Fr. Z Poll Bleg

As requested.  Go vote.  The topic is “Does an all-male sanctuary foster vocations to the priesthood?”

The results (given that this is Fr. Z’s blog) are unsurprising.  But vote anyway.

[I voted yes.   FYI I have a daughter who loves serving at the altar,  and as long as my pastor is good with it, I’m good with it.   My parish has about half and half boys & girls serving.  Last time the secretary counted, she said it was more boys than girls.  But my intuition is that a mixed server-corps encourages vocations to the sacrament of matrimony.  I could be wrong.  H/T to Sr. Meris the New Nun, who used to be an altar server.]

Be Modest at Church in Four Easy Steps

This topic has been in my head for a while, and I was waiting for fall so no one would be embarrassed.  But this article here got my attention, courtesy of I think maybe Fr. Z or the Pulp.it or maybe both — primarily thanks to my being wound up late at night and goofing off.

What I see at Mass — and of course out in the wider world — is that a lot of really good Catholics don’t have a clue about modesty.  These are super wonderful people. Kind, pious, regular mass-goers who are living out the Christian life day after day.  And honestly?  They are trying to be modest.

–> My experience is that the people who struggle most in the two-few-clothes department are the more pure among us. It doesn’t occur to them just how weak their fellows can be.  It’s like putting out giant trays of brownies because it just never occurs to you that some people will be tempted to eat too many.  (But some of us?  Yes we will be.)

***

But our culture’s at the point where vendors of athletic clothing think nothing of mailing out catalogs with ladies in their bras on the cover.  And not a sports bra.  I mean, underwear-underwear, done pin-up style.

[Hint to businesses:  If my son has to carry in a picture of a seductively-posed almost-naked lady from the mailbox, I am never buying your products again.  Did I say that clearly enough?]

And that was the event today that made me decide it was time to share the Four Easy Steps.  Because when you live in a world where everybody everywhere is forgetting to put their clothes on, it’s really hard to know what’s modest and what’s not.  And all the great essays about “Put on your clothes! But it’s really about internal holiness and don’t be judgmental!” don’t really help, if no one will tell you which clothes you are missing.

So here you go, Four Easy Steps for Dressing Modestly at Mass:

1. Cover your shoulders.
2. Cover your knees.
3. Don’t show any cleavage.
4. Tailored is good, tight is bad.

And that’s it.  Follow those rules, and you will have to really goof it up to not be wearing enough clothes.

Now for some clarifications.  Consider this the advanced course:

1.  Actually I don’t think bare shoulders are always and everywhere a near occasion to sin.  Witness what I wore to my dad’s wedding, and what my own daughters wore last May for the crowning of the Blessed Mother.  This can be done modestly, or modestly-enough.  Lots of not-immodest sleeveless outfits at my church.  But it is so, so easy to go wrong.  And it’s just not worth agonizing over.  Put on a little sweater and you know you’re good.  Buy something with sleeves, you’re good.  Why argue about strap thickness when it so, so easy to just be sure?

UPDATED to point you to a quote in the combox.  A reader asked about sleeve length.  I gave it my guess, and then asked the guys for an opinion.  Christian LeBlanc came to the rescue with his usual no-nonsense analysis:

Short or long sleeves, either is ok.

No sleeves starts to distract. Thin straps/ bare shoulders/ bare backs distract more.

It has to do with the amount of skin, I think, even though the skin exposed is basically mundane.

–> So there you go.  Not just me makin’ things up to repress the masses.  Guys notice this stuff.  Be kind to them.  They are trying to pray.

(And anway, you know you are freezing at church. They set the A/C so that poor man saying Mass in all those vestments on a 105 degree day doesn’t fall over.)

2.  Ditto for knees.  I did a quick look-around the last couple weeks, and sure enough, there are tons of ladies at my parish wearing just-above-the-knee skirts that were perfectly modest.  The trouble is this:  It’s really hard for the modern-media-saturated brain to distinguish between the skirt that is long enough, and the one that is not.  Who runs around with a ruler in hand, figuring out the perfect modesty formula?  Knees, on the other hand . . . almost everyone has knees.  They are easy to identify, so you can tell right away whether they are visible or not.

–> Once again, this is a rule I don’t always follow.  (See “Dad’s wedding” above.  Plus of course in regular outside-of-Mass life, I wear shorts.  It’s summer.  Shorts.  Summer. Shorts.  They go together.)  But you know, I’d be willing to sacrifice an outfit or two, in my fictional world where parishes made dress codes, if it meant my son doesn’t have to look at swimsuit models at church.   Cover the knees at Mass and it’s hard to go wrong.

3.  Cleavage.  Cover. The. Cleavage.  Do you know what that part of your body is for?  It is for feeding your baby.  Do you know that when you walk into Mass with those girls on display, it makes nursing babies and toddlers hungry?  And it attracts other attention as well.  Do you honestly want people salivating at the sight of you? As in, actual drool?  Are you ready to feed the masses to whom you are advertising?  No.  Save it for your own baby.

This is a rule for 100% of the time, everywhere you go.  Fabric is your friend.  Cover the cleavage.

[Perfectly fine to be actually feeding a person during Mass.  If that person if your offspring, not yet to the age of reason.  Good, holy, necessary thing to do.  With the cleavage covered.]

4.  Tailored yes, tight, no.  This is another pretty firm rule.  Okay, so my daughters were telling me today that my t-shirt was tight, and I promise it was not, but, you know there’s a few decades there where the ol’ body stockpiles emergency calories just in case, and so yeah, there is a certain subgroup for whom staying ahead of the fitted-versus-tight curve is kind of a challenge.  I suppose we need to fast more.  But even with that allowance made, yes there should be some measurable amount of air between your body and your outer garments.

These aren’t rules for all time.  These are rules that work for 2011 in most parishes in the United States.  They err on the conservative side, not because I think you need to be extra-conservative, but just to make things really silly easy.

If you are currently wearing not that many clothes to Mass, give them a try.  You can say some lady on the internet dared you do it.

You’ll be more comfortable indoors when the A/C is set too high, but you won’t be too hot standing outside on the patio after Mass, chatting with your friends.  You’ll attract the attention of the kinds of men and boys you actually want to meet.  The ones who care about you, and see you as a real live person, not just as a pin-up model or an underwear catalog.  Mothers of teenage sons will thank you.

Try it.  What can it hurt?

Pagans & Tax Collectors

In Matthew 18:15-17, Jesus gives instructions on how to handle sin in the Church. There’s a method, and it’s pretty simple: You give the guy multiple chances to understand that he has gone astray, starting with the most discreet options, but eventually bringing in the teaching authority of the Church herself if necessary.

And what if he refuses to listen even to the Church? Jesus says this:

“Treat him as you would a Pagan, or a tax collector”.

And that’s the process.

The first steps are pretty straightforward, though maybe not real popular. Since it involves you personally, refraining from gossip and instead pulling on the grown-up suit and figuring out how you are going to convince someone else what is right and wrong. With the actual goal of persuading the person to repent and reform, instead of the much more self-gratifying goal of venting your anger and maybe getting in a few good digs while you’re at it.

[Remember: If the guy doesn’t listen to you, then you’re supposed to go get other members of the church to come help persuade. And you know those other members are going to ask about how the first conversation went. So you better not have said something really mean and stupid.  Yeah, I know. No one really likes this passage. I’m so much better at “mean and stupid” than “charitable and helpful”.]

But let’s skip ahead to the unrepentant sinner – which includes a subset, the unrepentant dissenter. This is the part hand-rubbing pundits love, because you get to pull out the big guns. You maintained composure through all those edifying discussions, and now, now!, finally!, you get to give the guy what he deserves and Treat Him Like A Pagan. Or a tax collector. Your choice.

When I see editorial on this passage, what I often see is the Freaked Out Jesus Method* of biblical interpretation. We, the readers, see words like “sinner” “Pagan” and “tax collector”, and we insert BAD, BAD, and BAD. And if Bad then Mad, right? So we picture Jesus: Impatient with sinners, ready to toss transgressor outta the church, and here’s how to get rid of ‘em, make sure you do the job thoroughly. Don’t be Mr. Nice Guy, apostles and disciples, or Jesus will be Mad at YOU too.

Except that Jesus doesn’t actually treat Pagans and tax collectors this way. What does Jesus do for Pagans and tax collectors? He invites them to dinner. He heals their sick. He praises what faith they have. He invites them take of the Living Water.

In summary: Jesus evangelizes.

That’s the method. If one of your brothers sins against you, and he won’t listen to the Church, try to win him back.

***

There is a sting, though, in this instruction. And here is where I think the courage of the Church fails most.

See, everybody wants to stay “catholic”.

It’s pretty funny, really. None of my Pagan or tax-collector friends are upset about not being Catholic. They don’t sit around stewing and accusing the Church of cruelty on account of how Pagans aren’t Catholic and Catholics aren’t Pagans. Everyone fully grasps the notion that there are things you have to be willing to believe and do if you want to be Catholic, and well, if you wanted to do and think such things, you wouldn’t be Pagan.

But unrepentant and dissenting Christians often are resentful of the notion that they have left the bounds of the fold of the Church.

Regular Pagans recognize the authority of the Church over its members, and choose not to be part of that Church. Dissenters want to be counted as part of the Church, but without recognizing that the Church has an authoritative teaching office that Christians need obey.

—-> For all the noise about ‘closed communion’, I’ve never once had a non-catholic friend be upset about it, after I explained why we did things how we do. No sane person wants to be publicly labeled as “believes in the Real Presence” and “accepts the teachings of the Church”, if they don’t actually believe such things. Catholic doctrine is, you know, a little crazy, huh? Would you want to have walked around New York in 1750 with a big stamp on your head that said “Thinks Humans Can Fly”??. Until you knew for sure that hot-air balloons worked, you wouldn’t want the crazy-label. Once you knew, you’d be proud of it. But until then, no.

In contrast, dissenting Catholics cling to their ‘rights’ with bitter furor. Try to tell a formerly-Catholic hospital** or college that they need to quit claiming Catholicism now that they’ve quit teaching and practicing Catholicism . . . and the drama . . . oh my goodness the drama.

The scandal isn’t that this or that person or institution is non-Catholic.

My local county hospital isn’t Catholic, my State U alma mater isn’t Catholic, and most of friends are not Catholic. Pagans and tax collectors all of them. For the longest time, I was even married to one of these people. (He seems to have come out of it.  Yay!) No drama necessary.

Jesus isn’t freaking out. He wants every one back into the Church, and He’ll do any good thing to make that happen. Have you to dinner, heal your servant, die on the cross for you – there is no limit to His mercy.

But the Gospels do tell us this: Don’t be crazy.

Sane people know what they do and don’t believe.

If someone has ceased to believe and practice the Catholic faith, put your head on straight and acknowledge the fact. Non-Catholics and former-Catholics are no scandal. Open wide your arms and give whatever you legitimately can to help and befriend.

Bad Catholics? No surprise there, we announce our sinfulness at every Mass. Forgive us seventy-times-seven times, and remind us in no uncertain terms what the Church really teaches. Accept our repentance, over and over and over again.

But fake Catholics? That is scandal and madness.

Turn on your brain, and respectfully acknowledge the former Catholic has stepped outside the fold. You can’t welcome someone back into the house, if you are busy pretending they’ve never gone out.

 

 

 

 * See two posts below for an explanation of the FOJM.  WordPress refuses to let me make links today.

**Ack, I hate link failure.  Here’s a great piece on the current round of Catholic hospital scandals:  http://defend-us-in-battle.blogspot.com/2011/08/why-providence-hospital-situation-isnt.html

Freaked Out Jesus

Yesterday’s Gospel is also Sunday’s Gospel, but before I write about that, I need to explain about Freaked Out Jesus.

When we speak, it is not only our words that convey the meaning of our message. Our tone of voice, facial expressions, general demeanor, all these clarify the real meaning of our words. Start with this statement: “I’m looking for my son.”

It means something completely different, depending on my tone. Frantic? Furious? Bored? Amused? If I’m standing at the sink doing dishes while he’s calling out from the closet for me to come find him, it means I am not looking for my son. As in, maybe he’ll stay in the closet five minutes and I can get these dishes done.

The Gospels almost never give us this extra information to go with the words of Jesus. Which means that for much of the Gospels , we the readers have to fill in the missing information ourselves. There can be no “neutral” reading – put the dialog into a flat, expressionless tone, and you’ve gone and set a very particular (and unlikely) mood.

What readers today seem to do the most, though, is use the words as stage cues. Which doesn’t always work – if Jesus says He’s “tired” of something, is he angry, frustrated, bored, or about to fall asleep? What I see most as a result of this method is what I call Freaked Out Jesus. We put the most forceful literal spin on his words, as if Jesus were marching through Galilee reacting in extremes at every wacky thing the mortals do.

I don’t think this works, and the reason is the people I grew up with. Bearing the brunt of one of our childish antics, my maternal grandmother would say: “I could wring your neck.” My father would say, “God bless it all.”

Now you who have lived in my time and place may know exactly what those two expressions mean and how they were conveyed. But pretend for a moment that you used the Freaked Out method of literal interpretation to add tone and meaning to the words. You’d make my grandmother out to be a homicidal maniac. The children spill a pound of sugar on the floor, and she’s ready to strangle them! You envision wild eyes, grasping hands, children fleeing in terror. And then my father, in contrast, watching the dog eat the meatloaf someone knocked off the table, is smiling beatifically, praising Jesus in mild, thankful tones for the wonderful gift of family life.

No. My grandmother would say, “I could wring your neck”, and she’d be laughing. Children are children. They make good stories. My father would bellow “God bless it all!”, and trust me, it wasn’t a blessing. [For the record, my dad is a great guy. But yeah, when he’s mad, he YELLS. And then he’s over it. He’s a wonderful father in his own special loud way.]

And those two are my argument against the Freaked Out method of reading the Gospels. When Peter starts to slip into the water out on the sea, and Jesus says, “Oh you of little faith,” do you really think He’s belittling the apostle? That’s how it usually gets interpreted. But what if Jesus were patient and kind? What if He were pleased with Peter’s efforts however small (and walking on water is not so small), and as He helped Peter up, He wanted to provide encouragement and guidance? What if Jesus had a sense of humor? Is it possible He was sort of chuckling to Himself and giving Peter a pat on the back as they got into the boat?

The Gospels don’t say. We have to use clues to fill in the missing information as best we can. And that’s where I’m going in the next post on Pagans & Tax Collectors. Because I think that the Gospels do give us clues on how Jesus feels about them, and how He wants us to treat them. And by extension, how he wants us to treat dissenting and openly sinning members of the Church.

Hey, look, a Tollefsen article!

Yeah, it took me by surprise too.  You’ll be relieved to know it’s on a nice, quiet, non-controversial topic, Contraception and Healthcare Rights.  Here were my thoughts as I read:

1. Yay!  A Tollefsen article my readers will actually like!
2. Ooops.  Nope.  More mad readers.  Uh oh.
3. No, never mind, I think it’s good after all.

So, er, read at your own risk.  It’s written philosophy-style, of course, so you’re constantly behind the curve, never really sure whether you agree with the guy or not.  But I’m pretty sure he makes sense.  In that special philosopher way.*

 

 

*Keep in mind that professional philosophers have to work day in and day out with people who aren’t strictly sure they exist, or perhaps are sure they exist, but also that they only turned up at the conference or the coffee bar on account of their molecules making them do that.  I’m not making fun.  That’s what a subset of real live tenured philosophy professors actually think.  I’ve taken the classes . . . I know.  You’d write reaaally caaarefullly if you had to present your papers to those people.    (I mean, for a living.  If you’re a student, you could just write normally and live with the B.)

Music for Mortals

So I like a good guitar or mariachi mass as much as the next person.  But really, listen to these chant settings for the new mass translation, courtesy of the Church Music Association of America.  Nothin’ says Four Last Things like gregorian chant.

And more joy.

I didn’t change because I liked Jesus’ message or because I decided to follow His teachings. I changed because I experienced His love for me and I responded to it. His love was so encompassing that I had to offer it to others.

Sometime when you have a few minutes to sit down, go read Antonella Garofalo’s conversion story.   It is longer than the usual twenty-second blog post, but eminently readable and full of life.

Looking forward to seeing more of her work.

Joy joy joy.

This blog is seriously fun.  Watch an aspirant get ready to enter the convent.  Yay.  All the stuff you never thought about, like, “where do those blue aprons come from?”.

(You can also help pay off her student loans. H/T to Jen @ Conversion Diary for the link.)

Why “Providentialism” Doesn’t Work

Continuing with the NFP theme . . .

If you travel in the right circles, soon enough you run up against “providentialists”.   You might see a reference to “Quiverfull” or “Full Quiver”, or “Letting God Plan Your Family”, or any number of things.  The basic idea is this:  Married couples should take no measure to avoid pregnancy in any way.

There are variations, and I won’t go into the crazier minorities.  Also, we aren’t talking here about couples who take no steps to space or delay pregnancy because they have no reason to do so.  That is normal and healthy.  If you are a married couple, the default mode is “hope for another baby”.

What I want to address today is the idea that maybe NFP is wrong.  That maybe, observing your signs of fertility, and actively choosing to avoid intercourse during the fertile time, is somehow not what God wants.  That by doing so you are not trusting God.  You are perhaps taking into your own hands something that should remain a mystery.  And that what God wants is for couples to go ahead and engage in marital relations with no regard for whether or not a pregnancy will result, even when all indicators are that a pregnancy at this time would be a very, very bad thing.

This is not Catholic.  And it doesn’t work.  Here’s why:

God gives us free will, and He means us to use it.  Let us set out an ideal of complete, childlike trust in God.  Now ask: Does that mean that you want your children to be automatons?  No.  I want my children to trust in me, to obey me, to do what I have taught them even when it doesn’t make sense.  But my goodness if the house is on fire,  all those years of “don’t get out of bed after bedtime” give way to the other training of “kick through the screen and climb out the window, I’ll meet you at the neighbor’s house”.   God gives us the faculty to think, to plan, to control our actions.  We are not dogs in heat.  We trust in Him, but we still check the classifieds when we need a job.

We aren’t meant to dwell in ignorance of the wonders of the universe.  And that includes human biology.  I don’t show my “trust” in God by refusing to learn more about the world He created.  It would be bizarre and unnatural for me to insist on complete ignorance of the very obvious signs of human fertility.

Our emotions and desires provide valuable information.  And they cannot be forced.  Although we should not be ruled by our feelings, when they are properly ordered they are essential to making prudent decisions.  What sane man could look at the faces of his hungry children and not be filled the notion that his first and foremost mission is to find a way to feed them?  That other things must wait.  What loving husband could look at his sick wife, and not want to first do what he could to protect her health, and choose to set aside his own natural urges for her sake?    In the face of serious reasons to postpone pregnancy, the normal, healthy response is to have a diminished desire for intercourse.

So “providentialism” simply does not work.  At it’s logical extreme, it asks us to abandon our role as creatures made in the image of God.  To set aside our free will, to insist on willful ignorance of the basic and obvious workings of creation, and to cultivate an animal-like desire for intercourse instead of responding to the normal, healthy instinct to put the good of others before our own pleasure.  In face of serious reasons to avoid pregnancy, abstinence — whether 100% or intermittently as required — is a natural, noble, and moral means of sacrificing for the good of the family.

That said, the practice proposed by “providentialism” is in fact the default mode for married couples.  It is normal for married couples to engage in intercourse at will, and joyfully welcome whatever children come their way.    It is only when serious situations arise that one would actually want or need to choose another course of action.  But in those situations, NFP is a sane response.

NFP and Suffering

The biggest complaint about NFP is that it stinks not being able to have sex with your spouse.  The rest of the method — observing and charting and all of that — may not be the funnest thing ever, but it beats having surgery or putting weird chemicals into your body, and compared to all the other things parents do, really it’s no big deal.  But not having sex with your spouse?  That stinks.

And so people complain, rightly, “We shouldn’t have to abstain.”

No, you shouldn’t.

We live in a fallen world.  There should be no hunger, no murder, no sickness, no death.  But there is.  Not because there should be, not because these things are right and natural and all part of what man was made for, but because our world is broken, and the ultimate fix is for the next life, not this one.

“We shouldn’t have to abstain” is also the argument for contraception.  Couples instinctively know that their calling is for intimacy and physical union.  They mistakenly conclude that whatever enables intercourse is therefore good.

The mistake is in thinking that sex can be separated from procreation.  If I have this sense that as a couple we ought to be engaging in intercourse at will, and if a pregnancy would cause a serious problem at this time, the conclusion of contraception is that I ought to keep the sex but avoid the pregnancy.

NFP says: No.  The two cannot be separated.  If pregnancy needs to be avoided, then intercourse will have to avoided, because you may not separate sex from procreation.  (Nor procreation from sex.)  The way in which we bring into the world new eternal souls is sacred.  It is set apart.

The trouble is that in promoting NFP, we mistakenly compare it to contraception.  It is as effective for avoiding pregnancy.  It is as easy to master.  And, sometimes you will be told, “Well, it’s only a few days a month that you need to avoid”.  In other words, you’ll hardly notice.

And we think therefore that NFP should involve no suffering.  No difficulty.  Because that is what contraception claims: Have all the free sex you want!  The free sex you surely need!  It pains you, as a married couple to abstain!  Surely your marriage requires sex at will, right?

What we forget, is that NFP is only there as a response to a serious problem.

If the world were not broken, there would be no NFP.  Couples would marry, and children would come.  There would be no infertility, no miscarriages, no stillbirths.  No pregnancy complications.  No breastfeeding difficulties, nor pregnancies too close one after the other.  No health problems that limited how many children one could bear and rear.  No concern about feeding or caring for or sheltering the children.  No mental health disorders.  None of these countless ways that many couples find they cannot simply have sex at will, for the world is broken.

NFP seeks to lighten the load.  It seeks to lessen the suffering that this broken world imparts.  But like a kindly nurse in the ICU, or a compassionate police officer at the scene of the crime, nothing can erase the underlying World Gone Wrong.   If I’m using NFP, it means there is some kind of problem in my life.

The suffering is not imaginary.  It is not particularly surprising, even.  It’s a broken world.  NFP is a moral means to take the edge off the pain, but it’s still a broken world.