The Quest for Free Everything

Jen Fulweiler has a pretty good response to the NYT‘s Contraception v. NFP article; Marissa Nichols adds more here, and of course Simcha points out that it’s all eerily similar to playground equipment. [Not like that, get your mind out of the gutter.]

My nine-year-old doesn’t know it, but it also has to do with cleaning the house.

She proposes a remote control with different settings, from “dirty” on through “super clean”.  Pushing the desired button automatically transforms the house into the level of cleanliness you have selected.  I observed that we didn’t really need the slovenly buttons, we’re very reliable about that part.

Because what we want is to just play and relax all the time.  We want all the fun of owning lots of cool stuff, building things, sewing, painting, reading 1,001 books — all of it genuinely good and good-for-you.  But we don’t really feel like doing the housework that goes with.

And mind you, there is nothing dangerous or laborious about the work we’re talking about here.  It’s just not as fun as the funnest parts.  It’s sort of dull.  So we imagine we’d be so much happier if only we had the magic remote to take care of the not-so-great parts.  Then we could do only the homemaking we wanted, and not have to think that every time we wanted to do an activity, we’d be expected to clean up afterwards.

It’s contraception for hobbies.

***

The reason people hate NFP so much is that they keep comparing it to contraception.  No no no.  NFP is not contraception.  It is not like contraception, it does not do what contraception does, it has nothing to do with contraception.   Ask a happy contraceptor to use NFP, he’ll quickly confirm this for you.

NFP is a form of abstinence.  It’s a method for not having sex. 

[Okay, it also doubles as a method for increasing your odds of having a baby when you want one, and we have had great success with using it that way.  In that sense, NFP is a fertility treatment, and compares very favorably to the other fertility treatments out there.  But no one’s complaining about that kind of NFP.  Wish the NYT would run the article.  Please.]

So any way, back to not having sex.  Which you would think was pretty simple (I’m doing it right now), but actually doing it all the time is not so easy.   People who are determined not to have sex often find they have to take elaborate measures to pull it off, such as not spending large amounts of time alone with likely partners.  And those measures are tricky to execute when you, hmmn, say, live with the guy.  As often happens when you’ve gone and married him.

Which is why NFP is great: Instead of having to not have sex all the time, which is daunting, you can figure out ways to not have sex just some of the time.  Which is easier if your spouse has some time-consuming hobby like golf or hunting or smashing concrete blocks to smithereens, that can be employed as a distraction during those “few brief days” (bwahahaha) of periodic abstinence.

–> I have my luddite moments, but there is no convincing me that everything was better back before digital thermometers, when couples who needed to postpone a pregnancy enjoyed the simplicity and peace of just not having sex at all.  Complicate my life with technology, please.

(I feel the same way about my washing machine.)

Is NFP good for you? Well, I don’t know.

I know some people who keep a really clean house, and they do it by rarely being home and rarely pursuing any hobbies when they are home, and not really cooking much.  That life seems sort of harried and empty to me, because I like all the messy home-livin’ we do.  They’re practicing the NFP of hobbies and homemaking, avoiding making the mess so that they don’t have to keep up after it.

I know other people who keep a really clean house, despite having bunches of kids, homeschooling, and eating all their meals homemade.  They do it by discipline and hard work.  They are the full-quiver, providentialist types of the hobby-and-homemaking world.  And they seem pretty happy.

I’m not sure what I’d do if you offered me the magic house-cleaning remote.  But I suspect it wouldn’t be good for me.  It would make my life simpler and easier and more fun-filled at first, but I bet over time my life would just get crowded by all the non-stop pleasure seeking. And then empty.

I know that contraception is dangerous and empty in this way.  (Though, like the magic remote, very tempting.)  I know that the people who are able to just conceive conceive conceive, and it is coupled with true generosity and discipline and love, these people are living a life filled with tremendous joy.

But what about us NFP-types?  Would we be happier if we just abstained 100%?

Would I be happier if my decision to have sex was not, “Are my reasons to avoid a pregnancy serious enough to wait until the end of the month?”, but instead, “Are my reasons serious enough to not have sex again, at all, until some unknown date when my life might be different?”  Would the higher stakes make me value my sexuality and my children that much more?

I do know that couples who have a large family not out of generosity to life but out of uncontrolled passion, sooner or later have to deal with the reality of their motivations.   And I know that NFP practiced with an overdeveloped sense of fear can mean missing out on the immense and uncountable blessings that another child would have brought.

It’s powerful knowledge, being able to know when you are fertile.

And I’m just simple and dumb.  I like being able to have sex with my husband some of the time.  I like that a lot better than having sex with him none of the time.  The Church says this is a morally acceptable way to use our sexuality.  And I suppose, what with most of our theologians and all of our Popes being “none of the time” people, they probably have an inkling.

Discussion Question: How to handle accusations against clergy?

The question is this:

In your opinion, how should accusations of clergy misconduct be handled, so that the rights of both the innocent and the guilty are respected?  Or if you prefer, accusations against school teachers, catechists, police officers, you name it.

Does your diocese [district / department / etc.], or one you are familiar with, have a good process that works well?

Do you know of a case where an accusation of a serious crime was made, and the situation was handled well?  What did it look like?  Please do not use identifying info.  This is not about any particular case, but about what methods that can be applied generally to all cases.

(Which means, I expect,the method needs to have multiple options, depending on the  nature of the accusations, etc.)

Also, if you have a story to tell, stick to the facts that you know.  Conjecture is not helpful and I’ll have to make fun of you it will lead others into temptation.

–Reply in the combox, or on your blog and then leave a link in the combox.  Thanks.–

****************************************************

My personal experience: I’ve been very closely involved in two serious cases — one accusation of child molestation, one of rape.  One of the accusations was true, the other was false. [Those are the facts, not the findings. I was close enough to both cases to know the facts.]  Both cases were handled fairly, in my opinion, by the authorities to whom the incidents were reported, and by the police.  Allegations were taken seriously, steps taken to keep minors safe, and investigations conducted quickly and with no pressure to sway the witnesses one way or another.

That said, in the case of the true accusation, the criminal committed more crimes before he was apprehended.  (He was at large, stranger to the victims.)  In the case of the false accusation, the man accused did suffer tremendously from the social stigma, being removed from work with minors, etc., even though he was eventually (and fairly quickly) acquitted.

–> As a result of these experiences, I have a hard time seeing my way clear to what an “ideal” process is.  If the accusations are true, there is a pressing need to protect any future victims.  Sweeping measures to remove the accused from any chance to harm more people is important.  And the victims themselves need to be given tremendous support.

But especially with sexual crimes, and often enough with other crimes, there is no evidence.  It is very easy to bring false accusations.  Someone so inclined can shut down a ministry at will, simply by making the accusation.  It takes a very clear head and a fair bit of life experience to be able to weed through the claims and personalities and discern whether the accusation is likely to be true or not.

–> I imagine many cases are not like the ones in which I was involved — where there were clear-thinking bystanders who knew the the parties involved and the details of the alleged incidents well enough to quickly resolve whether there was a probable crime.  One of the hallmarks of repeated sexual abuse is that a group of on-lookers enable the behavior and refuse to intervene.  Another, is that if innocent party is not taken seriously, it can wreak some serious psychological damage — creating an “unreliable” victim and the impression that the victim is the guilty one.

And distinctive in the case of church-related scandals, is that I don’t think we know each other very well. The community is often geographically spread out, and lives mostly apart.  We come together for a tiny slice of our lives, but the world of church ministry is separate from our other work, our other leisure, our home life, etc.  There are few people who know us very well.  Who get to see us in all places and times and contexts.

So it is hard.  I’d like to hear thoughts on what you think would make a good, fair way of dealing with accusations.

 

 

More on Forgiveness

I want to elaborate on my last post.   Forgiveness is not easy, and there are lots of useful tips that begin with something like, “In order to forgive, first . . . [insert important, worthwhile spiritual point].”

But before all that:  In order to forgive, first someone must do something wrong.

Our culture is awash in fake forgiveness.  Part of it is linguistic — the words “I’m sorry” mean “I have sorrow”, and you can grieve many things, not only your sins.  The words “I apologize” have at their origin the idea of a defense, or explanation, that may well have nothing to do with guilt.  But we respond “I forgive you” to some of these innocent sorrows and defenses, and that can create the false impression that we are frequently forgiving when really we are not.

For example:

My mother-in-law is half an hour late.  I rant and stew.  How could she make me wait?!! And then she arrives, and it turns out there was a bad accident, she had left home early but was stuck in traffic for an hour [of course I didn’t have my phone with me, she did call], she is terribly sorry [she really is] that I was inconvenienced.  Well, I could say “I forgive you”, except she never did anything wrong.    She’s completely innocent.  If anything, I’m the guilty one, assuming the worst about her and getting mad before I even knew what had happened.

When we pretend we’re forgiving someone, but really they are innocent, that’s what I mean by “fake forgiveness”.    It is a genuine letting go of anger and bitterness, but it’s not the hard kind of forgiveness that Jesus demands.

Another kind of fake forgiveness is the “I understand”.   I once had a priest yell at me, in church, as I was saying my penance after confession.  He was a crotchety old man, hard of hearing, in a lot of pain due to various ailments, and probably fed up to here with other parishioners that were eerily like myself.  He was wrong.  A priest certainly should not march out into the pews and loudly and angrily continue the topic brought up in confession.  But I could understand.  Grumpy guy.  Grumpiness happens.  I was glad it was me and not some other person whose faith would be more easily shaken.  I argued with him, he took my point, two grumpy people satisfied to have each said our due.

–> But “I understand” can’t be the foundation of forgiveness.  It is a help, for certain.  It is the proverbial spoonful of sugar, that camaraderie and compassion for fellow sinners that makes it easier to overlook faults not unlike our own.  But Jesus asks me to forgive even the people who are just really, really bad.  The ones who have no excuse.

The nice thing is that many of us get to mostly wade in shallow waters.  We get to “forgive” innocent people, and we can comfortably go about excusing the genuine but minor wrong-doing that we face from day to day.

But what if we kept our perception of right and wrong perfectly clear?

To my mother-in-law, I wouldn’t say “I forgive you”.  I’d say: You haven’t done anything wrong.  Thank you so much for thinking of me, that is very thoughtful, but I’d be foolish to be mad at you when you are perfectly innocent.

And to Father Grumpy, instead of “I understand why he’s so crotchety, he’s old and over worked and his knees are killing him today”, It would be just:  That was wrong.  He should not have done that.  That was a real injustice against me, and against the sacrament, and against his ministry.  But I forgive him.  He doesn’t have a right to do what is wrong, but he does have a right to be forgiven, so I guess no excuse for me being Mrs. Grumpy the rest of the day.

***

Oh, I know.  These are ideals.  You think I’m any good at this?  No way.  I most certainly am not.  And I don’t guess I’m explaining it well, either.

But this is the staircase of depravity I was talking about earlier.  If I’m regularly patting myself on the back for “forgiving” innocent people, I’m fooling myself.  I haven’t got a clue about forgiveness until someone actually does something wrong.

And then if I explain away every real wrongdoing with a “he had a good reason”, “nobody is perfect”, “I’d be tempted too,” then I’ve missed my chance.   Of course I should understand — I could write a book on human weakness, of course I understand.  But I need to go beyond that.  Both so that my soul gets practice actually forgiving, and as a favor to my fellow sinners.

***

The first person who showed me forgiveness was a department secretary.  I owed her a form.  I didn’t fill out the form on time.  She came to my cube and said, “You didn’t give me the form.”

I made a thousand excuses.  I couldn’t bear to be actually wrong, because I didn’t know then that you could be wrong and still live.

And she kept saying to my every excuse, “I forgive you.  I forgive you.  Jennifer, I FORGIVE YOU.  (Now please shut up and fill out the form.)”

I finally shut up and filled out the form.

What? I had done something wrong?  And she freely acknowledged I DID SOMETHING WRONG?  And she wasn’t mad?  Even though I really had done something wrong?  At cost to her?  And she demanded nothing in repayment.  Not an apology, not an ‘I’ll make it up to you,” not even an “it will never happen again”.  Not even the pleasure of berating me for twenty seconds.  Nothing.

It was a completely new world to me.

***

And that’s the world I was talking about yesterday.  If that helps at all.  I know, I know.  Forgiving small things is so much easier.  Yes. Yes.  But it’s a start.   I think we kid ourselves if we say we can tackle anything bigger, before we’ve got a handle on how to forgive the little sins first.

And yeah, supernatural aid definitely required.

Grace and Generosity

Today in the car my eldest daughter was wishing for soft, cushion-y flip-flops.  “Maybe for your birthday,” I say.

“My birthday is in February.”

“So write a letter to Santa now, telling him what to look for on summer clearance in August.”

Children start composing letters aloud.

Then I suggest, “Wait a minute.  Not Santa.  Write to the Easter Bunny.”

Mr. Boy begins: “Dear Easter Bunny, I have been very good this year . . .”

And I correct: “No.  It’s Dear Easter Bunny, I have been very bad this year.  That is why I am thankful for Easter. If I were good, I wouldn’t need it . . .”

***

–> One of the advantages of homeschooling, is that the children labor under no illusions about mom’s sins.

Sometimes people who see me teach as a catechist get the wrong idea.  They see how I run a class for an hour (So much energy! So focused on the children! So kind! So enthusiastic!) and imagine my own kids must be getting that 16 hours a day.

Um, no.

Just because I can do something for an hour does not mean I can do it all day every day.

But the thing about being a catechist, is that there’s a certain pressure to be an unrealistically good person.  Talking to friends who have worked in ministry elsewhere (non-catholic, as it happens), it seems to be par for the course.  You’re a Christian Leader.  You’re a Teacher and an Example.  And if you screw-up, You’re Fired.

It isn’t enough to be competent at your work.  Your work is not only to teach what is right and wrong, but to somehow meet spec.  Our #1 message is that we are all wretched sinners in need of a Savior, but if you’re a priest / minister / catechist, you’d better not be especially needful of that Savior.

That’s not real.

I’m fortunate, in that although I certainly get tempted to commit enormous sins, I mostly stick to goofing off and yelling at my kids as the bread and butter of my sinfulness.  So I guess I have a job as long as I can keep that up.

But here’s what: Everybody faces temptation.  I have been very moved by the humility of ordinary Christians who will openly acknowledge horrid sins.  I did it, I should not have done it, I am sorry I did it, I will never do it again so help me God. 

Public ministry discourages that humility.  It discourages it slowly and insidiously, by first teaching you to deny the venial sins.  What will people think if they find out I ______?  Will they refuse to let me minister to _______ if they hear that I _______?  I am not alone among catholic volunteers in being a tad nervous about confessing to my own parish priest.  I work for the guy — what if he gets the wrong idea when he hears my confession?

[I do, anyway, though not as often as would be good for me.  A lousy prayer life is one of my other besetting sins.]

So I am unsurprised when I hear that some Famous Catholic is by all appearances guilty of some tremendous sin, but is unable to admit to having done wrong.  To see clerics justify their serious sins, and maybe even leave the church over them?  Well, I’ve seen other ministers brush off lesser sins.  It is a staircase.  At the bottom you put on a good face for the public; as unseemly bits seep out here and there, what you cannot hide, you must somehow justify.  By the time a serious temptation comes along, the habit of fleeing condemnation is long since engrained.

Forgiveness is only way out.

You want honest clergy?  Learn to forgive.  Not to deny, not to downplay, not to ignore.  To forgive.   Where sin abounds, grace must abound all the more.

The Christian paradox is that where grace abounds, sin loses its hold.  For if I know I will be forgiven, then I can admit I was wrong.  And if I can admit I was wrong, and only if I can admit I was wrong, then I can begin the work of repairing my soul.

The Rite by Matt Baglio

The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist, by Matt Baglio, Doubleday, 2009

I recommend this book, on the condition that you read the whole thing.  Otherwise, skip.  Just not healthy any other way.  –>> And no I have not seen the film, [which Father L. reviewed here, and has even more to say on the whole topic here]  and no I’m not planning to see the film, because I am too impatient to watch things when I could be reading instead.  Also I see on the author’s page that the paperback has updated material in it — my comments here are based on the edition above.

Anyhow, back to the book.  Here’s what it is, per the author:

The purpose of this book is not to promote any one faith over another, but to offer a detailed account of one priest’s journey from a rational skeptic to a practicing exorcist. I didn’t set out to write with any preconceived bias and as such the book is written in a straightforward journalistic style, which means that I give respect to the beliefs and testimonies on all sides, including medical science.

And that’s what it is.  We follow Fr. Gary Thomas (a real guy) as he heads to Rome on sabbatical in 2005, after being freshly appointed diocesan exorcist.  His travails are, wow, amazingly normal.  If you spend any amount of time in the Catholic Church, you will totally recognize the place.   You couldn’t write fiction like this.  Fr. Thomas does finally manage to secure an apprenticeship with a practicing exorcist, and the book version does clearly show the humdrum, hard, dull work that goes with the territory.

[Interestingly — the reports of boring catholic exorcisms match very closely to what I have heard described by evangelical protestants who have experience with boring exorcisms of their own.  Different details as far as the methods of the exorcists, but identical phenomenon on the recipients’ end.]

The author sticks to the straightforward, journalistic style all the way through.  It is not a “catholic” book in the sense of trying to evangelize or prove a point of the faith.  The reporting could come straight out of the Herald Tribune.  But it is a firmly catholic book in the sense that any book which earnestly reports the truth is necessarily catholic.

In addition to following Fr. Thomas’s personal story, the book explains catholic teaching on the supernatural in very clear terms.  There is also an examination of how demon possession relates to psychological disorders, including interviews with secular researchers who reject supernatural explanations.  [One of the first jobs of the exorcist is to find a qualified psychiatrist to rule out natural causes.]   One of the reasons I think it is important to stick with the book through to the end, is that it is not at all clear how things are going to turn out, or whether the book will ultimately end up affirming the catholic faith.  [It does.  It can’t help it.  Tell a true story, that’s what you end up with.]

The book follows Fr. Thomas through to his first “for real”, no-doubts-about-it exorcism, in 2007, after he is back home in the states and settled in to his parish assignment.  And here’s the conclusion, so you can rest easy, since if you are smart you will naturally be quite wary of picking up books on these sorts of topics:

These prayers do have power, he thought.  It was a visceral reminder that the age-old conflict between good and evil, sin and salvation, was far from over.  Not only did this validate his calling as a priest, and his choice to become an exorcist, but it was a powerful confirmation of one of the deepest mysteries of his faith.  Even though evil existed in the world, there was a way to defeat it.

Will there be fake news in Heaven?

The IC is having a book-release party for Felon Blames 1970s Church Architecture for Life of Sin. Go take a look.

Someone was asking me yesterday which blogs I follow, and of course I completely blanked out.  (Um, look at my sidebar?).  But I believe I’ve read every single post by the Ironic Catholic since however many years ago it was I discovered the place.   And probably on that day I scrolled through the entire archive.

Intelligent, clean-cut catholic satire that *is* funny and *is not* mean.  How many other writers could sit in the middle of that venn diagram?

Mothers & More

Here’s a great article on “Why Mothers Matter”, h/t to the Pulp.it for pointing it out.  Totally made my day.  (Yes, I am goofing off.  Bad mother! Clean house!  Make children clean house!)

–> Which explains why St. Thomas More re-married so quickly after the death of his first wife.  As Butler’s Lives points out:

More was a man of sense as well as sensibility, and he had four young children on his hands: so he married a widow, seven years older than himself, an experienced housewife, talkative, kindly and full of unimaginative common sense.

Apparently she didn’t appreciate his jokes, though, which the biographer observes was an “undeniable trial of patience” — for which spouse the text does not specify.

A quick saint bleg on that topic:  Our VBS-alternative (“Terrific Tuesdays”) will feature St. Thomas More, St. Joan of Arc, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Therese of Lisieux, and St. Martin de Porres.  If you happen to be sitting on a linky-link treasure trove of free-to-copy coloring sheets, puzzles, clip art, and the like, I would be most grateful to learn your secrets.  Thank you!

–> FYI if you are in a similar boat, I’ve been mining the My Catholic Pray and Play Activity Book for generic worksheets.  Nicely done, good little resource for elementary-age catechists to keep in the drawer.  The sheets are reproducibles for non-commercial use.

***

And this is a random other lives-of-saints observation I stumbled upon last night, and had to share.  From Butler’s Lives, further down on July 9th (same as More), concerning the martyrdom of Sts. Nicholas Pieck and Companions, Martyrs of Gorkum in 1572.  This was a Calvinist round-up in the Netherlands, and the clergy arrested included not only the saintly types, but also St. James Lacops, who “had been very slack in his religious observance and contumacious under reproof”, as well as St. Andrew Wouters, who “went straight from the irregular life to imprisonment and martydom”.

Here is the bit I found to be a timeless reminder:

. . . when already Father Pieck had been flung off the ladder, speaking words of encouragement, the courage of some failed them; it is a significant warning against judging the character of our neighbour or pretending to read his heart that, while a priest of blameless life recanted in a moment of weakness, the two who had been an occasion of scandle gave their lives without a tremor.

More reading – nice ranty sermon for you

Change “missionary” to “parent”, and this is the rant that has me writing the homeschooling book. 

To customize, insert “teacher”, “DRE” “Pastor” or “___your name here____”.

I would add, this is the kind of judging others we should be wary of.  It’s easy to know whether one ought to steal or murder (no).  Not so easy to know what I should do today, and what prayers to pray, and how to explain to the children they really must learn math. Really.  And handwriting.  And not punching people.  Except sometimes.

Oh wait.  Divine Mercy.  Scratch that punching thing.  Oops.

Or not.  Legitimate self-defense only, I promise.

Happy Easter & an Exultet bleg

Pithless Thoughts wins the award for my favorite Easter blog post.

Happy Easter.

And how do you say that in Elvish?  I so want to know.

*********

Bleg:  I’m looking for just the right recording of the Exultet.  Have searched around a little bit on You Tube, but didn’t find what I wanted.  Here’s what we need:

• In English.  English and only English.
• Sung by a guy.
• Just the basic chant, optional simple accompaniment, no musical showing off.
• Nice clear recording.

Something a non-musical guy, but who can more or less sing your basic hymns thanks to years of repetition, could listen to over and over and over again, and eventually get the tune good and stuck in his head.

If you find it, please let me know!  Thank you.

nothing new under the sun

On the topic of catholic education, a friend points me to this encyclical (Dec/21/1929), which in turn quotes this one (Jan/10/1890).  Worthy reading, and not only for internet debate purposes.  ==> Though you will quickly learn not to quote to selectively, lest your opponent trounce you with a counter-quote from the same document.

So there’s something to do tonight, in order to not think about eating.  For example if your next door neighbors are grilling steaks.

The popes.  The internet.  Powerful combination.