Oh That You Should Bear This Cross

I don't get many comments on my blog, but one I did get from an acquaintance shook me a little. It was in response to a post I had written titled "The Day That Cost Me My Friend" in which I recounted the fallout incurred with one of my best friends from college from my trip to San Francisco to minister to Joseph Sciambra in his LGBT outreach at San Francisco Pride (note that Joseph's ministry is not a gay-affirming ministry, but an in-the-trenches outreach to those in the gay lifestyle as an act of mercy to encourage them to reconsider their choices). 

I didn't know why I was hopping a airplane flying across the country and back in less than 24 hours to do this, but my philosophy in the past couple years has been, when God speaks, you listen. When God says go, you go. I'm not a super impulsive person, but in this instance I knew if the Holy Spirit was calling me to this thing I absolutely did not really want to go to (I hate crowds, there are places I'd rather be than the largest gay pride rally in the country, and I could think of better things I could use $750 for instead of a last minute plane ticket), if I considered it too much rationally, I would talk myself out of it. So I booked that ticket and just went before that happened. It was fruitful in the sense of obeying and getting used to what that looked like, and also connecting with many other friends and supporters in the Faith through Joseph.

Anyway, this mom of two, who I had once been very good friends with (but had fallen out of touch with over the years, so I have no idea the context but I can probably infer) had also gone out of her way to leave the comment on my Facebook page, and I'm not sure I had ever gotten a comment from her before, so I imagine something struck a nerve. It read:

"What will you do if it is your child that comes to you someday with this cross?"

Now, I don't like 'what if' questions, generally speaking; questions like, "if you were being tortured, would you deny Christ?" or "if your wife got cancer, what would you do?" Sure it's easy to say what we think we might do in whatever situation given such and such circumstances based on an over-idealized vision of our noble merit and a disregard for our weaknesses, but it just feels like futile speculating for the sake or argument, in my opinion. I take to heart the scripture that says:

"Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away." (James 4:13-14)

It was a valid, but I did not feel, fair question. It also felt like a little bit of a trap with a hidden agenda, though it may have just been coming from an emotional place and I honestly didn't know what the backstory was or her family situation. The subtle inference being, if you take a "hard-line" Catholic approach, you'll kick your child out of the house and never love or speak to them again, or some such thing. I think I can safely say, despite my not being able to predict the future, that I would never stop loving my child and to take such measures would be extreme.

Every now and then I will meander over to Fr. Martin's Facebook page, though I am not friends his posts are public I believe. There are no shortage of parents (and it is mostly mothers commenting) with gay children there. I also see it in other liberal Catholics whose once solid faith has given way because of such things. I imagine they find some solace in someone in the Church, a priest, affirming their family situations. It can get a little bit dicey reading these comments and things too, because a lot of times I sympathize with their situations and things. The stage is usually one set in half-truths, though, and appeal to emotionalism. I think, well, what if my son or daughter was gay? Would I change my tune?

Joseph has assured me in our conversations that being a good father and showing affection to one's sons (and daughters) goes a long way in healthy attachment and psycho-social development for the children. But I also know, and have the humility to admit, that sometimes we just don't know what causes same sex attraction. It is a multi-faceted situation that oftentimes has some common themes (domineering mother, distant father, trauma and/or abuse, etc), but sometimes those things are absent and a child will still grow up with such an attraction despite everything. So, I don't know, but my friend's comment was pushing me to say to myself, "well, what would you do?"

There is more to the scripture from James 4. He goes on immediately:

"Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin." (James 4:15-17)

We have a shifty way about us, don't we, as human beings to rationalize. We think of ourselves as having good hearts, but the fact is scripture does not support such a claim, for "the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" (Jer 17:9) and "out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. These are the things which defile the man" (Mt 15:19-20).

I don't like children being used as pawns, either politically or spiritually. A child's sinful behavior--whether it is lying as an eight year old about stealing cookies, or going to bed with their boyfriend or girlfriend as an eighteen year old--should never be condoned. As a parent, you may be the only moral pillar they might have to lean on in a morally bereft culture. Scripture is clear about our responsibility as parents: "Train up a child in the way he should go; Even when he is old he will not depart from it." (Prov 22:6). This does not always work out they way we may expect and no one is perfect, but it doesn't mean we don't do everything in our power to ensure good moral formation, and from an early age.

The inference is that if it is my child who is gay or living a gay lifestyle, it must be the Church that is wrong when it teaches about the disordered nature of such attachments. I imagine there may be some cognitive dissonance alleviation going on there. But the Catechism is clear that homosexual acts are contrary to natural law, and under no circumstances can they ever be approved (CCC 2357). So, where does that leave the parent in such situations?

I am reminded of the morally troubling book by Shusaku Endo (and recent film produced by Martin Scorcese), Silence about the Japanese martyrs and the specter of apostasy that many dealt with during that era in the 16th century. The book actually made a formidable impact on me, not because it answered any questions, but because it shrouded such moral certainty and elicited the uncomfortable response of having to actually grapple with these issues, in the same way my friend's comment did. For a potential takeaway theme (hence the danger in the book to those not grounded in their faith) from Endo is that it is "more compassionate" to in fact trample the fumie (the image of the Lord or Our Lady to affirm one's apostasy) so that the suffering of the martyrs crucified in the sea might cease and they be spared. One of the priests is haunted by what he hears as the words of Christ, "Trample. It is to be trampled on by you that I am here." But even Satan can quote scripture, and we know that apostasy, even for compassionate reasons, is an act of treason and a supreme offense against the God who died for us. To echo the catechism, under no circumstances can it be approved.

Scripture can be hard to read sometimes, in light of such things. For what does our Christ teach?

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it." (Mt 10:34-39)

You can love your son or daughter and not affirm their lifestyle. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. That comes with a cost and a cross, a heavy one, when they do not listen to you and you are forced to make hard, concrete, real life choices in that relationship. We should not make an idol of our families, as if "family is everything." As a father I have meditated on the story of Abraham and Isaac on many occasions. It's hard to appreciate til you are a father, the thought of putting your little boy on that altar as a holocaust, drawing the knife yourself, looking into his eyes, all in the back of your mind, "Lord, WHY are you asking me to DO this?" But remember that Abraham was being tested, as the Lord often does with us, to see where our loyalties lie. And the Lord blessed him and his descendants. Looking at it from the outside, without eyes of faith, one might see a deranged, sadistic God.

But the Christian knows. The Christian knows that this is a precursor to exactly what God the Father, in his unfathomable love for us, did. He sacrificed His Son, His only begotten Son, to save us from our sin. And Christ, in his obedience and love for the Father, went willingly like a sheep to slaughter. He could have passed on the cup of suffering in the garden. He could have commanded his angels to take him down from the Cross. But he obeyed unto death. The Christian knows what our faith costs us, what it calls us to. Anything that asks your life of you is not going to spare anything else as well. But what is promised will be returned a hundred fold.

Do not sacrifice truth for a lie. Do not be tempted to the point of succumbing to comforting affirmations that sparkle and shine, especially when contrasted with the steep and shadowy road to Calvary. We have no right to take away another's cross if it be God's method to sanctify them. Though you might gain in this life, will lose it in the next, and your children will be no consolation there. Love them to death, and love them enough to show them what truth under pressure looks like. They will hate you for it. They may leave. But by prayer and fasting, by a severe mercy and love, by being the father that scans the horizon day after day and girds his dress and runs out undignified on the day their son make his way home from the foreign country he had set out for. Well...you may just save their souls in the end.