We are a culture that values not toughness but power. It isn’t fortitude we treasure but autonomy. It isn’t the ability to endure great trials that we prize, it is the ability to conquer decisively. If there is real danger? We want an out.
Life involves danger and pain. From the moment of conception to the last breath, danger and pain are risks we all run, and sooner or later both will overtake us.
The fundamental argument for abortion is this: I would rather you die than that I suffer.
The fundamental argument for euthanasia is this: We would rather you die than that we suffer.
The fundamental argument for assisted-suicide is this: I would rather I die than that I suffer.
We talk a big talk about being “fierce” but actually we are cowards. We are only “fierce” in the face of bronzed threats — frozen solid, unable to harm us. We can stare down a picture of danger all afternoon; real danger makes us proud to run and hide.
A ferocious beast will kill for its own gain. It is not ferocity but fortitude that we humans undervalue. We like these girls who fight because we know deep inside that we humans are created for the fight. We are created for living dangerously, and for facing the trials of our life unflinching.
Artwork courtesy of Wikimedia: The Virgin Mary with saints Barbara and Catherine of Alexandria. I dunno, were those girls all that tough? Hmmn.
Something a lot of people involved in the pro-life movement do is to stand up for the unborn by praying outside of abortion clinics. Happily, this effort has gone in a much more positive, loving direction over the last 15 years. It’s not even accurate, in most cases, to call these “protests” anymore. Make no mistake, this presence is intended to bring attention to the defense of the most vulnerable in our society. To take an innocent human life is objectively wrong. To take the most innocent of all human lives is unacceptable. There should be no minced words about that. To be silent is false compassion – it’s spiritual and emotional euthanasia.
However, it is incredibly important to heed that ancient axiom to ‘hate the sin, but love the sinner’. We all have an obligation to point out injustice and wrongdoing. However, none of us has any right to condemn the person carrying out that act, as only God knows their heart. So, if you see or hear someone telling a woman considering an abortion that she’s going to Hell, then they clearly don’t understand the point here, nor do they understand Christ-like love.
The much more common scenario these days is people calmly and quietly standing outside abortion clinics praying. Sometimes they hold signs with slogans like, “Pray to End Abortion”, or “Adoption: The Loving Option”. We’re there to provide women in unplanned pregnancies real choices (having literature on alternatives to abortion available) and to let them know how much they (and their babies) are loved.
This reality makes it that much more bewildering when you’re standing there peacefully praying and someone drives by and gives you the finger. Admittedly, there was a time when such actions irritated me. They fed a desire deep down in my heart to give that person “what for”. While I knew that wasn’t the proper reaction, it seemed instinctive.
Then, I read Abby Johnson’s book, “Unplanned” a few years ago. For those who don’t know Abby, she was a former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic. Then, one day (through some fluky circumstances), she ended up witnessing an actual abortion at her clinic. (This was the first time she saw the product of the business she was running.) She had a visceral reaction and knew she had to quit. And she did. Since then, she’s been an outspoken voice for life, and she wrote this book.
What “Unplanned” showed me (much to my surprise) was the humanity of abortion clinic workers. Honestly, I had never given these people much thought, other than as some kind of faceless monsters. That caused my praying for a culture of life to take on a much broader focus. Only then did a human face start to appear on these folks for me. These are real human beings who deserve our love, who deserve MY love, because to cast them aside would mean I just don’t get what it means to be a Christian.
That realization also helped my attitude towards the bird flippers driving by. (You know who you are!) J All of a sudden, my immediate response when being flipped off was to have compassion. I’d immediately think to myself, “What kind of pain must that person have suffered to feel this way?” “What is the source of that anger?” And by making that pain and anger clear to me, therein lay the ‘blessing’. By having a reaction – of any sort – that person gave my prayer a target. I would launch into a ‘Hail Mary’ or a Divine Mercy chaplet asking God to rain down His love and mercy on that person. I’d pray that they find healing, peace, and the presence of God.
So, if you see me (or any of the 1000s of other regulars) standing outside an abortion clinic praying and encouraging others to choose life, it’s okay if you feel the need to tell us we’re #1 with your middle finger. But know that prayer is powerful, and that I’m calling for all God’s truth, mercy, and love to come showering down on you very soon. And I thank you for giving me that blessing – that reminder of your humanity. Please pray for me, as well. I need all I can get.
And for all you awesome pro-life prayer warriors out there, please consider this unsolicited advice. Arguments don’t help. Love, prayer, and genuine compassion (and the willingness to listen) do.
Vincent married up more than a quarter century ago and is a proud father of 5 wonderful daughters. He teaches business classes at a college in Greenville, SC, but thrives on discussing controversial topics, especially as they relate to Church teachings on sexual morality.
I always have trouble when Christians say, “Jesus had to die on the cross in order to save us.” It makes me think: I suspect God could have saved us however He liked.
But He did it this way, so here we are.
Humans are thick about the nature of God. You’ve just been created out of dust and given domain over the earth, and yet you’re unclear on God meaning what He said when He told you not to eat that one fruit. Never mind ten plagues, the parting of the Red Sea and the drowning of the Egyptian army — did God really say . . .?
The Godliness of God is hard for us to grasp.
Even harder, judging from the pagan pantheons and our own understandable tendency to despair in the face of so much evil, is believing that God is good. The gods of myth are fickle and self-serving; they come to our aid when it suits their own cause, not ours.
Thus the Incarnation. Here comes God in the form of a man, which the mythical gods have done in their way, but this one is different. This one loves the way that men love when they are very, very good men.
Mostly we humans like to push off thinking too carefully about love, because what we want is for the satisfaction of the present moment’s desire to be counted as “good enough.” But we do know real live goodness when we see it. We honor the sacrifices of those who have given of themselves for others. We know deep in our hearts that the very best people, the ones who embody Goodness itself, are those who care entirely about others and don’t consider what it might cost to give, they just give.
We know that.
And we’re not very bright about what God is like, so it is helpful for us to see that when God is a man, He loves the way that the very best men love.
***
There were good men living in the time of Jesus, just like there are good men living now. Men who were heroic in their willingness to do what others needed them to do, in the mission of love and justice and mercy. The Samaritan. St. Joseph. St. John the Baptist. No doubt others as well.
Pontius Pilate was given the chance to be a heroic man. His wife had been warned in a dream concerning Jesus, and passed on that message to her husband: Don’t mess with this guy. Let him go. Gentleman, recall that you chose your wife for this purpose. You elected her to be the one person whose advice you value most, so don’t squirm when she gives it.
He could have been a heroic man, sacrificing himself for the sake of love, justice, and mercy. He knew very well that Jesus was innocent — he said so himself.
Instead he chose to be the coward of cowards. What is the suffering of one innocent man compared to the danger I face? And it was danger. He was facing the end of everything, and so he pushed away the plain truth and talked himself into the crucifixion.
***
I do this all the time. I push away what I know to be the right thing to do, because I do not want to lose some good I’ve convinced myself is more urgent.
***
The difference between God and us is that He’s God and we aren’t. He’s all-powerful, our powers are limited.
We are capable of being fully human. We are capable of being entirely the persons God created each of us to be. We are capable of choosing heroic sacrifice rather than cowardice. But we would still only be men. Limited.
God-made-Man remained fully God even as He took on the fullness of humanity as well. As man, he could be fully the best sort of man, giving of himself entirely. But He was still God, and thus His powers were not limited.
***
Think of the best people you know. Perhaps you have moments when you would gladly sacrifice yourself for someone else. Perhaps you are a parent who would do anything to take on the suffering of your child so that your child can be spared. Perhaps you see someone in grave danger, and know that if you could, you would give over even your very life to rescue that person.
Sometimes we get the chance to act on that impulse, but usually we don’t. No matter how fully your heart is filled with generosity and a willingness to sacrifice, your powers are limited. You would joyfully give your life to save that starving orphan in the war-torn country, but you can’t. You are limited by distance and other obstacles. Maybe you can’t even give your life adopting some local orphan, because your means or the local bureaucracy or the other people who already require your help prevent you from being able to rescue that other one.
You and I can give everything we have, but we can’t give it to everyone.
***
We also can’t cause our sacrifices to do exactly what we want done. My abilities are limited. I can save some people in some situations, but other problems are beyond my powers. I lack the mechanism to make the rescue happen.
***
Fully Man, Jesus was the best of men. He was willing to sacrifice everything for the good of others.
Fully God, the power of His sacrifice is not limited.
He can save everyone, everywhere, everyhow.
He can breathe into dirt and cause humans to live on earth. He can hang on a cross and cause humans to live in eternity.
FYI we have a family custom of unplugging for the Triduum. Some of us will still be on the machine doing things like taxes and homework, but if you’re looking for me, I finally have a legitimate excuse for being gone. Happy Easter!
When you study buzzwords or fad words from each generation, very few stand the test of time. “Groovy”? “Hep”? “Tight”? “Gnarly”? (Really?) Nope. All of them – gone from our lexicon. However, one has stood strong for at least 3 generations. That is “cool”.
I don’t know why this specific word has lasted for so long, but I think I understand why what the word represents has endured. The idea is that you not only fit in, but that you fit in very nicely. Cool is comfortable. It fills that 3rd level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It means we are accepted and maybe even respected by the tribe.
Long ago, ‘cool’ meant being different in some sort of interesting way. The ‘differentness’ is what made the person (or the action) ‘cool’. However, ‘cool’ wasn’t usually associated with virtue or engaging in something ‘good’ or particularly healthy or virtuous. And that’s the downside – the dark side – of ‘cool’. It was never about becoming fully alive. It was never about growing as a person or being the best version of oneself. It was typically about wearing masks and aspiring to something that wasn’t worth the effort.
That differentness imbued with a general lack of goodness or virtue has become sameness. When you look around these days, ‘cool’ is about blending and conformity. Challenging traditional values was once considered ‘cool’. Now, if you don’t challenge them and conform to the ‘new normal’, you’re likely to be marginalized with visceral enthusiasm. Wearing underwear on the outside of one’s clothing (or in place of outer garments) used to be reserved for Superman. (Probably not the impression he was trying to give, though.) Now, if you leave anything to others’ imagination, you’re prudish. Getting a tattoo was once a unique thing to do. Now, it’s not a matter of getting a tattoo to express individuality – it’s that you’re kind of strange if you don’t get one. (This is not a judgment on tattoos, by the way – just saying that they hold no inherent ‘goodness’ or value.)
This new definition of ‘cool’ doesn’t just lack virtue, though – it’s not even cool. It’s now about fitting the beautiful diversity of what every single person brings to the table into a very small box – and a boring box of sameness, to boot.
But perhaps herein lies opportunity to rekindle ‘cool’ in a whole new way – a way that makes goodness and virtue desirable as something ‘different’. Recall those words from 1 Corinthians 12 where St. Paul says, “For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single organ, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.’”
There is a reason each of us is different. We all have unique talents which aren’t always appreciated by others, but that shouldn’t stop us from fully developing them for the good of mankind and for the glory of God. We’re meant to strive for goodness and virtue. Becoming more virtuous means becoming more like God. Anything else is disordered and a waste of our efforts. It’s just not ‘cool’ (in this new sense, of course).
Dare to be different. Dare to be the best you imaginable. Dare to let others see God through your actions. How cool would that be?
Vincent married up more than a quarter century ago and is a proud father of 5 wonderful daughters. He teaches business classes at a college in Greenville, SC, but thrives on discussing controversial topics, especially as they relate to Church teachings on sexual morality.
Twice in the past month men I know, good solid Catholic men who run circles around me in the holiness business, have mentioned in passing that they’re not so sure about this “Personal Relationship with Jesus” stuff. Larry Peterson did it here, and Tom McDonald did it here. Both articles are worth reading on their own merits. These are not wishy-washy lukewarm Catholics. These are men who have counted the cost of discipleship and have stepped up to pay it.
Because the question is still being asked, I’d like to answer it as well.
By Metropolitan Jovan Zograf [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
What kind of relationship do you have with a person?
To be human is to have a relationship of some nature with three divine Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. One God, three Persons in God.
You might have an antagonistic relationship, a numb relationship, or a sorely neglected relationship, but you’ve got something. To be Catholic is to acknowledge, even if you don’t realize you’re doing so, that God isn’t some vague cosmic force or a misty feeling or a set of good thoughts. God is Personal, period. You literally cannot be baptized without acknowledging the Personhood of God.
Persons, even when it’s a Divine Person and a human person, are made to have relationships with one another. The question I think many Catholics struggle with is partly linguistic and partly practical: What should we call our relationship with God, and what should it be like?
Do Protestants own all the words?
Catholics used to be people who borrowed words shamelessly. Need a word to describe what a “Church” is? Hey, look, there’s a Greek word that we could use to get us started, grab it and run! Large swathes of the Catechism are littered with words that Catholics picked up off the sidewalk and put to work in ways those words weren’t previously used.
Like the Greeks and Romans and even those pagans who lent us the word “Lent,” American Protestants have a few useful expressions of their own. The concept of a Meat-and-Three restaurant, not to mention Macaroni is a vegetable! come to mind, but we’ll stick to theology for today. A “Personal Relationship with Jesus” is a phrase used heavily by American Evangelicals, sometimes beautifully and sometimes in ways that make you suddenly remember there was another county you needed to be in right now.
But they are words that, when used rightly, do in fact sum up Catholic spirituality. They are words that we now find helpful, in this era when many Catholics do not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. They are words that counteract the pseudo-spirituality that infects the Catholic Church and reduces the reality of the Incarnation to supposedly-edifying legend.
Where do I find this in Catholicism?
Q. Why did God make you? A. God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven.
May I recommend you purchase a copy of the old four-volume edition of Butler’s Lives of Saints? The writings and lives of the martyrs and mystics are soaked through with the intensely personal nature of a well-formed relationship with God.
When we speak of knowing, loving, and serving God, we aren’t speaking of rendering obeisance to some distant overlord who wants us to pay tribute. We are speaking of Someone who knows us entirely inside and out, and who wants to be known by us. Someone who chose to suffer grievously that we might again be able to walk in the garden together.
The concept of a “Personal Relationship with Jesus” is specifically about owning the Incarnation. Our Lord didn’t appear in the Heavens on His Throne and zap the world clean from a dignified distance. He took on human flesh that we might eat with Him, and care for Him, and lay His body in a grave. God seeks intimacy with us.
This is Catholicism.
Can poetic prayer be personal prayer?
It can be hard to say out loud the things we feel most deeply.
One of the hallmarks of the Catholic liturgy is that the Church gives us the words to express what we would say to God if only we knew how.
When we purchase a greeting card at the grocery store, we don’t have too much trouble with this concept. We look through the racks until we find the right words for the occasion, the words that best fit the relationship between ourselves and the recipient and the event at hand. Yes! That one says what I’d like to say! When we receive a card, we are moved by the sentiments if we know they come from a loved one who is genuine in sharing the humor or well-wishes or tenderness of the ideas in the card.
(And likewise: Nothing is more off-putting than receiving a card from someone who most certainly does not share the sentiment printed on the cardstock.)
But we live in an age with very little poetry, and which often mocks the beauty of previous generations’ rhyme and meter and melody. We can accept the idea that we might be truly expressing ourselves in the greeting card or when we sing along to a pop song on the radio, but somehow many of us have been deceived into believing that we our unworthy of higher art. We’ve been persuaded that too-beautiful words aren’t capable of being our words.
The Incarnation is Everything
The law of prayer is the law of belief, and if we pray the Our Father or the Glory Be convinced that somehow these are words too high for us, too mighty for us, we’ll come to disbelieve the Incarnation.
We’ll persuade ourselves that Bless us O Lord is the herald’s shout to Jesus on His Celestial Throne Who Can’t Be Bothered To Get Any Closer, not the simple few lines of people wishing to pause before eating to say a word of personal thanks to a Person who literally dwelt within our very bodies the last time we received Holy Communion.
This heresy is at the heart of our liturgical wars: It is it only “authentic” prayer if it’s folksy? Or is God so august that we must never approach the throne of grace with anything but fear and trembling? It’s a false dichotomy. In the liturgy I’m a child learning to say grown-up words. God the Father wants to rear me for His Heavenly Kingdom; God the Holy Spirit breathes supernatural life into my feeble attempts at prayer; and the God the Son is both there at table for me to lay my head upon His breast and raised to the great high throne in majesty.
My relationship with Jesus is personal because Jesus is a Person. I grow in that relationship the more completely I embrace the entirety of what Christ is. God humbled, God crucified, God glorified. All of it.
Colijn de Coter (fl. 1493-1506) [Public domain or CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
Today’s topic is important enough that I’ll be cross-posting it at Patheos as well. Share from whichever venue you prefer. Per my standard policy on blog posts, parish and diocesan publications have permission to reprint at no charge, please provide a link back to the original in your attribution.
I learned three things from lectoring yesterday at my niece’s wedding, and a fourth I don’t want to forget.
The first is that the same old readings are never the same and never old. First and second readings were the two most popular Catholic wedding choices going, Genesis and Corinthians. You’ve heard them so many times you think you know them by heart (though you probably don’t).
But this time, standing before this couple, certain words pop out and resound and suddenly make sense in a way that almost feels like they were waiting all these millennia for the right two people to come along and make you say, “Aha! So that’s what this reading is about!”
It’s always like this when you pray the Scriptures, because you aren’t reading some old story, you are stepping into an interaction between the eternal and the pressing present.
Second: If you can only pray one prayer, try the Litany of Humility. I’m not convinced it’s even necessary to pray the thing all that often, because it’s that powerful of a prayer. Something that struck me as I was reading through the “Love is . . .” series in Corinthians 13 is that all the different aspects of love are fruits of humility. Thus the litany is a two-fer: You can quash your miserable ego and accidentally find yourself becoming a loving person into the bargain.
Try it. You’ll hate it. Until you don’t.
Thirdly, about that liturgy! The Catholic liturgy is extraordinarily dense, and thus exquisitely suited for use by we the extraordinarily dense. I could not help but notice how little anything at all depended on we the people present doing the work, other than that we show up and do it. I don’t mean that it’s anything-goes for the humans: When we cooperate with God, making the effort to know what we’re doing and do it as well as we’re able, the liturgy is better. It’s always better when you work with God rather than against or apart from Him.
I think because I was up there reading (which I only really do at family weddings and funerals), I was more conscious than usual of the part we humans bring to the Mass, and this allowed me to see how much we humans aren’t the ones bringing it. God does the work, we cooperate. The Catholic liturgy is in this way completely opposite of anything else.
And the fourth thing that’s so hard to get through thick human skulls:
We try all the other things. We go on and on and on about how we have to do all the other things, because the one thing needed just won’t cut it, quit being so pie-in-the-sky.
But of course, there is pie in the sky, which changes everything. The Persons putting on that party know their business. We dense ones have all these other methods for chasing after human happiness, and it turns out there’s just that one thing that always works. Never fails.
So my feast of St. Lawrence* resolution is to try the one thing.
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