It’s always nerve-wracking writing a personal update, because invariably the moment I publish the report everything promptly changes. Still, we live dangerously.

Where me to find me this spring:

I’m speaking this weekend (Sunday 2/26/23) on evangelization to the Catholic Writers Guild at their online conference (so you can attend from anywhere). The topic is “Evangelization for Authors” but the presentation will be of interest to critical readers as well — especially those of you who like to make book recommendations. Details are here, conference registration is still open.

Annual free e-book sale of Lord, You Know I Love You! A Discernment Retreat Using the Great Commandment runs from Wednesday, February 22, 2023, 12:00 AM PST to Sunday, February 26, 2023, 11:59 PM PST. So check the Amazon link and when you see the price go to zero, that’s your opening. More info about the book and how to read it is here. Edits and a paperback edition were slated for last fall, see below for why that didn’t happen, but even in the present version it’s a lot of value for your $0.

At the Evangelization Substack One Soul at a Time, we’re taking a deep dive into the topics of hospitality, welcoming, and forming friendships in parish life. There’s a lot to cover. The series started here and three weeks in we’re still just warming up.

Reminders:

• All content at One Soul at a Time is free to all readers.
• Financial sponsors get combox privileges, but all subscribers (including free subscribers) can reply to any e-mailed newsletter to share comments, ask questions, or make topic requests.
• I keep it free of politics and other crazy stuff.

So if you are looking for Just the Jesus, the substack is your place. If you’re staying off social media for Lent (or forever, because you are smart like that) you can subscribe (for free!) to receive posts via e-mail.

I specifically created the Substack for people who don’t want the noise of social media debates and all that stuff. (That’s a reason I have a sharply restricted combox as well — what you’ll see there are only comments from people who seriously care about the topic. No trolls.)

Blorging continues over at Patheos, time-permitting. It’s the usual gamut of spicy topics.

My only social media presence is on Twitter, @JenFitz_Reads. (Proceed with caution, it’s yet a level spicier there.) Anyplace else you might find an account from me is a ghost presence only, I’m not there. But I do check my JenFitz_Reads notifications, so you can ping me there if you need me.

And that’s about it. One more low-key media thing in the pipeline, I’ll let you know when (if) that goes lives, but mostly my attention is elsewhere, because . . .

Things Are Good

2022 was a rough year, physically. COVID in January, which went fine, but then I kept getting sick constantly all the remainder of the year (nothing serious, just *constant*), until I finally got absurdly aggressive about germ-avoidance.

September ’22 started in with what I thought was a little cold one of the kids brought home, and ended up spending two months laid out flat with insane levels of sleepiness. 10 hours a day, laying around the rest of the time, aggressively planning to accomplish the least little thing — took about 48 hours of strategizing and carefully-targeted caffeine mega-dosing to be able to *sit* through Sunday Mass. For example.

It was not my favorite thing.

And then that little episode went away, in the space of a week in mid-Novemeber my maximum sustainable daily step count increased by 50% and overall energy level went back to completely normal-person levels. It was crazy.

Also crazy: I came out of it with a weird, annoying, disruptive, but not-that-bad movement disorder. Basically, if I completely relax (physically — mental state has nothing to do with it), my muscles will start jerking, but I can totally make it stop just by un-relaxing. So that’s fine except if I ever, at all, want to relax (physically — again, completely unrelated to what I am or am not thinking or feeling). Not the easiest for falling asleep.

So that’s been fun.

But other than never relaxing, everything is fine?

So the past couple months have been devoted to maximum fitness, since I need to gain as much as I can before the next round (blood work indicates: there is likely to be a next round, and one after that . . . etc.), doctors, time with the kids (since I can!), and catching up on a year’s worth of neglected chores.

Also attempting to have a little bit of a social life? Which is funny since I’m writing that series on parish hospitality, but you know, I am now an expert on things that prevent you from having from friends, and how many other evangelization writers can claim that?

Highlight, by the way, has been taking ice skating lessons with the youngest, who wants to learn to play hockey. So yes, things are good.

Have a great Lent!

Last summer I was able to record an hour-long telling of my conversion story for The Journey Home on EWTN. I learned today that it will be airing tonight!

If you don’t have cable (I don’t) you can watch it for free via EWTN’s online streaming. It will eventually also get posted at The Coming Home Network’s YouTube channel.

Update: Here’s the episode link!

Enjoy!

Quick note to the readership: I’m on indefinite hiatus from blogging, and yes I know that happened very abruptly. I apologize for that. Thank you to everyone for your many prayers and your concern.

I’m not making any predictions about future writing plans. Readers, I miss you, love you, think the world of you. Thank you for making my blogging experience fantastic.

(This archives contains all of my posts from my years writing the Riparians at the Gate blog. You can find additional archives at Patheos and at the National Catholic Register.)

The conference is, so far, blowing me away with the awesome group of people participating and the need we seem to have tapped. Perfect talk after perfect talk, and all of them completely different. (I don’t know whether other people needed my talk, but I did, so it was perfect for me, anyhow.) Life is good.

Also, I’m past peak intensity with the conference project now, and my mind is moving to Monday, when Marie Kondo arrives at my house. In preparation, a thing happened to me that caused a moment of aching clarity.

The thing that happened is that SuperHusband ran out of coffee, and we needed my daughter to pick up a resupply while she was running errands in the same direction.

Because we forget to use grocery lists (I know! How hard is that? Hard for us. I’m sorry.), our method for remembering we need infrequently-purchased staple items is to save the package as a reminder. Thus the other day I set in the garage-library this bag:

What with my daughter being the one sent out, I naturally retrieved the bag to hand off to her, to make sure she knows exactly what coffee to buy.

She did not need the bag. For one thing, her father texted her the info. For another, she usually ends up being the one to buy the coffee, so she already knows.

“You sure you don’t need the bag?”

“I don’t need the bag.”

I relented. Maybe it is possible to buy the correct coffee without physically bringing in the bag and double-checking the label very, very carefully. Some people have superpowers that way. Fair enough.

And thus I was left holding the bag.

I looked down at this bag. It is in excellent condition. It is a very convenient size for . . . something. Such a quality bag, eminently reusable. If you had rice you wanted to scent vaguely of coffee? Perfect for that.

Maybe yarn, if I ever attempted knitting again, and this time I wanted the baby booties to taste and smell just like home. Perfect.

So, so, many undreamt possibilities for how to use this bag.

It felt wrong to toss the bag. Irresponsible. Wasteful.

But, alas, I can’t keep all the bags, and I already have bags (though not one quite like this), and there is no public whatsoever who would like my old coffee bag. (Would you like my old coffee bag? I could set it out for you to pick up sometime.)

Which is why, come Monday, begins the firestorm of sparking joy.

Not, with a brain like mine, something that can be done in tiny spurts. Whole brain and will and spirit will need to show up and give it their all, because the world is brimming over with coffee bags, and not buying coffee is the wrong answer.

So that’s my situation.

Will post notes from my conference talk, about that different problem I have, when I get them cleaned up at some indeterminate date in the future.

Meanwhile, here is Simcha Fisher with a must-read post for those of us who have coffee-bag problems. Even if she isn’t usually your cuppa ‘spresso, this one is Simcha at the very top of her game and saying the thing that people who own extraneous stuff need to here.

Spreading the word because we experienced a nasty system failure sometime on the 14th: If you registered for the Good Discourse conference-retreat, you should have received an e-mail from me (Jen Fitz) this morning, Saturday the 16th.

If for any reason you don’t have the e-mail in the account you gave us (check your spam, check your other e-mail account you forgot was the one you used to sign up, etc. etc.) please contact agooddiscourse@gmail.com ASAP.

We do still have spaces available if you know someone who meant to register and forgot all about it.

Kindly check on your friends and make sure they have gotten signed up if they are the sort who would thrive on just such a weekend.

Also, regardless of anything at all, please keep our speakers, hosts, and participants in prayer over the week ahead. The spiritual warfare on this event has been a sight to see.

Thank you so much.

I was in conversation with a Jordan Peterson fan, and this listener told me about Peterson’s interview with Wim Hof, dedicated world-record breaker. My comments that follow aren’t about that interview, but about the listener’s impressions of it . . . and then, of course, about some Catholic follow-ons.

So, JP Fan was enchanted by the notion that we moderns are far too coddled, and that we would benefit physically from assorted toughness practices, and here think: Cold showers. Wrapped into the mystique are stories of various real live persons who have undertaken legendary-level feats of extreme toughness, including Wim’s own exploits, but the whole idea is boxed in the reality that human history is mostly a tale of surviving not-comfortable not-modern not-affluent conditions of physical duress. Your ancestors didn’t have hot showers and HVAC.

These facts can be insightful, and maybe you would benefit from cold showers or lowering the thermostat or not eating out-of-season produce. Questions worth asking yourself. The fallacy to watch out for is this: If so-and-so thrived on these conditions of duress, then I will too.

That’s magical thinking that ignores the historical fact that real people die of hypothermia in conditions far less brutal than Wim Hof’s daredevil swims under the ice. The Toughness Fallacy ignores the reality that premature death is part and parcel of living in tough conditions. Some people endure, some people thrive, some people die. That’s what happens when conditions are brutal.

Human bodies vary in their abilities and needs. Be discerning. Maybe you would benefit from less coddling in some area of your life. Maybe you would benefit from being gentler on yourself. Maybe you’re already living in the sweet spot, just tough enough on yourself but not too much. Strangers on the internet cannot know the answer to those questions for you.

The Toughness Fallacy in Catholic Community Life

The physical application of the toughness fallacy is pervasive, but I’m going to leave the exercise of identifying instances for your homework. For Catholics, a much more serious matter is the extent to which Catholic community life is infected with toughness fallacy magical thinking on a spiritual level.

The kind of suffering that hurts souls the most is not exhortations to greater austerity in prayer and fasting, though there are circles where that can be a problem. What drives people from the Church, or keeps them from entering, is the fallacy that “Come on in, it’s terrible!” is good for us.

The available liturgy leaves you cold, and no one will let you do the work to create an opportunity to worship in a way you find meaningful? Good for you!

Unable to make friends at your parish? Good for you!

Inane hurdles that have no bearing on your real spiritual needs laid out as barriers to the sacraments? Good for you!

We’re all St. John of the Cross now! If you can’t take it, you obviously don’t love Jesus.

This is the toughness fallacy. Is it good for you to be constantly coddled on the spiritual level? Of course not. Learning to die to self is fundamental to the pursuit of holiness.

(Curiously, too often it’s those who insist that financial or physical or spiritual barriers to the faith are no big deal and you just need to toughen up a little and muster some dedication turn out to be the same people who have a mountain of excuses for why xyz change that the Church allows, or even encourages, is “just not something we can do.”)

This is a problem across the spectrum in Catholic life. No one liturgical or theological or social faction has a monopoly on this fallacy. And here I emphasize: I am not speaking of the reality that your local parish is made of up humans who can only do so much. I am describing an attitude of shutting the mind to the possibility that felt-needs and expressed-needs are real needs. Just like many people really do need modern medicine in order to survive, many people really do have spiritual needs that toughness-fallacy thinking ignores.

And Then There Were Some

What happens when we dismiss out of hand the spiritual needs of people who aren’t doing well on parish-life-as-usual? Those people leave.

Mostly, those people disappear without a trace. When they can’t find a place in the local parish, they turn to non-Catholic houses of worship or to the secular world. The only sliver that remains trackable are those who flee to extremes on the Catholic margins, right or left.

Those who remain in your parish are the people who are able to endure what’s on offer, directed by a core who thrive on that status quo.

The Everyone-Here-is-Fine Fallacy

As a result, looking around your parish, what you see are the people who are managing with what you’ve got.

No Deaf Mass in your diocese? Well, who needs it — there are no Deaf Catholics here! No mental health support groups? Well, there’s just no demand for that, our parishioners are in great shape! No ministry for LGBT Catholics struggling with the faith? Well you know they all hate Jesus and hang out at the farmer’s market on Sunday mornings, except of course that one lector who keeps it in the closet and we all pretend not to notice.

And on, and on, and on. No one “needs” xyz liturgical, spiritual, or social ministry at your parish because the toughness fallacy has already killed their spiritual life.

How can one person fix all this?

One person cannot fix all this. One parish can’t offer All the Things. One pastor can’t oversee thirty bazillion new ministries. One DRE can’t institute ten different approaches to sacramental prep. One well-meaning volunteer can’t staff eighty different outreaches.

Ultimately, individuals can only do two things: Be available within our abilities, and be open to hope that others will step forward to handle the rest.

The application of that hope requires a willingness to let go of control. If I’m currently the queen bee of parish Bible study or outreach to the homeless or picking the weekend’s four-hymn sandwich, openness to hope means openness to some one else edging onto “my turf”. My hope should be that someone will come along who offers a different Bible study for a different type of student, or begins a different ministry serving the type of poor person my ministry doesn’t serve so well, or takes over responsibility for the music at one Mass a weekend, so that we have eight different hymns on offer.

My openness to hope is something I need to plan on. I can’t serve xyz need, but I fervently pray that someone will come along who can, and when they do, I will support them in whatever way I can. That might be with material assistance, but it might be with just a positive attitude towards expansion and change.

The Toughness Fallacy in Online Discourse

Finally, coming around to next week’s conference, which still has a few more open spaces: Lately the toughness fallacy has been killing the spiritual lives of Catholics looking for hope and encouragement on the internet.

It looks like this: Me? I thrive on the thrill of a rousing argument! Nothing gets my Jesus on more than hashing it out with so-and-so, that evil wrongheaded windbag who claims the name Catholic and it’s my mission in life to debunk! Therefore, anyone who can’t take the heat needs to get out of the kitchen.

Y’all. I have been watching people who were struggling with their faith give up altogether because what they see among widely-read public Catholics is nastiness. They sought out the online Catholic community for support, and got a brawl instead. I have seen how seemingly low-key, quiet corners of the Catholic internet designed to provide that much-needed support get plagued by a level of vehement discourse that is not appropriate in forums that aren’t intended to host debate on contentious issues.

Over the past few weeks my impression of the extent of this problem has been confirmed. I have heard from many who are coming to the Good Discourse conference because they are desperate to find or help create a place where Catholics can interact with good will and charity.

The toughness fallacy kills. It kills physically, and it kills spiritually. If you are interested in being part of the healing process in Catholic discourse, please join us.

I first used this photo of a feral cat to illustrate this post. It seemed time to pull it out again. FYI, I will probably have cats in my zoom presence. Said cats are contentious, ill-mannered, but loveable all the same. Photo credit: w:User:Stavrolo [GFDL or CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Related: If you liked this post, you might like this book on how to reach out to those people who also need Jesus, but don’t yet realize they can find Him in your local parish.

A frequent question we’ve been getting about the upcoming Good Discourse conference is a variation on “Am I the right type of Catholic for this?”

It looks like . . .

What? You’re inviting people from that publication?

Are you sure I should come? I don’t think the other people there are going to want someone like me.

I sorry but I can’t come, because if people saw I was attending a conference with that person, it could wreck my career.

These worries stem from candid recognition that there are significant, important disagreements among Catholics concerning liturgy, theology, politics — you name it. These issues matter.

I care deeply about some of these debates. I hold on certain questions the conviction that some well-known Catholics are pushing views that are not compatible with the Catholic faith. I consider it extremely important that we as Catholics accurately teach what is and is not essential to our faith.

And yet . . . I completely, 100% agree with Sherry Antonetti, genius mastermind behind the Good Discourse conference, that Catholics of every stripe belong at this event.

Why?

1. Ugly Infighting Hurts our Christian Witness

Catholicism is called “the thinking man’s religion” for good reason. We should argue in favor of what is true, and we should do so firmly, cogently, and honestly. We absolutely should not take a “hear no evil” attitude when someone touts as Catholic an opinion we find contrary to the faith, or announces as mandatory an opinion or practice that we know is not required.

Healthy debate and charitable correction are both essential parts of the Catholic faith. We aren’t DIY theologians, slapping Catholic externals on whatever we feel like believing.

But that does not mean we have to be horrible to our fellow Catholics.

Sooner or later — likely sooner, unless you are just an amazingly good person all on your own — some aspect of the faith is going to be Not What You Want.

You will have to wrestle with a moral issue that doesn’t make sense to you, or a devotion that rubs you the wrong way, or a teaching that you accept intellectually but fail at applying, or goodness knows what else. Catholicism is a demanding religion because Jesus Christ wants to rescue you from your fallenness and turn you into a spotless, pure, perfect-for-all-eternity image of Him that is also uniquely and unrepeatably you. (And He wants to do it with your freely-chosen cooperation, yikes.)

Therefore, someone who is considering converting, returning, or persevering in the Catholic faith should expect to have moments of discovering he or she is dead wrong about xyz Catholic thing.

Because that is a normal part of being Catholic, you shouldn’t have to steel yourself for all kinds of nastiness from the people who ought to be helping you see your way more clearly.

There will be plenty of times when you have to face the uncomfortable reality that you have not been living the way that you ought. We who love the Catholic faith should endeavor to make those moments easier to face. We can do that by learning to engage in sharp-witted but gentle-tongued* discourse with our worthy opponents sitting in the pews with us.

2. This is a Single-Topic Event

The Catholic faith applies to every part of our lives. In the course of your life as a Catholic, no doubt you’ll attend retreats on prayer, conferences on life issues, talks on dogmatic theology, workshops on the liturgy . . . lotsa stuff.

My heart was warmed the day I saw my parish music director get all stirred up in an internet Catholic food fight over a completely different topic, because it meant he cared, and I just loved that he was so passionate about this other aspect of the faith. But when someone comes to him for choir practice, he doesn’t ask at the door: How about NFP? How about Marian apologetics? He’s there to teach to music. It’s okay if a volunteer is still working on some other issues. They can grow in their Catholic over time.

(In fact, storytime: My husband reverted to the faith with some typical reservations about Mary due to his evangelical background. It was through music that he was able to gently make progress in that area, thanks to a music director who did not have a theological litmus test, but did have a profound love of the Blessed Mother.)

Our conference is about learning how to not be quite such a jerk when debating other Catholics. If someone is a radical progressive on some other issue about which I’m ultra-conservative, or vice versa, so what? If we both want to learn how to be more peaceful and more productive in our dialog, we can work together on this.

Maybe we’ll be a good influence on each other in some of our areas of disagreement as well. But at the very least, we can be a good influence on each other in this one thing we both know is important.

3. This is Not an Exercise in Self-Congratulations

Come on y’all: What kinda conference involves me going all Proverbs 15:1 on people. Seriously? You know very well that without an editor to slap sense into me, I go off the rails in that department pretty easily. Some would say I make a hobby of it.

So maybe you, too, need a membership in Cantankerous Anonymous. You have realized you need to change.

Guess what? No one’s going to be like, “Wow! That bellicose ol’ jerk really turned over a new leaf!” when you’re busy gushing over the brilliance of someone you agree with.

It’s your ability to behave like a civilized creature towards people you strongly disagree with that we are attempting to cultivate.

So if you’re puzzling over why we have encouraged other Catholics who are so, so wrong about xyz hot-button issue that seriously gets your dander up — maybe it’s the issue that you feel is the most serious threat to all that is good and holy in our precious faith — why we have invited that person to also come to the Good Discourse conference . . . maybe it’s so you can practice being nice for 48 hours?

Scrolling through the registrations so far, we have a super group already signed up. The names I recognize are all people who are nicer than me, just FYI. There are still some spaces though, if you want to spice things up for us. Zoom format, so request your Zoom invite here.

*I know.

Personal story, and then the invitation I am going to continuously extend for the next two weeks, and then some.

I am one of those people who has a love/hate relationship with “Make Me an Instrument of Your Peace,” the hymn that US Catholic parishes are contractually obligated to sing at least three times a year if they want to keep their pet-blessing license.

(That’s a joke. Also, my cat needs his blessing renewed.)

Not a joke: Sometimes the song annoys me, sometimes the song inspires me, but being a peacemaker is not something that falls naturally within my wheelhouse. Longtime readers and meat-life friends can attest, the thing I am very, very good at is identifying problems and complaining about them.

So, end of November, I was at Mass on a Sunday evening. No person living inside my soul could testify that I arrived at that Mass disposed to attentiveness and holiness. During the introductory rites, however, the priest announced the Mass intention. It was for the repose of the soul of a priest I had met perhaps twice in my life, but whom I “knew” very well because he had been a brief but tremendous influence on one of my children as chaplain at that child’s school.

Friends, during that Mass, I felt that this holy (and extremely outspoken) priest was praying the Mass with me — coaching me through it, getting my head back in the game. And after communion, I felt to called to answer a single, private question from the Lord: Would I be willing to be His vessel of mercy?

It’s not a trick question, and it’s no stunning revelation for me alone. All of us are asked that question. When you receive Holy Communion, you are receiving into your body Mercy itself. You can let it work through you or you can fight it, but the plain fact is that your calling is to be a physical temple of the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is a Spirit of Mercy.

***
I’ve been blogging since 2006. When I began, St. Blogs was the land of opiniated Catholic hotheads like myself who cheerfully banded together for debate and online camaraderie. Over the past five-and-some years, though, the online tone has changed. Public Catholics, both media professionals and amateur social-media conversationalists, have grown increasingly bitter towards one another.

I think that this week’s shocking events at the Capitol show just how much we have imbibed the spirit of the age.

That is not our Christian calling.

We are called to speak plainly and clearly, even on difficult topics, but we aren’t called to take pride in just how nasty we can be.

***
If you no longer want to be part of the our national psychotic break, consider becoming part of the “Good Discourse” movement. How you can do that:

(1) Consider joining us for the “Good Discourse” online retreat in two weeks, as well as inviting others you know to do so.

(2) Host the conversation at your own place. Please feel free to post links to your blog posts, podcasts, or personally-hosted discussion group over at this blog’s discussion group, so that others can find you.

(3) Keep the discussion going! I’m delighted to report that several of my colleagues at The Catholic Conspiracy have volunteered to host a post-conference private support group for Catholics who wish to change their online debate-behavior. I am hoping that many other such partners in this work of mercy quietly step forward to do the same.

***
The growing violence in our nation needs to stop. In whatever way you feel called, please become one of the people who answers “Yes” when the Lord asks you to become His vessel of Mercy.

Thanks.