On another forum the question was raised, and if it’s being asked there then it is probably of interest elsewhere: What does it take for a rosary to “count”? If you want to be able to honestly claim you prayed the rosary, what is the minimum that must be done?
My answer . . .
There are some very limited situations where it matters whether your rosary “counts”:
If it is the penance assigned to you in Confession. If so, follow the instructions in a booklet or similar resource on how to pray the rosary; presumably the priest who assigned the penance has such a thing on hand or else confirmed in advance you knew how to pray the penance.
You are committed to praying the rosary daily because of your affiliation with a religious order or apostolate, such as being an auxiliary member of the Legion of Mary. If so, follow the instructions set forth by the organization to which you belong.
You’ve pledged to say a rosary on someone’s behalf, and you were quite specific it would be a rosary, not just prayers in general. If so, go with booklet instructions as above.
Otherwise: Doesn’t matter. It’s you and God spending time together loving one another. Think of it as going on a date . . . you wouldn’t spend your time wondering whether the date “counted”. I hope?
So the US Bishops have assembled again, and following a hot tip I watched the session with Bishop Barron’s report on evangelization. You can view the whole thing here.
It is worth watching if you have the time. I started jotting down a few of Bishop Barron’s points on post-it notes for reference as the new book goes into final edits in December, and ended up annotating the whole transcript instead. [FYI for those tempted to create snarky hierarchy-themed bingo boards, ahem, YouTube’s auto-generated captions and transcript do some fascinating things with the words ad limina.]
There were many valuable points raised, but the one I want to talk about now occurs around the 46-minutes mark. Bishop Daniel Conlon raises the question of evangelization versus catechesis. In his comments and Bishop Barron’s reply, a thorny problem for catechists is discussed: How do we both provide the rigorous catechesis that young people need (discussed extensively earlier in the presentation), and evangelize the barely-Catholic youth in our parishes?
As the bishops’ review of the state of evangelization rightly points out, it is no good throwing a pile of commands and directions at someone who is still asking basic questions about life, the universe, and everything. But at the same time, for the young person (or older person) who has largely accepted the Catholic faith, and in a different but crucial way for the young person whose mode of grappling with the faith is headily intellectual, the hunger for theology is a survival drive. Serious examination of the faith for some young people is life-saving nourishment.
And yet that same theologically-intensive approach to the faith would absolutely drown a different kid also sitting in the circle at the youth group ice-breaker.
So what do you do?
The present solution — parish food fight, and last man standing gets to organize the youth program along his or her favorite lines — is not a good solution. It’s not just a bad idea because yelling at your pastor is poor form (so I’ve been told, more than once), but also because “young people” are not a homogenous lump of catechetical tumor.
The young people who attend your parish are not identical to one another. They have differing academic abilities, differing faith backgrounds, and differing spiritual needs.
Imagine if pediatricians organized conferences where they attempted to hash out a single mode of treatment for every child. Imagine showing up at your child’s doctor’s office, and the appointment went like this:
Parent: My kid has a badly swollen knee. It started about three weeks ago.
Doctor, nodding gravely: Ah yes. I see. You will definitely want to start our regimen of asthma treatments. It’s a shame you didn’t come in sooner, but it’s not too late.
Parent: I don’t think you understand. It’s the knee.
Kid: My knee really hurts. I can’t play soccer anymore.
Doctor: Yes! It’s impossible to play soccer if you can’t breathe well! What we need you to do is come in once a week for breathing treatments.
Kid: I can breath just fine. I don’t need breathing treatments. It’s my knee that hurts.
Doctor: Well, it never hurts to improve your breathing. Many children have undiagnosed asthma, and so it’s important that we focus on making sure you can breathe well first. When you’re older there will be plenty of time to look into your knee, if that’s important to you.
Parent: But if we don’t treat the knee, isn’t my child likely to get out of shape and have a worse time keeping up?
Doctor: Yes. Exercise is so important! That’s why we require all patients to receive weekly breathing treatments, to make sure they can exercise well.
Parent: I don’t think that we want to do the weekly breathing treatments. We’re looking to understand why the knee is swollen.
Doctor: I’m sorry. With an attitude like that, obviously your child is not going to get any better. In all my years of medical practice, I’ve found that if we don’t require breathing treatments, children with undiagnosed asthma can get seriously ill, and even die. I’m concerned you don’t take your child’s health seriously.
Parent: Could you refer us to a knee specialist, perhaps?
Doctor: Of course! After you child finishes college, it might be possible to find a doctor’s office with a knee program. Though honestly, most Singles Doctors and Young Adult Doctors don’t do knees. We did have an OB-GYN who treated a sprained ankle once, though. Knees are more likely to come up in the Seniors treatment center.
Kid: I hate doctor’s offices. Last year I had to spend six weeks in a cast because four of the kids in our treatment group had broken wrists.
Doctor: Oh yes. I’m so glad your group was treated for that! Many children hurt their wrists skating or climbing trees. In any case, I doubt it’s your knee. We have extensive research showing that breathing treatments are far more effective at keeping young people in your grade alive and healthy. Let’s just go ahead and sign you up, and you can give it a try, and I think if you have a good attitude it will work wonders for you. Remember, you only get out of treatment as much as you put in, right? Big smile for me, okay?
Disaster. But before you lay into the “doctor” in this situation, keep in mind the doctor is only doing what we’ve asked. We’ve spent generations now commanding youth ministers and faith formation directors to develop a single program that somehow effectively treats every patient in the pediatric hospital for sinners — and then we heap on the blame when an overworked, underpaid staff member isn’t able to magically cure all the youth of the parish in that sacred hour a week of instructional time.
There’s an alternative to this approach, and your pediatrician is already doing it, and interestingly it’s the same thing the Church prescribes: Parents as primary educators, passing on the faith in the domestic church.
What would happen if we abandoned the orphanage-model of faith formation and operated the hospital for sinners more like a good doctor’s office?
We’d quit scolding and start educating parents.When public health professionals notice parents aren’t getting their kids treated, they don’t rely on general admonitions to “Take your child’s health more seriously!” At my doctor’s office there are posters on the wall and racks of pamphlets explaining common medical problems, and signs to look for, and treatments to pursue. Does your parish educate parents on the common spiritual illnesses of youth, and how to prevent and treat them?
We’d give parents realistic ideas for how to educate their children in the faith, and expect them to follow-through. At the annual well-visit, the nurse runs through a list of age-appropriate potential concerns. The advice that goes with is concrete. Not a vague: Are you protecting your child from head injuries? but Does your child wear a helmet when bike riding? The best doctors take into account the family’s resources and limitations, and the child’s true needs, and work with parents to find solutions when, say, the kid won’t eat fruits and vegetables, or constantly unbuckles in the car. [Duct tape? Not kidding.] Parents usually will rise to expectations if the medical team can find a solution that the parent can reasonably hope to carry out.
We’d focus heavily on helping parents instill everyday spiritual health habits, but train parish staff in the diagnosis and treatment of serious problems. Our pediatrician is an excellent cook as it happens . . . but it’s not her job to feed our family. That’s my job. Do I sometimes slack on that job? You bet. But even on days when my kids have popcorn and ice cream for dinner, it’s better that our doctor focus her time on becoming as knowledgeable as she can on detecting and treating (either herself or via referral) the serious problems. Most appointments will end up with our doctor prescribing a simple course of treatment at home; every now and then, one of the kids will need more advanced care.
What would happen if we didn’t divide-and-conquer this way? I’d probably have a dead kid, thanks for asking. My pediatrician would be so bogged down with the weight of attempting to somehow feed our family a balanced diet (and do it in one weekly dinner twenty-five nights a year) that she’d never have the time and energy to stay current in her specialty and schedule one-on-one appointments. She’d never have discovered, in a routine five-minute check-up before a vaccine, the thing that could have killed my child. But because she specializes in treating the hard stuff, and leaves the day-to-day to me, when we need her expertise, she’s able to give it.
But the parents are neglectful! We lament. Well, yes. The parents are dropping like flies themselves, and Bishop Barron’s presentation addresses that. You can’t care for someone else when you yourself are dead.
Build Better Orphanages! is not the solution to the spiritual death of the adults in the congregation. You cannot bypass the parents. There are not enough youth ministers in the world, and never will be, because that is not God’s plan for the human family. Evangelize the parents, catechize the parents, and deploy the parents to do likewise for their children.
This is a constant, all-at-once process. Our pediatrician is effective because she assumes the goodwill of parents. We parents might know nothing at all about medicine, but we do love our kids. That’s all she needs for a start. If a parent is coming to your parish, that parent is ripe for the Good News. Who doesn’t want eternal life for themselves and their children, if only they know it’s attainable?
Here, enjoy this book cover. I am. Last round of edits starts in December, speak up at the blog discussion group if you have any final requests.
Feedback on this topic has been about 90% AMEN from people who have lived the experience of getting priced out of parish life, 5% Doesn’t Happen Here from people who live in awesome parishes and dioceses where making the sacraments accessible to all is the central goal (looking at you, Wichita), and 5% But How Would We Pay Our Staff???
If you’re in that last group, consider aiming for some doable, baby-step Non-Scale Victories in the serving-the-poor department. Change is hard. Keep pointing yourself in the right direction whenever you can, even if you can’t transform your parish overnight.
And on that note, here’s a thought that came up in a private discussion of the pay-to-pray problem: What the heck is Confirmation???
For most of us Latin-rite folk, our experience of Confirmation happens sometime between 3rd and 12th grade, and involves taking classes and doing service projects and attending retreats in order to “prepare” ourselves for the sacrament. A friend and I both observed that the whole scheme was much more pared down back in the day (1990’s). My best guess is that with each new crop of fallen-away college students, bishop-panic escalates and graduation-requirements become more stringent.
(Recap: Confirmation is not “graduation.” It is a free gift of God that can only be obtained by paying tuition, attending classes, completing assignments, and undergoing an evaluation once you have accomplished all your check-off requirements. If you don’t do the things, you can’t be confirmed, and there’s a form for you to sign stating you understand you have to do the things. But it is definitely a free gift. That you earn the right to receive by doing the things.)
For non-Latin-rite folk, though, the experience of Confirmation is typically quite different: You’re born, your parents haul you to church, and you bob around wiggling and fussing while your infant self receives all three sacraments of initiation in one fell swoop.
Interestingly the Latin-non-Latin divide extends into the wider Christian community. If you are Orthodox, you probably received confirmation (chrismation) as an infant. If you are part of the Protestant communiy, and hence your congregation traces its lineage back to Latin-rite western Europe, you probably experienced confirmation, or a non-sacramental equivalent, as an age-of-reason, formally and publicly pronounced, personal decision to follow Jesus Christ.
Catholics across the Rites maintain the course on infant baptism, pointing out that there’s nothing like it for underscoring the “free gift” aspect of salvation. Catholics and Orthodox agree with Protestants that once someone reaches the age reason, he or she must make the on-going decision to follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
What is troubling in the Confirmation Prep arms race is that by out-Baptisting-the-Baptists Catholics are increasingly turning, lex vivendi, a sacrament of initiation into a sacrament of service.
Marriage and Ordination are sacraments of service. They are sacraments that commission a vocation. While we would hope that growing up in a Christian home, being properly educated by one’s parents, and carrying out the appropriate course of discernment would go far in preparing someone for either vocation, it is reasonable that we take certain steps to ensure those embarking on their lifelong vocation are as equipped as possible to begin the task.
What seems to be happening with Confirmation in the Latin rite is that because we have (for now) the practice of delaying the sacrament until after the age of reason, we are losing hold on the free gift of the Holy Spirit reality of what this sacrament of initiation is. We are instead treating it like a sacrament of service. We are demanding proof of our young people not that they wish to receive the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, but that they are already able to use them.
This is not what the sacrament is. Confirmation confers the gifts that we need to live our Christian vocation. Furthermore, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are limitless and divine. We don’t have to fear, like handing a child an enormous check on his eighteenth birthday, that he’ll run out and spend the money foolishly for lack of adequate budgeting skills. You aren’t going to blow all your gift of piety in one wild afternoon of Adoration and be left broke and wondering what you’ll pray tomorrow.
Confirmation Prep as typically prescribed, though, isn’t usually about cultivating a spiritual state of desire for intimate union with Holy Spirit. Rather, our bishops look at the results of Confirmation — the fruits — of the Spirit, and prescribe a set of lessons and practice exercises to prove the child already possesses what the sacrament is supposed to confer and unleash.
Frankly, this verges on spiritual fornication. You say you want to be a fully-initiated disciple? Well act like one by doing these requirements that put you through the paces of disciple-activities! Show yourself able and worthy! To freely receive something you can never deserve, and which is about God’s action in you, not you working of your own power, we’d like to see ten hours of it accomplished and documented!
This is not the way God’s glory is made manifest. Repentance, the calling of sinners, the invitation to sit at the table of the Lord . . . these are preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit. The sacraments of service are vocations to love our neighbor as Christ loves us. They come after the sacraments of initiation because the ability to love our neighbor flows from Christ. First we receive from God, then we give to others what we have received. Confirmation is a sacrament of receiving.
Rather than a checklist of activities proving we are worthy and able to give what we do not yet possess, the question for those us of tasked with preparing young people for Confirmation is: How can I help you open your heart to receive this gift for which you were created, and which, so hard to believe in our meritocratic society, you can never earn?
I wrote to the DRE at the start of the school year, explaining that my teen wanted to be confirmed but that I was in the middle of a new job that was requiring 70-80 hour work weeks, so I really *could not* be the hand-holding parent going to a bazillion meetings and all that. I requested that the parish come up with a formation program my teen could complete without parent attendance, and what with it being she, not I, getting confirmed, it seemed reasonable.
Despite the steady nagging of teens to become “adults in the faith,” the parish struggled intensely with the idea of working directly with a teenager. I can get this, because I work directly with young persons, so I know that they are not universally organized and conscientious. Teaching children to become adults requires risk-taking and persistence. DRE’s thus tend to have an Augustinian wish: Give these teens responsibility, oh Lord, but not yet.
***
Over at the Register, Jason Craig writes “Why Confirmation is Not a Mere Rite of Passage.” I give it a hearty amen in part because I have shown up to a couple parent Confirmation-prep things lately, and apparently the indoctrination at religious ed on the “becoming an adult in the faith” is so strong that when I whispered to my teen a corrective to the presenter’s assertion that the sacrament of Confirmation was about you as a teen confirming you wanted to be Catholic, she whispered back, surprised, “It’s not??” I let the deacon feel my ire. The mother is not amused by pseudo-theology.
The mother is, however, grateful. If you’re going to lay into the parish staff for their irresponsibility, you have to be willing to do the work to offer something better. We came home from that dreadful formation meeting with a challenge: What is the point of Confirmation? It’s all well and good to say it gives you the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, but what does that mean? How is it different from Baptism and the Eucharist?
A few days contemplation bore much fruit. My husband and I, and hopefully the kids as well, found ourselves moved very deeply as we considered with awe the reality of this sacrament which, described imprecisely, is for your relationship with the Holy Spirit what the Eucharist is for your relationship with Jesus Christ. That intimate union, that indwelling, that receiving of life . . . to speak of the action of the Trinity is risk material heresy, but whoa! You want to shake a few shoulders and shout at the bishop with his well-meaning video for teens DO YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT IS YOU ARE FAILING TO TELL THESE KIDS?!! Tithing and church service are great, and yeah I’d like more priests too (though I want to find out if there’s a trustworthy seminary first), but seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, guys! Confirmation is one of the seven great mystical things, and you are missing out terribly if you think it is just a glorified membership drive.
Fortunately, the sacrament doesn’t wear off. Even if your parish has hidden the glory of the Holy Spirit under the table cloth of mandatory service hours, and your teen’s formation program consists of Catholic-brand career-counseling, God in His humility is waiting, like the preschooler behind the door calling out “I’m hiding come find me!” Ignore the distractions. Go into the quiet room where God dwells and find Him there. He wants to live in you. He wants to make you His home. He wants to make His life your life. You were made for this.
***
The children are taught to list the Gifts of the Holy Spirit when asked what it is they receive at Confirmation. You’re supposed to say that, instead of “Green light for my quince,” or “To get my parents off my back,” when they ask why you want to be confirmed. There’s an awful lot of talking about the gifts, and using the gifts, and of course you had to work hard attending classes and doing service projects and writing papers in order to be allowed to have the gifts.
It is so much noise. Blather. Idiocy. Too smart for your own good. Ditch the growing-up talk, because it is a childlike faith that our Lord requests. Children, unsophisticated, believing, accepting, are unafraid to ask for what Confirmation is: I want the Power of God to live inside me.
Unlike regular Bingo, with Vatican Bingo what doesn’t get said counts too! Put your chips on the grey boxes at the start of the game, and you get to keep them there until someone starts talking. Don’t worry, when the Vatican’s playing, you can be sure your chips won’t be extradited any time soon.
And lest you worry: The Vatican shut down the USCCB’s process last fall to replace it with this? Fear not. The USCCB wasn’t planning to talk either.
There are certain demons that only come out with prayer and fasting.
One of the frustrating features of many bishops’ statements has been a general call for prayer and repentance, but without any personal acknowledgement of guilt. I’m not aware at this writing of any bishop who has come forward to say what he knew and when he knew it. Even our best-responding bishops, to my knowledge, have provided sound condemnations without discussing their own place — whatever it might have been, however innocent — in the McCarrick affair and the like.
If we were to write a typical statement these days:
Oh yeah, this was terrible! Just terrible! I hate it! Someone sinned, but let’s not talk about exactly who. Y’all fast and pray, cause I know you are hurting because someone sinned! Um, okay I have to go now! Sorry my voicemail’s full! But you can totally trust me! Definitely not lying or evading! Y’all fast and pray, okay? Okay??
Well, we do need to fast and pray.
But it isn’t because of collective guilt. Many people are guilty, but let’s be clear: This is Catholic-on-Catholic abuse. This is a group of predators and enablers continuing to fail to take responsibility for their own actions.
So why do we fast and pray? Because we want this demonic behavior out of our Church.
A friend wrote in anguish to ask: How do I know what priest I can trust?
It’s a question borne of damning evidence:
Cardinal McCarrick promoted through the ranks and honored by the nation’s top Catholic universities despite the “open secret” that he was using his power to get away with molesting seminarians.
The Diocese of Lincoln failing to protect its college students and seminarians from the vocations director who molested them.
Cardinal O’Malley wisely canceling his appearance in a panel on protecting children and young adults at the World Meeting of Families because the seminarians at Boston’s St. John’s Seminary have spoken up about the sexual harassment they endured.
The Pennsylvania grand jury’s massive report on the covering up of sexual abuse — even to the point of Cardinal Wuerl approving a monthly allowance from his diocese for a priest removed from ministry because of his sadistic molestation of altar boys — and the report doesn’t even cover the whole state.
It goes on and on. The hushing up of the immorality is rampant and entrenched. It infects not just the United States but clergy at every level, all around the world.
And yet you know in your heart that at least some priests are good. At least some of them are trustworthy. Who are they?
The Stakes are Life and Death
One of the consistent themes in reports of victims — children and adults, men and women, across the nation and over several generations — is the use of god-language to placate the victims. God wants us to do this. Blasphemy in the extreme.
If sexual abuse in general is terribly damaging, it is all the more so when the abuser twists the victim’s relationship with God — cursed if you do, cursed if you don’t.
In a cover-up culture, the victim is abandoned and forsaken. What should be a source of support in a time of suffering is now the death blow. It is no wonder that victims attempt suicide, and that some succeed.
So the question of trust matters. You need to know before pouring your heart out to your priest: Is this guy gonna see I’m vulnerable and take me for an easy mark? Is he going to realize my kids are easy prey because they live in a home where the adults are struggling with some serious issues?
How do I know whom I can trust? is a life or death question.
Less terrifying but still serious: We have learned that many priests who aren’t themselves predators have been complicit in the cover-up culture. Do you want to walk into a counseling session with a guy who is a lifelong practitioner of denial and gaslighting?
When you are already vulnerable, you need to choose your counselors wisely.
We Can’t Live Alone
Trust no one. That’s how it feels right now. That feeling is not misplaced paranoia. That feeling is the result of the fact that all across the United States and around the world our clergy who should have been trustworthy have shown themselves not to be.
But the Trust No One way of life isn’t tenable. Human beings are made for community. We are made to know and be known, to love and be loved. Interdependence isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.
Extending trust to other humans, even in our most vulnerable moments, is necessary for our own good.
But to whom can that trust be given?
Trust is Earned
In a private conversation, a colleague who would know said to me, Bishop X is a good guy. I don’t know Bishop X from a shelter pet. Backwater diocese, doesn’t make the news, Bishop X is just this guy who has worked with my colleague long enough that they’ve gotten to know each other and Bishop X has shown himself to be trustworthy.
I thanked my colleague for saying so, because right now there is nothing Bishop X could say that would prove his innocence.
Right now, our clergy have no credibility — and many lay employees have no credibility either. They cannot speak up in their own defense, because lying and dissimulating are such entrenched habits in the administration of the Catholic Church that you simply don’t know who is telling the truth. We’re living in the world’s largest Agatha Christie novel.
And yet Bishop X has someone vouching for him.
How’d he get so lucky? By his actions.
Trust Isn’t Instant
The trouble with trust is that it takes time to prove. You don’t really know how your priest will handle a difficult situation until he’s given a difficult situation to handle. You have to actually see him admit to mistakes, or hold the painful conversation, or step in and forthrightly bumble his way through complexities that have no one right answer, but can at least be faced bravely and without flinching.
Can you trust your teen to call you if she needs a ride home because her friend started drinking at the party? You’ll never know until the night when she’s stuck out at the party with the drinking friend.
We build a hope of trustworthiness on many small things. Does your priest always prioritize smoothing things over, even if it means tolerating small-scale corruption? Is maintaining a good reputation his most important value? Are complainers dismissed as cranks?
Don’t trust that guy.
As with our children, the way we extend trust to our clergy is by giving them little chances to prove themselves. If you can look back over the years you’ve known your parish priest, or your bishop if you spend that much time with him, and you can see a track record of honesty and integrity — despite whatever his garden-variety flaws might be — there you go.
If you have no such relationship, then start building that relationship. Contact him about a problem — something that isn’t going to devastate you if he fails to address it properly — and see how he handles it. Are his actions consistent with someone who really wants to solve the problem (even if it can’t be solved easily), or does his priority rest with good PR and making sure nothing gets in the way of his personal ambitions?
Watch over time: Does he keep “loyal opposition” involved in parish or diocesan life, or does he sideline anyone who doesn’t shut-up-and-put-up? When a staff member does something wrong (it’s going to happen, to err is human), does he correct the error or does he try to act like his staff are above reproach? Does he himself openly acknowledge his own mistakes, or does he blameshift and gaslight?
It’s a slow process. Trust is proven over time. If your clergy have already shown themselves, over and over again, to be stand-up guys who can be counted on to do the right thing — thank God!
If guarded optimism is the best you can offer right now, then try to find a sane balance between the “guarded” and the “optimism,” neither too fearful nor too over-trusting.
And if you have no evidence of your priest or bishop’s trustworthiness, allow it to be just that: No evidence.
Maybe he’ll prove himself down the road, and that will be good.
Up at the Register: How to Be Catholic When Your Bishops Are Not. I am not gentle in this one. A faith that depends on eyes-half-shut and pretending all is well in the Holy Catholic Church will not withstand the present onslaught, unless you’re extremely expert at lying to yourself. I don’t think lying to yourself is a good option.
Meanwhile, let’s talk about praying for your bishop. Here’s a thing to understand: Your bishop was chosen for his cowardice.
Perhaps over the years you have wondered why your bishop seemed unable to accomplish much of anything. You might have wondered why every statement out of the diocese was more watered-down than a glass of ice cubes on a summer afternoon. You might have wondered why your parish and diocesan leaders seemed to find the clear and certain teachings of the Catholic faith just. so. difficult. to. praaaaactiiiiiiiiice.
Now we know. It turns out that in the eyes of the Church’s top leaders, fecklessness in a bishop is not a bug but a feature.
With Cardinals like McCarrick at the helm, it’s a miracle the clergy accomplish anything at all.
Well, God can use that.
Because you know how God shows off? By doing His work through the crappiest instruments He can get.*
Are you a terrible person? Then God can use you. You can pray things like, “Lord, I am almost as wretched as my faithless, weak-kneed toad of a bishop, and so I know what dreadful danger he and I both face. Indeed, were I in his shoes, I might be even worse than he. After all, Satan hates bishops even more than he hates me. Under full attack from the enemy, I’m not sure I’d last half an hour. So if you could somehow spare us both from eternal damnation, and maybe even accomplish a few miraculous acts of virtue through us, I’d be most appreciative.”
Lord, listen to my prayer:
turn your ear to my appeal.
You are faithful, you are just; give answer.
Do not call your servant to judgment
for no one is just in your sight.
The enemy pursues my soul;
he has crushed my life to the ground;
he has made me dwell in darkness
like the dead, long forgotten.
Therefore my spirit fails;
my heart is numb within me.
I remember the days that are past:
I ponder all your works.
I muse on what your hand has wrought
and to you I stretch out my hands.
Like a parched land my soul thirsts for you.
Lord, make haste and answer;
for my spirit fails within me.
Do not hide your face
lest I become like those in the grave.
In the morning let me know your love
for I put my trust in you.
Make me know the way I should walk:
to you I lift up my soul.
Rescue me, Lord, from my enemies;
I have fled to you for refuge.
Teach me to do your will
for you, O Lord, are my God.
Let your good spirit guide me
in ways that are level and smooth.
For your name’s sake, Lord, save my life;
in your justice save my soul from distress.
Chicken Soup it is not.
***
Editing notes on the Register piece:
If I could do it over, I’d write “feckless simpering” instead of “simpering fecklessly.” Sometimes we aren’t perfectly concise in our haste.
I regret that I did not write myself out a list of synonyms for the word “putrid,” as it occurred to me I should. I woke up this morning with the stark realization that I had missed quite a few.
Well, that’s how it goes sometimes. We live to write another day.
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:
11 Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil. 12 For 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. 13 Therefore, 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. 14 So stand fast with your loins girded in truth, clothed with righteousness as a breastplate, 15 and your feet shod in readiness for the gospel of peace. 16 In all circumstances, hold faith as a shield, to quench all [the] flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
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.
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:
