Cursing the Party

I curse the Democratic Party. This is not a matter of political disagreement or opinion; it is far deeper than that. Viscerally, morally, spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, socially, financially...I despise, I loathe, I renounce and I curse to hell the Democratic Party. To be clear: it is not the Democratic Party of my youth (1947-70) that I curse. That was a force for good as it defended the worker, the poor, minorities and exemplified Catholic social teaching, including an implicit defense of innocent life and the family. It is the Party of my adult life that I curse. Like a Jew curses Nazism or an Afro-American the KKK does this Catholic curse The Party. There is a special emotional and personal intensity to my hatred because I so loved the party in my youth and was so betrayed in my early adulthood. Nor do I curse any person who is a Democrat as I distinguish between the person and his misguided, even evil allegiance. I respect and like the Clintons, Obamas, and Bidens just as I might very well respect, like and even love a Nazi, Commie, bigot or Islamist if I knew one. I don't know any of that later group, but I know plenty of Democrats. Where I live (Jersey City) Democrats are probably more than 99% of the voting population. At least half of those I most love and respect pledge allegiance to the Dark Side on the cultural issues of defenseless life and the cultural sanctity of sex and family. That such good, intelligent, practicing Catholics and others can actively support the agenda of death is the most troubling, mystifying reality of my lifetime. That such moral blindness can descend upon good people remains always, for me, a source of shame, consternation and sadness. I think about the heritage I will leave behind me. At my funeral, how will memory of my life affect family and friends? My hope is that they will be somehow strengthened in their love for Christ and His Church, in devotion to family, to marriage or vocation, and to care of the weakest. And over my grave, I hope that they will quietly, serenely, and confidently whisper a curse on the Party of Death.

The Fractured Male Psyche

With the Boston Marathon bomber we again see the propensity of the fractured male psyche for a hidden, secret life. Friends, family, coaches and those closest to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are completely mystified: no one detected signs that he was capable of such violence. By now we are used to the hidden life: priest pedophiles (but never nun molestors), Opus-Dei-FBI-spies, policemen-criminals, and so forth. My own uncle was in military intellence for most of his life but withheld this information from his closest family members even when he was dying. His spy life was entirely opaque, closed off to and untouched by his family life. All my uncles fought in WWII but they didn't speak about it: it was a different world. We now know that there are morphological, neurological bases for this in the male brain: fewer connecting neurons between brain areas so that the sectors are disconnected from each other, in contrast with the integrated, synthesized, and organically harmonious female brain. But more important than that is the unavoidable, inexorable gender abyss. Boys and girls are both conceived in, born from, nursed by, and raised by mother. The developing female never leaves this world. She imitates, echoes and images her mother and never fully separates. Not so with the boy. By the age of two, he is already spending most of his day in a world entirely incomprehensible and inaccessible to Mom: the terrain of super heros, Jedi knights, pirates, and other aggressive, malicious, combatative villains and heros. Mom has no clue about the nature of this world: she observes benignly, externally, absolutely denied participation and comprehension. Just recently I have been informed by two different, intelligent women that war is always about food: even viewing of The Godfather or Goodfellows is unlikely to illuminate them as their brain seems to be constituionally incapable of understanding the masculine nature of war. School is a continuation of mom's world (alma mater) and we see that girls do much better in that quintessentially feminine ambience. But by adolescence things really heat up for the boys. The dynamics of fist fights, bullying, gangs, competition, sarcasm, and aggression challenge and intimidate and the youngster is on his own: mom, teacher and school are useless on this battleground. Even worse: overwhelming sexual urges erupt from the testosterone volcanoe and with them bring urgent desire, fascination, shame and confusion and an entire drama that must be completely shielded from the eyes of mother. So the adolescent male finds himself alone with an under-devloped intellect and an insecured identity as he navigates three different worlds: the Good Boy" maternal environment of home and school; the battleground of conflict; and the maddening, intoxicating delerium of sexual desire. The last two easily collude to undermine the maternal influence. And so, the typical male is an unstable tri-part system with very weak, loose connections: the superego, the sexual beast, and the embattled combatant in a hostile world which must be fled or fought. Most of us are walking around on the verge of some kind of explosion or breakdown: the right combination of stresses, contradictions, frustrations and opportunities and we fall into violence, quiet despair, or sexual depravity. So how is the young man to confront these threatening worlds that are opaque to each other? How is he to integrate and channel his energies and longings? The key is: the Paternal Presence! I do not say "Father" here because I am referring to three distinct, but interconnected realities: the actual or surrogate Dad; the symbolic, cultural realm which I will designate as "Patriarchy" (to be mischevously anti-feminist); and our heavenly Father himself. Dad and God our Father have a clarity about themselves, but here we will deal with the "Patriarchy" understood in the very best sense. Like Dad and God, the cultural or spiritual patriarchy is a loving, transcendent, personal presence that descends, from a distant, awesome, superior realm, to the young boy to uplift, protect, challenge, discipline, encourage, correct, strengthen, and inspire. Patriarchy is the domain of law, discipline, tradition, authority, hierarchy, instruction, ordination, certification, testing, standards, risk, danger and empowerment. It is distinctively not that warm, nurturing, enclosing, affirming, comforting, inclusive, accepting and unconditionally loving maternal womb from which we emerge and to which we are so stronly drawn. It is the Father (Dad, cultural patrimony, God) who will coach, guide, train, and groom the young man...will elicit his loyalty and within that greater love synthesize all energies and desires...will prepare him for combat and model for him the splendor and tenderness of genuine sexual affection. It is heartbreaking to read that prior to the bombing, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev tweated: "I miss my father." He needed his own father, he needed the guidance of a genuine paternal culture and religion, he needed to truly know his heavenly Father. But the void of fatherlessness, for the male, will not remain neutral: it will be filled with a surrogate...usually a deathly one.

Absent, yet Present...Present, yet Absent

For years I have wondered: after the words of consecration in the Eucharist, we know that Jesus is actually, physically present under the appearance of bread and wind but our proclamation of faith does not state this, but seems to contradict it: "We proclaim your death and profess your resurrection, O Lord, until you come again." We affirm that he came in the past, that he will come in the future, but we overtly do NOT affirm his presence now. By implication, we seem to affirm his absence. If I told you my friend came to see me yesterday and will come tomorrow, wouldn't you assume that he is not with me at the moment? Von Balthasar's magisterial "On Prayer" instructs me on the eschatological tension: Our Lord is present as absent. He is here, even as he is not yet here. He is to come, but is already here, really, proleptically or in promise. We rest contentedly in his presence, even as we long for him that much more. He is absent because of our sin; he is absent because our world is plagued with suffering, evil, death, guilt and dread. He is really present, but in the most unobtrusive, anonymous, hidden manner: as a thin, white, tasteless, quiet wafer; as the slightest sip. He is present discretely, enticingly, as he engages us, seduces us, arouses us, inspires us. He is present as absent; and absent as present. Welcome, Lord Jesus! Come, Lord Jesus!

Loyalty

Loyalty: is virile, fierce, steadfast, honorable, courageous, aggressive, protective, self-confident, serene, reliable, forgiving,powerful and yet gentle. Loyalty is everything. Loyalty, in contrast to integrity, is always to a concrete person: this specific king, captain, spouse or friend. Integrity involves moral principles...it is complementary to loyalty. We have become too familiar with corrupted forms of loyalty that violate integrity: police, mobsters or clergymen covering up for the misdeeds of their friends. Such is less than genuine since it violates another loyalty: to the innocent victim of the misdeed. Yet, if forced to chose between integrity and loyalty (which we really never would be), I could not opt for integrity without loyalty since such would be isolated, lonely, moralistic. Loyalty is primary...loyalty infused with integrity...but loyalty first and always. Loyalty: always to a concrete person. Loyalty, first, to our Lord Jesus, and His Father, in the Holy Spirit. Loyalty, next, according to my unique, specific, concrete state in life: this spouse, family, community, boss, and friend. In the Church, thirdly, my loyalty is to this very specific, concrete, limited, imperfect and even sinful pastor, bishop and pope. It is always personal. Inexorably, the prelate thrust at me is a frustration: too progressive or too traditional; too enthusiastic or too staid; out of control or overly controlling; lethargic or hyper-active. But my loyalty is always to a person: not my own spirituality, ideology, theology or style of worship. Jesus himself, Augustine reminds us, did not withhold the kiss of peace from his betrayer, one of the original twelve. Jesus was loyal to us to death, when we tortured and murdered him. Ignatius of Antioch, one of the very earliest post-apostolic writers, exhorts us to gather around the bishop, priests and deacons...the hierarchy, specific individuals with all their warts. Ignatius of Loyola, following his fellow knight and role-model Francis of Assisi, insists on a very passionate, personal allegiance to the bishop of Rome...without conditions about his theology, piety, politics or ideology. Especially today, with our pope, bishops and priests under attack from all directions, let us renew our allegiance, fidelity, support and obedience for these very specific, imperfect persons. God bless them all!

To The Wonder

To The Wonder, the current offering of Terence Malick, like his previous Tree of Life,is not a movie in the normal sense, it is a visual meditation, it is really a prayer, or rather three prayers: that of the exquisite and exuberant female protagonist, that of the saintly but desolate priest, and that of the admiring camera, or director, or viewer. As with the mother in Tree of Life, the director's eye is unabashedly masculine in his adoration of the feminine lead (Olga Kurylenko)...an adoration that never objectives the Beloved, but maintains a sense of awe and wonder, and the excruciating distance of reverence. With a minimum of plot and dialogue, the camera wants mostly to contemplate and marvel at the feminine loveliness and preciousness of the feminine lead in the dance movements of her form and the expressions of her face: wonder, grief, puzzlement, sadness. The second prayer is that of the priest, played poignantly by Javier Bardem, who is gently showing God's love to the most unlovely even as he is in anguish at the absence of God. He is a fresh expression of the dark night of St. John of the Cross, of the (Diary of a) Country Priest, of Mother Teresa and the young Karol Woytija. A summary of the movie explains it as the "story of a man divided by the loves of two women." This is not accurate. The male lead, Ben Afflek, is actually marginal to the agony and ecstasy of the real protagonists: he is a foil for Kurylenko, and is himself unbearably monotonous in his wordless, emotionally repressed, unexplained melancholy. He seems to be an expression of the grief of the director/viewer at the reality that the Desired One, in all her loveliness, tenderness, and preciousness, is finally elusive and out of reach. Despite an occasional smile, he is the morose male, trapped in the Oedipal passage, deeply longing for the maternal, the Eternal Feminine. As others have done with Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, and Penelope Cruz, this male director mostly wants to gaze at, marvel at, and long for Feminine Beauty. The melancholy of Affleck and the dreaminess of Kurylenko is balanced by the deeper spiritual emptiness and goodness of the Bardem priest. His is surely one of the finest portrayals of the Catholic priesthood available in movies. A key scene has her confessing to him and then receiving communion. In an erroneous detail that is highly significant for the Catholic, she receives Holy Communion, outside of the liturgy, under both species. This, of course, could never happen as the precious blood is not reserved. But far more disturbing is that, shortly after this reconciliation, she inexplicably commits an act of infidelity. This scene is possibly the most realistic, terrifying portrayal of adultery ever: deeply sad and alienating, bereft even of glamour, there is nevertheless the allure of evil, as she freely and consciously desecrates her own preciousness and her spousal love. Perhaps never on the screen has the allure, the sadness, and the power of sin been unveiled. This is Elvira Madigan meets Diary of a Country Priest, it is Nietzche meets John of the Cross (by way of Heideggar whom Malick studied). It is not a movie to entertain or divert; it is a piece of art that can only lead the viewer into prayer: prayer of desperation for our present-but-absent God, prayer of frustration and yet gratitude for the excruciating splendor of sexual love, prayer of praise for that "love that loves us."

In Movement to the Father

The manhood of Jesus is bracked and defined by two events: his emergence into maturity in the temple and his ascencion to the Father. Both involve a disconnect from the feminine and maternal and a movement to the masculine and paternal. The former event is known as the loss or finding of Jesus in the temple but this wording reflects the anxiety of Mary and Joseph. From his own point of view, Jesus was neither lost nor found. He was exactly where he was supposed to be: moving into his manhood as Son of the Father, gathered with the elders, the patriarchs, the wise men and scholars. His words to his mother are harsh, sharp, corrective: "Did you not know that I must be about my Fathers's house (work)!" A similar renunciation occurs with Mary Magdalen after his Resurrection: "Do not grasp me...I must go to my Father and your Father..." Jesus understands that he has come from the Father and is going to the Father and on the way is doing the work of the Father. This entails a sober, chaste, generous, liberating love for women but also rejetion of romance, sentimentality, codependency, domestication, and masculine weakness. Like his cousin John, Jesus is drawn to the desert where he becomes fierce, hard, tough, free and entirely available to the work of the Father and combat with Satan. He is no mama's boy! First, last and always...He is Son of his Father!

Enemies: A Love Story

Enemies: A Love Story, a marvelous, mesmerizing novel by Isaac Singer, later a movie, has Herman, a Jewish Holocaust survivor in Coney Island circa 1949, hopelessly enmeshed in relationships with three women and eventually married to all of them. Raised as a devout Orthodox Jew, his faith is shattered by the events of his life; he is intellectual and sensitive. He has married the simple Polish peasant servant who risked her own life to save his. He is indebted and devoted to her as she adores him and is helpless without him in a new culture. He is in love with a beautiful, sexy, neurotic woman who also loves and needs him. Then his wife (played marvelously by Angelica Huston), who supposedly had died in the war, surfaces. She is attractive in a seasoned way, intellectual and wise. Their relationship had been volitile but also filled with respect, loyalty and memory, largely of their two children who perished in Poland. Herman is attached to each of the three: each is charming in her distinct manner; he cares about each; each needs him. He does not give himself completely to one woman because he is incapable of extricating himself from any of them. He bounces from one to another, engulfed in evasion, hopelessness and deceit. His situation is very poignant. I marveled at the paralysis of decision and sympathized. In the novel, however, the underlying cause and its connection with the Holocaust is made evident in a way it was not in the movie: he very clearly did not want to father children. He had renounced his paternity. In his earlier life, according to the novel, he did not want to have children but it happened in spite of his intentions. But their murder hardened him in his state of psychological hopelessness and infertility. He was swallowed up by the needs of the three women and his inability to say "no" because he was anti-paternal. At one point, Herman tells his wife that his then-mistress did not want to have children. She wisely responds: "If a woman loves a man, she wants to have his children." Shortly after that he is told that she is pregnant, agrees to marry her and hears her voice these words: "I wanted to have your child from the day I laid eyes on you." Clearly: the erotic, romantic and spousal are insepable, in this most carnal woman, from the maternal. Herman is a tragic exemplar of how the paternal/maternal infuses the spousal. The repression of fertility aborts the spousal relationship itself. This calls to mind a conversation in which a man, happily married with two children, told of seeing an old girlf friend who invited him back to her place. He refused. On arriving home, he told me, he looked at his wife and realized that going for the fling would not have been a "big thing." But he looked at his children and thought that he could never do such a thing. It was his fatherhood that sealed his fidelity. Lacking such paternal orientation, Herman could not give himself and became victim of his own needs and compulsions and those of his three lovers. What does this say about gay unions? About homosexuality and the paternal priesthood? About the plague of co-habitation? About the inability of our young men to commit? About our countraceptive culture? About the REAL needs of our young women? The crisis in paternity...flight from it, contempt for it, maginalization of it... is certainly the defining tragedy of our age. The story weaves a pattern of nihilism and seems incapable of anything but a tragic conclusion. But the ending is surprizing and largely satisfying as it delivers what is suggested in the title by means of the very thing that Herman most dreaded.