An Observable Proof of the Fewness of the Saved

 

“Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are who go in thereat. How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!" 

(Mt 7:13-14)

If Sensus Fidelium videos are any kind of litmus, I find traditional Catholics generally amenable to the idea of the "fewness of the saved." You have websites like this one devoted entirely to the idea, and a plethora of historical quotes from the saints on the topic, such as St. Louis de Montfort's sobering observation: "The number of the elect is so small — so small — that, were we to know how small it is, we would faint away with grief: one here and there, scattered up and down the world." 

Of course, like many Calvinists and their view of the Elect who are predeterminately saved, Catholics who hold that few are saved may generally count themselves among those on the path to salvation. For why would a good Presbyterian bother attending church every Sunday if he was helplessly reprobate? Similarly, a Catholic who espouses the fewness of the saved: a) recognizes he is on the right path, and at the very least will be saved by the fires of purgatory, or b) if he thinks he is indeed damned by his way of life, at least he has the integrity to support the correct soteriology.

Then, of course, we have theologians and other figures on the other end of the spectrum (including the holy pontiff) who hold the optimistic hope that hell will be empty. This is a tenuous wager, since it does not seem to have the support of scripture, tradition, or the spiritual insight of the saints. It seems in the same line of thinking as the justifications for adultery through divorce and remarriage: our Lord was very clear in Scripture regarding this teaching, but we don't like the answer so we do theological acrobats to try to justify one more to our liking. Thus we take comfort in this life by way of these justifications, but may wake up one day on the other side of eternity in a less settled state of mind by minimizing the words of our Lord and listening instead to men.

All that being said, if I had to wager with my own spiritual currency, I am more apt to believe the words of the Lord in Matthew 7:13-14: the way to hell is wide, and many meet their fate by way of that path, says the Lord. Those who find the true path to life are few. This would seem to support the idea of the "fewness of the saved," sober as that "pessimistic" soteriological view is. 

And here is why I would wager, through general observation, that we underestimate our own sinfulness, and overestimate the number of the saved when in fact it is the opposite: we are much more sinful in the Lord's eyes than we ourselves see, and much more apt to be traversing through life on the wide path that leads to destruction.

Take any worldly event--be that a presential Trump rally, or a Taylor Swift concert, or free Rita's water ice, or the launch of the latest iPhone 20--and you will generally see sizable queues, packed stadiums, and/or a lot of "buzz" around the event. Parking lots may be jammed, admission prices may be gouging, and seating limited. 

Now, visit your local Adoration chapel where the King of the Universe sits on His glorious throne, in quiet repose, waiting for people to come and give due worship. There is no admission cost, no parking issues, no onerous travel requirements, no barriers to entry, no fighting for room in the pew. 

And yet when you enter, you will generally not find a packed house or limited seating--in fact, you may be the only person there. And this would track pretty similarly no matter where you were in the country, what town or church: the proportion of people outside that adoration chapel to those inside of it, I would wager, would track pretty closely the proportion of the damned to those who will find themselves in the heavenly court at death.

What does this say about us and our priorities? Well, for one thing it shows that "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" (Rom 3:23) because we have failed to live out the first and most fundamental Commandment, which is to love the Lord thy God with all one's heart and soul and strength and mind. (Lk 10:27). For if one truly believes that the Lord God is present in one of these chapels, what horse or guard could keep the ardent man from adoring his savior? No, the fact is, we are not ardent, and have put other priorities (idols) on the altar of our hearts, violating this most fundamental Commandment. And thus have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

We pay nothing for the ticket to Heaven, and yet it costs us everything. Were we able to truly see, and not through a glass darkly (1 Cor 13:12), we would lament every wasted opportunity to fall at our knees in worship and adoration in this life when we prioritized the most trivial of trifles over a private audience with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords...and then only too late. The fact that when we do make time to be with Him in the flesh that there are so few there kneeling with us is, I think, reasonable proof that Hell will not, in fact, be empty as some wish to believe. That we do not, in fact, love God with our whole heart, soul, strength, and mind means we, too, are in need of purification after death assuming we fall asleep in His friendship and not cast out as one He never knew. That love can grow weary, grow cold over time and need periodic renewal. Similarly, even when we have found the narrow way that leads to life, we sometimes get sidetracked and detoured by temptation--to shortcuts, easier routes, wider ways--and need to be brought back in line by grace. 

Rather than lead us to despair, this general observable "proof" of the fewness of the saved should encourage us to keep vigilant, taunt, sober and awake. Take the words of St. Leonard of Port Maurice to heart:

"Brothers, I want to send all of you away comforted today. So if you ask me my sentiment on the number of those who are saved, here it is: Whether there are many or few that are saved, I say that whoever wants to be saved, will be saved; and that no one can be damned if he does not want to be. And if it is true that few are saved, it is because there are few who live well.

What is the use of knowing whether few or many are saved? Saint Peter says to us, "Strive by good works to make your election sure." When Saint Thomas Aquinas's sister asked him what she must do to go to heaven, he said, "You will be saved if you want to be." I say the same thing to you, and here is proof of my declaration. No one is damned unless he commits mortal sin: that is of faith. And no one commits mortal sin unless he wants to: that is an undeniable theological proposition. Therefore, no one goes to hell unless he wants to; the consequence is obvious. Does that not suffice to comfort you? Weep over past sins, make a good confession, sin no more in the future, and you will all be saved. Why torment yourself so? For it is certain that you have to commit mortal sin to go to hell, and that to commit mortal sin you must want to, and that consequently no one goes to hell unless he wants to. That is not just an opinion, it is an undeniable and very comforting truth; may God give you to understand it, and may He bless you. Amen.

Attaining Heaven has little to do with "earning" entrance and so much to do rather with the desire to enter. Remember St. Thomas' words: You will be saved if you want to be. And the Little Flower's confidence that "when we love, we can't go there" (ie, Purgatory). The question is, do you really want to be saved? Or do you prefer your trifles to the Kingdom?

When you look around in the chapel during times of worship and wonder where everyone else is, be reminded that the wide road is a well-advertised toll highway, and the path to life one that is not so obvious and generally requires the help of a local (the saints) to find with directions (scripture and tradition) and four wheel drive (virtue and the grace of final perseverance). You are in good company in that lonely pew wasting away the hours at the feet of the King, contributing nothing and needing everything. For if you spend enough time there learning how to love you will, eventually, find your way home.

Contraception in the Heat Of Summer: An Illustration

Our home was built in the 1950's, a two story, brick split level. I would take a home built fifty years ago over today's stick-and-plywood construction, since in general they were built to last. 

What's advantageous about our home is various thought-out little details that make good use of the natural environment in its orientation and layout that minimize energy costs. For one, the front of the house is oriented due-south with a huge south-facing bay window in the living room and two large south-facing skylights over the master bedroom. There is also a protruded roof overhand in the front of the house. In the winter time, the solar gain from this orientation allows over 10kw of heat into the home during the day when the sun is low in the sky. In the summer, we cover these windows and skylights to keep the heat out, and the roof overhang helps shield some of that sun as well since it is higher in the sky that time of year. Additionally, the lower level of our home is built half below-grade, so it stays a more-or-less constant temperature: cooler in summer and warmer in winter than the rest of the house due to the thermal mass of the surrounding earth. This is just low-tech, common sense stuff that sadly has been left by the wayside in modern cost-cutting construction.

What I have found that with these various details, when paid attention to and taken advantage of, is that we burned only one hundred gallons of oil this winter for heating, and we can avoid running our central AC most of the summer, except on the hottest of days (which is good, because it's almost thirty years old at this point and probably on its last legs). One thing we do to minimize the use of AC is utilizing a modified "whole house fan." The idea is that when the nighttime temps are lower than the inside temperature, you crack the windows on the ground floor (where it is cooler), and run a 4,000cfm fan in the upstairs bedroom that points out the window (usually these fans are in an attic, but because we our attic is a walkup rather than a hatch, this won't work). This creates a vacuum effect that exhausts hot air from the upstairs and draws the cool nighttime air up from the ground floor and throughout the house. Then  in the morning, when you get up, you shut the windows and seal in all that cooler air and keep the hot daytime air out. This works best in the shoulder seasons when it's not super humid and not sweltering at night. But combined with blocking the solar radiation at the windows from entering and heating the home, it can still work well in the summer to reduce, if not eliminate, your need for AC. I do have a window AC unit for our bedroom in those hottest parts of the summer when the whole house fan is less effective. 

Living this way (my wife is a real sport) requires a bit of a shift in how one thinks about and approaches the idea of comfort. Is the goal to live in an hermetically sealed environment at a constant 72 degrees using mechanical means? Can one tolerate a degree of slight discomfort at certain periods of the year? And why am I writing about all this eco-weenie stuff, and what does it have to do with birth control, as alluded to in the title of this post?

Well, it got me thinking about how we approach what we see as "problems" in our lives. In the summer, in the Northeast where I live, that "problem" is how to stay cool inside when it's blazing hot outside. For the vast majority of people, the "solution" is the tap the thermostat and blast their central air. Since I'm not normal, I like the approach we take that isn't so artificial/mechanical and divorced from the seasons, and which also conditions our bodies for cold and heat tolerance so that we are more adaptable and less...well, soft.

It also occurred to me that this approach we take mimicks how we approach the "problem" (although it's not really a problem, of course) of the regulation of births. As Catholics, we live by the teachings of Christ as revealed to us through Scripture, the Magisterium, and the Natural Law. One must understand the Natural Law to make sense of WHY the Church condemns the use of artificial contraception as mortally sinful. This is not rocket science and does not require a degree in Philosophy or Theology, but simply that we are to use our faculties for their intended purpose. The intended purpose of the female reproductive cycle is to give rise to life. But we reverse this in the modern world by seeing pregnancy as the "problem", that something went wrong and haywire. This is in large part due to the acceptance and mainstreaming of artificial contraception which takes a healthy reproductive system and renders it infertile. 

Now, life is a great gift and blessing, but that does not mean the Church expects people to maximize the number of births in their lifetimes. She respects the judicious employment of our faculty of reason and free-will within the confines of the moral law, so that the discernment of the the number of children a couple has rests with them. Now, one can argue that this "planning" is itself contra to the will of God--that to be truly aligned with the divine will one cedes any and all control of how many children they have to God and let the chips fall where they will. Perhaps it is for the sake of human weakness in this way that the Church allows this concession of the moral means of the regulation of births by way of Natural Family Planning (NFP). That is debatable depending on which circles you run in. Nevertheless, a couple can always morally choose when to engage and when to abstain in the act of sexual intimacy so as to achieve the end of either avoiding or achieving pregnancy. What they cannot do is separate the means and the ends--that is, to have sexual intimacy without openness to life--through artificial means or coitus interruptus--in a way that is morally justifiable. 

This approach to the regulation of births by "natural" (basal body temperature monitoring, observing cervical fluid, cervix position, etc) means certainly takes a shift in mindset away from the modern mentality of '100% control-on-demand' in popping a pill or slipping on a condom. Because as any Catholic couple knows, NFP, while largely effective, is not foolproof in terms of preventing pregnancy. You have to think and communicate, adjust your behavior around your cycles, and work in tandem with the natural rhythms of the wife's body. You also have to accept that you are not 100% in control here. Kind of like when you have to crack the windows at night and turn on the upstairs fan, remember to shut it off in the morning and shut the windows, and deal with some slight discomfort when it gets a little warm. When one employs artificial contraception, you don't think about this stuff, you just take your pill every day and get your IUD implanted like setting your thermostat to 72 and not thinking about it. What is also disconcerting is that many grown women on the pill do not even know how their natural cycles work, or have any cogent understanding of their reproductive biology as a result.

The naturalist Wendell Berry, although not a Christian, wrote about how artificial contraception is out of step with the natural environment. From the Public Discourse:

In The Art of the Commonplace, Wendell Berry states that “birth control is a serious matter, both culturally and biologically,” but what is really “horrifying is not that we are relying so exclusively on a technology of birth control that is still experimental, but that we are using it casually, in utter cultural nakedness, unceremoniously, without sufficient understanding, and as a substitute for cultural solutions . . . and to promote these means without cultural insight.” In other words, a serious matter requiring careful deliberation and sound judgment has been handled carelessly and thoughtlessly—we have been forgetful.

Berry continues by noting that such thoughtless neglect is made possible, and subsequently exploited, by specialists; in this case the separation of sexuality from fertility has resulted in two groups of specialists, “the sexual clinicians and the pornographers, both of whom subsist on the increasing possibility of sex between people who neither know nor care about each other.” Both groups separate sexuality from fertility in the name of freedom and “thrive in a profound cultural rift” where sex is free “from thought, responsibility, and the issue of quality.”

As Catholics, we are not Luddites--we utilize and celebrate technological advancements when they are in accordance with the moral law. Air conditioning is one of those that is; artificial contraception is not. It can be argued that AC made residing in desert environments like Las Vegas and Phoenix possible, and made us all more comfortable; it can also be argued that the Pill made commonplace abortion, infidelity, promiscuity, and a greater proportion of women in the workforce. These are arguably not good things, but as moderns we are so far removed from being in tune with both our natural environment and our bodies that we can "afford" to not pay attention to these things and can gloss over them as the inevitable cost of comfort and control--our modern day golden calves. 

Down The Road: Strategic Charitable Giving Utilizing QCDs

My wife and I are doing some early retirement planning this week. Essentially we are getting our plan together for leaving the workforce in the next five and fifteen years, respectively and mapping out what that is going to look like. 

As I have written about before on this blog, I consider work a privilege I am grateful to have as a man, and I for the most part enjoy my job so I am in no urgent rush to jump ship. I had a 'mini sabbatical' for a month or two in between jobs in my twenties and realized in taking that time to get a taste of "mini-retirement" that I actually enjoy and appreciate the structure and meaning work provides. On top of that, I have various incentives to stay for the long haul which can be utilized at age 59. My wife, however, is in a physically demanding job (albeit, part time) and probably has five years left in her to be able to continue doing it.

Of course we know God laughs at future plans; at the same time we also see the admonition for prudent foresight and preparation for times of want in Proverbs 13:4, 7-8:

A sluggard’s appetite is never filled,

    but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied.

One person pretends to be rich, yet has nothing;

    another pretends to be poor, yet has great wealth.

A person’s riches may ransom their life,

    but the poor cannot respond to threatening rebukes.

Part of that foresight for us as a couple is evaluating what we value and how we can move our lives closer in alignment to those values. One of those values is hospitality--we try to make a point to open our home to others as a welcoming place of refuge, fellowship, and comfort; another is service--we don't want to just indulge our wants, but make ourselves instruments of God's purposes to accomplish His will. In doing so, we made the decision years ago to make every effort to pay off all our debts and frontload as much of our paycheck into savings (including retirement) so that we can take full advantage of the value of time as it relates to compounding interest (what Albert Einstein called the "Eighth Wonder of the World"). We did this by making sacrifices and living frugally early, in addition to various good fortunes, privileges and windfalls that we banked rather than spent, so that we are (hopefully) in a position later in life to step out of the workforce and live off our savings in retirement and pass on money to our children.

However we see the frightful warning in Luke's gospel  (Lk 12:16-21) of the "retired man" with his giant grain barns who has more than he knows what to do with yet hoards it for himself:

And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

“This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”

What was the wealthy man's end goal? To take it easy, enjoy life, and be merry. I.e., live it up in his "golden years."

Now, there is nothing wrong with enjoying life, even the finer things in life, in old age. As Christ makes clear, the problem lies in storing up "things for themselves" who are not rich toward God. What does it mean to be rich toward God? Mercy and charity go hand in hand, since mercy seeks to alleviate burden and charity can be the means by which one does that monetarily. If Christ is in the needy, we serve God when we both tithe to the Church, and to those in need as well. 

The thought of sitting back and making my life's purpose to enjoy material things and indulge my whims and senses ad nauseum is not appealing to me (or my wife) in the slightest. We don't talk enough about having a "philosophy of money" in the Church, I think to our detriment. Money (like the internet, or technology, etc) is a tool that holds the potential for evil purposes and self-indulgence, but can also be utilized for greater purposes; it shouldn't be taboo, or an overly emotional topic either. And God promises to multiply the dividends for the cheerful giver as well (2 Cor:9-6-7). We have witnessed this first hand in our life--that the more we give away to serve His purposes and His people, the more he lavishes upon us. It's crazy, actually. It's like a kind of "spiritual compounding interest." 

The funny thing is, as my wife and I have discussed together, we are in want of nothing; in other words, there is nothing more that you could add to our lives in terms of increasing the happiness factor or value of the quality of our lives. We have exercised and trained the muscle of frugality (not cheapness, mind you, they are different) for so long that it doesn't take much to give us pleasure. We are trying to raise our kids with the same mindset, since there is nothing more off putting than spoiled children. And so, we have no desire for second homes, boats or nice cars, or lavish vacations. Just simple pleasures that are within the reach of many middle-class people, as well as the gift of the one thing you cannot buy: time.

Now, God can throw all kinds of curveballs, so it's important to defer to and follow His will in all things as it comes. But in learning more about our retirement options and the nuts and bolts implications of having a degree of saved wealth later in life, we realized that at some point, the power of compounding interest will be like rolling a small snowball down a mountain as it picks up speed and snow, so that at the bottom it kind of "gets away from you" and is a huge snow boulder. What that means in terms of finances is that your accumulated savings/investment interest begins to outpace your spending needs. So the question then becomes, what do you do with all that accumulated wealth, since you obviously can't bring it with you when you die?

Well, as I've said before, have all the babies. I also think it's good to help your children in their life if you are able, and also leave an inheritance to them to give them a leg up in life. Same goes for helping one's parents as needed, in fulfillment of the 4th Commandment. The Old Testament clearly extols this idea of inheritance to one's heirs, and is one of the benefits of staying married as well. I think it's best to find a balance between the "Die With Zero" philosophy and the miserliness of saving everything, which is what my wife and I plan to do. Between pension income, delayed Social Security, and various taxable accounts, it is very possible for us to live comfortably without touching our retirement accounts. Which means they have the potential to exponentially grow and develop a "problem" later on (albeit, a good problem to have, but a problem none the less) when it comes to taking Required Minimum Distributions in one's early seventies. This is money the government makes you withdraw, whether you want to or not, from tax-deferred 401k and traditional IRA accounts so they can get their tax money from it to fund their debt and incompetence.

One thing I have found in common among all wealthy people, is that they will do everything they can to minimize their tax liability. There are shady and immoral ways of doing this which many avow themselves of; but there are also legal and strategic ways of doing so that minimize the taxes you pay to the government. I am all in favor of not feeding the glut of government spending and minimizing taxes where at all possible (which I guess makes me a fiscal, as well as a social conversative?). And one way to do this later in life if you are charitably inclined is to make use of Qualified Charitable Contributions (QCDs). 

At age 70.5, the IRS specifies that you can give up to $100,000 per year ($200,000 per couple) to qualified 501c3's from your tax deferred retirement savings; this is more effective than itemizing or simply writing checks from your already taxed income because you don't pay the tax on those distributions, and the charity gets a bigger share than they would have otherwise. If you need to take RMDs as well, those can be used as QCDs. You can read more about how to take advantage of this IRS allowance here.

So, that is part of our "money is a tool" strategy later in life--that we keep our spending modest and leave my wife's 403b account alone to grow from age 55 to 70.5, and then draw that down to close to zero over our lifetimes so that we limit our own tax liability (less money to the government), and fund charities that we value. This would include:

• One's local parish, of course
• Your local St Vincent de Paul Society
• The underground church in China
• Traditional monasteries and religious orders
• Organizations that foster Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, such as the Catholic Art Institute
• World Villages for Children, which my friend Kevin Wells is involved in and who do great work for exploited children
• The Laboure Society to help those with religious vocations pay off their school loans
• Perhaps scholarships for innovative new trade schools (like St. Joseph the Worker)

I'm sure there are many more worthy organizations, hopefully with low overhead and who get the money where it needs to go to do the most good. Of course, as a family we continue to make our weekly offerings to our local parish and help families we know as needed when circumstances arise. But the most "bang for the buck" in terms of very pragmatic, strategic, tax-advantaged giving can come from utilizing these QCDs later in life, in case you weren't aware of them (which is why I am writing this very boring post). 

As a family, we don't want to see money as evil in and of itself, and maintain a kind of detachment from it; everything belongs to God, and we are, and want to simply be, good stewards of what He has given us. Money can be a means for self-indulgence or a tool to achieve good in the world and serve those in need, fostering charity in ourselves and the alleviation of suffering in others. All things for the glory of God, and our finances are no exception.

How about you? What are some other charities that do good with low overhead and are effective at fulfilling their stated mission? Feel free to comment below. 

No One Is Putting Money On Me

It's been a couple months since my first book was published. My publisher and I did as much promotion as we could, running the circuit online and getting the word out and reviews procured. Here's a sampling of reviews and mentions: 

Stumbling in the Footsteps of Christ: Rob Marco's Wisdom and Folly (Kevin Wells, National Catholic Register)

What Is A Man? What Is A Good Man? What Is A Hero? (Patti Armstrong, National Catholic Register)

Wisdom and Folly: An Interview with Author Rob Marco (Susan Skinner, Veil of Veronica)

A Radical Third Way of Discipleship (Guest: Rob Marco) (Eric Sammons, CrisisPoint podcast)

Wisdom and Folly: Everyday Thoughts of an Ordinary Catholic (Roxane Salonen, CatholicMom.com)

Wisdom and Folly by Rob Marco (Phillip Campbell, Unam Sanctam Catholicam)

The last I checked with my publisher, the book has sold about a hundred copies. Not a hundred thousand. 100. And that is mostly friends and family, I imagine. No body has even bothered to write a review yet, though at almost 400 pages some people may still be trying to finish the book, haha. How anyone ekes out a living writing is beyond me. I know of nothing that demands so much of a person and compensates so little in return. 

I don't know what I was expecting, but it certainly was a reality check to know that despite writing a quality book that speaks to people's hearts, is relatable and honest, appeals to both men and women, and seemed timely and pertinent, it was truly a failure to launch. I'm ok with that, since I think in my heart of hearts I have never wanted to be "big" in anyway. I prefer a close circle and degrees of anonymity and freedom over prestige and compensation. So, I pretty much got what I have always wanted. 

Still, it's a little embarrassing to pour so much of yourself into your kind of opus, have it be well written and relevant, do some national marketing and exposure, and STILL not get any traction in a wider audience. 

I heard Louis CK, in reflecting on his comedy career, tell Theo Von recently: 

"A lot of it is just...you caught a wave it was good timing. There's some people who are incredible but they weren't *that* at the right time. that's one of the biggest challenges in comedy is just staying good when nobody is paying attention and continuing to progress, because it's like this search light that maybe finds you sometime, and if every time it finds you you're getting better and better, then somebody in the world will go, 'this guy's a good bet.' They'll start putting money on you."

I think that's just the reality. I never caught that lucky wave, and it's quite apparent that no one is putting money on me and saying "this guy's a good bet." Or maybe it's just the nature of the democratization of voices that the internet has produced--so many hundreds of thousands of good writers that there are no real long-lasting standouts. 

Again, I'm ok with this. I am a rich man already in friends, family, faith, and purpose in my life, in want of nothing. But I just think it's kind of a fools errand to think it's ALL just hard work and talent and dedication and grinding to "make it" big (whatever that means). If you never hit that wave, you're just another drop in the ocean that gets drowned out in the noise. Sheer luck and timing plays a part, whether we want to admit it or not. 

Again, all okay. Writing is my little hobby, nothing more, and if I set myself up to believe otherwise, the disappointment would be more acute I think. The book was mostly a legacy endeavor for my wife and children anyway. I'm sure a lot of "famous" people would envy the anonymity and freedom to go where and do what I want I have as an essential nobody in the media world. I'll thank God for that, then!

Our Death Penalty

I have been permanently trying to kick my addition to nicotine for over two decades. I know it says in scripture that a just man falls seven times and rises again, and that is true, but it is also indicative of the kind of stronghold such pernicious habits can have on us. Matthew Perry, the Friends actor who died recently, spent over $9 million dollars on his recovery and was in and out of rehab fifteen times. That is a testament both to a relentless desire to be free and an indication of just how deep the claws of addition can sink into one's spirit. 

Nicotine addiction is relatively innocuous in the grand scheme of things. It isn't psychedelically compromising and doesn't typically lead to succumbing to a life of breaking-and-entering. I know guys who use smokeless nicotine to hone their concentration and give them a little carrot during their workday. Some are able to keep it at 3mg a few times a day; I was never able to regulate with that kind of self-control. I was regularly ingesting over 100mg/day however I could get it in my system. 

I always hated the effeminacy of this chain of addiction, like a baby who can't live without his paci to soothe him. I also took to heart over the years the words of St. John of the Cross who related our attachments to a string--even the thinnest of threads--that keeps a bird from flight. I knew when SHTF during the end times, I did not want to be chained via detachment, because as Fr. Ripperger notes, it is our attachments during the Chastisement that will brutalize us when everything is taken away from us. 

It's always an interesting interplay between the work of grace and the effort of the will when it comes to these attachments to the world, the flesh, and the devil. St. Augustine countered the Pelagians, who downplayed the role of grace, on this very topic in the 4th century. I knew I wanted to be free of this habit and chemical dependency, but I didn't know how; I had fallen so many times--even when I had gotten free of it for upwards of a year--and always fell back into it one way or another. So, my will was resolved, but I needed grace to make it stick. Thanks be to God, I was able to go cold turkey two months ago off the drug and haven't been back to it since. It was brutal, not something I want to repeat, ever. Each day I have to not smoke, not dip, not chew--that is the will at work. But it was grace that saved me. Unfortunately, our memory of our slavery often fades the farther out from the fleshpots we find ourselves. Which is why we pray for our daily, not our weekly or yearly, bread.

I cite the chain of addiction during this holiest of holy weeks to highlight the fundamentals of our Christian faith during this season: our death sentence due to the Fall, our irreconcilable separation from God due to that disobedience;  the necessity of Christ's death on the Cross as atonement for our sin; his ransoming and redeeming of our fallen nature. 

It's hard to really comprehend that for those years from the Fall to the Resurrection, our ancestors were in a great darkness. There was no light, for the light had not yet come into the world. There was hope, but it was just that--hope that the Mashiach would return to bridge that divide and redeem Israel. It was a true slavery to the virus of sin which had not yet received it's antidote. 

If you know what it feels like to be enslaved--whether that is to a substance, a behavior or habit, or even literally as a human being--you know that your being saved comes from outside the self, for you literally cannot free yourself from your bondage--whether because of the strength of your captives or the weakness of your own nature. It is easy to lose hope, and to give in to the overdoses because, well, you will never be free, the Devil whispers to you. There are stoics among us, and the human spirit has an incredible capacity for perseverance, but even the most resolute of will have their natural and supernatural limitations.

Christ was not bound by such limitations, nor by the bonds of death. He subjected himself to the bounds of human flesh, humiliation and subjugation, but it was by Christ and only Christ alone who could be our "Superman," our savior, on whose divine integrity and human will the fate of all humanity depended. We were dead in our sin, with no hope--NO HOPE--of being reconciled back to the Father apart from Christ. That kind of debt, that Christ paid with his blood, can never be repaid. All you can do is marvel, shudder, and weep at the gift of a new lease on life that has been given you. 

Easter is the triumph of the cross, but it can only be arrived at via Golgotha. When you know the depths of your depravity, and the tenuous thin line that keeps you from the worm that never dies, you learn to lean on the strongman who conquered death by death, rather than your own strength. That is faith, prayer, trust in the God who does the impossible, who stooped so low to enter into our dark prison and take our place to free us, who paid our ransom with the highest cost of his life. We had no hope apart from him, for there is no other name under which we are saved. Christ came into the world, and we know how the story ends. That is the substance of our faith, one we have to go back to again and again to tell the wonderful story of our redemption.

But that story is not over. We are always walking that tenuous path, dodging thistles and arrows and traps to derail us from the narrow path. We have to keep our blinders on to see the Cross, always, or we are completely lost in the dark. We have been set free, but it is US who often wander back to our prison cells out of curiosity or longing. The horror of the door clicking locked behind us can lead a man to despair...but it is the WILL which we must exercise to continue to say YES to God, and NO to sin. Sin is slavery and death. The law of God is light and life, and a life that God desires us to have in abundance. 

This Holy Week, remember your death, your slavery, and the ransom paid for you to have life. Do not forget, but constantly recall the slavery you were saved from and which constantly calls you back to itself. Your Easter will be that much sweeter for it when you remember the dankness of the cell that held you. 

Lent For Losers

When I was around seventeen years old, I was competing in a multi-day stage bicycle race. I was a fairly competitive cyclist as a junior, but I'll never forget cresting one particularly grueling climb and seeing my dad on the sidelines. I pulled over briefly and told him I was having a heck of a time staying motivated to push through, both in this race and my cycling career in general. "Well, if it's too hard, you can always just quit," my dad told me reassuringly, or something to that effect. That was all the invitation I needed. We went home together that day, and the relief I felt washed over me like an ocean. 

I love my dad and how he is always there for me, like the father of the prodigal son. But my wife and I joke about that formative scene in my youth and how it set the stage for future folds. "Well, if it's too hard, just quit," we often joke in various scenarios we encounter. It's funny but kind of embarrassing as well. I want my kids to know they're loved and supported, but I don't want my kids to be quitters necessarily.  

I've noticed some of the greatest "achievers" in life were those who got the least affirmation when young. Elon Musk as one example has this kind of super-human ability to create and execute, but like many top-level achievers, I suspect it comes from a father-hole or a need to compensate or prove someone wrong. When Musk returned home after being hospitalised, his father Errol Musk berated him for getting beaten up by bullies. Errol Musk called his son a “loser” and took the side of the bully who beat him up. We all have those instances from our adolescence that shape us, for better or worse. 

I've written before that I believe the character trait of stubbornness will greatly aid a Christian in his spiritual life, especially were should he be faced with martyrdom. I'm not a stubborn person; I cede easily, so it's something I need to learn or develop. One inspiring saint in this regard is St. Eulalia, who was born in the 3rd century in Spain. At twelve years old, stubborn and bull-headed, she would sneak out of her parent's house in the middle of the night in search of pagans to defy. She would spit at their idols and defy their threats of torture in order to gain the red crown. Or St. Crispina, who refused to sacrifice to idols, was called stubborn and insolent by the proconsul, and was martyred.

One of my favorite modern disciples (hopefully on the path to sainthood) is Fr. Walter Ciszek, who grew up in the hard-scrabble coal country of Pennsylvania and had a tough-as-nails character. This character would serve him well as a priest. However, when he joined the Jesuits and found himself in a Siberian prison after sneaking into Russia to minister to Catholics there, he similarly learned a lesson in relying on his own strength when he was put to the test. From WAU:

"Initially, Fr. Ciszek wasn’t too worried. He was innocent, after all. And he had "a great deal of confidence" in his ability to stand firm against any interrogator.

His strength, discipline, and habits of prayer certainly helped. But Lubianka wore him down with its constant hunger and isolation and the all-night interrogations, with their mind games and agonizing afterthoughts. After a year—brutalized, drugged, threatened with death—Ciszek did what he had been sure he would never do: He signed papers that gave the impression he had been spying for the Vatican.

Afterward, burning with shame and guilt for being "nowhere near the man I thought I was," he finally faced the truth.

'I had asked for God’s help but had really believed in my ability to avoid evil and to meet every challenge. . . . I had been thanking God all the while that I was not like the rest of men. . . . I had relied almost completely on myself in this most critical test—and I had failed.'

The interrogations continued, and Ciszek fell into black despair. Terrified, he threw himself on God, pleading his utter helplessness. Then, in a moment of blinding light, he was able to see "the grace God had been offering me all my life."

'I knew that I must abandon myself completely to the will of the Father and live from now on in this spirit of self-abandonment to God. And I did it. I can only describe the experience as a sense of "letting go," giving over totally my last effort or even any will to guide the reins of my own life. It is all too simply said, yet that one decision has affected every subsequent moment of my life. I have to call it a conversion. . . . It was at once a death and a resurrection.'

We are now entering into Holy Week on the eve of Palm Sunday, it is no accident that we see the weakness of the flesh highlighted in Matthew's Gospel. If you are like me, you find strong affinity with St. Peter in the courtyard, who of course was just prior to his thrice denial of Christ was brazenly cutting off the ear of those who opposed him in the garden. This has not been an especially fruitful Lent for me--I'm not necessarily failing spectacularly, but I am certainly eating crow in "adjusting" my various personal Lenten observances--quite frankly, because I found them too demanding. Like my father at the bike race, we lovingly reassure ourselves all is well and all is well and all will be well, while we quietly slip out of our hair shirts a few weeks early and go off in search of some soft foods. "I will die (to self) with you!" we proudly profess on Ash Wednesday. When Palm Sunday comes, we self-consciously look around to see who heard us.

One of the most disconcerting parts of lost opportunity when your Lent is more or less a failure is that we fail in loving God more. "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God" (Ps 42:1) David waxes. Isn't this the purpose of our observances of the three Lenten pillars--to intensify that longing, that panting for God: in our prayer, in our hunger, and in the poor? 

But even when we have cut corners left and right, we can still finish strong. We should recognize, however, when it comes to the grace of final perseverance at our death, this is complete grace and depends nothing on our merit--even that merit we pride ourselves of obtaining during these sacrificial periods of penance and testing.

What happens when you miserably fail that test? You throw yourself on the mercy of grace, since this is what your salvation depends upon. We don't obtain perseverance through the will alone, but as St. Alphonsus notes, "All those who are in heaven are there for this one reason: They prayed, they asked for perseverance. All those who are in hell are there for this one reason: They did not pray and they did not ask the Lord for the grace of final perseverance." If nothing else, it reminds us that we do not save ourselves of our own merits, and how truly weak we are--helpless without grace.

If you're like me, you are salvaging what's remaining of your Lent to try to finish strong, while realizing it's all a kind of child's play compared to what our Lord endured in his Passion: our little successes, our massive fails, our meager penances, all the while accompanied by complaining and rationalizations for the slightest of discomforts. But we must remember that our Lord never held Peter's sin of denial over his head: it was a setback but not the sum of his discipleship, and one Peter never forgot either since it was the antidote to his brazen bravado.  

If you're having an excellent and fruitful Lent, I commend you; give thanks to God for the grace. If you're like me and having a less-than-stellar month of lost opportunity full of lackluster prayer and feeble fasts, I feel you. Let's try to recognize that in our Christian faith, we do not earn the love of the Father through our works and accomplishments--it is freely given and freely received, an unmerited grace. That doesn't mean we shouldn't push ourselves to pray more, fast more, give more....but even when you haven't, God doesn't love you any less. If anything, he is close to the brokenhearted and rich in mercy for the weak and helpless.

You may have bitten off more than you can chew a month ago, but you still have a week before the darkness-turned-dawn of Easter. Recommit yourself to the Lord, as the just man falls seven times and rises again (Prov 24:16).  Embrace your failures because they are your teacher--teaching you not to rely on your own merits, but on grace. And give yourself a little grace too--if you ate the chocolate or the burger or whatever. You're not a loser, just a human being. God still loves you. He forgives you, runs out to meet you and interrupts your rehearsed script to throw a robe and ring on you. He wants you to die with him, and die well, so that you may live. Final perseverance does not depend on you, but rests with a very competent and loving God who wants to shower you with that grace. 

Let him.

The Passion in Light of the Annunciation

 There is a moving scene in The Passion of the Christ when Mary, the mother of Jesus is walking in the Praetorium while her son is chained in prison below ground. At a certain point she pauses, almost with a kind of mother's sixth sense, and drops to her knees while resting her ear on the cold stone floor. The camera pans down, and we see Jesus chained to a pillar, raising his eyes sensing his mother directly above. If children are tied to their mothers, who bore them and gave them life, in a natural sense, how much more so would the Mother of our Lord have a supernatural bond with her son even when separated by physical time or space?  

As we begin to round the corner out of Lent and enter into Holy Week, I would like to propose a concurrent meditation--that of Christ's terrible Passion on Holy Thursday in the Garden of Gethsemane with his holy mother's Annunciation thirty-three years prior. For in both scenes, we see the fate of humanity hinging on two fiats--one human, one divine--but manifested uniquely in each historical setting.

Catholic tradition maintains that the Annunciation--the announcement by the angel Gabriel to Mary that she would conceive and bear the Christ--took place in Nazareth in Mary's home (it is interesting to note that the Eastern Orthodox tradition places Mary at the town well in Nazareth for this event, but for the purpose of this meditation we will maintain the Catholic tradition). For women, the home is the heart and sanctuary of a mother. We can see in Proverbs 7 that the tempestuous woman goes out from the house, "not bearing to be quiet, not able to abide still at home; Now abroad, now in the streets, now lying in wait near the corners (v. 11-12). When the angel Gabriel appears to Mary in the sanctuary of her home in Luke's gospel, he startles her with the proclamation, "Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you." And she was "greatly troubled" (Lk 1:29). The angel, in turn, assures her not to be afraid.

When women find out they are with child, there can be a mix of emotions--from overwhelming joy and hope to trepidation and fear. Now, we know Mary was conceived without Original Sin, but the general consensus among theologians is that as a human, she did not possess the Beatific Vision that her son had. The great and holy virtue of the Mother of God lies, I believe, in her unwavering faith and trust in God. But that faith and trust did not answer all of life's questions for her. In fact, after the angel makes the announcement and drops that bomb on her to which she offers up her fiat of faith and trust in that which she does not understand, he departs (Lk 1:38). 

In the garden of her home, and in the arena of her heart, I am inclined to believe that she wrestled with the implications of this divine assignment--what does this mean? What do I do now? How will this work? How is this even possible? She must have been cognizant of her low stature and standing, for in her canticle which follows her visit to her cousin Elizabeth, she proclaims in great faith her own lowliness (Lk 1:48), and that the mighty will be cast from their thrones and the likes of those lowly will be lifted on high (v. 52). Her trust in God, who reveals His plan to her not in advance but on account of her faith with only that which she needs to know at each moment, is the secret to her preservation from sin. God with us--Emmanuel--is her living reality, her nine month perpetual communion, in which the Messiah homes in the refuge of her womb until his appointed time. During that time, the Christ is nourished by her human body and Mary in turn feeds off the spiritual communion her son growing in her belly provides. There is not a moment in which she is separated from him--physically or spiritually--while pregnant.  For the alcoholic in recovery, he knows his only chance of sobriety can at times depend on seconds or minutes, not months or years. If he looks too much beyond those small steps, the temptation to wilt under the weight of the long road stretching before him becomes too much. I have to think that Mary, recognizing the great weight of her divine assignment while not fully understanding it, similarly takes these small steps in faith and trust the way a car on a dark road illuminated by headlights only sees the three feet at a time in front of it. It is in the present, not the future, that faith lives. Faith waits for instructions, faith assents, faith obeys and trusts. 

When we see the anxiety of Mary on the return to Jerusalem when Jesus is separated from the caravan. This is a natural, human emotion for a mother who has lost her son; but it would also lend credence to this idea that Mary is not a kind of omnipotent, all-knowing creature able to keep cool detachment in all circumstances. Just as she was "greatly troubled" at the annunciation and also experienced anxiety at losing her son, so too I think Mary wrestled in her home after the Annunciation against the natural factions of her mind--the "what ifs," the doubts, the questions, the not-knowing. She counters all of these 'demons' in a sense in the way her lowliness gains the highest stature in the divine economy: absolute, unwavering faith and trust in God. Her verbal fiat is her human "yes," though it was not as if the angel Gabriel led with a question "Do you assent to be the Mother of God?." Her ongoing fiat until she is taken up is that unwavering faith and trust in God that must re-assent each moment in the darkness--in the cloud of unknowing. 

Now let us turn our meditation to that of her son in the Garden of Gethsemane during his Passion on Holy Thursday. Jesus is confined in a semi-private space in the grove he enters into of his own accord "to pray" (Luke 22:41). Whereas his mother was greeted in her sanctuary with the words of Annunciation by an angel, and we can presume her monthly bleeding at that time stopped, Christ instead is subjected to the brutal test he tells his friends with him to pray to be spared from and his mental anguish is so intense that he sweats blood, a seemingly impossible scenario for a man. He is only comforted by an angel after the qualified fiat--"Not my will, but yours be done" is preceded by his heartbreaking admission of not wanting to go through what has been preordained for him before the beginning of time: to drink the chalice of redemptive torment. 

Whereas Mary has the comfort of kin in her cousin Elizabeth in their miraculous respective pregnancies, Christ's friends fail him at his hour of need. The women embrace and commune; the man Christ finds his company asleep from grief. He is alone with the Father who ordains the very weight that threatens to break his back: is the Father there? Does he provide the comfort Jesus seeks? For hours he seeps blood from his pores in a gripping fearfulness, an anxiety not of unknowing as when his mother sought him, but of KNOWING what awaits him. His Passion is not in the questioning of "what does this mean?" or "how can this be possible?" but of knowing EXACTLY what needs to be done to accomplish the divine will by nature of the beatific vision. 

We can almost imagine the hero Mashiach, in a moment of complete and gripping human fear, wanting to be back in the womb of his mother--with her and nourished by her and spared from such suffering. For he knows--by the Beatific Vision--his fate, which causes such agony. And so there is a kind of hypostatic union in his prayer to the Father: Take this cup from me; but Your will be done. For it is the great temptation of man--much different from the temptation of woman--to run from his destiny and seek refuge in the womb while armies go to war. The man goes out to meet death, while woman stays hidden to nurture life. 

In meditating on the Annunciation and the Agony in the Garden in this kind of parallel, we can then direct our thoughts to our own placement as human victims of sin and ransomed prisoners wholly dependent on grace. We are as helpless to save our selves as infants are dependent on their mothers. We do not have the benefit of an Immaculate Conception, and yet we are washed from the effects of Original Sin by baptism. Remember that Jesus' baptism in Matthew 3 was proceeded by his immediate 'going out' into the wilderness to be subjected to temptation. And we also do not have the benefit of the Beatific Vision, and so our spiritual sobriety rests on the faith and trust of Mary--moment by moment, step by step, nurtured by prayer without ceasing. When we fail to do so, or are distracted by sin and carelessness, we step off the path in the night without the lamp of grace and cry out in the dark for help. 

Men of faith cannot avoid going to war--against the world, the flesh, and the devil--and cannot avoid suffering in resisting the concupiscence which blinds us. Meanwhile St. Paul writes that "women, however, will be saved by childbearing" (1 Tim 2:15). What does the Apostle mean by this? In imitating our Holy Mother, whose fiat or "yes" saved us from darkness and death, so too does humanity depend on women not going out to the desert to wage war with the self as men do, but in bringing forth life from the sanctuary of the home like the Theotokos. 

While we may not have the beatific vision to know exactly how we are being used by God in the divine economy, that is by God's plan to keep us hidden. Faith is born in darkness and refined by fire and only after it has been tested can it bring forth light to others. This Holy Week, do not shy from that suffering in the dark, and resist the temptation to crawl back in the womb when you start to bleed. Cry out to your Mother from your personal cross that she might strengthen you with faith and trust to endure what you need to endure and not fail the test. If you are wracked by the "Why me?" of doubt or the seemingly merciless effects of tragedy in your personal passion, look to your Mother who rests her ear to the ground just above your prison cell, whose own heart was pierced by a sword and who knows more pain than you can ever imagine. Jesus, I trust in you. 

*This article was published on March 7, 2024 at Catholic Spiritual Direction (spiritualdirection.com)

Friendship in Christ: A conversation about chastity and same-sex attraction

 My latest article at Catholic World Report, here.

Read and Weep: What Contemporary Christians "Think" About Divorce and Remarriage

 For all the charges leveled against the Catholic Church about being Pharisaical and obsessed with rules, it can't hold a candle to the absolute chaos of sola scriptura "bible-based" Christianity. 

Exhibit A: My wife came across a post by the well-known Christian radio program Focus on the Family in her feed recently, which posed the question to their audience: 

Do you think it's okay to get remarried after a divorce? 

Let us know what you think! #marriage #remarried

 She told me the comments were driving her absolutely crazy, and that I had to see for myself. So I took a look and sure enough, she was right. I took a little sampling of screen shots to show you what I mean, which I think serves as a decent litmus for the Christian culture at large. 

Now granted, I don't think cultural Catholics are much better if the question had been posed to them. So this isn't necessarily to indict Evangelicals specifically, since the majority of Catholics can be just as theologically ignorant of both the Bible and exegesis in general. But I will say that in this particular dim sum sampling of responses the glaring deficiency of "scripture alone" private interpretation can easily be used to justify sin in direct contradiction to the literal words of Jesus in Scripture. I will provide some commentary for each of these randomly selected screenshot comments on the post to try to back up my point. 

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I have to give this first commenter credit: just a straight up, "Yes" to the question "is it ok to divorce and remarry?" 

Now, for those who may not be familiar with the scriptures or who may have glossed over the particular passage in which this very question is posed to our Lord in Matthew 19:9: "I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.” Adultery is a serious sin worthy of damnation. And because it will appear in the comments again and again, the "exception clause" that Protestants will typically ascribe to the translation of "sexual immortality" means "in cases of adultery." But this is not accurate, as Jimmy Akin points out here. 

Another interesting trend I noticed was the "insertion" of extra-biblical justifications for remarriage after divorce, such as above in cases of adultery "or abandonment." Mm, kay? For "Where Is That In The Bible?" Christians, I find that curious as "abandonment" appears nowhere in scripture as grounds for remarriage. 

I find the above line of thinking pretty permissive as well: "Yes, according to God's will" and the subsequent convoluted reasoning of "seeking guidance from God for permission to marry or remarry" which sounds pious but is really only self-serving and deluded, since it justifies sin. Of course, it is followed up by "only between one man and one woman" as a kind of orthodoxy chaser after the shot.

This comment above refers to justifying remarriage if "Christ wasn't at the center" of the first marriage. This could be a case of "being yoked to an unbeliever," but nowhere is that grounds for remarriage after divorce (adultery). 

The line of thinking above that "I don't believe God called us to be alone if divorced" is a common one, and that "God will not punish anyone that gets remarried?" How do you know that? "I don't believe" that God would do such and such is not a solid source when you are wagering your eternal salvation. And where is the cross in all this? Yes, being alone can be a burden. So can being celibate and "posessing your vessel" in integrity, as Paul exhorts one to do in 1 Thes 4. That does not give us a license to sin. I can't even. 

Here's someone who thinks the question is obviously a stupid one because OF COURSE IT IS!

This individual claims that "all sins are forgiven," presumably as a "get out of jail free" card using Christ's death on the cross as license. Maybe they forgot Paul's words in Romans 6:2, "shall I continue in sin so that grace may abound? Certainly not!" "There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus" is trotted out a lot when these situations make one uncomfortable with their lifestyle choices, and I think that is what is happening here as well. 

Here's someone above who states that "it depends on the circumstances." Again, there is no justification for divorce, and yet time and time again people will try to get out from under their vows doing exactly that.

This person states that "it's between the couple and God," which is line with the private interpretation/personal relationship ethos of Protestant Christianity. This very much neglects the fact that marriage is a public good and is witnessed to publicly as well. The "it's about consent between the two parties only" is what paved the way for gay marriage and further warped people's understanding of the proper means and ends of marriage. 

Again with the 'abandonment' reasoning, with an extra does of "abuse" as grounds for divorce and remarriage--neither of which are in the bible. 

It sucks that people get divorced. It sucks that people end up alone. It sucks that people get sick, become disabled, die. "People should have 2nd chances at love" doesn't want to accept the cross. Because we shouldn't have to suffer. 

Abuse. Adultery. Again, these are used as 'outs' in lieu of any authoritative teaching body (Magisterium) that is absent in Protestant Christianity. Anything goes when the interpretation of what God wills is up to you.

Again, sorry...abuse is not a biblically sanctioned event for remarriage after a divorce. 

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Is it any wonder that Satan--the great Deceiver--would wage his final battle on the field of marriage and family, as St. Lucia of Fatima predicted? Is it any wonder that Satan blinds people so they cannot see clearly and repeats his temptation in the Garden "Did God REALLY say?..." Again, I'm not signaling out Evangelicals specifically here, (as Catholics are just as guilty) only that they are just another canary in the cage for Christendom in the West and this particular thing online was cannon fodder. The justification of sin here baffles me, as our Lord's words could not be more clear. It is no wonder our Lord said the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Mt 7:13-14).

Marriage may be hard, but it's not terribly complicated: One man. One woman. Open to Life. Freely consented to. Until death do you part. Anything else is not of the Spirit...and the Spirit does not deceive.  

"Woman is the Glory of Man": A (Critical) Film Review of 'Cabrini'

Once while visiting downtown Detroit to do some street evangelization I prayed to St. Frances Xavier Cabrini because I heard she was the patron saint for finding parking. In an unfamiliar city with a rough reputation, I figured it was a long shot to employ her for this little favor (which seemed big at the time). Low and behold, as soon as I got downtown near our set-up corners, a car pulled out from a spot right in front of me and I was able to slide in. Grazie, Madre! Truth be told, though, I didn't know much about St. Cabrini's life beyond that little tidbit of info, and that little mini-miracle she worked for me.

So I decided on a whim this afternoon to go to a matinee screening of Cabrini, because I like to give things a fair shake, not to mention think and make determinations for myself rather than second-hand. I say that because it seems people who have seen the film (or those who have not yet feel moved to comment on it anyway) seem to be of two minds about it. I have made it known in over fifteen reviews on this blog (see here) that I am a film snob, and try to go beyond the "I loved it!" or "I didn't care for it" reactions to get to the objective reasons why I either loved a film or didn't. I was also surprised to see the theater about three quarters full, which was kind of cool.

I'll say from the outset Cabrini did nothing for me, either as a Catholic or as a movie-goer in general and I found myself checking my watch during the duration of the movie on numerous occasions. The acting is acceptable, the lighting and cinematography check all the right boxes, but I was absolutely not invested in these characters. It's not that they were two-dimensional or anything--they just did not give me a reason to care about them; and that includes Mother Cabrini herself. 

I also couldn't help feeling a bit force-fed, as well. Those who were critical of the downplaying or absence of faith and prayer in a story about a Catholic saint, and the upsell of strong-willed empowerment messaging were, I think, right to be. It kind of felt like a modern Marvel movie in that sense masquerading as a religious film. The humanist innuendo didn't hit you over the head, but it was definitely there, glorifying the human dimensions of what should have been reserved for the Divine. What seemed like a massive disappointment was the missed opportunity to underscore that the massive wagers and scope of work that Mother Cabrini undertook simply would not have been possible were it not for Divine Providence. It's as if the currency of the spiritual held no value in this particular producer's economy. 

Now, I know Catholics are our own worst enemy, but honestly why do producers keep missing the mark, again and again, when trying to appeal to mass audiences on matters of faith? This seemed to be the case with the new Padre Pio movie as well. However, there have also been some very well done films (A Hidden Life, about the life of Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, and Man of God about the life of the Orthodox Saint Nektarios of Aegina as two examples) in the past few years showing what is possible. 

Cabrini is neither a beautiful film nor a convincing one. I did not care about any of the characters, and it felt like a mild lecture one had to endure rather than something that draws you in of your own volition. All of Mother Cabrini's sisters seemed to be akin to NPCs (Non-Player Characters) in a video game, though the relationship Mother has with the former prostitute who has entered into their community seems to have some slight inter-personal development. 

The battles and obstacles in the film were all external, outside the person--this seemed like a huge lost opportunity to delve beneath the skin of a formidable character to the spiritual dimension. It almost seemed like a foreign script to the producers that they scrapped in favor of the tangible and easily explainable, as if the biblical scholars of the Jesus Seminar of the 1980's got together to try their hand at film and focused on the historical Jesus devoid of his miracles. Sorry, the feeding of the five thousand wasn't because "sharing is caring." Hard pass.

I don't quite know what the agenda of Cabrini was, if there was one. Was it to inspire? And if so, inspire to what? Curiosity? Piety? Humanitarianism? Deeper faith? Female empowerment? Was there a reason it was touted as premiering on "International Women's Day?" Or the emphasis on immigration during a border crisis and election year? I don't know, and I don't really care to speculate. Because nothing about Cabrini made me care at all, because...well, why should I care about something I wasn't invested in. And that is where it fails as a film. I don't owe Angel Studios anything. If anything, my $11.50 put to rest my suspicion of the critics of this film, because I can say they were right to hold the film itself in suspicion.

Phillip Campbell has a much more thorough (and favorable) review over at Unam Sanctam Catholicam. We both saw Cabrini on the same day and were texting back and forth about it and decided to publish our reviews simultaneously.