FID Week 5: Grace and Works

See everyone else’s answers here.

In your own faith:

  • It can be hard to settle our minds on the idea of “cooperating with grace”.  How would you explain the Catholic doctrine on salvation to others?

In your parish:

  • How does your parish currently respond when there are serious doubts about the readiness of a candidate for the sacraments?
  • How would a discipleship model of preparation fit into your current approach?

I’ve been living in Theology of the Body world these last few weeks (and months), so my thoughts on grace and works lean that direction: My body is the means through which my soul acts.  I can’t be nice to my kids in my soul, and spewing profanity at them with my body.  I can’t be reverent towards the eucharist with my soul, but toss a consecrated host into the garbage with my body.  I can’t be faithful to my spouse in my soul, and date another guy with my body.

My apathy works the same way.  I care less about a clean desk than blogging, and we can tell because although my blog looks a little lonely at times, my to-be-filed bins look even worse. I care less about the poor in India than about my own children, and we can tell because I shop for the ones reliably every week, and the others much more rarely.  I might or might not have my priorities in order, but we can see by my actions what my priorities are.

Our Lord of course warns us against judging one another, since what you and I see on the outside is only part of the picture.  He sees on the inside.  He knows the whole story. There might be some invisible but valid reason for the condition of my desk.  Or my waistline.  Or my bank account.

But those invisible stories aren’t excuses.  If I’m disorganized for _xyz_ good reason, that doesn’t negate the virtues of orderliness.  Perhaps I do have a failure of fortitude, or prudence, or justice, or temperance; perhaps I don’t.  Still, it’s not fair to my heirs to risk dropping dead with boxes of unsorted papers, if I can manage to do otherwise.  If I can’t, I can’t.  But God bless the priest who reminds his congregation that if we don’t want to be a burden to our family members, we can skip euthanasia and go straight to good housekeeping and cultivating a pleasant personality.

***

I don’t know how my parish handles dubious sacramental situations.  My family has always shown up adequately prepared for our various sacraments, and I’m not a sacramental gatekeeper, so I’m not privvy to what happens in those circles.  (As is meet – none of my business.)  But the topic comes up on the internet in catechist circles, so I do get to hear how other parishes manage it.  In my life as a catechist, and as an ordinary parishioner, people do share with me their stories.  Between those two influences, I start to develop some opinions.  You knew that about me.

And here’s my thought: People deserve to be known.  If my parish is running a sacrament mill, with dozens of anonymous second-graders being processed via an attendance policy and a set of registration forms, we’ve got a problem.  The problem isn’t just that some unworthy seven-year-old might presenting himself for the Holy Eucharist — that’s the symptom of the deeper problem.

Is my parish really so large, and so utterly devoid of kind, sensible, informed laity, that the only way to dispense the sacraments is like one massive emergency baptism, run by an overworked DRE and a couple brave catechists?  It shouldn’t be.  No matter how large or small our parishes, there should be a a proportionate number of mature Christians who can each mentor a few up-and-comers.  Mothers of 2nd-graders shouldn’t be anonymous faces in the mini-van, mailing in forms and cruising the carpool line once a week, and finally making their debut in Christian society by presenting a child with brushed hair and clean clothes on the appointed day.

If the little saints are missing Mass every weekend, shouldn’t there be someone who has an idea of why? Because there’s an illness in the family? Because work schedules are erratic?  Because the non-Catholic spouse is creating mayhem?  Or the Catholic spouse is in a fit of despair and just doesn’t have the will to do one. more. thing.?  There’s always a story behind the bad-attenders, and the woefully-ignorant, and the badly-dressed.

If the only measure of sacramental preparation that we have is a set of checklist-items, we don’t have a parish.  We have Wal-Mart.

FID Week 4: The Fruits of Discipleship

Find links to the rest of the discussion here.

This week is crazy week for me.   I received the proof of the catechist-book manuscript late last week, and my comments are due tomorrow.  (I found a few typos, sat on my hands in spots where I think maybe the wording could be a tiny bit better, Jennifer, and am about to get into a conversation about why I think my way is the best way when it comes to commas.) Meanwhile, I’d offered to do a talk at the local bookshop, and that’s tonight.  Saturday is the Eucharistic procession to the SC state house, which is to the best of my knowledge the first time that’s ever happened in history.

And then there’s my regular life.  Taking the Family Honor course (I’m behind schedule), teaching math and handwriting through the summer, because . . . you know why.  Thinking about killing fire ants (what is the best way?), thinking about making a new spot for the load of firewood that showed up yesterday, wondering where my desk went, again, and who stole my calendar?

The reason I list all that, is because that’s what discipleship looks like for me.

My life did not always look like this.

That is, my life has always looked crazy.  Crazy Week is most weeks I can remember, ever, since it’s been in my power to fill my time up this way.

What I figured out about myself a few years ago, is that I’m not made for moderation.   I’m going to add stuff until I’m not bored, and until I do have enough to keep me silly busy, because I’m happiest when I’m doing stuff.  I get cranky and unpleasant if I’m not occupied with something.

The difference discipleship makes, is that I care what that stuff is.  I want my life to be full of things that matter.  And if I don’t fill my time with God, I’m going to fill it with something else.  I pray better that way, anyhow.  Desperation is my straightest route to piety.

***

With those thoughts, I’m going to slip off to bookmark a pile of Bibles at Matthew 5:1, so look that this:  A good post on evangelizing teens, Don’t Dumb it Down version.

–> I found the post very helpful for myself, as I’m about sick of hearing what I have to say about the beatitudes in my 17-minute 10-minute talk, and I needed the reminder that these topics are a lot less boring if you haven’t heard the same talk five times in twenty-four hours.  I keep reminding myself that if people wanted to hear jokes, they’d watch a sitcom, and there’s a decent chance folks turning out a Catholic bookstore want to hear the Gospel instead.

I guess if they don’t, they’ll learn their lesson.

FID Week 3: We Don’t Know What Normal Is

For those just joining us, find the start of the conversation over at CatholicMom.com’s Lawn Chair Catechism series.

This week I’m answering these questions:

  • Are you comfortable talking with others about your relationship with God?
  • Would you say that you’re a “normal” Catholic using the criteria outlined above? (See post here.)
  • Or are you a “typical” Catholic, fighting that feeling that interest in the faith is only for a few pious eccentrics?
  • Do you personally have, within your parish, a group of Catholics you meet with regularly, to discuss the faith, study the faith, and encourage each other to greater virtue?

#1. Here’s the funny thing about this: No, not really comfortable.  I’m very comfortable talking theology or sacraments or apologetics, or you-name-it academic topic that has to do with God.  And I’m pretty good at general principles of the Christian life  — anything I’ve thoroughly digested and can step back from.  But if it gets personal . . . it’s personal.  My relationship with God is the #1 most important thing in my life, ever, and it’s also the most intimate and honest relationship I’ve got (at least from His end — I’m working on it from my end).  So: Not something I want to just throw out there for the whole world.  Hence my pure unadulterated hatred of “sharing questions”.  Don’t wanna answer them.  Just.  No.

But of course I’m in this line of business where we talk about God-n-stuff, and so sure, I’m getting better and better at sharing the not-so-private bits.  And of taking the private parts and sharing only the public dimension.  And then I’ve basically mastered the part about if you share any detail about your life in practical terms, people are going to either think you’re pathetic, or think you’re Amazing!, or think you’re _insert demeaning label here  , and still you just have to toss out the necessary info, and let folks think what they’re going to think.

And then there’s the part about my Educated American up-bringing.  In which God is a topic reserved for the quaint and the elderly, and folks of sound mind and breeding know not to bring up the R-word.  If you’ve read the writings St. Thomas More closely, you have a picture of what it’s like to be an earnest Christian caught up in the prejudices of his own era, and largely unaware of it.  American prejudices run the exact opposite way.  We aren’t inclined towards persecuting heretics much, except if it’s the one American heresy of suggesting that someone, somewhere, might be wrong about a matter of faith and morals.

So no, I’m not so inclined to just ask people about their religion or their faith in God.  I’m strongly trained against it.  But I’m always happy to chat if someone brings up the topic and appears interested in a straight answer.

# 2 & 3.  Normal in the abnormal fashion.  You knew that about me.

And yes I do fight the ‘you must be a freak’ feeling.  Fortunately I cut my teeth in evangelical world, so I’ve been inoculated against the worst of it.

#4.  I’ve really lucked into a good group — not at my parish in particular, but in my city.  We have a ladies’ Bible study once a month, and a monthly family-to-family get together, where the men and boys play outside, and the girls do a story and craft (Little Flowers Lite) then play outside safely away from the testerone-wing, and the moms chat and watch the babies.

I’m a graduate of the evangelical small-group world, and I still have a few families (we’re the only Catholics) that get together for a pot-luck meal once a month or so, though we ditched the formal approach a year or two ago, and just chat about life and catch up with each other.  Lots of thoughts on what makes a group click, and why some groups are better as a short-lived thing, and others seem to last decades.

–> I’m totally committed to the concept of many overlapping opportunities for parishioners to find their happy place to grow in the faith.  I’m not persuaded a formal “small groups” program is so much the solution, as letting naturally-occurring subgroups do their thing, watered and mulched with a good balanced dose of pastoral leadership.

 

Forming Intentional Disciples Week 2 – God has no Grandchildren

It’s that time.  Week 2 of the Forming Intentional Disciples discussion at CatholicMom.com.  And I’m answering these two:

  • Have you always been Catholic?
  • How did the instruction and mentoring you received help you – or prevent you – from having a personal relationship with God?

I have not always been Catholic.  I was baptized Catholic as a baby, and made my first communion in 2nd grade, then dropped into annual church attendance.  The summer before 10th grade, we moved to SC, and my mom got us all going to Mass every Sunday.  I spent 11th grade as an exchange student in France, went to Mass a couple times there, but I wasn’t staying with practicing-Catholic families, and it wasn’t in me to show up every Sunday on my own.  (I certainly could have — I had the run of the city.)

My senior year of high school, back home again, I got on the Catholic bandwagon with enthusiasm.  I made my first confession (Yes! 10 years after 1st communion!), and after a crash course in the basics of the faith, was confirmed in the spring of my senior year.  I was one of those shiny high school students youth group directors love to show off.  I was always there, always volunteering, a real Faithful Catholic in the making!  I won the parish Knights of Columbus “Catholic Student of the Year” award.

Also, and I’m going to be real candid here, but also respect the privacy of the guilty: Our Youth Group program was straight from the pit of hell.

If you haven’t got much imagination, when I say that, you are maybe picturing snarling chaperones, or vicious cliques, or one of those lewd characters committing unspeakable atrocities.   Nah.  That’s not much of an enemy of the faith, because anyone can see that those things are wrong, that the kids are being led astray.  How do you really get kids to leave the faith and commit mortal sins?  Our parish used the “everything’s fine” method:

  • Run an active youth group with lots of activities and good attendance.
  • Make sure your leaders are real friendly and well-meaning.
  • Teach enough of the faith that everyone is sure the kids are getting good Christian formation.

Then you have to do a few things:

1. Slip in a few zingers, in the name of compassion: Maybe there are certain cases where sex outside of marriage is not a problem.  Maybe insist that all faiths are just as good, ours is just our personal “Catholic faith tradition”.  Perhaps, in this day, do what a friend’s DRE told her son — gay marriage is AOK, because it’s about two people loving each other.

We didn’t have many of those, but we had enough to make sure that somewhere in our college years, we’d find ourselves happily dissenting from the faith, and not even realize we were slowly walking away from the Church.

2. Convince everyone that teens can’t handle the Catholic faith.  Better not be too firm about modesty, the girls will run away pouting.  Better not tell parents to insist on chastity — soft pedal it with, “I’d rather you didn’t, but if you must, at least use protection.”  When you do teach the firm truths of the faith, make sure the instructor is really just reading from the text, and is unable to answer any hard questions, and unwilling to look up the answers and follow-up later.

3. Quietly fail to teach the kids how to explain and defend the faith.  Just happen to leave it out of the curriculum. This is pretty easy to do if you’ve already established that there’s no real right or wrong — the faith is really just a collection of good ideas we mostly like, right?

Now I was that award-winning Catholic.  So when I went up to college for freshman orientation, I hunted down the local Catholic student group to find out all about it, ready to be involved come the fall.  Met some friendly grad students still in town through the summer, had a nice weekend.  And that was it.  I turned out for Mass once or twice after I got to school, but there really wasn’t any Catholic presence on campus.  My new Baptist friends were all gung ho to recruit me, but it didn’t take.  I couldn’t defend the Catholic faith, but I was still a patriot, and knew I didn’t like all this Jesus talk.  We never used all this Jesus talk back home at the parish, so surely it wasn’t Catholic, right?

Instead I slipped into Intelligent University Thinker mode.  You know — too smart for all this organized-religion business, too hip for those simplistic moral codes written for dumb people in centuries past who needed to be told what to do, and plus, I had other things to do.  My weekends were busy, you know?  Oh, I was still Catholic, for a long time.  It took me four years to fully shake off my Catholic identity, and I never did quit receiving communion if I happened to be at Mass for some social reason.  (Yes.  I know.  I know.)

And that’s how I left the faith.

If you wonder why I’m crazy-obsessive about good catechesis, this is why.  I know where pathetic milquetoast  Church of the Good Intentions teaching leads.

I have every patience for the ordinary guy in the pew who just doesn’t know his faith.  I was that person.  I know how easy it is to be that person through no fault of your own.  You show up every week at Mass, and no one ever bothers to explain the faith to you, beyond a few general exhortations to love God and neighbor.  You attend Bible study, or the men’s or women’s group, or religious ed, and still learn nothing. So where are you going to learn the faith?  On Fox News?  From the New York Times?  Well, when your parish refuses you to teach you, that is where you learn it.  That is all you’ve got left.  It’s no surprise you’re barely Catholic — it’s a wonder you turn out at all.

But if you’re a priest or a DRE or a youth minister, and you’re refusing to teach the Catholic faith to your flock?  If you haven’t bothered to teach to your audience how to explain and defend the Catholic position on life issues, or chastity, or _insert hard teaching here__?  Can’t seem to get around to making sure your lay leaders know and understand and practice the faith? I’m mad at you.  Table-turning, kick-you-out-of-the-temple-courtyard mad.

Because you are ruining people’s lives in your dereliction of duty.

I pray God will have mercy on those souls you’ve failed to teach.  I pray He will have mercy on your soul — for I suspect that we spend some portion of our purgatory enduring the suffering earned by those in our care whom we lead astray.

Hard words.  I know.  Catholic leadership is a sobering and serious responsibility.  We kid ourselves if we think we can hide behind our little excuses.

But there is mercy.  Even for the pathetic puny soul of the lukewarm Catholic leader who helps walk hundreds upon hundreds of parishioners into a life of mortal sin, one gentle “pastoral” lie at a time . . . there is mercy.  Redemption is for all men, not only for the humble guy in the pew.

To whom much is given, much is expected.  But he who is forgiven much loves his Lord all the more.

 

About that Book You’re Reading this Summer

. . . here’s what you need to know:

Forming Intentional Disciples by Sherry WeddellYou’ll be reading ​Forming Intentional Disciples by Sherry Weddell, which I happen to think is one of the most important Catholic books on the market today.  Important enough that I’m putting together a local book club in my own town, to meet and discuss the book. And so are you?  Yes?

And because you like to talk about things on the internet, you’ll be visiting CatholicMom.com’s Lawn Chair Catechism discussion group.  Led by Sarah Reinhard, whom you’ll recognize as one of my favorite writer-people.  And who is an extroverted friendly person, so I bet sheee never clams up when it’s time to drop the J-word.  She’ll be doing one of those linky-link festivals, or you can participate in the combox at CatholicMom.com, or at a participating blog near you.

(This blog is very near you.)

Because you don’t have a ton of money . . . Our Sunday Visitor is watching out for you: From now until the end of the month, you can purchase the book from the publisher’s website for $10, free shipping, no minimum.  This is basically the wholesale price.  Sarah asked OSV for a little coupon, and they responded with extreme generosity.

Because actually you’re illiterate very busy, but you like to talk about evangelization, or at least just complain about what’s wrong with the world . . . CatholicMom.com has pre-released the weekly discussion questions, which include a cliff-notes executive summary of each chapter.  Find the link at the Lawn Chair Catechism landing page.

Lawn Chair Catechism at CatholicMom.com

Because you’re exceedingly irritated that I’ve suddenly started using Facebook to post links to this event, and not a single cat photo . . . send your hate mail to Christian LeBlanc, Fr. Longenecker, and the SuperHusband.  They started it, not me.  I just write stuff and talk a lot.

Blurry Cat Photos are over-rated. Read Forming Intentional Disciples instead.

Who else to blame?  Will Duquette say you should read it too.

And so does Mark Shea, but he’s friends with Sherry Weddell, so he’s probably just making it up.

I, on the other hand, have never even met Sherry, or even stalked her on the internet, so you can believe me.

PS: Pope Francis Says: You probably don’t want to answer all the “your parish” questions on the internet.  But discuss in the privacy of your own local evangelization group?  Yes indeed.

My bishop is cooler than your bishop . . .

. . . because look:

Saturday, June 22: Fortnight for Freedom Mass, 8:30am at St. Peter Church, Columbia, SC.
Main Celebrant: Bishop Robert E. Guglielmone

Eucharistic Procession immediately after Mass, starting at St. Peter Church to the State House, with Benediction at the State House steps.

How awesome is that?  Five blocks of awesome, that’s how much.

7 Takes: Other Than Bacon

If you’d gotten the impression I’ve spent the last two weeks with no other thoughts than bacon . . . that would be a reasonable guess.  Since it’s Friday, I’ll be sociable and make a list of seven.

1. At AmazingCatechists.com, I wrote yesterday about how to evaluate your Christian Formation situation using the Great Commandment.  It’s a fleshing-out of this comment I left at William O’Leary‘s combox:

Couldn’t agree more. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your *mind*, and all your strength.

Which means the more your mind is capable of, the more it needs to study the faith. If you don’t love Jesus, you’ll love something else. If you don’t worship Him, you’ll worship something else. If you don’t work for Him, you’ll work for something else. –> And if you don’t use your powers of reason to know and understand Him . . . that blank space in your brain will be filled with something else.

We’re made to know God, and know Him fully. No other way to be happy.

-me.

2. At CWG today, I tossed up a couple links on writing competence and the new evangelization.  Something we struggle with at the writer’s guild is that fine line between “encouragement” and “enabling”.  If we had a narrower focus, like “only literary fiction”, or “only professional authors with trade-published credentials”, it wouldn’t be so difficult.  But since we represent all faithful-to-the-Magesterium Catholic writers, from aspiring amateurs on up, every genre . . . it’s a bumbly boat.

I like the bumbly boat, of course, since it’s the only one that’ll let me in.

3. Is it a cult, or just weird and stupid? Fr. L. posted an excellent article on the traits that characterize cult-like behaviors.

Readers here will be assured, having reviewed the criteria, that I am in no danger of becoming a cult leader.  Whew.

4. Sometimes I wonder whether what I wrote somewhere else is really of interest to readers here, and whether I should post a link. The other month when some people were freaking out because Pope Francis Is Not Pope Benedict, I posted some thought at AC.  Naturally I linked it all back to catechesis, since I didn’t want Lisa M. kicking me off her blog.  And because it was relevant.

I re-read my post and thought it wasn’t that bad.  So you could go look, if you wanted.

5.  A non-bacon recipe: Venison stroganoff. So good you can eat the leftovers cold for breakfast. What to do:

  1. Use the recipe for beef stroganoff from the Joy of Cooking.
  2. Skip the beef step.  Toss your hunk of venison roast in the crockpot with a little liquid (water is a liquid), cook on low all day.  Take it out and chop it up.
  3. Start up the Joy recipe.
  4. Crazy Innovation: Add parsnips — yes parsnips!  Peel and shred them (you have to shred the onion anyway), and toss them in after the onion but before the mushrooms, and let them saute a bit before you put in the mushrooms.
  5. When the mushroom mixture is all cooked up, toss in your diced venison, then the white whine wine, and then the sour cream.  I’m sure it’s possible to use too much sour cream, but I don’t have any proof.
  6. You’ll be serving this over rice — oh wait, most people do noodles, but actually rice tastes better. Yes, I said that.
  7. Regardless of what you put your stroganoff over — or nothing at all, if you’re having it cold in the morning for breakfast — you’ll want to make gravy with the venison drippings.  Chunk of butter in the bottom of saucepan, melt it, dump in a bit of flour and mix like a crazy person, and when it’s a nice pasty-paste, pour in the cooking liquid from the venison, mix it up.  (Immersion blender is your friend.)  That’s it. Best gravy in the world, easy-peasy.

6. I know.  It’s not deer season.  Too bad.  Ask your friends to open up their freezer to you.

7.  I had a long train of thought (hanging out laundry), and ended up with this thought: If there one thing — and only one thing — I could ask bishops and priests to do over the next year towards the reform of the Church, it would be this:

Make the Catholic Faith the Non-Negotiable Minimum Standard for Those in Ministry

People freak out when you do this.

So I completely get that it’s an unpleasant task, and clergy want to be all pastoral, and all that.  And to be clear: I want the pews packed — packed — with tax-collectors and other sinners.  That’s what not what I’m talking about.  I’m speaking only to those in ministry.  The DRE who tells the confirmandi that gay marriage is AOK.  (Didn’t happen at my parish, whew.) That kind of stuff.

And that’s something only those in authority can actually enforce. We lay folk can do all kinds of helpful things to make up for a pastor who can’t read a contract, or doesn’t know how to hire a good plumber, or whose fingers freeze when it comes to dialing 9-1-1 . . . but we the laity can’t really do a whole lot when the hierarchy decides to be indifferent to the practice and teaching of the faith.

So that’s my new one thing.  I figured out it’s the source of my chronic grumpiness about these or those other little hot-button topics.  So I’m resolving to at least keep my temper-tantrums focused on the real issue.

Meanwhile, since what comes around goes around . . .  What do you think is the one thing clergy wish laypeople would do?

Why I’m Catholic, abridged version

Over at the borg, we’ve been instructed to explain why the borg is best why we believe as we do. After much deleting to get it nearly inside the 200-word limit, I posted mine at the Happy Catholic Bookshelf.

We’ll do the even more abridged version here: Because it’s true. 

And with that, I wish you a lovely Triduum, and I’m going to slowly unplug and start getting ready for a few days of peaceful silence family time observing the holy days.

On Modesty and Evangelization: 5 Lies We Tell Our Daughters

Portrait Photography at the Fitz Studio

My monthly column at New Evangelizers is up this morning.  FTR: I’m absolutely no good at telling whether my daughters’ pants are too tight, and their skirts too short.  So if you read my column, and you get this vision of me as one of those people whose daughters are always dressed with perfect modesty, and then you meet my kids and you think, Wow, that’s an amazingly sleazy outfit that child is wearing . . . It’s okay to voice your vote.  Because yep. To quote myself:

” . . . we ladies don’t instinctively understand modesty — we’re no more aroused at the sight of a bare shoulder than at the sight of a naked Golden Retriever.”

Read the whole thing here.

Your Father is Just This Guy

In the past 48 hours I’ve been guilty, more than once, of uttering crude expressions of impatience concerning select clergy.  Not publicly, and not out of ill-will, just a general, “Will this guy get with it for a change!”

Lots of us are guilty.  We want all these guys we call “Father” — the one we grew up with, or without, and the ones in our Church — we want them to be wonderful.  We want them to be holy, and kind, and wise, and good.  And we want them to know what to do.  To know how to fix things.

But they’re just these guys.  They wear funny clothes.  They have strange taste in music.  They are too indulgent with that child, and too severe with the other one.  They didn’t do Christmas / Thanksgiving / Birthdays / Math Homework / Yard Maintenance / The Easter Triduum just the way we think they should.  They work too long, or retire too early, or both.

They stink at interior decorating.   And most of them snore.

Also, when you get to be a parent of a certain age, you look back and do the math, and realize just how young your father was, way back when, when you as a child thought he was so old.  When you thought he knew everything, because you were six? He was barely into adulthood.  When you thought he knew nothing, because you were sixteen? He was still just cutting his teeth on the What Do I Do With This Teenager of Mine problem. And when he’s eighty, he’s being eighty for the first time in his life.  He’s just improvising.

He’s guessing.  That’s what fathers do.

I’ve lost my patience with the Francisco-Obsessing.  He’s just this guy.  He dresses funny.  Guys dress funny.  It’s what they do.

I know the Holy Father, and your bishop, and your parish priest, and your dad, they all do certain symbolic actions that send important messages.  But you know how there’s all those NFP instructors who make that smarmy admonition that husbands should do the charting, as if the measure of a man’s worth could all be summed up in one glorious epitaph, “He Recorded Her Mucus Faithfully”?

A man is not a symbol.  He’s a person.  If he doesn’t chart, but he does do his best to earn a living, and help rear the children, and say nice things to you now and again, and maybe even change your oil, doesn’t that count for something? You can be the dad that tells bedtime stories, or the one who reads the Bible at breakfast, or the one who plays ball on Sunday afternoon, or the one who takes a kid along when he goes to the hardware store . . .  and you don’t have to be all of them.  Being one guy is enough.

Guys who cheat on their wives, or abandon their children, or refuse to support the family, or commit any number of gross abuses of their responsibility?  They deserve the harsh words that come their way.  Guys who don’t discipline their children, ever, or can’t be bothered to see they get a decent education, or don’t listen and take action when the kids come to them with problems?  They need a serious talking to.  They need to put on their Man Pants and step up to the plate.

But the guy who dresses funny and dines at all the wrong restaurants?  Whatever.  He’s not a better dad because he’s so dapper, or so frugal.  He’s not a worse dad because he wants Thanksgiving served on heirloom china, or on paper plates.

And you can’t know what it all means, not really.   If he surrounds himself with elegant things, he’ll be accused of being self-indulgent, or pompous, and also of being erudite and cultured.  If he wears the same pair of jeans for fifteen years straight, he’ll be accused of being slovenly and lazy, and also a “man of the people” who “doesn’t get caught up in appearances”.  Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t.

Maybe he’s just this guy.

Francisco’d better appoint good bishops.  He’d better elevate good cardinals.  He ought to direct the curia deftly, pay attention to necessary reforms, and teach clearly and accurately.  He needs to cultivate his own spiritual life lest he fall into greater sins than the one he commits already (whatever they are, I have no idea what they might be), and in the hopes that he might yet grow further in wisdom and holiness.

Lord willing, he’ll do all this, and do it well.

And if he does, I pretty much don’t care where he lives.  I don’t care what he eats.  I don’t care about the car he drives, the shoes he wears, or the kind of music he listens to at night.  Not so long as none of it’s immoral, and none of it prevents him from doing his real Dad Jobs.

And if he screws it up?  He’s accountable for that, too.  It’s a false piety to think that “Honor Your Father” means “Pretend Sin Is Not Sin”.  Francisco has serious responsibilities.  Heresy and dissent are rife within the Church. Corruption, crime, and immorality among the clergy and laity have got to be addressed.  What is true and good — whether it comes in more formal or more humble trappings — needs to be encouraged and promoted.  No amount of visiting prisoners or chatting with the help gets a pope excused from doing his (other) fatherly duties.

But any man who’s doing his Dad Jobs gets a free pass to dress as goofy as he wants, sit in his favorite comfy chair, and stock his beverage cooler with whatever the heck he wants. He’s a father.  Call him to task on his Manly Responsibilities, if indeed he neglects them.  You don’t have drink his Pabst Blue Ribbon, or his Glenfiddich, if turns your stomach.  More for him. So be it.

Holy Thursday’s tomorrow.  Pray for priests.