Can Goodness Fix Abuse?

In conversation surrounding Simcha Fisher’s piece on why the Fr. Luke Reese criminal trial is something the community needs to know about, a related topic came up: What role do victims play in their abuse?

For some perspective, Fr. Reese is charged with carrying out an 18-hour ordeal in which, at its peak, he dragged his wife in front of the altar (Fr. Reese is a married priest, yes the Catholic Church has them) and beat her there.

There are no counter-charges that Mrs. Reese was in some way abusing her husband and he was merely physically defending himself. This is not a case of brawling. This is assault and battery.

And yet — and the argument is even more deeply entrenched in cases of emotional abuse — some people labor under the idea that abusive behavior is “provoked” by the victim.

This is false.

Why the confusion?

We know a few things about healthy relationships:

You can make your relationship stronger by being kind, considerate, and generous.
You can help each other grow in virtue and avoid sin by making an effort to avoid tempting yourself and others.

So, for example, if you want to get along better with your workmates, greeting them cheerfully and completely your work promptly can help you all form a better team.

If you and your date are determined to remain chaste, choosing to avoid actions the other finds alluring can make it easier to abstain.

If you and your neighbor want to live on good terms, observing quiet hours can make it easier to get along.

These things work when everyone involved wants a healthy relationship.

It is the nature of abuse to try to pretend there is a “good reason” for the abuser’s behavior. But there isn’t.

It is normal to get a little frustrated at other people’s faults. A normal married couple might argue over who should do the dishes. A normal married couple will not physically assault each other over who should do the dishes.

That’s what makes abuse different from normal behavior: The action or reaction in no way matches the circumstances.

How to Have a Better Marriage

If you and your spouse are both desiring a happier, more joyful marriage, there are things you can do to help with that. You can pay attention to your spouse’s preferences, and find little ways to show consideration. Maybe that is by taking on a chore your spouse finds tedious, or by giving attention to some detail that other people might not care about, but which especially pleases your spouse.

She likes tulips not roses, so you bring her tulips. He hates cilantro, so you serve it on the side. Of course you do these things, because you love each other and you want to please each other. You might go so far as to choose an outfit that your spouse particularly admires (and which you agree is becoming on you and fitted to the occasion), even though left to your own devices you yourself wouldn’t spend so much time on your appearance.

An abusive person is not abusive because you brought the wrong flower or served the wrong meal. An abusive person isn’t going to be “cured” by your selecting a nicer outfit next time. Healthy people don’t beat their spouse over failing to coordinate the day’s plans, or failing to keep the house clean, or failing to make the children settle down. Healthy people don’t kidnap, rape, and beat their spouse even over suspected infidelity.

Healthy Responses to Very Bad Behavior

If you thought your spouse was cheating on you, healthy, proportionate reactions might include:

Asking your spouse to explain his or her behavior.
Attending counseling, with or without your spouse (or both).
Asking your spouse to cut ties with a specific person he or she committed adultery with previously.
Refraining from intercourse if there is reason to be concerned about sexually transmitted diseases.
Insisting your spouse be transparent about internet and social media use.
Considering whether a civil divorce or other legal action is a necessary way to handle the fallout from marital infidelity.

Some of these actions are very serious responses to very serious concerns. None of them involve assaulting your spouse.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia, CC 4.0.

What Doesn’t Protect the Church

I’ve been writing about the allegations of sexual molestation against Cardinal McCarrick over at Patheos:

Soldiers for Christ Hiding Under the Bed is about the connection between covering up for sexual predators and the inability of the Church to be an effective witness to wider society. Not a surprising connection, but one that needs to be made.

Promiscuous vs. Predatory: How to Tell the Difference is a response to the suggestion that McCarrick was guilty of simple sexual immaturity, not predatory molestation and sexual harassment. It contains links to my growing collection of essays related to the topic of abuse in the Church.

Rod Dreher has been covering this topic as well, from the point of view of a journalist who investigated McCarrick in the past, but was unable to pull together a story he could break. In Uncle Ted & The Grand Inquisitor, he shares a disturbing comment he received from a reader:

We MUST protect our brand, our shield, our faith!

I fully support Pope Francis and his softened tone, and even swipes at capitalism because the media love him. And image is everything. Similarly with Cardinal Dolan, I will fight to the death to defend him, and would go to extreme lengths to protect him because he is so well liked in the leftist NYC media.

In short, we must handle these issues swiftly, legally, but privately! As a successful advertising executive in NYC I am looked up like an alien because I am a weekly mass attender, and a conservative. I am respected by my liberal media friends because I loathe the Trump-Palin-Brietbart wing of my party, and trumpet my cause in a more Bill Buckley.

Image is everything, and when it comes to the One True Church we MUST protect her!

Dreher’s reader is wrong.

Let’s see what the Bible has to say about fighting the Church’s enemies:

¹¹Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil. ¹²For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens. ¹³Therefore, put on the armor of God, that you may be able to resist on the evil day and, having done everything, to hold your ground. ¹⁴So stand fast with your loins girded in truth, clothed with righteousness as a breastplate, ¹⁵and your feet shod in readiness for the gospel of peace. ¹⁶In all circumstances, hold faith as a shield, to quench all [the] flaming arrows of the evil one. ¹⁷And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Ephesians 6:11-16

What are our weapons? Truth, righteousness, the Gospel, faith, salvation, and the word of God.

Covering up for sexual predators does not fit on that list.

If the allegations against Cardinal McCarrick are true, the man should have been removed from pastoral ministry decades ago. By all means, when you see a priest, or anyone, doing what they ought not be doing, if no laws are being broken, begin by confronting the sinner privately. We all sin. Would that we were all given the chance to quietly confront our own failings and rectify them.

But when you have evidence of decades of predatory behavior, with untold hundreds of clerics at every level of the hierarchy complicit in silence and cover-up, and how many lives of young men ruined by the crimes inflicted upon them . . . there is no quietly cleaning this up. “Discretion” does nothing to help the Church. There is a time for genuine public penance, and now is that time.

Dreher’s reader is correct: the Church’s image matters. But when we hide behind some limp notion of “handling things privately,” the rot festers. No one is fooled. The public rightly views us as hypocrites of the worst sort.

So let us instead make the Bride of Christ holy, without blemish, and irreproachable before Christ. That image, and that image alone, is the one for which we should strive.

Artwork via Wikimedia, Public Domain

Pat the Bunny for Young Adults

When I was a kid we had Pat the Bunny. It’s a little board book that shows Judy and Paul doing various activities, and then you, the reader, do that thing too:

Judy can play peek-a-book with Paul. Now you play peek-a-boo with Paul.

Judy can read her book. Now you read.

And so forth. There’s a tiny book-inside-the-book you can flip through when it’s time for you to read. There’s a piece of cloth for you to lift up when it’s time for you to play peek-a-boo. The title comes from the page where Judy pats the bunny, and then there is a fuzzy bunny-shape on the page for you to pat. Hard not to like a book like that.

Over Father’s day the Art of Manliness ran a piece on the importance of doing strenuous outdoor things with your son.* It’s the same concept: First your son learns how to do challenging things with you, and then he goes on to do them himself.

So now we’re moving on to Pat the Bunny, Young Adult Edition: Mommy can organize a month long trip in a foreign country, now you organize a month-long trip in a foreign country.

This was just what I’d hoped the boy would learn from last year’s adventures, but I don’t think I was quite ready when he came to us a couple days ago, observed how he has been a very low-budget child to raise up until now, and would we kindly chip in towards him spending a month wandering around France this summer?

Um, okay.

This is what young adults do. Some of them go off and get their own apartment. Some of them take a summer job on the other side of the country. Some of them hit the road and travel around.

Can he do this? Yes, and he knows how. He’s done international flights and trains and public transit. He’s done hotels and apartments and restaurants and grocery stores and hut-to-hut hiking. He’s familiar with the French obsession for regulation headshots slapped on anything and everything, and how to hunt down a photo-booth when you need one. He’s even demonstrated his ability to read a French neighborhood and know whether it’s one non-locals should be wandering.

What he hasn’t done is doing the thing all by himself, with the parents tucked away on another continent. Of course not, he just turned 18.

When his great-grandfather was 18, he was wandering France, too, though with somewhat more supervision and quite a lot more danger.

18-year-olds are adults. They are young adults with not much experience. It’s the job of parents to give them experience. First you do it with your kid, and then your kid does it on his own.

Yes, he even knows about taking pictures of the map.

*I’m a firm believer in doing adventurous outdoor things with your daughters, too. Girls are different from boys, but they benefit from outdoor sports just as much, sometimes for the same reasons, sometimes for different reasons. Humans are made to play outside. It’s good for us.

Passwords that End in Question Marks

I spent an hour on the phone with the bank today trying to figure out why my daughter couldn’t log into her new bank account. Everyone else’s online access was working fine, including my ability to see into her (joint) account from my own ID.

The tech guy finally suggests we try logging in using someone’s mobile app. Two phone-wielding teenagers are lurking in the living room. There is assorted stalling, but finally IT ~~Boy~~ Young Man is drafted for the job.

I show him the new password we’re trying to enter on the “change password” screen that is our gateway to the new account. (You can’t proceed with the bank-issued password, for obvious reasons. Kindly choose something the lady at the bank doesn’t know.) This is where we keep failing. We fill out the form and nothing happens when we click “continue” but there is no error message either. Just nothing.

ITYM starts to enter the data on the post-it-note I hand him. The new password ends in a question mark.

“I bet it is rejecting your password because it looks like a SQL injection attack,” ITYM says.

Um, okay. That sounds like something you would say, child of mine. “So how about trying the password but without the question mark at the end?”

He tries it. We’re in. I try it on the PC, we’re in.

I helpfully tell the tech guy at the bank what the problem was, since we can’t possibly be the only people ever who accidentally thought up a password that looked to the machine like a deadly weapon.

We’re not convinced the bank guy is taking notes.

I’m thinking: I could have saved an hour if I’d used my in-house guy instead of calling customer service. Also, I’m glad the bank has thought up a few security precautions, even if their help desk team does dwell in ignorance.

Photo by Jaakko H., CC 3.0.

My St. Anthony Story for Today

So I have this devotion to St. Anthony that is mostly about finding things. Typical Catholic.

This spring the relics of St. Anthony toured the Diocese of Charleston, and of course I had to go. My specific prayer request was about figuring out (“finding”) my new small-v vocation, now that my last homeschooler is in school. I’ve been feeling the waters in a lot of different directions, but nothing was quite coming together. A lot of things were definitely NOT coming together.

So yesterday afternoon after four days forced offline, and a period of prayer and fasting as well (though not as much prayer as I’d like to be able to say I accomplished — just small and targeted prayers), in the space of an hour I got an e-mail accepting a book proposal for a book I can write this summer, and one for a teaching job that starts in the fall. Perfect combination: I can write this summer while being with the family, and then have work in the fall about the time the manuscript is done.

(No announcements yet — details and contracts still need to be hammered out.)

This morning I got up, and you should know that my usual routine is to make a hot beverage and open the Scriptures, either picking up from where I left off in the Bible (Ezekiel at the moment), or from the day’s Mass readings, or Morning Prayer with iBreviary. One or another, it just depends. I had to shake off some scrupulosity and give myself the freedom to just go with whatever was going to work that day.

So today while the hot water was supposedly warming up, I was sitting in front of the PC goofing off, Missal in my lap to go sit outside and pray the readings once the drink was ready. (You can talk to people online first thing in the morning, no problem, but everyone knows that Jesus wants you to have your hot drink in hand before you converse with Him. Yeah right. Cue Coffee with Jesus.) Eventually I figured out the kettle wasn’t plugged in, eventually I remembered I was supposed to be praying instead of reading online, and thus eventually I made it out to the porch.

Hitch: My bookmark in the Missal wasn’t on the right day, and I was too lazy to go back inside and look up what day we’re on.

But hey, there are saints days in the back, so I figured, I’ll go see if anyone’s having a feast today.

Hitch: That requires knowing what day it is.

But I did some hard thinking (rather than go inside and check the date, hmmn) and remembered that yesterday was the 12th, I think, so that made today most likely the 13th. I flip to June 13th and who should the saint be but . . . St. Anthony of Padua. My guy.

But interestingly, my edition of the Daily Roman Missal doesn’t talk about St. Anthony finding your parking space for you. What it talks about is this: Here’s a saint who was a phenomenal evangelist. He preached from the Scriptures so thoroughly, with such a reliance on the Gospels, that he got called the “Evangelical Doctor.”

Whoa. St. Anthony I barely knew you.

And yes, I’d read the biography before, but it went in one ear and out the other — great Franciscan saint, middle ages, preaching or miracles or something, blah blah blah. Mostly you could count on him to find things, and also one year one of the kids in my class did a great St. Anthony costume for religious ed. That was truly all I remembered.

I mean, come on, find my hotel for me, that’s all I need.

But also, I asked for his intercession on the question of my vocation. And on the vigil of the feast day (which was already the feast day in Padua), I got invited to:

Write a book on evangelization.
Teach in a school where evangelization and Scripture study are the top priorities.

Sooo . . . yes. Ask and you shall receive. Mind whom you ask for help, though.

Some short biographies for those who want to parse out yet more parallels:

St. Anthony at the Cathedral of Strasbourg.

How To Have Competent Young Adults

So Saturday the internet went out, and here’s what happened next: Mr. Boy, now officially all graduated and legal and I guess technically Mr. Young Man, says to my husband, “Would you like me to clean the house, or would you like me to get on the phone with AT&T and get our service fixed?”

Now he does not have superhuman powers, so it still took until Tuesday for AT&T to actually show up. But they did, and the friendly service guy, who is not at fault for AT&T’s corporate lapses, worked with Mr. Young Man to figure out what had happened and get it fixed. (It was them not us . . . my IT ~~Boy~~ Man would have fixed it if it were us.)

Here is another thing that happened on Saturday: My 16-year-old and I got into a huge fight about the state of our front yard, eventually came to a truce-type-moment, and she proceeded to carry out a massive landscaping renovation. First thing Monday she phone around to mulch dealers, got the best price on pinestraw, calculated how much she’d need, drove the truck (and I drove the other truck) out to pick it up, loaded the truck with a bazillion bales of pinestraw, and came home and made our yard look 10,000 times better . . . and then pressured-washed the driveway.

Our yard Before & After, as visualized by Wikimedia. [Public Domain and CC 3.0 Daderot at en.wikipedia respectively.]

So how do you get yourself some teenagers who are able to take the initiative and do responsible things?

By letting them take the initiative and learn to do responsible things.

For the boy, I’d say the turning point was letting him unschool 7th grade science. Every day he was required to read or do some kind of science thing, and make a note of what that was. I knew I could count on him to educate himself in that area, and indeed he did. Mostly he read technology websites that year. In later years we bought him computer pieces for his birthday or Christmas when he wanted to build or re-build a computer. By spring of 12th grade he’d landed his first regular IT job. He’s 18 and pretty much already has a profession, because we let him do the thing he was interested in. We didn’t send him to lessons or anything complicated. We let him experiment and take risks and just do the thing. There was a lot of trial-and-error involved, but it was his trial, not ours, and now he knows how to avoid the errors.

I’ve already documented some of E.’s artful adventures. Note that nearly all the things from this beautiful backyard patio area have now been moved around for other decorating needs. Having a child who can paint means never knowing where your paintbrushes are (except when they are left sitting by the kitchen sink). The reason the girl is confident she can take on a front-yard renovation is because she’s been let loose with the weed-whacker and the leaf-blower and the pressure-washer many times before, even though she doesn’t always do it the way I wish she would. (See: Bitter Argument Saturday Morning, Why Did You Chop Down That Oak Sapling?)

Now notice here that my IT guy did not help with the lawn. Note that my lawn girl did not lift a finger to fix the internet (shout-out to the grandparents who pay for her data plan . . . she had internet while I didn’t, ha.) There will come a time when they are older and they’ll have to take on a certain number of big projects that they don’t particularly care to do. At 16 & 18, a realistic expectation is that your kids will go big and deep on the things that are most important to them.

But that’s a good start. If they learn in their teens that they can take an interest in something, master all the skills, and be turning out professional-grade work as a result? I think that’s about where they need to be.

So parents, if you are terrified of the mess your kids are going to make, or you are tempted to over-program and over-schedule their lives, or you worry that your kids aren’t “well-rounded” because they tend to focus mostly on one or two types of interests and not ALL THE THINGS, relax.

Set a few boundaries, sure. But mostly: Just let your kids do things.

Top 10 Papist Travesties Your Congregation Should Trash This Instant

Now many of my non-Catholic readers aren’t so much protesters as “Mere Christians” and can happily get along with some Jesus-art, whether plain plaster or glow-in-the-dark like the Good Lord intended. But there are always a few who are true Protestant’s Protestants, and need to clean house of any popery that might have sneaked into the pews* by accident.

As a history buff and confirmed papist, I’m here to help you root out all traces of Romishness quicker than you can say “whore of Babylon.” Here are the ten biggest offenders:

The Trinity. Does the Bible even use the word Trinity? No it does not. Obviously invented by bishops.

Illustrated Bibles. Your KJV comic book Bible is really just the Book of Kells in sheep’s clothing. Seriously you weren’t thinking of buying that I hope? Honestly the whole thing has to go.

Hospitals. Monks and nuns and bishops and all that stuff. If you opened a hospital, people would basically think you were Catholic.

Universities. Talk about pure popery from the get-go. Avoid.

Latin. There’s nothing more Romish than the language of Rome. Sure, the language was invented by pagans, but then what is Catholicism but paganism warmed over? When looking up plant species or medical terms, it’s safest to translate the Latin into German first.

Guitars. No one really knows where they come from, except of course it was Spain. Now you can find them in virtually every Catholic church in the world. Bonfire. Tonight.

Martin Luther. Father of the Reformation Schmather of the Schmeformation. Not only is there an eerie parallel between the Martin Luther Insult Generator and the Pope Francis Insult Generator, but the man was a closet papist the whole time. It was the proto-typical Jesuit Plot, long before anyone even admitted there were Jesuits. No good Protestant will get within 10 miles of a building with the word “Luther” in the title.

Methodists. The better English-language Catholic hymnals basically consist of the Wesley brothers, Fr. Faber, and a couple bits of Thomas Aquinas, translated. We suspect the Illuminati are behind the rumors that John and Charles Wesley didn’t like Catholics.

Mendelian Genetics. You thought nothing of sitting around the dinner table trying to figure out where little Josiah got his blue eyes from. Let’s just say that “Augustinian Friar” is not the chicken at your late-summer potluck.

The Big Bang. As a Christian who believes God created the universe ex nihilo (Google Protestranslate suggests: aus dem nichts), you no doubt are in the habit of recognizing God’s hand in the science of creation. Aren’t we all. But the whole idea that God spoke and bang! the world was made? Forget it. Well known, openly acknowledged Jesuit plot.

Artwork: Christ Enthroned, as envisioned by a bunch of Bible-hating celibate Irish papists. What is with that hair? Whoa.

*Pews themselves have a suitably Protestant pedigree. They can safely stay.

Visiting the Childhood Haunts of St. Joan of Arc

St. Joan of Arc’s feast day (Jeanne d’Arc if you’re looking for French-language info) is May 30th. When I told people I was going to France, I got asked a lot if we’d be going to Lourdes. The answer is no. I have no objections, it’s just that I was going to be on the wrong side of the country, and as much as I love a good road trip, there are limits. But we were on the proper side of the country for a side trip to Domremy, where Jeanne d’Arc was born and where she lived most of her life.

Up above the town, they’ve built a modern (“modern”), massive church for receiving pilgrims.

When we visited, there was a youth group tour going on:

The artwork is vivid, and of the sort to make you wish you had a better camera.

The place was just chock full of interesting stuff, heavy on the fleur-de-lis.

From the hillside shrine you can look over the rolling hills of Lorraine.

I don’t think very many people go to Lorraine — and yes, it’s where the quiche comes from (which can be had in Alsace, so you don’t have to go to Lorraine to get it). It’s very pretty countryside, but doesn’t have the wow factor of other regions. I was glad we had a couple excuses to drive through during our trip.

So then you drive down to the little town of Domremy itself, where the house Jeanne d’Arc grew up in is still standing:

It’s been remodeled since her day, but it’s still rustic enough to give you the general idea:

Outside is a marker at approximately the place where Jeanne heard the first locutions. She described it as being in her father’s garden, by the right side of the church. That would be here:

You can see the church beyond that tree. The church has been renovated since Joan’s day, as yours probably has been, too. Here’s a snapshot of the new interior:

It’s still kinda old. I mean that in a good way. It’s a very tranquil place to pray.

They held onto a few things from the old chapel, though, including this holy water font from back when Jeanne was a kid:

And here’s the baptismal font in which she was baptized:

Epic pilgrimage accomplished.

SuperReaders, Your Mission if You Choose to Accept It . . .

UPDATE:

The SuperHusband thanks you. Mission accomplished.
Since I found it difficult to read the results in graphic format, here’s a link to the spreadsheet where you can see them all.
People are like, “Oh really, how fabulous are your readers, Jen?” And now I have documented evidence to back up my claims. Y’all are hilarious.

. . . is to fill out this survey on how you acquired your superness:

Jen’s Survey of Fabulous Readers

The reason you are doing this is because the SuperHusband is tasked with putting together a survey for a project, and he was under the impression he needed to use an expensive and limited survey service, when actually, thanks to the powers of ~~Big Brother~~ Big Shifty Uncle Google Who’s Probably No Worse Than The Other Snake Oil Salesmen, it is not necessary to pay for someone to collect up all your secrets to sell to the Russians, you can do it for free.

So no, I’m not asking for any secret information. Okay, yes I am. I want to find out what makes you so super. Oh just go look.

(Things I’m not asking for: Your name, your e-mail address, your birth-century, your mother’s maiden name, your childhood pet, one picture of you and only you . . . none of that. You’ll see. It’s just a sample survey so the SuperHusband can watch data be collected and see how it works. In this case, he’ll be learning all about the causes of your superness, so make it good.)

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia, CC 4.0 . . . this is what turned up when I did a search on “poll.” Go figure. At no point in the survey do I directly ask you for the size of your fish. There is a short-answer space where you could mention that if applicable, though. Just sayin’.

Capitalizing on Your Children’s Laziness

I’m deskavating again, and just came across a wooden box with some random items. Two pens, two markers, an empty lead-refill box, and a flashlight. The box had apparently been sitting in the kitchen or living room, and the people I live with got the idea to drop things they didn’t feel like putting away into the box. Then someone stuck the box on my desk, because that’s where we pile things we don’t feel like putting away.

So now I have this cool flashlight, which is great, because I’ve been wanting one to keep in my overnight bag for traveling. Wow that saved me $5 and a trip to the store.

I’m putting the box out in the living room to see what else I can collect.

Why the confusion?

How to Have a Better Marriage

Healthy Responses to Very Bad Behavior

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