The Charism of Silliness

Spiritual writers commonly warn against the dangers of silliness. The dictionary describes it as foolish, trivial, superficial, zany, nonsensical, crazy, irrational and generally a lack of common sense, good judgment and responsibility. Not a pretty picture! Nevertheless, I strongly agree with St. Philip Neri who demonstrated it as a charism, a marker of transcendence and interior freedom, a distinctive delight of the Kingdom of God. As always, the etymology throws light on the deeper realtiy: the Middle English "seli" means blessed, innocent and hapless and comes from the Old English "gesilig" meaning blessed. So, St. Philip was on to something: there is something blessed about being silly. In its pure form...free of resentment, rebellion, cynicism...it is a form of joy and freedom. Genuine silliness has an interior, hidden logic of its own and awakens surprise, delight and laughter. It is a release, a transcendence of the burdens of sadness, guilt, shame, fear, resentment, lust, pride and all bad things. When we are really being silly we are in a zone of sublimity and lightness, of freedom and spontaneity. It is also a medium of communion with others. Babies and children take great delight in the silly. Grandfathers, especially (in my view) have a special dispensation to be silly with their grandchildren and enjoy the shared delight that flows. It is a healthy thing for adults and children to be silly together. It seems to be more of a masculine charism or virtue...but we will not stereotype as some women are very, very silly and there are men born without a silly bone. This is probably because men suffer more tension...specifically aggressive and sexual tension...and silliness is a release from tension. In the developmental journey of the young man away from his mother's embrace into the world of men and the Kingdom of the Father silliness is a wholesome and harmless way to gain freedom from maternal enclosure. Silliness can be a way to distance oneself from maternal enclosure without giving insult or disrespect. My own mother would say: "you are silly" in a way that was not approving or delighted but not condemnatory or angry. Victory! I made my escape without giving offense. Silliness in the best sense is lightness of heart and mind: it is a relief from moral seriousness, from an oppressive superego, from guilt, from ideological fervor, and from anger and fear. Silliness is utterly distinct and unique and has its own form, logic, essence or gestalt; it cannot be described by anything beyond itself. If you don't know what it is, no one can explain it. But it is closely related to its cousins which include humor, laughter, teasing. Humor has more intellectual or cognitive content while silliness is more subliminal, primal, pre-conscious, anomalous or preternatural. Laughter is the instinctive physical accompaniment to both humor and silliness. Teasing includes an aggressive dimension while silliness is more pure and generous. Silliness is also related to a family of spiritual, even Pentecostal gifts which free the restricted and burdened psyche to relax and exult in the love of God. These include: praying in tongues, holy laughter, sleeping in the spirit, and more ecstatic song and dance in worship. Think David dancing before the Ark! In all these experiences, the deeper self or soul is released from fear, anxiety, restrictions and burdens and exults exuberantly in the love of God. Generally, morality can tend to be oppressive, judgmental and negative; while piety can be sentimental, and lacking in vigor and stamina. These charismatic gifts of spontaneity and exuberance are especially important for the masculine psyche which needs to be lighthearted and buoyant and yet magnanimous, expansive and heroic. Women by nature have more integrated and harmonious psyches and less rigid ego structures and aren't in need of these gifts. Fierce masculine energies related to conflict and sexuality desperately need to find wholesome outlets or else they become bottled-op and repressed and we have wimps or they go wild and we have thugs. Eastern Christianity may have a deeper appreciation for this mystery as we know the Russians honor the tradition of being a "fool for Christ." At least we Romans have St. Philip Neri! If silliness is a special quality of infancy and childhood, it seems to be also a grace for the aging. Early and mid-adulthood is involved with the serious, challenging responsibilities of parenting and work. But the very young and the very old are free from these burdens. They can more fully indulge in the grace of spontaneous, ridiculous, delightful and liberating silliness.

Spotlight: Systemic Evil

I was pleasantly surprised by the movie Spotlight : it was not unfair to the Church but did shed a helpful light on the priest sex scandal. The movie focuses on the investigative team (fine performances led by Michael Keaton)as they unravel the cover-up. Most are lapsed Catholics who carry no obvious animus against the Church although one editor is clearly troubled because of loyalty to the Church. The lead editor instigates the investigation: he is new to Boston, a Jew, and motivated by a professional interest in the truth. It seems that he would do the same for the NFL or the Boy Scouts or the NY Times. At a key point in the drama, the investigators are excited about evidence that "(Cardinal) Law knew!" The editor clarifies: it is not about Law. It is about whether there is a systemic cover-up! An even better clue comes later when key investigators are horrified at the lawyers who helped the Church with the cover-up. A lawyer answers that years earlier he had supplied that very newspaper with evidence about the priestly wrong-doing but that it had been buried by the Metropolitan section of the paper. Who was head of that section, we discover, but the lead investigator, the hero of the drama. In other words, it was not about the good guys (journalists) and the bad guys (clergy) but a deeper, pervasive pattern which recruited almost everyone: priests, laity, journalists, lawyers, and victims' families. It truly was a systemic pattern, largely invisible, unrecognized and not spoken about: it had the umbrella of normality over it. The sex abuse itself can be see in two parts: First the actual pedophilia abuse of children which involved serial behavior by a small group of very sick men; secondly, the broader pattern against adolescent males that was clearly a homosexual phenomena although (systemic) political correctness forbids that this be spoken. But the cover-up was even more disturbing for many of us. It seems to me that this cover-up was a perfect storm of group-think created by a convergence of forces: desire to protect the reputation of the Church (just like we would shield our own families), loyalty to fellow priests, naivete on the part of innocent clerics unfamiliar with sexual perversion, bad advice from psychologists (treatment will cure them!) and lawyers (avoid liability at all cost!), a clerical distance from and distrust of the lay victims, and even a deep shame-discomfort and avoidance of a disturbing matter. The concept of "systemic evil" is relatively new and falls outside our traditional understanding of actual sin as mortal and venial and is more closely related to original sin or the "sin of the world." The mimetic theory of Rene Girard can shed light: in various ways, conscious and unconscious, we imitate or mirror the behavior of others. It is our very nature to do so. Often we are hardly aware of it. Some patterns that constitute our world include: collaboration with the abortion industry by voting compulsively for pro-abortion democrats; the contraceptive mentality that is not mentioned, cannot be challenged and is now invincibly institutionalized by Obamacare; the politically correct deconstruction of gender that leaves young men adrift without markers on the road to manly fidelity and integrity; an overarching technology and bureaucracy (both governmental and corporate) that violates subsidiarity and leaves us, personally and communally, paralyzed and impotent; a class system (NOT racism, which has not been a systemic evil for half a century) that is getting worse; and a meritocracy which rewards self-centered advancement at the expense of solidarity. The scary thing is that these dynamics are working on us relentlessly and we barely are aware!

Holy Thursday Foot Washing

I welcome our Holy Father’s change in the Holy Thursday that allows the priest to wash the feet of laypeople, not only priests. The foot washing is not itself a sacrament but a liturgical gesture, a meaningful part of a most important event, a kind of a sacramental. It is not essential or foundational for our faith but is an important dimension. It has to be located within the sacramental life and I would place it, not so much in relation to Orders, as to the more universal and foundational sacraments of baptism, confirmation, Eucharist and penance/anointing. In all of these, all of us are cleansed, washed, served, caressed by Christ and thereby anointed to do the same to others. We are, all of us, immersed in His Mercy and propelled to express the same to others. Orders is, for me, a subordinate or subservient sacrament in that it serves the others: it is important, not in itself so much, but because without it we do not have Eucharist, confirmation, confession or anointing of the sick. It is a servant sacrament, instrumental and inferior in that it serves the more primary events of encounter and communion with Christ. So, a Holy Thursday sermon on priesthood is a clerical distraction from Christ’s gift of Himself in the Eucharist. The priest, as servant of this Mystery, takes a humble, discrete back seat. The greatness of the priesthood is entirely derivative: it is great because it brings the Sacraments! Therefore, its greatness must lie in humility, anonymity, and quietness. Like John the Baptist, the priesthood must decrease, that Christ may increase. With this in mind, we can see a bright side to the profound blow against the status of the clergy delivered by the sex scandal and other developments. When I was growing up, the parish priest was the very most respected man we knew. The priesthood has lost that reputation. But a humbled, lower-status priesthood may be a blessing as it is seen for what it is: a humble servant of the Word and the sacred mysteries, nothing more and nothing less! By this logic, one might conceivably expand even further: allow the laity themselves to do the foot-washing while the priest-president watches peacefully. Imagine: husbands foot-washing their wives and vice-versa; politicians washing the feet of the homeless; doctors washing the ill; rich washing the poor; grandparents and grandchildren; Democrats/Republicans and Libertarians/Socialists; and so forth. Importantly, this must not reduce the mystery to social service, but anchor the slightest act of mercy in the sacramental economy of Mercy. And as the flow of Mercy, out of the Mysteries, into all of human life, expands and flourishes, the humble cleric, unworthy instrument of God’s grace, can only rejoice!

A World Bereft of Tender Masculine Strength

Sicari, a current movie about war against a Mexican drug lord, is nauseatingly violent, but remarkable for performances by Emily Blunt and Benecio Del Toro and for what it says about our culture: a world bereft of tender, masculine strength. The opening sequence establishes the Blunt character as a competent, tough, courageous FBI operative; as a leader of men in a men’s world; as a person of impeccable integrity. One marvels that we now live in a world where a woman, and a petite and lean one at that, can more than hold her own in an arena of brutal combat. Perhaps another Katniss(Hunger Games)? Not at all! She is recruited into an undercover, illegal, black-ops led by a dark, brutal, sadistic Machiavellian assassin, devoid of moral scruples, principles or sympathy (scary performance by Del Toro!). He works nicely with the lead intelligence agent, (a convincing Josh Brolin) who is equally cynical and manipulative if garrulous and superficially charming. Our protagonist’s intelligence, courage and good will are entirely overwhelmed … from beginning to end … by the relentless, unrestrained, destructive machismo aimed at the violent drug cartel. In this world chaotic, invincible macho violence prevails and our feminine hero is rendered powerless. In several scenes she is brutally attacked and almost killed by the muscular, ruthless male antagonist. In this world there is no tender, restrained masculine strength to counter the testosterone-fueled empire of evil. Her colleague, a black man, is an intelligent, principled and competent agent like herself but he is equally powerless against the Big Dogs. An endearing Mexican father, shown playing soccer with his son, senselessly becomes a victim as he cooperates with the cartel. This is the opposite of the you-go-girl, feminist movies like Hunger Games or Divergent! In this world intelligent, tough, courageous femininity is completely dominated and violated by male violence. This is a frightening reflection of the world in which we live! We lack father figures: strong, confident, reassuring men who can face evil and prevail against it; men who are capable of protecting women and children; men who are strong and good at the same time. Our current President is emblematic: he is well-intended but impotent in the face of ISIS, of the chaos in Syria. Rather than reassuring us about terrorist immigrating as refugees, he ridicules the fears. Instead of protecting women and innocent unborn children, he champions abortion and forces the Little Sister of the Poor to pay for that despicable, toxic, and sinful abomination called contra-ception! A genuine “Anti-Father” (in his public positions, NOT his private life which is praiseworthy!) he represents the flight from paternity in his fierce, uncompromising war against the meaning of sex and gender as generativity, fruitfulness, chastity and loyalty. The fundamental evil of our time is a crisis in masculinity: a failure of men to be strong and yet good, to be humble and chaste, to be real fathers. The women are fine: there is about femininity an irrepressible, infallible and efficacious goodness. They cannot help themselves as they are instinctively and unreflectively compassionate and generous. We men are not so: to become strong, tender men we need a long and arduous itinerary of formation; we need to be coached, encouraged, challenged and rebuked. And we need to open ourselves, in our weakness (cowardice, lust, anger, selfishness, etc.) to the strengthening of the Holy Spirit! In this year of Mercy, let us all pray: “Let your Mercy be upon us as we place our trust in you! Strengthen us by the indwelling of your Holy Spirit! Strengthen us, Lord Jesus, with your own strength, with you beautiful, sweet, gentle strength!”