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!”

The Emergent Femininity

Divergent gave us Tris and the Hunger games Katnis and now the Star Wars galaxy, up to now entirely dominated by masculine Jedi and Sith, gives us Rey, an intuitive, invincible, natural and effortless female Jedi. Each is more noble, selfless, powerful, intelligent and brave than anyone in their respective universes. Each is a “perfect creature.” I am enamored, delighted, captivated! I would like my granddaughters to emulate them… I think. But there are problems. Big problems for us men especially! What is the place and purpose of us men in a world that gives birth to such feminine/masculine perfection in a single woman? Such a woman does not need a man. She is a perfect creature (Is such possible?) And by comparison, all the men in these films are weak and insignificant…at best. Unhappily, our cinema is reflecting the emergent ethos of our age: women are surpassing men in the important arenas (which do NOT include salary) and masculinity is in decline. Men, particularly young men, are discouraged, indecisive, and bereft of confidence and purpose. A second problem with this model of femininity is that it is unrealistic. In real life, excluding some supernatural intervention (St. Joan of Arc), the decision in favor martial fierceness almost certainly will harm or diminish the distinctive virtues that constitute real feminine strength: sensitivity, compassion, receptivity, humility. Let’s face it: for real flesh-and-blood women it is virtually if not absolutely impossible to combine the ferocity with the tenderness of a Tris, a Katnis or a Rey. Consider real life warriors like Hilary Clinton or Carly Fiorino: they equal men in assertiveness but they lose something mysterious and indescribable in the deal. Lastly, and most significantly, there is a most profound ontological problem with such womanly perfection: such a heroine is independently strong and good; she does not need a man but she doesn’t really even need God. Let us contrast this emergent model with the one creature who was perfect, perfectly feminine, which is to say perfectly strong in her humility, receptivity, gratitude, dependency, compassion, trust, vulnerability and generosity. Mary depended entirely, not on herself, but on her heavenly Father. She needed a man, Joseph, to protect and provide. She subordinated herself to a man: her Son. Her real strength was in relationship! This gives us a key to a new and refreshing model of femininity and masculinity: relationship! We men are desperately in need of a new vision of masculinity as we cannot return to the imitation of John Wayne! We are made for each other…to serve each other…to receive from each other. Even before sin we were created, male and female, to need each other, to equally give and receive, to own our particular strengths and weaknesses, and to be in relationship! And, so we can enjoy Katnis, Rey and Tris as harmless, entertaining fantasy, but this model is as empty as male fantasies like James Bond or Jason Bourne. The reality is that we are made, male and female, to be in a relationship of dependency, vulnerability, generosity and receptivity…with each other and with God….just like our Blessed Mother.

Our Eccentric Pope

Pope Francis is an eccentric. I like eccentrics and always have.But I don't like an eccentric as Pope. They are interesting; they are off-center but often insightful and passionate in an unusual way; they are prophetic, artistic, surprising; they offer a clear window into some mystery of life even as they do not get the whole picture. Many of my dearest friends have been eccentrics. From my youth I was drawn to extremist, fascinating characters (e.g.Ivan Illich) who immensely enriched my world and broadened my intellectual vision. But an eccentric really can't be pope because the pope has to be "catholic" as inclusive of the big picture, spiritual father to all of us, and privileged teacher of the Faith and the Truth in its entirety. Traditionally a pope buries his individuality to represent the Church. John Paul II, blessed with an extraodinarilly deep and rich personality happily broke that mode and infused his pontificate with all the personal gifts he had received from the Holy Spirit. He was not even slightly eccentric but perfectly centered in the love and truth of Christ and infused EVERYTHING he touched with the gentle but powerful Wisdom from on high. Francis is not so blessed. Yet he is immodest and unrestrained in bringing his own imbalances into the exercise of his office: he loves the poor but hates the rich; he sees all the problems with capitalism but none of the strengths; he is a man of prayer but disparaging of traditions of solemn worship (the Latin mass); he extols Mercy but is viciously condemnatory of those he sees as powerful, indifferent, arrogant, moralistic (but who these are is not clear; they seem to be a figment of his rich imagination.) His homilies are creative, provocative, challenging and entertaining; but he lacks clarity, precision, depth and nuance. He is viciously contemptuous and judgmental of what he views as clerical privilege. He is passionate in his anti-moralism but becomes emotional and personal in his own form of moralism. He is strangely inarticulate about the gospel of chastity and marital fidelity which is the genuine key to happiness and holiness for all of us, rich and poor. He is father to those on the margins, but he has left many of us abandoned, fatherless, orphaned...sheep without a shepherd. Those of us who love John Paul's Theology of the Body or the Latin mass or the fruitfulness of free markets or the honors and pomp of the Church...many of us who most love the Church feel there is no one at the rudder of the Church. What are to do? That's easy! Renew are awareness that we are all of us, from the Pope on down, sinners...desperately in need of the Mercy of Christ. And Francis is solidly on board with that! We have to forgive him his failings, love him as a person, and renew our loyalty to him as our Vicar of Christ. We need to dig more and more deeply into the precious theological legacy of the dual-pontificate of John Paul and Benedict. We need to let ourselves be fed by those bishops and priests who get the big picture. And we need to let ourselves be inspired by Francis in his eccentricity, in his strength, in his passion to bring Christ's Mercy to those at the margins. And in this Year of Mercy, we need to be merciful to our weak, fallible (except you know when), endearing, disappointing and inspiring Papa!

What Constitutes the Church?

What Constitutes the Church? In his customarily creative, intuitive, suggestive, provocative but vague and confusing fashion, Pope Francis last week spoke of “synodicality” as constitutive of the Church. The suggestion seems unhelpful to me as it is tied to a limited, juridical institution, the synod. A broader, deeper concept is that of “collegiality” which properly understood is far broader and deeper than the judicial structures of the synod or even the hierarchy but derives from the “communio” reality of union with the Trinity in Christ as it permeates every reality of ecclesial and human existence: the family and sexuality, friendship, economics, politics and culture as well as the visible, sacramental Church. But his comment did provoke me to wonder: What does constitute the Church? The Church, bride of Christ, is constituted by the Bridegroom’s loving action upon herself. But this infinitely dense, profound, fecund and symphonic mystery has several dimensions, dynamics, currents or movements that cannot be separated because they mutually infuse each other but can be distinguished so we can marvel with clarity of vision at the SPLENDOR OF THE CHURCH. Seven such currents are clear: four are primary or fundamental in that they will continue after this life and history itself into eternity; three are essential but secondary in that they will disappear with this life and this world. The primary movements that create the Church in the love of Christ are: the work of the Holy Spirit (pneumatic); the Word of God which is the person and event of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, as infallibly articulated in Scripture and Tradition within the Church (evangelical); the life of worship and prayer (the liturgical); the holiness of life perfectly expressed in the body and soul of Mary and those in communion with her, especially the consecrated (Marian); and the community of love in all its fecundity, richness and variety (Johannine) as evident in family, ecclesial community, friendship and all wholesome, holy expressions of human communion. The three movements which are essential in this life but temporary are: office or hierarchy, sinfulness and consequent contrition/repentance and pardon/mercy, the missionary impulse and concrete actions of mercy. The hierarchical Church will prevail until the end of history; but not afterwards. It is infallible in teaching and efficacious in the sacramental bestowal of sanctifying grace, but is subservient to and expressive of the pneumatic, evangelical, marian and johaninne. Likewise sinfulness pervades every human dimension of the Church: each person, community and institution including the Pope and the holiest among us. And so, confession, repentance and reparation as well as forgiveness and patience (with self as well as others) is constitutive of the Church in time, but not in eternity. And so also with the missionary and agapic or active dimension of the Church: it defines the Church in history, in flesh and time, but not in heaven. There is a temptation to elevate these three subordinate, if definitive, but penultimate dimensions to a position of dominance over the higher four. The result can be clericalism (office), activism (mission and works of charity), and pessimism (a Calvinist or Jansenist obsession with sin). This understanding of the dynamics of movements infusing the Church incorporates the breath and catholicity evidence by the "models" approach of Cardinal Dulles while overcoming that approach's extrinsic, Kantian tendency to define the dynamics against each other rather than indwelling each other mutually. Finally, we might see that the Church of history is quintessentially constituted by the Eucharist in which Christ's conjugal love for His bride, at once spiritual and physical, temporal and eternal, perfectly expresses every dimension: the pneumatic, the evangelical, the liturgical, the marian, the hierarchical, the penitential/confessional, the missional/activist.