I think NOT! It is not about numbers: I would rather encounter one holy priest...radiant with love, humility, sanctity...once yearly, than encounter half a dozen mediocre priests daily. What we do need, desperately, is two realities: the Eucharistic presence of Christ and the Word of God.
The Eucharist is sum and summit of Catholic life; but I am going to say something to upset our liturgists. Even more than the celebration of the mass, I am personally consoled by the abiding presence of our Eucharistic Christ in the tabernacles of the world. It is the permanency, the reliability, the constancy that I cherish! Let's be honest: daily mass is over in 28 minutes; Sunday mass in 58 minutes. Most of the time my own mind is wandering. Even when I focus on the paschal mystery being enacted my intellect and emotions remain dull and not equal to the event. But I take great consolation that Jesus abides in our midst twenty-four seven, every day of the year except for late Good Friday through Holy Saturday. He is with us: As we scurry about on a million errands, He is there! When we sleep, He is there! When we wander into sin, He is there! Always present to us! Always waiting on us! Always patient and available and merciful!
Let's play overrated/underrated! What is, absolutely, the MOST UNDERRATED reality in the history of our cosmos? No-brainer! The Eucharistic Presence! Christ present is the most wonderful thing imaginable, and yet He is almost entirely ignored. That indifference and neglect extends also to liturgical fashion after Vatican II in that it emphasized the liturgy as banquet and experience and downplayed the abiding physical presence of our Lord in the tabernacle.
The first thing the Amazon and the entire world needs is a craving for and delight in our Lord's physical presence. I imagine a remote village in the jungle that sees a priest once a year. They await him eagerly with joyous anticipation: it is the highlight of the year! Throughout the year, however, they find time to abide with the Eucharist, in silent adoration as well as shared prayer including communion services. Every month a group does pilgrimage to where the priest is to confess, celebrate Eucharist, receive instruction and encouragement, and return with the Body of our Lord for reception at regular gatherings. The theologically correct criticism of this approach is that it seems to minimize or marginalize the actual event-encounter celebration of the Eucharist. Fair point. We need balance here! My hope, however, is that the silent adoration and the deprivation of the actual celebration will feed a hunger and eventually an increase in genuine priestly vocations. In this way the Church grows in Eucharist adoration and craving.
The second, absolute necessity is the Word of God. In this we do well to emulate our Pentecostal brothers and sisters. In the Amazon area and throughout Latin America there is concern about the exodus of Catholic into Pentecostal churches. I do not share this concern: I greet it happily. For the most part, those "converting" are coming closer to Christ in a fervent act of surrender, an intenser form of ecclesial communion, and a devotion to the Word of God. Pentecostalism is spreading like a forest fire...and without eco-conversion, without liberation theology, without married priests, without pagan syncretism. They are spreading because they love Christ, live in close communion, and listen to the Word of God. They should be our best friends and role models. In a Church with fewer priests I imagine an emergent laity, a la Pentecostalism, on fire with the Word of God...let thousands of Scott Hahns flourish!
The two paths of renewal suggested here are quite different: the first, a revival of late-Tridentine love for the abiding Eucharistic presence; the second a radical ecumenical communion with the fiery Pentecostal movement. Both, however, center in the person of Jesus Christ, in sacrament and word. The Church need not moan and groan about numbers of clergy; She needs to delight in her Lord in His physical presence and in His Word!
Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Monday, October 28, 2019
In Praise of Extending Sexual Latency
Classically in psychology, the period of sexual latency is the period prior to puberty ( up to 12 or so) during which the sexual energies are quiet, dormant and peaceful. This calm is ended with the onset of adolescence, explosively so for the boy who finds himself overwhelmed by erotic passions and involved in the agonistic struggle to achieve masculine identity. The girl's itinerary, it seems to me, is briefer, more telescoped, less eruptive physically, but maybe even more intense emotionally. I want to argue for a second, culturally created, period of latency and peace through adolescence, from 12 to about 20 years old or so. I envision a cultural/social arrangement in which young men and women engage in a variety of wholesome activities and interact with each other unburdened by romantic/ and sexual involvement. Clearly, there are major advantages to single-sex high schools in light of this vision.
In Eric Ericson's stages of development the achievement of identity belongs to adolescence, ant that of intimacy to early adulthood. We do violence to the organic growth of our youth when we allow them to be pressured into physical and emotional intimacy before their identity is matured. Better for them to throw themselves into academics, sports, work, family, same-sex friendships and a moderate degree of social, chaste friendship with the opposite sex. This allows for the steady, solid formation of identity, uncomplicated by the volatile roller coaster of dating.
And so, when my older children were approaching high school, I told them I would like them to avoid serious dating until well into or after college. This did not go over well at the moment. But for the most part, I can happily report that my own seven children emulated the pattern of my own family cohort of nine: little or no dating until at least late in college. The outcomes have been excellent: solid, happy marriages.
Old fashioned dating may be a thing of the past, but a new danger has emerged: the obsession with LGBTQ sexuality. Now we have Catholic high schools sponsoring clubs that support this movement. This can only be detrimental to the development of teen boys especially. Surely we want to discourage all forms of bullying and hate, especially in a Christian environment. But the drumbeat of gay militancy is harmful for both those who do and don't experience same-sex attractions. The high school will benefit from a degree of quiet, anonymity, and even avoidance of these issues.
For our Catholic youth, for sure, we need a clear, candid and reverent catechesis of the sexed human body in regard to: the inner meanings of masculinity and femininity, sexual chastity as an aspect of purity of heart, the importance of fidelity even to one's future spouse, the unitive/procreative nature of sexual intercourse, the power of concupiscence and its disordered consequences, the mercy of confession, the vocations of virginity and celibacy, and the grave, indeed horrific, nature of romance and sexuality uprooted from marriage and family and therefore sterile, extrinsic, manipulative and dominating.
The intrusion of the gay agenda into the Catholic High School is problematic in several ways.
1. Obviously, it's affirmation of gay identity and activity clearly contradicts the Catholic view of sex as a sacred encounter of man-and-woman, within a sacrament ordered to new life and a community of two that is exclusive, permanent, and the bedrock of society.
2. Secondly, it is a big mistake for a young man, whose emotions and identity are in flux, to fix, as in cement, his identity as "gay." More broadly, it is ill-advised and narcissistic for anyone to center their identity around sexual proclivities, but this is even more disastrous for the teen. It is not irrational to imagine future law suits as those formed by LGBTQ clubs sue the schools that sponsored them.
3. For the heterosexual youth the LGBTQ presence is also disturbing. The young man is insecure in his own identity, vulnerable to shame about his sexual feelings, and involved in often brutal competition with boys who are hostile and belittling. It is not by accident, nor mere homophobia, that aggressive young men intuitively use contemptuous language around homosexual acts to demean and insult each other. It is because here is an inherent indignity, a violence, a lack of mutuality, a toxicity and a dominance/subservience in the very nature of homosexual intercourse. It has been this way and probably always will be: notwithstanding the laws, taboos and disapproval out of the gay movement, in the crude, primitive, and violent culture of insecure male teens, the two privileged instruments of contempt and humiliation are the insult to the mother and the allegation of homosexuality as servility, weakness and lack of virility. This is unfortunate, but probably not avoidable. The argument here is that the sponsoring of gay clubs, pride, parades, rainbows and causes will not repress this regrettable dynamic but may inflame it.
A benign neglect of the gay agenda is important within Catholic education. A clear and comforting catechesis on sexuality will prepare teenagers of all types to receive, calmly, the chaos and violence of sexuality and concupiscence, whatever its presentation. And our youth will enjoy a relative quiet and peace in which to strengthen their identity and prepare for intimacy.
In Eric Ericson's stages of development the achievement of identity belongs to adolescence, ant that of intimacy to early adulthood. We do violence to the organic growth of our youth when we allow them to be pressured into physical and emotional intimacy before their identity is matured. Better for them to throw themselves into academics, sports, work, family, same-sex friendships and a moderate degree of social, chaste friendship with the opposite sex. This allows for the steady, solid formation of identity, uncomplicated by the volatile roller coaster of dating.
And so, when my older children were approaching high school, I told them I would like them to avoid serious dating until well into or after college. This did not go over well at the moment. But for the most part, I can happily report that my own seven children emulated the pattern of my own family cohort of nine: little or no dating until at least late in college. The outcomes have been excellent: solid, happy marriages.
Old fashioned dating may be a thing of the past, but a new danger has emerged: the obsession with LGBTQ sexuality. Now we have Catholic high schools sponsoring clubs that support this movement. This can only be detrimental to the development of teen boys especially. Surely we want to discourage all forms of bullying and hate, especially in a Christian environment. But the drumbeat of gay militancy is harmful for both those who do and don't experience same-sex attractions. The high school will benefit from a degree of quiet, anonymity, and even avoidance of these issues.
For our Catholic youth, for sure, we need a clear, candid and reverent catechesis of the sexed human body in regard to: the inner meanings of masculinity and femininity, sexual chastity as an aspect of purity of heart, the importance of fidelity even to one's future spouse, the unitive/procreative nature of sexual intercourse, the power of concupiscence and its disordered consequences, the mercy of confession, the vocations of virginity and celibacy, and the grave, indeed horrific, nature of romance and sexuality uprooted from marriage and family and therefore sterile, extrinsic, manipulative and dominating.
The intrusion of the gay agenda into the Catholic High School is problematic in several ways.
1. Obviously, it's affirmation of gay identity and activity clearly contradicts the Catholic view of sex as a sacred encounter of man-and-woman, within a sacrament ordered to new life and a community of two that is exclusive, permanent, and the bedrock of society.
2. Secondly, it is a big mistake for a young man, whose emotions and identity are in flux, to fix, as in cement, his identity as "gay." More broadly, it is ill-advised and narcissistic for anyone to center their identity around sexual proclivities, but this is even more disastrous for the teen. It is not irrational to imagine future law suits as those formed by LGBTQ clubs sue the schools that sponsored them.
3. For the heterosexual youth the LGBTQ presence is also disturbing. The young man is insecure in his own identity, vulnerable to shame about his sexual feelings, and involved in often brutal competition with boys who are hostile and belittling. It is not by accident, nor mere homophobia, that aggressive young men intuitively use contemptuous language around homosexual acts to demean and insult each other. It is because here is an inherent indignity, a violence, a lack of mutuality, a toxicity and a dominance/subservience in the very nature of homosexual intercourse. It has been this way and probably always will be: notwithstanding the laws, taboos and disapproval out of the gay movement, in the crude, primitive, and violent culture of insecure male teens, the two privileged instruments of contempt and humiliation are the insult to the mother and the allegation of homosexuality as servility, weakness and lack of virility. This is unfortunate, but probably not avoidable. The argument here is that the sponsoring of gay clubs, pride, parades, rainbows and causes will not repress this regrettable dynamic but may inflame it.
A benign neglect of the gay agenda is important within Catholic education. A clear and comforting catechesis on sexuality will prepare teenagers of all types to receive, calmly, the chaos and violence of sexuality and concupiscence, whatever its presentation. And our youth will enjoy a relative quiet and peace in which to strengthen their identity and prepare for intimacy.
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