The Over-Load on Marriage

We expect way too much from marriage...from our spouse. Marriage is immensely overloaded with expectations. None of us can live up to what is expected. The first problem is the "Romantic Fantasy"...the pernicious, pervasive illusion that there is that someone special out there that can make me happy, make me whole, fulfill me. And so we expect SO much from romantic and marital relationships.  The problem develops when we look exclusively or primarily to our spouse for most of our emotional needs. Ironically, some us with high marriage ideals, including traditional Catholics and devotees of the "nuptial mysticism" of St. John Paul II, are even more vulnerable to disappointment, discouragement and resentment since we expect so much of ourselves and the spouse. And so, a good start is to lower our expectations and be realistic about marriage. Even more than that, we need to know what I learned in Kiko's Neocatechumenal Way: I am called to love my enemy and my greatest enemy, the one who hurts and disappointments and betrays me is always...my spouse. And so I need to be ready continually to forgive her. Even worse, I am her worse enemy so I need to be always ready to ask forgiveness, to humble myself and make my amends. Husband and wife need to be on their knees together asking our Lord to repair the harm we do each other. A second solution is to expand our families: the small, nuclear family of mom, dad, child and dog is a terrible idea. We need more people around us: uncles and aunts, cousins, grandparents, friends. And this needs to go beyond blood: our children need many "aunts," "uncles" and "cousins" who are really part of the family but not necessarily by blood. Our families need to be open, pourous, expansive, and missionary. Moral theologian David McCarthy of Mount St. Mary's, Emmetsburg Maryland,  has written especially well on this. Thirdly, a major contributor to the overload on marriage is the deconstruction of gender that largely defines modernity. Every man, and every woman,  needs to satisfy most of his (or her) emotional needs through a strong network of same-sex  friendships. This is where each of us can quell our loneliness and gain a sense of solidarity, community and quiet bonding. Filled with confidence and peace from this font of intimacy, we come to each other as spouses with an overflowing generosity rather than a desperate neediness.  In traditional societies, the men and women are segregated and effortlessly find such bonding: the men are hunting, shepherding or fishing  and the women are joined with each other in the care of the young, the sick, the elderly and of the home. There is a natural, fluid, effortless community and intimacy. And so, at night when husband and wife retire to their bedroom, they have spent most of their day in satisfying community and friendship. Modernity deconstructs gender...male and female...and makes us into androgynous, monadic units of consumption and production...replaceable by each other. Led by militant feminism, the sexual revolution viciously destroyed most of the environments in which men as men, or women as women, can be together. And so, the typical spouses return from the dog-eat-dog world of achievement/competition starving for affection and comfort. They look to each other...and are inevitably disappointed. And so, we need to rebuild networks of man-to-man and woman-to-woman bonding. Lastly, but most importantly, we must ever remember with St. Augustine that "our hearts are restless until they rest in you O Lord!" The primal, foundational loneliness in each of us is...deep down...the longing for intimacy with our dear Lord. Our primal, foundational marriage is our baptismal union with Christ. As we deepen this union, with help of our spouse and brothers/sisters, our marriages and all our relationships will flourish, realistically and soberly.

Masculine Silence of Advent

In the Advent readings the men are always silent, quiet, mute. Zechariah is struck mute when he doubts the angelic message that his elderly wife Elizabeth would conceive. Only after the birth and naming of John ("God is gracious") does he burst into his glorious song of praise, the Benedictus. St. Joseph, of course, is silent throughout as he promptly, vigorously obeys the heavenly directives: take Mary, go to Egypt and then Return from Egypt. The three kings are largely silent as they travel and then offer their gifts, bowing in quiet adoration. John the Baptist, in his mother's womb, jumps for joy...wordlessly. And later retreats into the quiet of the desert. The Word himself...is hidden, quiet, weak, vulnerable, dependent. And of course we contemplate the peaceful Bethlehem scene: mother and child, Joseph, and the mute animals. And so we see the primacy here of masculine silence. John the Baptist preached repentance, but only after his own sojourn in the desert of silence and solitude. Jesus himself spent 40 days in the desert immediately before initiating his own evangelical mission. We men especially need to seek silence. Those of us who grew up in the 1950s had this modeled for us by the strong, silent types: John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck and others. In the 1960s we were told we had to be more like women: expressive of our feelings. But it seems that the male psyche, already prone to "know it all arrogance," needs to be humble, docile and quiet in order for it to have something worth saying.

Return to Patriarchy?

Donald Trump has appeal as a father figure (I argued in the previous blog) and his presidency can be understood, among other things, as a return to patriarchy. He emanates self-confidence, strength, and assertiveness. He is a revival of "paterfamilias!" His is a crude, chauvinist, even lewd patriarchy, but a patriarchy nevertheless. It helps that he has a gorgeous family that seems to be happy and fiercely, inexplicably loyal to him. Compare him with his competition. Barack Obama exudes rationality, gentleness, passivity and weakness. It is not his fault: he was fatherless and mentored by men like Reverend Wright and Saul Alinsky who were themselves stuck in adolescent rebellion and resentment against authority. It is no wonder that he lacks gravitas, forcefulness, and above all paternal authority. In his marriage, Michele seems to be so much more fierce, strong, even threatening. If I were Putin or Assad I would not fear Barack, but I would not want to mess with Michele. As a couple they model the emergent matriarchy of our culture: the woman is determined, fearless, competent, intelligent and multi-tasking her family care, career and altruism. The man is gentle, meek, reasonable. He is man as idealized in the liberal (distrustful) feminine psyche: free of the fire of evangelical fervor, entrepreneurial risk, or martial vigilance. The liberal hates nothing more than the vigorous virility of the preacher, the businessman or the soldier! Hillary, on the other hand, in the legacy of Jezabel, has corrupted her own femininity through careerism, ambition, and a liberal messiah complex, but especially by her embrace of sexual liberation. For political reasons, she became the protector and enabler of her predator husband even to the point of attacking the women already victimized by him. Trump's male chauvinism is repulsive, but mild in comparison with the deeper, darker, disguised misogyny of the Democratic Party. Their contempt for femininity as virginity and maternity is the other side of their dismissal of paternity. The Clintons and Obamas are moderate, pragmatic, and irenic about almost everything (militant Islam, Wall Street, immigration) but fiercely militant about contra-ception and abortion. This pill that is poison for the woman's body but more toxic for the soul, the family and the social order...this pill MUST be available to everyone, paid for by everyone, approved of by everyone. The other hallowed sacrament that can never be challenged is the legalized intrusion of cold, sharp, metal instruments into the woman's body to dismember and destroy the innocent, defenseless one sheltered therein. I could never have voted for Trump and am worried about his regime in many ways even as I hope for the best. But at the least, he is a relief from the relentless, insistent, oppressive tyranny of the Party of abortion, sterile sex, and the deconstruction of marriage, sexuality and family. With the Supreme Court picks and the demise of Obamacare mandates we can at least breath a sigh of relief that our government is not a perpetual attack upon the values we have cherished for generations! For a while maybe we will not be forced to pay for contraception and abortion, to place little adoptive girls with two gay men or little boys with two lesbian women, to bake cakes for gay marriages, and to share our bathrooms with those who suffer such painful gender confusion. So, the deplorable Trump patriarchy will at least be a relief from the anti-maternal, anti-paternal Jezebel matriarchy of Hillary. But what we really need is a revival of authentic paternity as tender care, reverence, chastity and gentle strength; what we really need is a resurgence of maternity as generosity, reverence and inspirational loveliness. For that we don't need a President or a Congress or a Supreme Court...we can all of us work for that where we are right now!

The Appeal of Donald Trump: a Surrogate Father

An entirely unacknowledged reason why Trump beat Clinton in the recent election is: he is a father figure. A terrible father figure...but a father figure! Hillary is superior to Donald in so many ways: experience, self-control, sobriety of judgment, intelligence, character and (some) values. But she cannot be a father figure. The defining crisis of our age and society is the crisis in masculinity and fatherhood. So many of our young are coming of age without the presence of a caring, wise, reassuring father: families are broken, young men are weak or violent, women are holding their own in the marketplace and raising the children largely on their own, and the sense of God as Father has declined. Into this spiritual, emotional wasteland comes Donald Trump: he is confident and reassuring! He will make America great! He will bring back jobs! He is a winner! He will protect us from immigrants and terrorists! He feels like he could be another FDR or Ronald Reagan. And so, he won the election. He is actually a bogus father figure...a terrible father figure! But he is a father figure. As described in the previous blog: a father-figure needs to represent, not his own ego, but Another, God our heavenly Father. Therefore, a genuine father will be humble, strong in a gentle and tender way, chaste and truthful. On all four counts Trump is blatantly, ridiculously, nauseatingly bad! Far from being humble, he is full of himself and clearly a narcissistic personality in the clinical sense. He is strong but hardly gentle as he bullies women and anyone who opposes him. He is boastfully unchaste. And his disregard for fact and truth is simply breath-taking. But he has a crude, confident masculinity about him. And so he is a father figure. And a culture in retreat from the fatherhood of God and largely depleted of genuine fathers is clinging desperately to a bogus father.

The Visible Fatherhood of God

"His vocation was to be the visible fatherhood of God on earth."  This was said about St. Joseph. But I thought: Isn't that my vocation as well? Isn't that the call of every man...in some or other mysterious and unique manner? The male role is always to REPRESENT something or someone greater than himself: God, the Church, the country, tradition, authority, the military, the union or the company, the law...and so forth. By contrast, a woman is always herself...she has an inviolate, inherent integrity and she represents only herself, as God's highest creation. Already by the age of 14 or so, a young woman who has been loved is a temple of beauty, of goodness, of compassion. Without effort on her part, she is endowed with compassion, emotional intelligence, integrity of mind and heart and soul. A woman, a mother, is always herself and never needs to be anything more. Not so with a man. A man at the age of 14 and long afterwards is a collection of disparate pieces and chaotic, explosive energies that need focus, purpose and mission. This is why boys of all ages love uniforms: a man needs to be a knight, a warrior, a Jedi! A man needs to serve something and really Someone greater than himself. At the end of the day, a man must make visible the Fatherhood of God in a specific, concrete manner. And so, the fundamental and primary virtue for a man, as representative of another, as a St. John the Baptist who prepares the way for another, is humility! Humility! And Humility! This is not insecurity, indecision, weakness. This is humility as devotion to Someone greater. This is humility as truthfulness about one's strengths and weaknesses. This is humility as obedience to a higher voice. If humility is the essential masculine virtue, than pride is the quintessential vice. The male ego must be deflated for a man to be true to his mission. Ironically, the flip side of humility is magnanimity or "greatness of spirit" since the man who is free of self-concern can think and dream and plan big. The second constitutive masculine virtue is gentle, courageous strength. A man must be strong and courageous, but it must be gentle...protective and tender to the fragile and vulnerable. The third essential virtue is chastity as purity of heart in all arenas but especially regarding sexuality where disordered desire, even in small measure, can entirely destroy the paternal relationship of protective, tender, reverent care. Lastly, the man must serve truth...raw, harsh truth...even when feelings are hurt...the man must be truthful. Here we see that these four virtues serve and indwell each other...the proud, cowardly or unchaste man is unable to apprehend or testify to the truth. Only the humble, strong, chaste and truthful man will be a witness to truth and a representative of the Fatherhood of God...in the manner of St. Joseph, St. John the Baptist and all the martyrs, fathers, doctors and saints.

Awake and At Rest

The end (November) and beginning (December, Advent) of the liturgical year is full of admonitions: Awaken, the night is spent and the day is dawning! Be alert and vigilant: the Lord will come like a thief in the night! Be sober and on guard for the devil roams about seeking whom he can devour! At the same time we are promised that those who labor will be given REST! We consider St. Joseph who receives all his heavenly revelations and directions in the passivity of sleep. And we recall with the psalmist: "if the Lord does not build the house...in vain is your rising so early, your going so late to rest...for he gives to his beloved in their sleep." So, we are being urged to be awake and yet to rest! Which is it? An easy fix would be to go with Ecclesiates:  "...there is a time for everything...a time to rest, and a time to awake from resting." But this may be another case where the Word of God would have us pair seeming contraries into a deeper harmony whereby they actually interpenetrate, illuminate and actualize each other. And so, the "rest" of the Lord is not unconsciousness or slumber, but the inner serenity and harmony of trust and surrender. This is a rest that does not dim or lessen awareness but rather awakens and sharpens it. Who is the better watch guard: the one who is fatigued or the one who is rested? And so, the genuine calm and integrity that comes with "rest in the Lord" actually awakens us and sensitizes us. It is the opposite of the numbing, de-sensitizing intoxication of addiction, agitation, anxiety, and resentment. "Resting in the Lord" is a spiritual and psychological receptivity and trust that roots and centers us; it preserves and channels our energy; it heightens our sensitivity and vigilance so that we are docile to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and reactive, promptly and forcefully, to the initiatives of the Evil One. So that, paradoxically, it is when we are at rest that we are alert, vigilant, poised and ready to do what pleases our Lord!

The Anatomy of Virile Chastity

Virile chastity is different from feminine virginity. The later is like a sacred, precious, beautiful garden that is tended, admired, protected, aromatic, flowering, fruitful, clean and wholesome. This applies even to secondary virginity (like that of St. Mary Magdallen) where there has been a violation or loss but then a restoration to pristine integrity and purity. Masculine chastity is entirely different: it is more like a raging fire that needs to be channeled and disciplined so that it provide powerful heat and energy and light and lest it destroy everything in its path like a forest fire. Consider the contrasting physical markers: the maiden virgin has a clear physical barrier which is preserved intact until it is pierced and this physical integrity has deep, significant even sacramental meaning for all traditional cultures. The young man, even if he has the purity of a saint, is visited unexpectedly at puberty by passionate, overwhelming desires and eruptive, non-deliberate, explosive physical erections and effusions. Clearly, the task for this young man is not to maintain some lily-white cleanliness; but to (gradually, painstakingly) discipline and channel all his libidinal and aggressive energies that they become wholesome and fruitful.  Chastity is usually understood as mere abstinence from sexual intimacy outside of marriage or as a permanent state for the religious but neither of these is the heart of the matter. Our culture finds "chastity" to be unintelligible. Some time ago I was speaking with some men on a corner here in Jersey City and I mentioned a friend who came regularly to speak to our confirmation youth about "being chaste." One, who had more of a street than a church background, was interested:  "That's cool! You mean...what do you mean...being chased? Like being chased by the po...lice?" Chastity is sexual purity and a subset of the broader concept of purity of heart. But what is purity? Purity likewise is poorly understood in the negative as "not dirty" in the sense of free of greed, avarice, lust, envy and so forth. "Blessed are the pure of heart, they shall see God" we are told by our Lord so clearly purity, like chastity, cannot be primarily a "lack of something bad" but a positivity: something surpassingly good, alive, overflowing. Purity is love: love of God and of others in God. Purity is the blazing fire of the Holy Spirit, by which we are inflamed with holy desire, reverence, tenderness and honor. And so, the first thing about chastity, as purity in the sexual arena, is that it is the fire of noble, generous, tender and compassionate love. The second most important aspect of manly chastity is that it is strength: it is the power to love...faithfully, tenderly, courageously. The Latin word for man, vir, is the root for our word virtue and was originally associated with heroic strength and courage. So, chastity, far from being a deprivation or abstinence from something, is the very power to love clearly and generously. So, the chastity of the married man is not essentially a question of abstinence (though that too pays a role at times) but of loyalty, steadfastness, and generosity. Chastity then is not a lack (of intimacy) but a plenitude of gentle, fecund strength. The Evil One, then, grooms his target for lust by whispering quiet lies: "You are no man! You are a wimp, a failure, a nothing!" A third dimension of virile chastity is that it is affectionate. Chastity is the opposite of a sterile, distant coldness; it is the warmth of tender, nurturing and appreciative affection. So, the path to chastity is the path of affection: the young man needs to receive affection, including lots of wholesome, sober affection from other men including mentors, friends, partners and relatives. A lack of affection is another cause for lust and covetousness as the lonely, isolated one seeks surrogate, false intimacy in superficial physical pleasure. A fourth dimension is closely related to affection: heroic virile chastity is elicited as care and reverence in the face of stark goodness in three distinct enfleshments. First, the young man must encounter and then emulate strong, heroic, saintly older men as role models. Secondly he must encounter the poor, the suffering, and the small including children and the elderly and be filled with compassion. Thirdly, and most significantly, he must encounter feminine loveliness in all its splendor, attractiveness, nobility and fragility in order to bow in veneration, tender care, and humble service. Virile heroism in all its dimensions of courage, humility and chastity is inconceivable and impossible until the young man meets, in some manner, his Beatrice as God's Masterpiece of Feminine Loveliness. Fifth and lastly, chastity is a form of temperance, of balance and moderation, and so related to justice and moderation in all aspects of life. It is sobriety as inner harmony; it is freedom from intoxication of fear, insecurity, anger, self-doubt, fanatacism, greed and discouragement. So, the path to chastity is prudence and proper order in all areas of life: work, sleep, food, money, family, relationships and, above all, prayer. To conclude: virile chastity is the gentle,confident strength to love; it is fidelity, integrity, steadfastness; it is tender affection; it is reverence and care for women and those who are frail; it is the fire of the Holy Spirit purifying, deepening, strengthening and sanctifying masculine desire and passion with holiness and nobility.

Under the Influence...of Woman

"Strong feminine influence" the graphologist wrote in her analysis of my handwriting. Interesting! My view is that we are created, man and woman, precisely to influence each other: to revere, instruct, correct, encourage, care for, inspire, humble and ennoble each other. We are SO different; and we SO need to give to and receive from each other... in reverence, trust, tenderness and gentle strength. The feminine influence is primary: we are en-fleshed and then enmeshed with our mother while our father is a strange and distant figure who must be befriended. The crucial oedipal passage, for the boy, is absolutely decisive as he cannot become a man without detaching from Mom and attaching to Dad. This passage is never complete or perfect so that later the man continues the dramatic journey into robust virility as he relates with women. Interaction with gracious, grace-filled femininity arouses and cultivates wholesome virility; in the presence of womanly goodness and loveliness the man becomes tender, caring, protective, self-less, sensitive, humble, contrite, reverent, encouraged, confident, courageous, spousal and paternal. There are a limited number of relationships with the feminine for the pilgrim-male. Abstinence from feminine influence will leave the man restless, agitated, depressed, lethargic, unmotivated and despairing. Alternately, the man can become dominant, controlling, manipulative...a predator and a rapist! Thirdly, the weak man can be submissive to the seductive and dominating femne fatale...as did Adam in the garden. Finally, the man can surrender himself, in an act of serene freedom, to the influence of holy womanhood. This is what Jesus did in becoming man. This is what John and the apostles did after Jesus died and left them his mother. This is what we do...mostly unconsciously and effortlessly as we are loved by our mother, wife, sisters, daughters and friends. This is what we Catholics do when we are immersed in our holy mother Church.  

The Passivity of St. Joseph: He Gives to His Beloved in Their Sleep

“If the Lord does not build the city, in vain is your rising so early, your going so late to rest; for he gives to his beloved in their sleep.” My new statue of St. Joseph sleeping reminds me that his most important work happened in passivity: when he was asleep. Four times he received heavenly messages in his sleep. He was passive, at rest, unconscious, in-deliberate and inactive. Not the passivity of an inert rock; his passivity was attentive, sensitive, alert, receptive! He was a man of action: he did indeed take Mary as his wife; he did protect his family by flight into Egypt; he did return at the proper time and provide for and protect Mary and Jesus. But all this steadiness in strength, determination and protectiveness sprang from a prior receptive passivity in sleep. So we see vividly in the case of St. Joseph that the Lord does indeed give to his beloved in their sleep. God’s grace works independent of and prior to our initiative: like the planted seed that is growing quietly in the ground. God’s love is sovereign: our primary task is to be still, to be quiet, and to know that God is God. It is in that quiet and peace that we receive the seed, the Word, and it is then that we are moved to act, out of a fullness of love and the Holy Spirit. All fruitful, joyful activity springs from a prior passivity. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of rest...physical, emotional, mental spiritual. 12-steppers are vigilant against becoming hungry, angry, lonely, tired...HALT...which trigger their addiction. For me tired is the worst by far: if I let myself become fatigued, physically or emotionally, I become another, dark person. My absolute number one priority...before prayer or work or relationships...is to get my rest! But interiourly, a spirit of rest...of confidence, trust, peace, steadiness...is absolutely essential. The original sin was one of activism: rather than trusting and resting in God’s peace, Eve took the advice of the serpent and acted on her own initiative, and then seduced Adam into the same. We Americans are disastrously prone to shallow activism with our pragmatism, technology, meritocracy and aversion to contemplation. Our age is not vulnerable to a quietism of lethargy and presumption; rather ours is a restlessness of hyperactivity, consumption and empty entertainment. Our action will be joyful, peaceful, fruitful and beautiful to the extent that we learn to rest in the Lord.

A Spirituality of Feelings

If acceptance of a feeling is a profound, complex and immensely significant act, it is only the first step. Feelings do not come on their own but are always/already interiorly connected to other realities including: thoughts, habits or acts, memories, hopes, acts of the will and relationships. Imagine my boss gives me a dirty look and I become both sad and mad. The feeling is unavoidable and can only be objectively accepted and acknowledged. But immediately I am flooded with related thoughts:  "I am such an idiot; I do everything wrong; I will never amount to anything!" or "He is such an idiot; no wonder everyone hates him; he is a piece of garbage!" These thoughts must be separated from the initial feeling; they are already moving me beyond the feeling into an attitude of self-hatred or resentment. And so, while I accept the feeling I clearly and firmly reject the thought that follows it and almost seems to live in it. I might say: "I made a mistake and am only human and will learn from this" or "I know the boss is stressed and having family problems and I will accept this small injustice" or "Here comes my inferiority or anger problem; I will call my friend at the break and talk about it." So here we see the important role of things like cognitive therapy which addresses the thought process but leaves the feelings to move along on their own. The marvelous "spottings" method of Dr. Low's recovery method for nervous people is a remarkable case of early cognitive therapy in which the sufferer of anxiety learns to substitute objective for negative thoughts:  "This is distressing but not dangerous; humor is my best friend, temper my worst enemy." The power of positive thinking of Peale (in proper measure) finds its place here in the cognitive. My own favorite, from the Pentecostal tradition, is the "power of praise" by which the believer habitually gives thanks and praise to God in ALL things, even the catastrophic and tragic, in belief that "God works all things to the good of those who love Him." This habit of thought, practiced diligently, has revolutionary impact! The second reality that is deeply related to feeling is habit or act. For example, the frustrated child has already learned to express his anger by biting or throwing his food. This again is more than a feeling; it is an action. While the feeling of frustration cannot be avoided, the action must be stopped. Here we have the role of discipline, punishment (or "consequences" for the culturally correct), behavioral modification, asceticism, and "a program." So, the addict learns to pick up the phone and call his sponsor instead of going to the bar; the believer remains in prayer even when it feels empty and futile; the spouse re-affirms his fidelity even as he feels a chill. Memory is a third partner of emotion: a feeling normally recalls, however obscurely, memories:  the bosses dirty looks reminds me that my father never came to my games or always yelled at me from the stands. And so, a feeling needs to be scrutinized, especially when it is inordinately intense: am I responding to a memory? Here we see the role of classic psychoanalysis: identification of a hurt is not a full healing but it does bring some distance and an opening for healing and newness. In charismatic prayer we have here the "healing of memories" and in deliverance the prominent role of forgiveness of those who have hurt us.  The forth is the most important: hope. Every feeling brings with it a spiritual act of despair or hope: my sadness casts me into discouragement or moves me to consolation and encouragement. Hope, springing from faith, is the essential and quintessential human movement. At the ultimate and deepest level, (capital H) Hope in the supernatural sense is the only adequate antidote to death, tragedy and heartbreak. But even short of that, a natural human hope is the force that moves us forward through adversity and suffering towards the good. We see here that the greatest enemy of the human spirit is precisely despair. The deepest pain cannot destroy the human spirit; but despair can. At the core of every addiction and sin is a quiet act of despair: I am lonely, I will get high and watch porn. At the heart of every worthy human action is hope or prayer: I am lonely, I will volunteer at the soup kitchen. Every movement into truth and goodness is an implicit prayer, even when done by a cognitive atheist. And so the fifth element is already included in the act of hope or despair:  an act of the will. An emotion is an opportunity for an act of the will: my feeling is hurt; now I can choose to self-pity, to resent, to converse, to retaliate, to reconcile and eventually forgive. Lastly, feelings always occur in the context of relationships and so the feeling, the remembrance, the physical act, the movement of the will, the hope or despair...all enter somehow into a complex of relationships with family, friends, colleagues and God. And so, every feeling, even if covertly and implicitly, open up to influence from Another...or it doesn't. A feeling, then, must be accepted as it is, in its integrity. But a feeling is never just a feeling: it comes bound up with thought, habit, memory, will, hope, and relationship. It opens out into ever greater event, encounter, drama and promise.

A Psychology and an Ontology of Feelings

A sound psychology directs us to accept, acknowledge, own and experience our feelings. To deny, repress, ignore or flee an unwelcome feeling is ultimately destructive since it will re-emerge in a covert and dysfunctional manner. However, to "accept a feeling" is a deceptively subtle, mature, dense and difficult act. To say "I am angry" or "I am sad" is already to have a degree of interior peace so as to distance oneself, at least partially, from the feeling; it is to achieve an intellectual clarity and confidence about what is happening; it is to remain engaged and at the same time transcend the emotion. A profound and paradoxical relationship is established when I say "I am angry": the Self or the Soul is at once saying "I am angry; I am my anger; anger defines me" even as he is saying "I am able to distance myself from my anger; I am more than my anger; I can consider and understand my anger and make decisions about what to do with it." So: I am my anger even as I am more than my anger! This paradoxical relationship is rooted in the body-and-soul nature of the human person. I like to ask: Which is true: "I have a body" or "I am a body." Both are true to a degree; but neither are entirely true. The two mutually infuse each other and must be held in tension:  I am my body but I am greater than my body. I do not live in my body the way I wear a summer suit; but there is an indefinable, mysterious way in which I am more than my body. A similar dynamic is at work in the 12 steps of AA. By saying "I am Joe and I am an alcoholic" I am defining myself as an addict, as one afflicted with a condition impervious to acts of my will. But implicitly I am also confessing that I am more than this condition; that in acknowledging it, publicly, I am already starting to escape or transcend it. Implicitly, I am believing that "I" am more than this condition; that there is hope for deliverance even as my own will, on its own, is not able to free me. Similarly, in confession we say "Bless me Father, for I have sinned!" When the sinner says with the repentant thief "You Lord are innocent but I am guilty; remember me when you come into your kingdom," he identifies as a sinner but he is hoping that there is a Soul or a Self that is able, miraculously, to be separated from sin (if not by his own agency) and so he is confessing "I am more than my sin if you will have Mercy upon me." And so we see that the path to liberation from feelings, from addiction, from sin and even from death is Confession of the truth: "I am sad; and I am addicted; and I am sinful; and I am terrified of death! But I sense that I am more than that and I hope in your Mercy O Lord!"  (The next blog will be on the spirituality of feelings.)

Just Friends: Romance and Friendship

"Just friends!" my daughters would assure me, all through adolescence, when I would inquire about a male friend. Looking back, I think they were being honest. Something in my family's emotional DNA: we were for the most part, all (happily) delayed in the development of our romantic faculties. But we made up for lost time: at the end of college or soon after we all met someone, fell in love, married and lived (imperfectly but for the most part) happily ever after. This raises the question: when does a friendship become romance? Indeed, what is a romance? I will define it: a mutually exclusive, possessive relationship in which the lovers share and seek Joy through a union that is deep, intense and multi-leveled (emotional, intellectual, spiritual, physical and social). Romance, ideally, is a movement into spousal or conjugal union, marriage. What distinguishes romance from friendship is its exclusive and possessive nature. Interiorly, what structures it is the act to seek:  to search for fulfillment in a union with my beloved.  In a romance, I look to my beloved...I seek...for a fullness of joy and satisfaction. Romance is a disastrously unstable relationship:  the higher the elation the deeper the eventual sadness. A crash is inevitable since the euphoria is a transient satisfaction of profound if unrecognized interior loneliness that the beloved can never fully quench. Yet, in the best of circumstance, when couched in an context of maturity, faith, virtue, family and fidelity, Romance can mature into patient, enduring, sacrificial and finally satisfying spousal union. But it must go through the dark night...and many stormy mornings, rainy afternoons, and freezing evenings. If the quality of Joy abounds in romance, it is equally true that all loves are structured by Joy. And so, there can be a romance-like quality to many a relationship which remains, nevertheless, a friendship. Feelings of delight and desire come and go like the breeze and the sunshine and are themselves not constitutive of romance. What is decisive is the "turning" and the "seeking" and the "looking" for happiness from the one who is loved. This definition helps clarify the foggy notion of emotional or psychological adultery. While physical adultery is clear, graphic and easily identifiable, the emotional is not. Yet, we can imagine a married person, a priest or religious who remains physically abstinent but is not genuinely faithful and chaste. But is not a feeling or emotion, however intense, that despoils the heart and soul. Rather, it is an interior act of the will, a looking toward the beloved in the manner of idolatry, a turning away from the spouse or the sacred vow. And so feelings of delight and desire will invade our ordinary friendships randomly, unwillingly, inevitably. They can charm, inspire, encourage and enlighten us! They can frustrate, embarrass, seduce, and demoralize us! In the agony and the ecstasy of romance, they are fruitful when they move us, in God's grace, to renew, deepen and intensify our abiding and fundamental fidelity: to spouse and family, to God,  to vocation and mission and to all our friendships. The Gospel announces that life is ultimately the Great Romance: of love between our Bridegroom and ourselves. Penultimately, romance eventuates in Calvary: some denoument of loss, sadness and tragedy. But this is a purifying movement into the Great Union of love. May all the agonies and ecstacies of love move us into intimacy with our Great Lover and purify us in all our loves!

Intimacy and Reverence

Every relationship...and Love in all its splendid forms...is a dance of intimacy and reverence. This is not exactly the same as closeness/distance although the two polarities are analogous and mutually infuse each other. Mysteriously, genuine intimacy with the other enhances reverence so that proper closeness elicits respect, esteem and even (with God) adoration. The human body...in its fragility, corruption, radiance and bi-sexuality... is the temple of intimacy and reverence. In its sickness it can repel us even as its pain elicits our compassion. In its beauty it can draw us into reverence, or into a false intimacy of use and disrespect. Pope Francis tells us is that we will be judged according to how close we become to all flesh. Clearly he is speaking of reverent intimacy, specifically with the flesh of those who suffer. Our Lord Jesus, in his newly-resurrected body (He is NOT a ghost or a spirit, but emphatically a body, albeit glorified...he shows his wounds, eats fish) pushes Mary Magdalen away ("do not grasp me") even as he draws the distant, skeptical Thomas close ("put your hands into my wounds"). In these contrasting encounters, we see Jesus protecting distance and reverence with the woman and overcoming distance and establishing intimacy with the man. This suggests that the feminine, especially the maternal, impulse is to enclose the Other in an improper closeness; while the masculine is to remain distant, autonomous and indifferent. Clearly, the female psyche is intrinsically open to and accepting of the other where the male ego is discrete, rigid and excluding. And yet, the opposite dynamic is common in the area of romance where the male attraction, insensitive and overwhelming, pushes past boundaries while the womanly instinct (where it has not been compromised by a culture of promiscuity) is to protect her inviolate, precious integrity. And so in romance there is a special responsibility for the woman to protect reverence as the crude masculine longing for a more physical and superficial intimacy requires discipline and correction. And then again, in other contexts the stronger emotional nature of the woman calls for moderation by the male mind with its higher capacity for distance, objectivity and sober judgement. The complexity, creativity, nuance, and fecundity of the the dance of intimacy/reverence, between man and woman but in all relationships, is endless and reflective of the Absolute Intimacy and Distance within the Three-In-One!

Movements of Love

There are five distinct, but interwoven, movements in every love: care, esteem, delight, companionship and pain. Care is the desire for the well-being and flourishing of the beloved; it is tenderness in the face of suffering, fragility, vulnerability, misery and preciousness. It is particularly pronounced in maternal and paternal love. Esteem is appreciation for the goodness, virtue and inherent value of the beloved. It includes reverence for the profound, mysterious dignity of the other and admiration for particular qualities of goodness such as kindness, courage, intelligence, faith, and compassion. It is particularly strong in filial love towards parents and those we admire including leaders, heroes and saints. Delight is the heart and soul of love: it includes approval but goes beyond the cognitive to a celebrating joy in the beauty of the beloved. And so we see that at his baptism and transfiguration, Jesus is the object of his Father's delight:  "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." By companionship (from the Latin: "to have bread together") we mean here that friends, family or lovers always share in Good and goods, Truth and truths beyond themselves: family and children, mission and vocation, Church and community. Genuine love always opens up beyond the immediate relationship and overflows fruitfully and generously into eventfulness and novelty. Lastly we must acknowledge the dimension of suffering and loss that inevitably characterizes love as we know it. Pain and grief are inevitable, even as they take a variety of forms: death, disappointment, unrequited love, and tragedy of various kinds. Such suffering becomes meaningful as sacrifice when it purifies, expresses and strengthens the love. Quintessentially we see this sacrifice in Jesus on the cross: in the physical, psychological and spiritual agony (including the feeling of abandonment by his Father) he forgives the repentant thief, he forgives his torturers, and he consoles his mother and disciple. In this world love cannot avoid suffering; but in the person of Jesus we see that all love with all its pain is already infused with the Delight of heaven.

Great Desire

Desire...the deep, abiding, insatiable, Capital-D Desire...not the fleeting desires which distract us from deep Desire...Desire! It soon becomes obvious to the reflective soul that no person or thing, no quantity of money or success or achievement or power...not even the greatest love affair or family...can finally satisfy the longing of the human heart! What is the meaning, purpose, destiny of this profound, unquenchable longing? This is The Big Question! And there are a limited number of answers. Let us consider four: Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist and Judaeo-Christian. Buddhism considers desire and suffering as illusory so it presents a path to enlightenment whereby the observant is relieved of both desire and pain into a state of serenity and unity. To an outsider, however, this is finally a negative, indeed nihilistic view of desire as ultimately futile. Hindu faith articulates the classic cyclical view, including reincarnation, in which life is an endless circle that returns always without a final purpose, resolution or end. The immortal soul is destined to return endlessly to earthly life like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day. Again, there is a futility to Deep Desire! Lastly, atheism in its classic forms (Freud, Marx, Nietzche) denies any final, ultimate meaning to life and counsels us to find limited, but ultimately despairing, consolation in small-letter loves and truths. (A word about agnosticism as not-knowing: this is a skeptical and often honest and humble posture that is finally unstable and is moving, if slowly, into Trust or Suspicion! It is no final resting place! ) By contrast with these nihilisms, Christian faith (and its relatives Judaism and Islam) is indeed Good News:  Desire is destined for super-abounding fulfillment beyond our wildest expectations! St. Augustine said it best: "Our hearts are restless until we rest in you O Lord!" We are created by an infinite Lover who desires (but does not need) us and infuses us with a desire for infinite Love...and we are destined to fulfill this desire...beyond our wildest imaginings! And so, our path is not to suppress or deny or flee desire, but to inflame it infinitely! Our task is not even to control Desire or desires in the way of moralism or stoicism! Quite the opposite, we are destined to enhance, deepen and strengthen Desire, and even our desires, into fire! And so, we need not fear frustration or futility or sadness or desire! We need only to intensify Deep Desire...and all the smaller desires that feed it: longing for love, meaning, achievement, safety, serenity, agency, intimacy, truth and beauty! And so our prayer can be:  "Inflame me with love for you O Lord; let this fire consume what is not of you; and purify all my loves!"

Revolt of the Trumpian Id

The Trump victory can be understood, in Freudian terms, as the revolt of the Id...on many levels. An expression of rage and frustration, with the barest coherent ideology, it is (among other things) a furious repudiation of the oppressive PC liberal superego with its relentless insistence on abortion, climate control, multiculturalism, uncritical embrace of Islam and the undocumented, liberated and sterile sex in the form of compulsory funding of contraception and homosexual marriage. Ironies abound in this paradoxical, contradictory development! Democrat liberalism is, of course, the Party of the Liberated Libido, the unrestrained Id! In the early 1970s, the party of the Catholic working man morphed into the regime of sexual liberation, with abortion as back-up birth control. Along with this came the deconstruction of gender, homosexual militancy, and now trans-genderism. A hidden totalitarianism has now shown itself since this regime demands compliance: evangelical and Catholic agencies MUST place little girls with gay men, photographers MUST service homosexual "marriages" and the Little Sisters MUST pay for contraceptives and abortificients. The contempt our liberal elites have for Catholics and evangelicals (vivid in the Wikileak emails) explains the relief so many of us felt at Trump's unabashed anti-political-correctness. In another way, however, the Trump movement is a clear rejection of traditional Republicanism. His blatant, shameless vulgarity and rudeness was a striking contrast to the gentile, aristocratic dignity of a Romney or a Bush. The personal insults he flung at his primary opponents represented a regression to juvenile if not infantile immaturity. His stereotyping of immigrants and Muslims was a shock to the refined Republican establishment; as was his his embrace of protectionism and entitlements. His unembarrassed lifestyle was at once an embrace of the  sexual revolution and a rejection of the classic Christian super-ego. Paradoxically, however, he embraced the anti-abortion movement and religious liberty even as his own family offered a vivid image of old-fashioned loyalty and unity. Perhaps the strongest influences on him personally are his daughter and her husband who practice traditional Judaism.  Talk about mixed messages! In a most confused, befuddling fashioned, he offered to shield us from the excesses of the sexual revolution he himself has personally embraced. While many of us moral conservatives could not vote for him, enough evangelicals and Catholics "came home" to give him victory in the rust belt.  In the classic Freudian melodrama, the conflict between Id and Superego is finally mediated by the Ego and so we can question if the multi-layered conflict here can be moderated and guided by reason and moderation. Here we consider the Ego of Donald Trump! On the one hand his is a powerful, confident and overwhelming Ego; on the other he is clearly a narcissist with symptoms of borderline personality disorder, especially in his capacity for "splitting" (seeing the other as entirely good or entirely evil.) At this point, we can only pray that his better angels prevail over his many demons. He will surely work with Ryan on the moral/cultural issues (especially the Supreme Court nominee); he will probably comply with the liberals against Ryan on behalf of entitlements; he will likely be frustrated if he really attempts the wall and the expulsion of Muslims. We have no idea what his foreign policy will be. His project of replacing Obamacare will be endless complex and difficult, especially if he retains the valid gains of that law in providing coverage to previously uncovered. However, at the end of the day the Freudian triad of Ego-Id-Superego is a materialist reduction and an inadequate anthropology. Freud himself said that the capacity to love (and to work) is the sign of psychological health. But his philosophy had no place for such a spiritual reality. The human spirit is an infinite desire to love and be loved...a longing for the True and the Good and the Beautiful...a craving for union with others and with God's very Self. And so, it is not the Ego but the Spirit of Love, the Holy Spirit of Jesus and His Father, that can mediate the pressures of the Superego and the impulses of the Id.  And so we pray that this Spirit inspire our new President and all our leaders and ourselves in our own little arenas of responsibility!

Why Do Men Hate Women?

Misogyny: Where does it come from? The roots are complex, dense, profound, multilayered! But I (as a man myself) have some ideas. 1st, the disengagement from Mother, the oedipal passage into attachment with Father including weening and everything else, hardly goes perfectly and so it leaves an emotional wound, an aching loneliness. Ideally, this residual longing inflames the romantic passion and drives the man into the spousal embrace where it can be healed and transformed. In a worse case scenario, as a result of the dis-attachment, the man harbors a resentment against women. 2nd, in an even worse development, the oedipal passage is entirely frustrated by a smothering mother who refuses to "cut the apron strings." This can leave the emerging man vulnerable to waves of dread and resentment against the dark force that enslaves and emasculates him. This sad development seems more prevalent today. Sixty years ago, most of us grew up in large, intact families and the mothers met their emotional needs with their husbands and a group of children. Today, the single-mother with one son has become common and it is understandable that such a mom might unconsciously transfer her emotional needs to the son who is then enmeshed, smothered, confused and eventually enraged. 3rd, the adolescent male psyche, for reasons biological as well as sociological, over-values strength, independence, autonomy, and decisiveness. By contrast, the female psyche...spontaneously, effortless, gracefully...is empathetic, relational, maternal, interdependent, humble and generous. The immature male brain often perceives the very splendor of the woman as weak and dependent and he despises her! 4th, with puberty the young man is invaded by overpowering physical desire for the woman and spends an inordinate amount of the rest of his life in a state of arousal and frustration. It is not fun to want something so intensely and not get it; and so...rage! This frustration is intensified by a culture of pornography and license. 5th, these overwhelming passions bring with them dark currents of shame, guilt and fear. People like to blame the Church but that is a slander. These emotions are more primal, universal and irrepressible. Fear is especially important even as it is unrecognized: subconsciously, the lusting man knows he is out of control and he is afraid but does not know it and has no clue how to heal. So: hatred of the woman! 6th, longing for woman  and for fulfillment through spousal communion was infused into us at our creation. But this entails an inter-dependency, a vulnerability, a humility and a receptivity. As mentioned above, the immature male ego...insecure, fragile but rigid, arrogant...cannot tolerate his own "weakness" and so resents the one he craves. 7th, the man is abstract, analytic detached; the woman is concrete, synthetic and engaged. We are created to compliment and fulfill each other; but under conditions of suspicion and fear, the one attacks the other. 8th, we delve deeper into the psychology of dependence: all of us come from a mother, a female body, a finite and mortal creature. The woman is a reminder of our beginning, but also of our end: that we are mortal and will die.  This dread of death is also reinforced by the drastic experience of masculine arousal and climax which is a premonition of death as finality. And so, dreading death the man despises the messenger! 9th, for a man to love a woman with the reverence and tenderness she deserves he needs a deep interior reservoir of gentle, confident, generous strength. This does not come naturally: it comes with after an intensive, extended discipleship; after being tested, disciplined, corrected, coached and encouraged; as a result of participation in a brotherhood of chivalry and courage; and the result of ordination by the brothers and elders and as a gift from on high. Our anti-gender culture has stripped our young men of almost all the paths to ennobling masculinity. Thus emasculated, misogyny becomes an attractive option.  10th, it will be helpful to distinguish two expressions of misogyny: aggression and indifference. The first is obvious enough in abuse (verbal, emotional, sexual, violent) but the second is arguably more prevalent and catastrophic. It is disengagement, dismissal, and negligence. In the Genesis account, Eve is seduced by Satan when she is alone, unaccompanied by her partner. This suggests that part of the descent into sin was a disengagement on the part of the man: he did not care enough or he was distracted or lazy and discouraged. 11th, we know that Satan despises Woman more than any other creature and he simply loves to draw men into his misogyny. We see that he targeted the woman Eve, not the man. A credible tradition has it that his revolt against God was out of a furious envy when he learned that a woman...fleshly, mortal, dependent, modest, humble, fragile...was to be the Mother of God and Queen of Angels, including himself! This was TOO much! Since then, he despises woman and seduces us men to join him. A misogynist is a lackey, a stooge, a lapdog of Satan. By contrast, a Friend of God is a Lover of Women...passionate, tender, reverent...a Lover of Women! 12th and last: we were created, man and woman, for tender, generous, reverent intimacy with each other...within a greater intimacy of adoration, with God's very self. When we fall out of that ultimate relationship, we fall into suspicion, fear, shame and resentment. Misogyny! And so, eventually we men rediscover our love for women through our love for God. Woman is God's greatest creation, as epitomized in Mary our Mother, and Jesus, like his Father, is the Great Philogynist ("philo" lover, "gynist" of women). A friend of God is a lover of women! In the gospels we see that women are drawn to him...he does not seek them out or call them to be disciples...but they are drawn to him and love him...Mary Magdalen, the Samaritan divorcee, the woman caught in adultery, Mary and Martha. He just loves women...for themselves, in perfect purity and generosity, in gentle, tender strength. So, when we approach the Eucharist to receive his body and blood, we are ourselves receptive to the Bridegroom who loves us, his bride. But we men especially approach our brother, captain, Lord and God...eager to imbibe his love for women...to be healed of fear, insecurity, weakness...and be filled with his gentle, pure, geneous love! A Friend of God is a Lover of
Woman...tender and yet fierce, passionate and yet chaste, reverent and yet exhilarated...a Lover of Woman!

Fidelity and Fecundity

Success, productivity, achievement and efficiency are all good values, in their proper place, but are vastly overrated, even idolized, in our culture that is sick with meritocracy (the competent are inordinately rewarded, the slow or disabled are neglected and even despised), careerism (we value people by their achievements), and techno-idolatry (obsession with control and production; dismissal of contemplation as resting in beauty and meaning.) The ugliest word in the English language is "reproductive" as applied to sexuality and conception. When I taught high school girls, a "liberated" feminist colleague asked me: "Doesn't it scare you that our students could be reproductive agents?" I was quiet and then asked: "Do you mean mothers?" What scared her I didn't know; for my part I was in awe of the mysterious endowment of  maternity these young women already enjoyed in potential.  "Reproduction" to me means xeroxing copies of some form; or an assembly line that cranks out 750 widgets an hour, all identical and therefore "reproduced."  To apply this mechanical term to the Mystery of conjugal love and human conception is sacrilegious  and blasphemous. Anyone who can speak this word with a straight face is already lost in a world bereft of depth, enchantment, purpose or splendor! By contrast with the empty, stark, dismal world of "reproduction" is the luminous Mystery of conjugal communion, fidelity, intimacy and fecundity (fruitfulness). These indwell each other in an enchanting and awesome manner. Fidelity, communion and intimacy (emotional, intellectual, and spiritual as well as physical) entail a mutuality in rest and deep interaction between the Lovers, be they married, friends or family members. These are not actions, externally, against objects as in the production process, but a mysticism of profound, active-and-receptive inter-communion. And out of this, there emerges...surprisingly, mysteriously, wondrously,..fecundity or fruitfulness. The epitome of this is, of course, the union of man and woman which is blessed by the procreation of an utterly new and distinct and infinitely valuable person. But something similar happens between friends and family members and marvelously so in any genuine spiritual friendship, that is any relationship of affection and respect in which the two, or more, open up to the True, the Beautiful and the Good. Imagine the fecundity of a garden: it is not a production or achievement but a serendipitous synchronocity that involves seed, soil, nutrients, water, sunshine and a greater directing hand that we can refer to as nature or God. Something wonderful, ineffable, and inexplicable is at work...beyond even the sum total of the elements. And so, let's ease up on efficiency, achievement and productivity! Let's surrender ourselves, in fidelity, to each other, and our purposes, and our communities/families, and our God! Let's rest with each other and in each other...inefficiently...in affection, reverence, tenderness...and hope for the fecundity that comes only as gift!

Fatherless: A World Without Men

In an insightful, encouraging article, Jacqueline Mattis ("Religion and Spirituality in the Meaning Making and Coping Experiences of Afro-American Women: a Qualitative Analysis" in Psychology of Woman Quarterly 26 (2006) 309-321) highlights the importance of faith and prayer in the lives of representative Afro-American women. Far from a crutch or a sign of immaturity/irrationality, she shows that religion/spirituality is a source of strength, determination, resilience and purpose as such women face tremendous adversity and hardship. How refreshing to find, in a journal of academic psychology, such a witness to the quiet strength, patience, perseverence and serenity of spirit that is so common among mature black women in our society! How good to see the development of a positive psychology that considers the role of faith in the development of character and virtue! What a change from the predominant trends of psychology when I was a student in the 1960s! There were arguably three such that impacted the Catholic and Christian communities: the Freudian which was straightforward about its contempt for religion as a crutch and an irrationality; the humanist psychology of Rogers that idolized individual subjectivity, self-fulfillment and personal choice and implicitly/covertly, which is to say deceitfully, despised any restraints on the Imperial Self such as humility, obedience, chastity or piety; and there was Jung's gnostic cult of the deeper self which preached an alternative religious belief and practice but masqueraded as scientific psychology. Of the three, Freud was refreshing for his honesty and candor. A worthy, forthright opponent is of infinitely more worth than a deceitful and seductive "friend": Jung and Rogers (despite their valid contributions), in their pretense as an "enlightened Christianity," did far more to undermine faith   than did the blatant, militant atheism of Freud. Happily, Mattis emphasizes the role of intimate relationships with other women, especially the mother/daughter connection, in the vigorous spirituality of these women. It is here, however, that a dark shadow descends: Where are the men? The only reference to men is indirect as she sees the confrontation with patriarchy. The only masculinity here is the toxic, oppressive and hostile hegemony of the (bad) patriarch! No benevolent, supportive presence of father, grandfather, bridegroom, brother or male friend. To the extent that men are present, they are the enemy! Related to this is her important distinction between religion and spirituality: the former she understands to be adherence to the practices and beliefs of an organized religion, while the later is a more subjective activity by individual. She rightly says that they overlap each other and pledges to use the language of the participants in the study. But this reader was struck by the overwhelming predominance of spirituality over religion. Faith for these women, aside from intimate relationships with other women, is an activity by a single individual facing overwhelming adversity and supported by the Higher Power. There is no mention of sacrament, authority, tradition, priesthood, preaching, law, liturgy or ritual. Now religion (from the Latin "religio" meaning "bonds") has to do with the connections between people, in community here and now and also with the broader Church as well as our ancestors, descendants and all those who preceeded and follow us. These representative women have a deep, spontaneous, and intense closeness to a few women but apparently little meaningful connection to a broader community or the "masculine" world of objective, institutional religion. The later is implicitly viewed as hostile to the feminine spirit. Now it is true that women are by nature vastly more spiritual, open to the transcendent, compassionate, generous, and humble in their need for help from above. It is the men who are challenged in these arenas of compassion, generosity and piety. It is the men who desperately need a PROGRAM of laws, authority, tradition, ritual and discipline for them to develop a masculine spirituality as son of the Father, bridegroom of the woman, and father...above all as father. Despite the customary feminist reference to (bad) patriarchy, the world presented in this article is that of a matriarchy where the women care for each other and the children and defend themselves against the man. Spirituality as a heroic,  largely solitary project is seen as vastly superior to religion as formalized, impersonal, and oppressive. But it was NOT meant to be so: we were created for each other...men and women...to desire, and delight and reverence each other...to be charmed and fascinated and thrilled by each other...to tenderly care for and honor each other. The problem, of course, is not with the women, but with us men. These and similar women are amazing in their resourcefulness and resiliency. Femininity is a mysterious endowment of compassion, goodness, trust and humility! Women can and do live without men! They can and do live without organized religion! But it was not meant to be so! Men cannot live without women: we become vicious thugs or passive wimps! Jesus himself did not call women to be his disciples and apostles; rather they were spontaneously, without invitation, drawn to him (Mary Magdallen, Mary and Martha, all the women at the foot of the cross). But Jesus knew it was the men who needed a rigorous, intense period of mentorship and discipleship in order to become disciples, fathers, priests. And so today it is us men who similarly need spiritual fathers, fraternal fellowship, and rigorous progams of spiritual development...that we become the sons, brothers, bridegrooms and fathers (as well as uncles, cousins...) that our women deserve!

Sara

The name Sara or Sarah means "Princess or Noblewoman" and indicates a woman of dignity, elegance, influence and goodness. The scriptural Sarai had her name changed to Sarah by God in the life-changing covenant He established with Abraham and Sarah and seemed to strengthen the good and strong meanings of the name. Strangely (to us), she was half-sister (same father, different mother) and wife of Abraham. In that culture (and Muslim societies even today) the incest taboo was less rigid and allowed for such combinations of blood relationship and marriage. We see this reflected even in the love poetry of the Song of Solomon where the groom refers to his Beloved as his "sister"...something strange and dissonant for the modern ear. Her beauty was so extraordinary that Abraham made a habit of introducing her as his sister, not wife, lest his hosts kill him to possess her. Twice she cooperated, loyally and obediently, in order to save his life.  Both times she was accepted into the household of the hosts, Pharoh and Abimelech, in order to be wed. Both times God intervened to save her from defilement and her husband from death. The modern reader sees here perversion. But the ancient scripts are boldly free of moralism and of excuses:  she, and her husband, lie and risk adultery to save his life: period. It is not excused; it is not rationalized! These early texts are refreshing in their candor about the unvarnished failings of the protagonists:  what always emerges is God's gracious hand in delivering His people in spite of their glaring sins and failings. Here Sara can be seen as emblematic of so many women who are betrayed by their men but mysteriously protected by Another. Overall, perhaps the most striking quality of Sara is her loyalty to and deep communion with Abraham. Although polygamy was common at that time, especially for those as affluent as Abraham, they seem to have been monogamous. And she is faithful and close to him in all their adventures, including those we find morally abhorant. Her great curse, of course, was her infertility, the greatest deprivation an ancient woman could face. God had promised that they would be father and mother of many nations but she bore no children. Out of desperation, she gave Abraham her slave Hagar (clearly there were no other wives) who bore him Ismael. This act on their part showed a lack of faith in God's promise; but it did not frustrate His promise, which was slow but steady in coming. Hagar then has contempt for her mistress because of her barrenness and Sara responds in deep envy by getting Abraham's permission to mistreat the slave then who runs away. Here again we see the candor and honesty:  again she is far from praiseworthy but is significant, despite her moral failings, because she is God's chosen and He loves her.  She is also here a counter-example of insecurity, jealousy and resentment. Abraham, unable to resolve the conflict, reluctantly sends Hagar and his son Ishmael away. God, as usual, comes to the rescue and assures him that the two will be protected and also become mother and father of many nations (today's Muslim Arabs!) Later, Paul in Romans, will see her as an example in that God worked through her and her husband not through their own effort, exertion, will or goodness, but in their very poverty, weakness and barrenness through His great mercy. It is ironic however, that this icon of faith, like her husband, weakened and acted out of disbelief and distrust. She did this on another occasion at Mamre where the three mysterious strangers promised that she would be pregnant within a year and she laughed in contempt. Again, a failure in faith and yet God's plans were not frustrated by her unbelief! And so, she is emblematic for the poor in spirit, those who are unfruitful and even weak in faith and morals and who are nevertheless visited by Mercy from on high. This noble Beauty is far from perfect: indeed, she is deceitful, almost adulterous, jealous, resentful, weak in faith. Yet, she is fiercely and intimately loyal to her companion Abraham in the covenant, mission, a communion they share with God. The Bible says she lived to be 127 years old (a sign of greatness and goodness) and she was honorably buried by Abraham who was later buried with her...together even beyond death. Rabbinic legend has two versions of her death, both iconic of maternity and connected to the story of Abraham's (aborted) sacrifice of son Issac. According to the first, she died of sorrow at (mistaken) news of her son's death; in the second she dies of Joy upon learning that Issac was still alive. Surely, both versions point us to the sorrow of Mary(the Pieta) and her Joy at the Resurrection! Later in our Scripture, in the first letter of Peter, Sara is used an an example for women to adorn themselves, not with outward ornaments, but with inner qualities of quiet, gentleness, graciousness, generosity, and strength. This is not the contemporary ideal of an "empowered woman" where power is a mimesis of crude machismo strength as "force against force." Rather, this is a premonition of the influence, the inspiration, the encouragement and ennobling femininity we find quintessentially in Mary our Lady and Mother!

The Worldliness of our Holy Father

Our Holy Father's homily on Sunday's gospel about Lazarus was classic Francis: for the most part a gripping, illuminating spiritual reflection on the mysterious, blinding allure of "worldliness" as a kind of false consciousness, largely unrecognized by the victim, worse than sin as act since it is sin as condition. But then he gratuitously insults clergy who indulge the rich and indifferent as "pusillanimous." This word means, of course, "weak-spirited" in the sense of cowardly, unmanly, bereft of courage, backbone and spine. This is the worse insult you can give a man. Call me ugly, stupid, smelly, awkward or whatever you want and I will chuckle to myself; but call me a coward and I MUST fight you. If you are a man, you know what I mean! Why does our Pope express such visceral contempt for (not all of) the clergy? Of course there is truth to his view: we have experienced clergy who are complacent, indifferent, arrogant, detached from and indifferent to the "Lazarus" in our midst. But his tone is not compassionate or mournful; it is contemptuous. It is like the cartoon in which the psychologist responds to his patients confidence with: "You did what? That is disgusting!!!!" Clericalism, in the worst sense, is virtually constitutive of Catholicism because our sacramental economy requires a caste of priests, some of whom unfortunately configure the reverence they receive into arrogance, privilege and complacency. And so, its companion, anti-clericalism, is equally inevitable. But for our number one cleric to be so anti-clerical is unprecedented. A key to understanding may be our Pontiff's understanding of "worldliness" as false consciousness, often unrecognized. Perhaps we can see that Pope Francis himself is unaware of a "worldliness" that has infiltrated his own thinking. He seems to have interiorized an intense resentment of the privilege, arrogance, and complacency he sees among the clergy. This is striking in that he exaggerates mercy, in other areas, even at the risk of truth and justice. It is an attitude I have observed elsewhere: for example, a pastor who is kind and gentle with his flock but brutal with his curates.  This spirit of resentment seems to influence our Pope in other areas as well. It seems that he deeply identifies with the "Lazaruses" in our midst, but unlike the biblical figure who is silent and apparently serene, he is angry at the indulgent Dives. In regard to capitalism, he again despises those who are privileged, powerful and distanced from the poor. Again, his tone is not that of a pastor inviting repentance in the manner of the great saints; rather he seems distant, judgmental and disdainful. A third area, the most important in my view, of a subtle but unrecognized worldliness regards the rigorous, ennobling sexual Catholic ethos of the Church. This was given a new, fresh and inspiring in the teaching of St. John Paul II. Rather than continuing this legacy, Francis sympathizes with the view that the Church is oppressive, judgmental, and exclusive with its teaching and practice. He seems to have interiorized the contempt of the world towards the Church and is embarassed about the demanding, sanctifying ethos it offers. On the positive side, however, Pope Francis has a basic humility about himself as a sinner in need of God's mercy; he is genuinely a man of the poor; he is strikingly authentic and free; and basically a man of the Church committed to the Deposit of Faith (despite his irrepressible urge to admit those in non-sacramental unions to the Eucharist.) He is the weakest teaching Pope in my lifetime of seven pontiffs, but by historical standards he is not that bad. In this Year of Mercy we can only pray for mercy upon our fallible Pope, and the Lazaruses who suffer among us, and all us complacent Diveses.

Weeds and Wheat: The Civil Rights Movement Remembered

Having come of age during the Civil Rights Movement, I consider it the finest moment of our nation. Not only was the cause impeccably just, but the evangelical, non-violent modus operandi of the Reverend King and his lieutenants was courageous, ennobling, fierce yet gentle, and boundlessly generous. In captivating our hearts, it was marvelously successful: by the end of that tumultuous decade of the 60s, racial inclusion was passionately embraced by all our major cultural institutions: academia, the churches, media, entertainment, sports, the government, political parties and the law. Twenty years later, in the 90s, my employer UPS put all of us management through diversity training where we learned that profitability and global capitalism had zero tolerance for the faintest trace of bigotry. Racism, as a historical and institutional force, was deader than the dinosaur. No doubt there are residual traces among old timers and the unavoidable ethnic, tribal rivalries endemic to male adolescents (think the West Side Story). A type of racism that I personally find despicable is the current practice by hoodlum, black teens in the cities of northern NJ of mugging undocumented Latino workers who are flush with cash on payday Friday...but you will not learn about that on public television. Nevertheless,  culturally racism is as taboo as animal sacrifice. In all of the worlds I have inhabited in my adulthood, I am in the minority as a white...and quite comfortable surrounded by descendants from Africa, Asia and Latin America...in Jersey City, at UPS operations in Newark Airport, teaching in urban Catholic schools, in our own modest residence for low income women, and in the many urban Catholic churches I attend. However cultural movements are complex and contradictory, like us human beings ourselves, and never pure but always infected with sin. The weeds and the wheat, prior to the Second Coming of our Lord, cannot be definitively separated. And so I identify three significant, unfortunate consequences of the Civil Rights Movement: the sexual revolution, the concentration of power in the federal government and the cult of victimization. None of these three weeds were intrinsic to the Civil Rights Movement itself, which was wheat of finest quality, but they were deeply involved with it and thereby given impetus. It was an unholy intimacy. Regarding the sexual and cultural revolutions that accompanied the King movement: the wives of the black leaders, but few others, were painfully aware of the virulent promiscuity (particularly with young white women) of the leaders of the movement. There seems to have been an implicit but strong compact of compliance between the sexual liberals and the civil rights leaders and that coalition remains the inner core of the Democratic Party to this day. And so, in spite of the immense legal and political advances, the black family emerged from that decade in worse shape than it began and has been getting worse since. Despite almost 50 years of the easy availability of contraception, today 2/3 of black babies conceived in NYC are aborted. And Afro-Americans are flawlessly pro-choice! The second catastrophe that issued from the Civil Rights movement was the moral approval of concentration of power in the federal government. Local governance in the South was not able to correct the deeply-structured racism so the intervention from the higher power was necessary, correct and immensely successful. This moral success, which should be considered an exception to a wholesome federalism served to consecrate the concentration of power in the federal government (which was the result of many and various historical forces throughout the 20th century) and accelerated the decline of intermediary organizations and the loss of a sense of subsidiarity even among Catholics. And so, we have the atomizatiion of the individual, the emergence of a enveloping Mother-State, and the weakening of smaller social units including the family, church, and smaller social bodies. Lastly, we have the cult of victimization that pervades our culture as all kinds of minorities claim the sacred shroud of victimhood and compensatory entitlement. This blend of self-pity, jealousy and impotence is the starkest contradiction of the original Civil Rights Movement with its ethos of quiet strength, forgiveness, courage and hope. We do well to honor the memory of Reverend King who is in the company of a very elite group of American moral heroes including Lincoln, Ceasar Chavez and Bill W of the 12-step tradition: all notable for their humility, wisdom and courage. But we do well also to renounce the legacy of sexual license, centralization of power and the culture of victimization that has instituted itself in all our major cultural institutions and elites.

I Believe What I See!

“I believe what I see.” She said...with serene intelligence. She is a student of human psychology: a learner and a searcher, open-minded and sober in investigation, eager for meaning but thoroughly contemporary in her agnosticism and skepticism, especially about wild claims about the invisible, spiritual universe.

“I believe what I see.” This is good start, a wholesome and trusting empiricism: “I believe…” An act of faith, trust, belief! I believe what I see…I trust in my eyes …which are given to me to access what is real…and will show me what is actually there beyond my own mind.

This is already an act of faith: in my eyes, my mind, my natural capacities for perception, and the validity of my senses and intellect. This reflects a wholesome and naïve realism. Implicitly this involves a trust in Reality: that there is an objective reality beyond subjective experience which unveils itself, benevolently, to attentive eyes and inquiring intellects. After all, a deep suspicion and distrust would discredit the validity of one’s own perception and judgment: maybe I am dreaming, maybe I am deluded, maybe my deepest thoughts and convictions are entirely the result of cultural conditioning, of needs and desires, of my own peculiar and finite experience. It is a good start to trust one’s experience: to look, and think and question and listen and ponder…receptively, trustingly, gratefully.

Consider: every act of perception and cognition is already an interpretation, an intuition of meaning and purpose beyond the immediate, discrete sensory data. A stranger smiles at you in the street: you smile back, having received it trustingly; or you look away in defensive avoidance, or glare back angrily muttering “What do you think you are smiling at, stupid?” You arrive at your office on your birthday to find a bouquet of lovely flowers on your desk:  you are beaming with delight as you already have a sense of their origin and purpose. Indeed, the human mind is an unending search for meaning and purpose: what does that smile or this bouquet mean? What is it all about? What is the purpose of my life, of my yearnings, of my suffering?

And so the question is:  What do you see?

Do you see a bad infinity of hard molecules banging against each other senselessly? (Materialism?)

Do you see a cruel universe where the deepest human longing for love and meaning is ultimately frustrated? Where life is an endless battle between conflicting wills, frustrated egoisms and and vicious tribalisms? (Nietzsche?)

Do you see a futile cosmos that emerged senselessly from Nothing; that lacks any interior coherence or meaning; that is doomed eventually to disappear into that same Nothing? (Nihilism?)

Or: Do you see a marvelous world charged… gratuitously, serendipitously…. with splendor, surprise, and purpose?

Do you see the love and compassion that moves you as an image of an even greater, an infinite love and compassion that moves the stars and the atoms and the human heart?

Do you sense that the yearning that possesses your heart…and all human hearts…the desire to love and be loved TOTALLY…Do you sense that this longing is destined to be surpassed beyond its own limits?

What do you see? Cherish your agnosticism as an impetus to learn! Continue to look, to see, to question, to probe, to wonder, to marvel, to admire, to love, to thank, to pray (even if skeptically), to sacrifice, to exult and delight in Reality with all its Truth, Beauty and Goodness…and to Hope!

A Theological Style: Dulles and Guarino...Loyal, Receptive yet Rigorous, Modest, Detached

I was delighted that the theological work of our friend Fr. Tom Guarino was recognized by the Vatican naming him a monsignor.  I recalled a similar happy event when Fr. Avery Dulles was named a cardinal for the same reason. I think that Fr. Dulles was something of a mentor to Fr. Tom who has assumed leadership in the Catholic-Evangelical-Dialogue. I have found in them a similar and striking theological style that is at once:  fiercely loyal to the Church, open minded and yet rigorous in thought, detached from any particular theological approach, and modest in epistemological expectations.  Each shows a fierce filial loyalty to Christ’s Church as Mother and Magister in all elements starting with Scripture, Tradition, the magisterium and the testimony of the saints. Each practices “theology on the knees” albeit in a humble, unpretentious manner.  Secondly, they welcome dialogue with other faith traditions and a diversity of theological approaches even as they are precise and painstaking in analysis and wholesome criticism. For example, they will parse a papal statement to discern exactly what is and isn’t intended, not hesitating to point out limitations, but in a stance of loyalty and obedience.  Docility of the will is joined with clarity of the intellect. They welcome the positive insights of various approaches but identify the imbalances. Thirdly, and most interestingly for me:  they both seem detached from any particular theological approach. Neither seems committed to any thinker or school of thought. I suppose they are indebted, with all Catholic theology, to Thomas, Newman, DeLubac, and possibly Rahner and Ratzinger. But they seem detached: fully committed to the Church and her teaching but distant and free to accept and reject what they want from the competing schools of thought. They both favor a “models” approach which comes from Kuhn’s understanding of “paradigms” and is, I suggest, a soft Kantianism:  the “noumenal”,  the unapproachable Mystery of God and Heaven, is inaccessible, even if it is revealed, and our cognitive expressions are always inadequate and partial, if valid and necessary.  Theirs is a humble, modest and apophatic epistemology. We “know” God best when we know we are “not really knowing Him.”This is especially true of Guarino who is engaged with postmodern agnosticism and acutely aware of human knowing in its historicity, subjectivity, and enfleshed finitude.  I see three schools of theology competing in the Catholic Church today: a renewed, traditional Thomism; the conjugal mysticism of Balthasar, St. John Paul II, Benedict and their “communio” allies; and heirs of the transcendental (Kantian) Thomism of Rahner and Lonergan.  Dulles and Guarino do not surrender to any one approach but seem to borrow from each: they share a deep, prayerful spirituality with the romantic mystics but in a sober manner, without fascination for nuptial mystery as the very interiority of the Church. With the traditionalists they reverence the intellect in its capacity and orientation to truth even as they share with the Kantian-Thomists an awareness of subjectivity and finitude. They are more engaged with modern thought than the traditionalists, even as they renounce the slide of the Rahner/Lonergan heirs into an adulterous embrace of the most anti-Catholic aspects of modernity.  My own view is that Balthasar and  John Paul are the ones who directly, clearly and deeply answer the threat our age faces in regard to sexuality, family, gender and the very ontological reality of the Church as Bride of Christ. Dulles was the unrivaled dean of American Catholic Theology: admired by all even as he resisted the slide of much of the guild away from precious Catholic truths. Guarino continues his mission: educating generations of priests, dialoguing with Evangelicals in a time of crisis, and developing the Deposit of Faith. Guarino is a particularly gifted presenter: energetic, humorous, and virally contagious in his love for theology.  Deeply in love with Christ and his Church, broad and deep in scholarship, clear in thought, and zealous in search of Truth:  How blessed we are to have close to us such Fathers of the Church!

Polarities of Vocation and State of Life

My daughter's unusual and sometimes confusing vocation has caused me to reflect. Having professed herself in Christ to a life of evangelical poverty, chastity and obedience within the community of Memores Domini ("Rememberers of the Lord") she lives actively as a lay person in the world and is not a nun or a sister and even avoids the language of "vow" and "consecration."  Most of us Catholics can't quite put our minds around this. I think this is because we simplify "vocation" into a single polarity:  lay/married and priest-or-religious.  It may be helpful to identify four distinct but overlapping and interpenetrating polarities: apostolic mission vs. regular life; celibacy and marriage; sacraments of orders and matrimony; and the religious (called out of the world) and lay states. The primal New Testament distinction involved those called by Christ to share in his mission of proclaiming the Kingdom and the Word. These would be his 12 apostles, the other disciples sent out in pairs, and Paul and others. Many wanted to follow him but were told, in no uncertain terms, to return to their normal lives. Mary and Joseph were not called to apostolic ministry. Secondly, we have the call to virginity. Most of the apostles, disciples and early priests and bishops were not virgins although Jesus, Mary, Paul and probably Joseph and John were. But the spontaneous, passionate embrace of virginity, especially by young women, was one of the great Christian shocks to the pagan and Jewish worlds which had nothing even remotely similar. The independence and defiance of Roman patriarchy by such young virgins was as confounding as their embrace of martyrdom.     Thirdly we have the sacraments of orders and matrimony which complement each other but are neither incompatible nor necessary. We have married deacons who are bound in conjugal union and yet ordained for a special ecclesial or apostolic ministry. At the same time, many single and professed abstain from both sacraments. The last polarity contrasts ordinary "lay" life in society with a "religious" call out of the world into the monastary or hermitage. This was unknown to the apostolic church but initiated by the desert fathers and dominated the medieval world.  Virginity ordinarily accompanies this life although there have been some (in my view misguided) attempts to fuse marriage with such a retreat from the world. The classical religious community would be a cloistered community, common in the middle ages, but the more active, "apostolic" orders (inspired by St. Vincent De Paul and his followers) who work in the lay world in teaching and service of the needy are "religious" and yet "lay" in a sense. And so, we have in the Catholic Church a rich variety of combinations.  We have married couples who are called to an apostolic mission such as the itinerants of the Neocatechumenal Way or the Maryknoll affiliates; we have consecrated, celibate religious (such as my nephew who is a Franciscan Friar of the Renewal) who are not ordained and yet serve actively among the poor of this world; we have consecrated virgins who are not ordained and who have no specific apostolic mission other than the ordinary baptismal life of prayer, service and holiness. Indeed, all of these variations are expressions of the deeper, foundational union we all share with Christ and in Christ through baptism. Balthasar has taught us that such life in Christ inexorably urges us to a gift of self, normally in a clear and definitive manner in  the vows that constitute matrimony or virginity. But this simple, unifying commonality expresses itself in a rich and variegated symphony as our charisms and missions work mysteriously together for God's glory, our salvation and the transformation of Creation.


P.S.  Is one vocation or state of life superior to another?  Yes and No. The final issue is holiness of life and so we can imagine that the greatest living saint might be someone who is not ordained, not called to ministry, not vowed to virginity and not blessed with matrimony. Think of someone patiently suffering a great affliction! Perhaps mental illness! But objectively there is hierarchy, or actually three different hierarchies.  First, the virginal state is superior not just because it involves heroic self-sacrifice but because it is a truer realization of the Kingdom of Heaven in imitation of Jesus and Mary. Secondly, the graces of the sacraments are very special and powerful and have a certain pre-eminence. Lastly, a special call to apostolic-ecclesial service does set one aside and above the ordinary pursuits of society. And so, a celibate, ordained, and apostolic Christian has a special pre-emience. But that does not translate into personal holiness. Indeed, more is expected of such a person and failure in holiness for this special one is more gravely sinful. Additionally, within a genuine Catholic culture there are clearly three privileged and sacred roles. First, those who suffer, physically or psychologically, have a special closeness to Christ and are to be honored. Secondly, those who identify closely with the poor and suffering have a particularly strong blessing. Lastly, and especially in a society so misguided as our own, a special honor is due those who witness to truth in catechesis, teaching, preaching and writing. Great is the need for such witness!

Suprised by Grace: An American Beauty

In the 1999 classic American Beauty Kevin Spacey gives an astonishing performance as Lester, a no-life conformist suburbanite who breaks free from stale job and sterile marriage to embark on a journey of liberation by buying a hot rod, surrendering to his lustful fantasy about his daugher's sexy cheerleader friend, working out, smoking very good pot, venting his anger at his wife (a hilarious, delightful Annete Bening) and fleeing to a job with very, very low responsibility (flipping burgers at a fast food place.) His is the quintessential male midlife crisis. A psychologist would call this regression. His path would warm the hearts of Marcuse, Reich, Kinsey, Mead and all the geniuses of perversion who inspired the Cultural Revolution that transformed our society in the decades leading to this movie. Common sense (that has become uncommon since the 1960s) would see that this is a path to futility and despair. But the movie has a delightful, supernatural surprise in store! The story is narrated by the voice of the now deceased Lester in a tone of deep appreciation and peace from a heavenly, but not stereotypicaly  pious perspective. The object of his lust is an arrogant, aggressive, and seductive young blonde. The plot builds to the climax: he finally "gets" her as she surrenders herself. As he unbuttons her blouse, something deeper is unveiled. Timidly, fearfully she says: "This is my first time. I am sorry I am not better at this!"  Her facade has disappeared and she shows her real, vulnerable self.  Lester smiles lovingly, paternally. He reaches for a shirt and covers her protectively. He embraces her tenderly, chastely. In an instant they are both transformed...A Miracle! Through no merit or effort of his own, Lester is granted a revelation, a manifestation...of  the truer, deeper beauty, indeed the splendor, of this precious, fragile, misguided young woman. And this awakens within him, at last, his own greatness as a man, his paternity, his true virility. Lester's narrative is illuminated by that of his mentor: his daughter's adolescent boyfriend who is at the same time a drug user and dealer and a genius and mystic who may be mentally unstable. He explains that he had heard a heavenly voice assure him that "there is nothing to fear, ever!" and he had come to experience the heart-piercing Beauty that surrounds and permeates everything. Through the influence of his deviant saintly mentor and the self-disclosure of his Beloved, Lester is drawn into the Kingdom of Delight and Goodness! This movie is especially refreshing for a believer in that it entirely transcends moralism:  not only is Lester not trying to be good, but he is trying to be bad. But where sin abounds, so much more does grace! Something mysterious, efficacious, transcendent intervenes to bring him Joy and make him good. Balthasar would approve: it is Beauty that finally triumphs, not our own feeble efforts at virtue or vice...in a Drama of sheer Splendor! We see that his ridiculous, embarassing erotic fascination and her manipulative seductiveness were both mysteriously anticipatory of a heavenly Encounter, a genuine Event of piercing Loveliness!

Josephite Homosexual Union?

Fr. Groeschel said: "I would not have expected this, but I have come to know homosexual couples who out of love  for each other and God  have returned to the Church and a chaste life together as brothers." So interesting!  It is not at all uncommon, a gay friend assured me last week, that one or both members of gay or lesbian relationship lose interest in sex due to age, health, medicines and such.  He was interested in my thoughts about his budding romance. I cautioned:  every romance is doomed to self-destruct  eventually ... and the higher you go the deeper you fall ... after which there is heartbreak or transformation into something deeper and truer... a love rooted in forgiveness and contrition, generosity, faith and sacrifice. I recalled a homosexual couple who have taken in about a dozen disabled children and I remembered the worst of the aids epidemic and the many who cared for  their loved ones through suffering onto death.  I assured him of my prayers for his relationship but made it clear that that prayer included chastity. He was less than enthused  with the blessing. Later I thought to myself:  how about something like a Josephite union for such a couple?  In Catholic tradition a Josephite marriage is like that of Mary and St. Joseph: a real marriage but without sexual intercourse. To my knowledge, the Church has no definite teaching on such and it seems in tension with our pronounced emphasis on the procreative meaning of marriage.  But in unique and unusual cases, it seems to have borne fruit.  The Maritains (Jacques and Raissa) famously consecrated their union to a mission of truth. The blessed Quatrocci couple made the vow after having children... a more normal path. The Martin couple (parents of St. Terese) lived thus until directed otherwise by their spiritual director. I have known of one such couple in my own community. Could a homosexual couple, male or female, live together chastely in something like a marital union? It seems to me that such is not impossible and not wrong. I suspect many couples have lived thus...quietly, humbly, anonymously. It seems particularly congenial to the feminine psyche. Our sexual yearnings, I deeply believe, are informed by a deeper emotional/spiritual hunger for loving communion. We cannot rule out that Grace might create a true, holy union in a same-sex partnership.  It is unusual but not forbidden and might well be a holy thing.  I cannot imagine that the Church could officially, in principle,  endorse such a union, if it has not done so for heterosexual couples. And our understanding of gender, complimentarity and the marital union clearly indicate that a same-sex union by its nature would be less than fully conjugal. Nevertheless, it seems to me possible that such a friendship might participate, in a less than full manner, in the graces of spousal love if it is informed by purity, abstinence, generosity, compassion, mutual forgiveness and contrition, faith and a shared mission of love. I can imagine a spiritual director finding grace and sacrifice in such a companionship and encouraging participation in the sacraments if appearance of scandal is avoided. Wise discretion would be necessary but we want to always be open to the surprising workings of grace!