The Siren Song Of The Fleshpots Of Egypt

 

Temptation is such a strange thing. Always predictable, and yet always new.

I have been out of the woods for over six months, having quit smoking/vaping/dipping/nicotine cold turkey over the summer. It was brutal but the acute pain of it was shortlived. Months 2-5 were largely passed unscathed. But for whatever reason the past month, I think everyday of going back to it. Every day I need to consciously say, "No, thank you." "No, not today." "No, we are not going back to being a slave." "We are going to stay in the Promised Land...there is nothing back there in Egypt for us."

We all have our struggles and vices, our particular crosses and temptations. I haven't masturbated or looked at pornography in over 12 years. One always needs to stay diligent, but it's not an every-day struggle anymore for me. For some men, this is their battle; one which needs to be won. 

But with regards to this drug, I consciously know I can't just pick up a JUUL or whatever and use it every now and then. Unfortunately, from past experience, I seem to need a no-tolerance policy in order to stay clean. "As a dog returns to his vomit, so a fool repeats his folly" (Prov 26:11). I have to admit there is a kind of powerlessness over the drug, that I would be a fool to entertain a "I can have just one" rationalization. I have no physical dependency at this point; it is one hundred percent head game. "Take heed, lest you fall" (1 Cor 10:12)

There comes a point when our exercise of the will becomes just that--exercise. Some days we are cruising, in the habit of virtue. And sometimes we need to deal with the oily suggestions that slide into our eardrums from the lemon-lot salesman more consciously. In these moments we only see the uncorrupted parts of the fruit being offered. We need to say NO and turn right away. "When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it" (Gen 3:6). It can physically and psychologically hurt to do so. But any short term pleasure must be considered against the inevitable fallout that would take one back to the land they escaped.

"And the children of Israel said to them: Would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat over the flesh pots, and ate bread to the full. Why have you brought us into this desert, that you might destroy all the multitude with famine?" (Exodus 16:3)

I have to think that the devil will often try to wear us down by projecting things into the future. This exercising the will which feels so tiresome day in and day out--when it's suggested to us that it will never end, will be like this forever, will exhaust us to the point where we have no choice but to succumb to whatever temptation we are being buffeted by--it's absolute folly....but you want to listen to the siren that gives you permission to indulge your senses. "It will be ok. Just one. Just one time. Just one hit. I promise. Just one." The next thing you know you are back to square one. Any addict knows how the story ends. The weariness of being clean and turning down invitations to indulge are nothing compared to the weariness of day-in day-out addiction. 

One thing a friend in deliverance ministry suggested to me when I lamented to her that I was tired of 'exercising' the will, saying no to my dark wants every. single. day. She said, offer it up for someone specific. I heard somewhere, I can't remember--offer your temptations and sufferings for the release of a thousand souls in purgatory. Their release is more painful to the Devil than the pleasure brought on by seeing you suffer, so maybe he will stop tempting you then. Not sure how theologically accurate that is, but I'm willing to give it a try. 

We all have our battles, our tailor made crosses. This may be one of mine (among others). I don't want to forget the freedom, the newfound strength, the ability to be free in times of crisis, unfettered by binding chains. But some days it's all I can do to not pull over the car and feed my addiction. Every day is a 'NO' and I gnash my teeth a little. It feels like there's no end in sight, no respite on the horizon. And yet, all I have to do every day is what I am currently doing. Not listening to the lies, not using, and not forgetting. There's a lot at stake, and I am a weak and unprincipled man. 

Deliver me, Jesus. Deliver me. Take this suffering and use it for Your glory. Amen.

Forgive Quickly, Before You Change Your Mind

Don't underestimate God's propensity to make use of the Nuclear Option in our lives to set us straight.Were it not for what I call a "grace grenade" bouncing into my room and blowing out the windows of my life as I knew it, I'm not sure what things would look like today. 

I had met a photographer while biking across the country in the summer of 2003, fallen in love, and gotten engaged a few months later. In some ways, she was a little wilder than my usual "type"--a talented artist, covered in tattoos and who was featured in tattoo magazines, who trained at a South Philly boxing club, trading exotic dancing in a strip club for bartending in an iconic 15th Street dive bar--while in some ways we were too much alike. 

The wedding was set for September of 2004, the deposit was put down at the reception venue, the guests were invited, the shower gifts received. I remember many times saying to myself and others, "relationships are supposed to be hard. They're supposed to be hard." The truth is, we weren't right for one another, and I was an incredible burden at the time, my depression thick as a fog. 

We kept pushing on, gritting through, but truth be told the whole thing needed to be blown up. And blow up it did under the stresses of circumstance. Her photography career was taking off on a national level while her best friend was diagnosed with and succumbing to cancer. Meanwhile she was juggling dealing with my mental state and, I presume, having doubts about her ability to endure me for the rest of our lives together. At one point she confessed she had gone home with someone from the bar and contracted an STD in the process. 

The news, of course, cut like a knife. I could tell she was sorry, but it was also a clear sign that she wanted out; this would not be something we would be walking back from. The hurt was so weighty, it felt like at the time, that when I held her sobbing in my arms it was clear I had no natural strength to forgive this infidelity. I was numb, but I made an act of the will to turn it over to the Big Guns to do the forgiving for me. After all, had I not played the whore with the Lord, been his Gomer, and been washed clean by his own blood? Who was I to withhold forgiveness for such harlotry? It was the same Holy Spirit who at the basement hardcore show when I was 17 had "cut me to the heart" and convicted in my sin who then stepped in and gave me the grace to forgive my fiancee, with no residual of contempt or bitterness. I simply forgave her, washed away by mercy, and let her go. It was one hundred and ten percent grace.

God doesn't keep us from making mistakes, especially those of youthful folly. But in lobbing this "grenade of grace" that derails our dearest plans, sending downed trees into one trailhead so that we take another instead, he gently makes use of our tangled circumstances for His glory and our good and brings us to the place He wants us to end up. He's not opposed to opening up the arsenal and using whatever is needed--tragedy, sickness and death, betrayal, crisis--to break our hearts of stone, reshape us by grace, and bring us home.

Pastor Wang Yi spoke in this video of how he approaches police interrogations (for living the faith in China) which I think speaks to this technique of backing yourself into a corner on purpose before you can second-guess, and "settling matters quickly" with your adversary (Mt 5:25). 

"When I'm being interrogated at a police station, I put myself in a 'spiritually safe' situation...I say everything front. I immediately arrive at the point of no return... 

When you are facing pressure because of your faith, don't give yourself to much wiggle room. Articulate the most controversial point as early as possible, and then with Esther say "If I die, I die." It is often those who say "If I die, I die" who live in the end." 

 That relationship of mine twenty years ago was a disaster, and it needed to be blown up. And of course he not only blew it up, but sent the wife he had been reserving for me years as a provision years later. 

But I never forgot that experience of God's mercy for my then-fiance through the conduit of my own broken spirit. I willed forgiveness, and in the daze when I felt myself losing consciousness and going down, turned it over to Him to exact it. It was bigger than I could do myself. I backed my will into a corner of forgiveness, because if I did not right then and there, I would doubt I ever could. I would brood and fester, reliving the hurt, licking wounds and lording it over her for years to come. 

Instead, I just....let it go. Let the Lord deal with the mess. I'll do my part--"forgive those who trespass against you..." just as I had been forgiven my trespasses. I had no dogshit of resentment stuck to the soles of my shoes, no anger.  God had wiped everything clean in my heart after that moment. In that, I myself healed, while never forgetting that that kind of power does not come from the human heart, but by grace. 

Whisper Down The Lane: A Cautionary Tale of The Dangers of Underground Catholicism

A few days ago we received our annual newsletter in the mail from the Cardinal Kung Foundation, who we financially support to aid the underground Church in China. For those unaware, the Church has been illegal and persecuted in China for the past sixty years. "Since October 2016, anyone in China under age 18 may not be baptized, enter a church, attend a Mass, or receive religious instructions." The Communist government created a Church under the control of Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association in 1957 in an attempt to replace the Roman Catholic Church in China and transferred almost all the properties of the Roman Catholic Church in China to the Communist founded Patriotic Association Church, leaving the "illegal" but loyal-to-Pope underground Catholic Church in poverty.

The Patriotic Church is an "approved" but sham puppet Church which pledges its loyalty to the CCP. Meanwhile, the true Church in China loyal to the Pope and dedicated to preserving the true faith, is the illegal "underground Church" and being starved and fined out of existence. According to the Foundation, "The Vatican has not consecrated new bishops when an underground bishop retired or died. Many diocese are now managed by Diocesan Administrators. Many bishops are elderly. Even without medical care or proper living conditions, with God's blessings these elderly bishops work in their 80s. Due to frequent arrests, the health of these elderly bishops deteriorated."  

The underground Church is staying loyal, but the Vatican is not making it easy to keep the faith. "With the signing of the Vatican-China Provisional Agreement, [the] Vatican gave recognition to all the Patriotic Bishops, including forgiveness to eight excommunicated Bishops. [The] Vatican even "requested" two legitimately consecrated underground bishops to step aside for two excommunicated bishops. With such extraordinary concessions to the government and the Independent church, the Vatican failed to obtain the freedom of one of its own bishop who is 89 years old and had already been jailed for 44 years."

In this case, to be a true Catholic in China, you must join and be loyal to the underground Church, which is hidden, persecuted, and left hung out to dry by it's own leaders in Rome. 

There is also another tale from the East--in this case Japan--of a persecuted minority of Catholic Christians that had been forced underground during extended years of persecution from the 16th century onward. The Kakure Kirishitan, or "hidden Christians" never really emerged from the underground, and as a result the Faith--fiercely loyal to the ritualism but deformed by degrees over the years a--became almost unrecognizable to the true Faith. It became....something else. From CERC:

"Missionaries were banned from Japan for 200 years until the middle of the 19th century when the French reintroduced Catholicism to the country. At this time, some of the Hidden Christians came forth and rejoined the Catholic Church. Others did not recognize the French Catholicism as the faith of their ancestors. Centuries of concealment and isolation had changed their faith into something unique with secrecy an integral part of its doctrine.

The Hidden Christians worshiped and prayed together and offered each other mutual support. But because the initial introduction to Christianity lasted barely one generation, their education in the faith was somewhat rudimentary. Nevertheless, they turned their inadequate instruction into a practice that developed its own hereditary priesthood, observed holy days and administered the sacrament of Baptism."

When an anthropologist sought out these Kakure Kirishitan practitioners in 1995, she discovered that there were only two "priests" left. 

"This is the only thing they have the ceremony," Whelan said. "That becomes their dogma. You have to do it right, you have to say the prayers right, or it won't have power. In the absence of other things that most other traditions have, this becomes the thing you've got to be true to."

"I do think that they are religious men in their own way," she said, that their prayers are directed toward God.

A tiny Catholic Church on Narushima attracts a small congregation, but the Kakure Kirishitan priests are not interested in joining it. Although they probably understand intellectually the relationship between Kakure Kirishitan and the Catholic Church, Catholicism to them remains foreign and removed.

Whelan, herself a former Catholic turned Buddhist, saw reflected in the last two priests the universal religious struggle between the conservative and the liberal. One priest, in being correct to the past, is blind to the realities around him. The other, attempting to make the ritual relevant to those who don't truly understand the tradition, makes compromises that dilute the best of what had been preserved.

Whelan considers the two old men on Narushima as among the only living authentic practitioners of the Kakure Kirishitan. "

Because we have been under quarantine as a family for the past week, we missed Mass last Sunday, Christmas Eve/Day, and this morning, so the five of us had to make due with a Missa Sicca ("Dry Mass") and family rosary, which I led. The Dry Mass is a stop-gap, not intended to the long-term. Last year, during COVID when Masses were suspended temporarily, I had converted our shed to a chapel in the off-chance event we needed a place to have private masses said. We have not had to use it for such purposes, as the churches were not closed for long. 

I know many traditionalists tout this kind of "underground TLM" movement but I think it's a short-term solution that makes them feel like persecuted torch-bearers in their minds but neglects the unforeseen dangers of "whisper down the lane" mutations were these ghettoizations to go on for years or decades. The underground Church in China is under real persecution, their bishops are being starved out of existence, but God has not abandoned them. 

And yet, for us, the danger of losing perspective were traditionalism to go "underground" is ever-present. I have to say, on the other hand, though, we have some older parishioners from our parish who did just this before Summa Pontificum was promulgated, who were assisting Masses in basements and keeping the flame of Tradition alive for future generations to be enjoyed in a more mainstream fashion today. If the mainstream TLM was being enjoyed, if the trajectory coming out of the Vatican is accurate, it may have been a short-lived luxury. If it is not the CCP, but our own supreme Pontiff, that is relegating us to the underground, how do we stay true to the faith and it's authentic expression in worship while keeping such deformities (seen in the KK communities) at bay? 

Personally, I'm conflicted about the "underground Trad" movement. I'm not averse to sacrifices and hardship for the faith and will gladly endure what we need to. Not that it is necessarily inevitable, but I fear a potential insular radicalization and spirit of malcontent should we be further ghettoized. Years, decades later, will the distance between those who remain in the liturgical New Rite and those stay loyal to Tradition in the Old intensify to the point where the traditionalist "old believers" emerge and find the Church of the Novus Ordo "unrecognizable" and refuse to join it? If the Vatican refuses to ordain bishops in the Old rite, how many generations can we truly survive without becoming illicit? Is this a new eve of nuevo-Lefebrism? 

For those who attend the Novus Ordo regularly, they may question what the big deal is with any of this, be unfazed or undisturbed by what is coming down from Rome. But for those of us faced with the decisions of what to do on Sundays and beyond moving forward should this come to fruition, our faith and loyalties are in many ways being tried and tested. What does it mean to be faithful? To be loyal? To be Catholic? To sell out? To resist? To let the flame of religion be snuffed out?

One thing I know for sure--our Lord never said it would be easy. “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to" (Lk 13:24)

“Awake, sword, against my shepherd, against the man who is close to me!” declares the LORD Almighty. “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered, and I will turn my hand against the little ones. (Zech 13:7)

See also: Subversion

Making Room

 You may have noticed this blog doesn't really track well with the liturgical calendar. I miss feast days all the time, and my knowledge of ecclesiology is limited, so I tend to just stick to what I know and write about that. I figured there is no shortage of Advent reflections, etc, at the Register and other more mainstream Catholic sites. 

Unfortunately this Advent we've had a number of timed gut punches, from the answers to the TC dubia last week, to our entire family coming down with Covid, my father getting hit by a car, and various other distractions and emergent issues. Despite all that, we're trying to look on the bright side of things--we are all together, we have enough groceries for now, and we seem to be on the upswing. Since we have chosen to quarantine, we will not be able to attend Christmas Mass, which is a real bummer, since I don't know if we've ever missed it. 

We don't get sick very often. Yesterday I was on the couch all day in and out of a sweatful sleep, and recalled St. Ignatius's story. From the Fr. Hardon archives:

He was a soldier by profession and, as later on he would at such length explain to his followers, God would do the most unexpected and unpleasant things in order to bring a soul to Himself. In Ignatius’ case, he was fighting a war against the French. During a battle at Pamplona he was badly wounded; one of his legs was quite shattered. Incidentally the Spaniards, once Ignatius was wounded, fled. (He was their leader). This led into months of convalescence; his convalescence converted him. You might say the Society of Jesus was born on a sick bed. He was a great reader of the romances of those days. Now that, by the way, is really something because he was wounded on May 20th (everybody remembers the date), 1521. Print was discovered in the late fifteenth century and yet, already, by 1521 there were, of all things, all kinds of novels in print. There is no doubt that the manner of his conversion, not just the fact but the manner, decided the nature of the order that he would found and the kind of spirituality that he would teach.

He wanted novels, but they just didn’t have them; it was a poorly stocked library. All they had was a Life of Christ and a book on the lives of the saints. The Life of Christ changed Ignatius’ life, and for the rest of his days his spirituality was, in the deepest sense, Christocentric. Unlike so many other great spiritual masters, for Ignatius the spiritual life is identified with a Person. He was no theologian; his vocabulary was very limited; his figures of speech were sometimes infantile, but he fell in love with Christ, and that made Ignatius and Ignatian spirituality. 

There is something about convalescence that strips you down and makes room for, well, just "being". St. Alphonsus quotes St. John of the Cross on this matter. "

"St. John of Avila once wrote to a sick priest: “My dear friend, -- Do not weary yourself planning what you would do if you were well, but be content to be sick for as long as God wishes. If you are seeking to carry out God’s will, what difference should it make to you whether you are sick or well[66]?’’ The saint was perfectly right, for God is glorified not by our works, but by our resignation to, and by our union with, his holy will. In this respect St. Francis de Sales used to say we serve God better by our sufferings than by our actions."

Thank God. Last year was such a busy year on a lot of fronts that I made a resolution this year to strip out as much as I could that wasn't necessary so we had more bandwidth for family, service, and just the 'white space' of availability. 

In many ways, as we lead up to Christmas, the traveling Mary and Joseph found a place that had "no room for them." (Lk 2:7). Although we don't want to be sick any longer than God wills, it's probably a gift in disguise, this "gift of room" where we can't do much but, well, exist. 

The birthplace of our Lord was an unexpected one, that fit into the Divine plan perfectly but on the surface seemed accidental, offensive and unduly human--straw, animal dung, a stable, a manger outside the inn. None of this kept the Lord God from accomplishing His work of salvation in history. Nothing happens apart from His will. In the manger moments, all you can do is sit in speechless adoration. Even the gentile Zoroastrians knew there was something special happening here in Bethlehem and worshipped. 

Thank you Lord for health. Thank you for sickness. Thank you for giving, thank you for taking. Thank you for loving us, for subjecting yourself to our level. Thank you for saving us by your grace, your Son, our Savior and our salvation. Amen. 

Feser: The Catholic Middle Ground on Covid-19 Vaccination

 It's been a number of months (if not a year) since I visited Edward Feser's blog. But I stumbled upon it this evening, and was surprised (and, admittedly, somewhat edified) to see that what he purports in his latest post almost completely squares with my own thoughts on the matter at hand. He is a philosopher, I am not, so he has done most of the heavy lifting of putting pen to paper whereas most of this stuff has just been swimming in my head the past six months. 

Read for yourself here. 

Why Faith Is Like A Marriage, and Why I Hold Out Hope For It

The person you love most can cut you the deepest. 

Anyone who has been married for a minute knows this. You literally mortgaged your entire life on this one person, this vow, this covenant, and living and loving them til death do you part. When you've shared a bed with someone for a year, ten years, half a century, you get to know them pretty well and vice versa. If you're a spiteful person, you have plenty of ammunition you can use against them. 

Though my wife and I have a good, healthy marriage, we are witnessing in friends the complete leveling of theirs. In sensitivity to the situation, I don't want to divulge details, but I can say that the entire foundation has been called into question, and while for years they had been superficially coasting with minimal blood traveling through restricted veins, an artery has ruptured in their marriage that has caused an proverbial aneurysm and brought it to the brink of collapse. Believe me when I say the issues are serious, and will take an enormous amount of investment and re-commitment to bring it back from the ledge. 

I said when I was on The Journey Home that when I came into the Church at the age of 18, I knew it was for life, and my 1st Communion and Confirmation felt like "walking down the aisle on my wedding day." So, I've always had this feeling that my relationship with the Church was not a fad, or a passing commitment, but literally a covenant. And it is fitting that the Lord recounts his relationship with his people throughout scripture in marital language. The Church is the spouse of Christ.

So, ok, in many ways both my wife and I have gone all chips in on each other, and all in on the Church as well. Because, as many Protestant Christians have trouble understanding, one's faith as a Catholic cannot essentially exist in any real way outside of the Church. It is a foreign concept that one could "love Christ and not the Church," any more than one could be truthful in saying he loved God but hated his brother (1 Jn 4:20). 

For some people who feel liberated by their recent throwing off of the shackles of the institutional Church--freedom from the gaslighting, the cognitive dissonance, the fear of the threat of eternal damnation--are making the claim that none of it is real, none of it true, and that the promulgation of Traditiones Custodes proves that it's nothing but bullshit. That those who stay in the Church are fools suffering from a kind of Stockholm Syndrom, especially since it's obvious at this point that the vicar of Christ himself is acting like an abusive father meeting out beatings. They feel vindicated by their escape, and the "I told you sos" from these religious pundits just feel like salt in the wound for the rest of us (who hold to the traditional faith and Mass) now having to contend with the "What nows?"   

For the first time in, I think, my history as a Catholic believer, the thought came to me, "What if they shut down the Latin Mass, and we just...stopped going?" Essentially, what if we just gave up, and said, "you know what, I don't believe any of this anymore." 

It's hard at this moment because we are dealing with the uncertainty of our future of worship, and also dealing with the existential questions and the pragmatic "where do we go on Sunday if this thing goes through" decisions that need to be made. And like many of those being crucified in their marriages who have the thought planted in their mind during those moments of insurmountable agony and betrayal: "what if I just leave the house for a pack of cigarettes, and don't come back?"

My friend Leila wrote a follow up book to her Primal Loss: The Adult Children of Divorce Speak. The book gave voice to those who had suffered from the trauma of divorce--that is, the children--but some readers expressed that that couldn't be where the story ended. And so she wrote Impossible Marriages Redeemed to tell the story of marriages that had been put up on the cross to be picked apart by ravens and yet did not come down off of it. By God's grace, many of these couples experienced a complete destruction and leveling of their marriage and yet refused to concede. They tied themselves to the mast of the ship, like Odysseus, and stuck to their vows by sheer force of will. And because they did not give up, but threw themselves on the mercy of God to save their marriage when they didn't know what else to do, God heard their desperate prayer and slowly brought it back from the dead. With man, this was impossible. But with God, all things are possible (Mt 19:26).

The promulgation of TC is a kind of humiliation, it feels like. All we want to do, as Catholics of the traditional persuasion, is to worship God in the fullest, most fitting way possible. Many of us can attest that it has borne good fruit, and is not (despite the gaslighting) rooted in a spirit of disobedience. Were the CDF to say tomorrow (today?): "You can no longer worship in this way?" many of us are faced with these decisions of "well, how are we to worship, then?" 

I think about Padre Pio a lot when he was forbidden to offer Mass, and how difficult and painful that must have been for him. But he accepted it as a crucifixion in obedience. I don't quite know if it's an apt comparison. But I wonder if many of us have been gliding along, superficially in our faith and worship, neglecting that if we are to follow Christ we are to be baptized into his death (Rom 6:3). What could be more painful then having the thing we care about most ripped away from us, and even more painfully so, not by a Communist government or a leftist mob, but by the Church herself? Like the spouse that knows us and our vulnerabilities.   

We may be on the eve of this period of uncertainty, liturgical wandering, and painful humiliation. And the threat of schism and defection to Orthodoxy and the SSPX may prove to be an extremely likely. When it comes to the Vatican's forecasting of who these traditionalists are a friend aptly said, "They are expecting college Republicans and they're getting the Maccabees."

And yet, for myself as the spiritual head of my household, I feel like the Lord is allowing this. This is not an accident, or outside of His will; nothing happens apart from His will! If we are going through a crucifixion of sorts, should we be surprised as if this was not a part of our discipleship. If the Lord is leveling His Church to the foundation the way He leveled the Temple, will He not rebuild it? Or do we not trust Him to guide us through this, and instead leave our marriage and forfeit the deepening of our faith and love in the Golden Years through the fiery trial (1 Pt 4:12)? We are people of the Resurrection, as St. Paul writes,  

    

"Now if Christ be preached, that he arose again from the dead, how do some among you say, that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen again. And if Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God: because we have given testimony against God, that he hath raised up Christ; whom he hath not raised up, if the dead rise not again. For if the dead rise not again, neither is Christ risen again. And if Christ be not risen again, your faith is vain, for you are yet in your sins.Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ, are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.

But thanks be to God, who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast and unmoveable; always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labour is not in vain in the Lord." (1 Cor 15:12-19; 57-58)

I have hope. I must have hope to survive. If we go through dark times, we must then lean more on Christ to guide us in the dark. If we are stripped down liturgically, crowned with thorns, we are in good company. To the extent that the wheat is separated and the faithful are not blown away like chaff, that we endure our suffering and do not defect, we will be resurrected. If you don't believe that, just what then is your faith in the crucified Christ founded on? 

I don't know what God is doing but I lament and assent with Job "Though He slay me, yet I will TRUST IN HIM!" (Job 13:15).

The Problem With The "Golden Unicorn"

 This is going to be a basic, repetitive post as I feel I've been making this point for a few years now. But in light of the Holy Father's now cemented antipathy to my people (fellow traditionalists), maybe it's worth posting. 

A couple years ago in St. Louis I attended a Latin Novus Ordo celebrated ad orientum, replete with chant, incense...the works. All the "smells and bells." My friends who belonged to the parish at the time referred to it as the "golden unicorn" of extremely rare Novus Ordo masses that tried to combine the best elements of the Tridentine Mass superimposed on the Novus Ordo. 

I guess, to be fair (according to OLV, where I attended that particular weekend), 

"Many Catholics are surprised to learn that the new General Instruction of the Roman Missal allows for certain traditional options that are now seldom seen in the U.S. But the ordinary form Mass, as celebrated with these options at St. Mary of Victories, is actually very close to the style of worship contemplated by the Fathers of Vatican II when they promulgated the Constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC) in 1963. They decreed, for instance, that Latin was to continue as our main liturgical language (SC #36), and did not call for priests to change their location on the sanctuary. (The celebrant traditionally stood in front of the altar during the Eucharistic Prayer, facing the same way as the people.) It was not the Fathers of Vatican II, but Pope Paul VI some years after the Council, who decided to legitimize the reception of Communion standing and in the hand as well as kneeling and on the tongue (the traditional manner that Benedict XVI, as pope, asked from those receiving Holy Communion personally from him). Nor did SC ask for new Eucharistic Prayers in addition to the First – i.e., the ancient ‘Roman Canon’, the centerpiece of the Roman-Rite Mass. It did, however, insist strongly that the Church’s great treasury of sacred music, especially Gregorian chant, should be not only retained but given “pride of place” (SC #116)."

This was a historically Hungarian parish, adjacent to and under an underpass, which had seen better days. Like many traditional parishes, it was in the "bad part of the town," but didn't enjoy the growth and crowds that many TLM parishes did (like SFDS Oratory, run by the ICKSP, for one). It was in desperate need of repair, and despite the best efforts of some of the more dedicated parishoners, it was dying.

I always feel I have to pardon the expression whenever I say it because it sounds kind of harsh, but the expression "lipstick on a pig" is one I have used to describe this situation (the Novus Ordo celebrated ad orientum in Latin). I don't have any issue with people who attend the Novus Ordo, or like the smells and bells of these kinds of liturgies. But I find it offensive when proponents of the NOM purpot it as some kind of 'split the middle' solution of a reverent liturgy in the New Rite to those of us who attend the Tridentine Mass. Someone in our area started a "Trad-lite" Facebook page kind of pressing this point. Hard pass.

Keep in mind liturgy is not my strong suit. I know what I know, and not much beyond that. And I don't want to come off snobby or snotty. But from my limited vantage point, one of the  obvious problems with the liturgical Golden Unicorn are that it is untenable.

The Novus Ordo is be definition malleable. It can be celebrated with mariachi bands in Spanish, or with incense and chant, or gospel style, or whatever. The pastor seeking to right-the-boat with a more traditional, Anglican-style high liturgy has to face the fact that the next pastor 3-5 years down the road can simply come in and dismantle the whole thing unilaterally. The rubrics of the Tridentine Mass prevent such 'freedom expression' and limit what one priest can and can't do within it.        

Sorry, this is kind of a lazy post, as half of us have COVID and I'm having to attend to my wife who has fallen ill. I'm sure there are other things which liturgical experts like Peter Kwasniewski could expound upon (I reviewed his book, here). But I have no interest in the Novus Ordo at this point, even if it is celebrated in this style. I am open to hearing points as to why I should. But if push came to shove and things got as bad as they are projected to, I think we would defer to the East (Byzantine Catholic) as a matter of recourse. I just can't understand the Holy Father's vindicitive animosity at this point; I'm just kind of...numb to it. If they want to destroy the Church (I don't buy the 'unity' claim) by restricting those of us who just want to give God due worship according to the ancient rites...well, I guess we'll see how it all plays out. I pray it backfires.

The New Art Of War

 

Yesterday the FDA permanently lifted restrictions on mifepristone by mail. Almost 80% of abortions take place before 10 weeks gestation, meaning they could conceivably take place by way of medicine abortion (eg, the abortion pill).

It's common to see pro-lifers outside of the local Planned Parenthood clinic praying and holding signs of aborted babies, the reality of surgical abortion. I have to wonder, though, given this recent ruling--is this like the analog version of pro-life infantry on the ground (already sparse) in a newly digital age? 

In other words, if potentially 80% of abortions are taking place in a decentralized environment--in people's homes, by mail--what are we doing outside of Planned Parenthood? Focusing on the 20% of (surgical) abortions after 10 weeks that are easier to pinpoint geographically happening in a centralized location? It introduces a potentially whole new battle front and strategy of guerilla warfare by abortion advocates the way the Vietcong during Vietnam fought. They became the "invisible enemy" changing the rules of warfare to achieve their ends. 

Though it certainly could capitalize on this legislation, Planned Parenthood doesn't have a corner on mifepristone. I imagine the profit margin is thinner than with surgical abortions in clinics, but still...do you see where I am going with this? Who is the enemy we are fighting against when medicine abortion becomes the common method and becomes decentralized to the degree that your next door neighbor, your boss, your sister even could be getting her pill by mail--willingly--and killing her child in the privacy of her own home, and that is the vast majority of abortions taking place? Then where do you protest? "The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live, and afterward they join the dead" (Ecc 9:3). Planned Parenthood clinics then become this kind of symbolic thing, a kind of cicada shell left behind so that pro-lifers have some place to focus their prayers and signs and physical presence on. But what if these become minor statistical battles when the war is taking place someplace else entirely? 

I don't know. It's incredibly disheartening. You know, I've been recruiting for over a decade now. For years I have been saying the in-person college fair--where you drive three hours to set up a table with swag and printed information to talk to maybe two or three potential students--is a dinosaur and a waste of time and resources. But pre-covid we had nothing to replace it with, so we just kept doing it the way we always had. Then 2020 came, and everything went virtual. So it's like, how do we attract these students now if we're not even meeting them in person anymore, they're not taking the SAT or GRE (so we don't have purchases lists anymore), and they're not even participating in the virtual fairs either? How are we suppose to do our job in this type of environment? It's like the rules have changed, and we're two steps behind. We're still acting like the British forces in the Revolutionary War. 

I don't know what the answer is, but if things move in this direction, getting in your car and "going to get an abortion" is going to be akin to cassette tape decks in cars or fax machines or tobacco cigarettes. How will pro-life advocates (the "old guard"?) pivot and fight the hearts of those who place their orders for these pills? How do you fight one's heart? You can't. You can only win someone over one heart at a time. 

Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.

I'm In It For The Laughs

 Both my wife and I had a "list" of the traits we were looking for in a spouse around the time we met. My wife, for one thing, prayed for a "resourceful" husband. She was quick to point out: "resourceful, not rich" since I was, well, living in a van down by the river at the time and was unemployed. I managed to turn things around over the years though, and we're doing great and comfortable now. 

Surprisingly, high up on my list of things I was looking for in a spouse, was someone with a sense of humor. If I can't laugh with you, that's a bad sign. That doesn't mean we have to have the same sense of humor, or find the same things funny. But if you can't laugh--at yourself or others--and take yourself too seriously...well, that's going to be tough.

Even now, I love to laugh. Unfortunately, not all the comedy and comics I like are squeaky clean. But I can sometimes look past that. The ones I find the funniest are the ones who see the things everyone sees but actually says what everyone is thinking. I'm very picky, like with movies, though. Comedy is so subtle, such an art, because you really have to have a good read on the crowds, be attentive to timing, and know what will work when. I met a guy who did amateur standup and he said it was so incredibly difficult. So, I have a degree of admiration for people that can make others laugh. Because laughing is good for you!

It has to be hard these days, though. Many comics have lamented that the PC, virtue-signaling, super-sensitive and easily offended culture kills comedy and makes their jobs that much harder. I think it was Jerry Seinfeld who said he won't even go to college campuses anymore to do shows because of this.

St. Philip Neri is one of my favorite saints because of his love of humor and being a jokester. This is refreshing! A true sign of humility is that you don't take yourself so seriously. We should be sensitive in some ways, and not jerks obviously, but the ability to take and receive a joke can tell you a lot about a person. Personally, the fact that my wife and I can make fun of each other and burn calories laughing about it is one of the highlights of being married to her. 

On that topic--I think cursing is in most instances, abrasive and distasteful, especially in the written word. Most people use it in a cringy way of trying to be cool and relatable to compensate for something. Every now and then, it can be used in standup in a funny way. But it's kind of like salt--don't overdo it. If your comedy depends on curse words or crude sexuality, that's kind of base and lowest-common-denominator. But I'm not opposed to a carefully flung word bomb by a professional from time to time if it will do the job.

We love to laugh as a family, too. It keeps things light. There is so much heaviness in the world! Laughter is a good antidote to taking yourself too seriously. Of course, life is serious. But we're reminded of that pretty constantly. It's more that we need to remember to lighten up from time to time. 

Christian, don't be afraid to laugh! As the saying goes, "if you don't laugh, you'll cry." 

St. Philip Neri, pray for us! 

The Spiritual Investment In Your Marriage

 One of the blessings of now being able to work remote two days a week is my morning time with my wife. We usually both get up around 6am or so (a little bit earlier on my office days), while the kids are still sleeping. Sometimes one of us is up before the other and has some quiet time to themselves. 

Whoever is up first will put the coffee on, and we convene at the kitchen table, our defacto 'domestic community chapel.' There we have our Lady of Guadalupe candle, blessed salt and epiphany water, a couple of rosaries, and a 1st class relic of St. Maria Goretti. 

Depending on the day, we will sip our coffee and catch up on things either before or after prayer for about half an hour. We talk about the kids, the day-to-day stuff and to-do items, but also anything that needs to be discussed as it pertains to our marriage. It's time 'set aside.' 

When we pray, we bless ourselves with holy water, make a morning offering, and read a chapter of the Carmelite book of meditations, Divine Intimacy. If we have time, we will pray our daily rosary together as well, and then do intentions and pray for those who have asked for prayers. 

One of the greatest blessings in my marriage has been my wife as a partner in faith; that we are walking together shoulder to shoulder. But like other aspects of marriage, it requires continual fertilizing and attention. Daily life with a family can get so busy that it's easy to neglect the time set aside to pay attention and connect on the nuts-and-bolts stuff, but also the deeper issues of goals, where we are at individually and collectively, and being open to (and recognizing) grace working in our marriage. 

Growing up, there was a framed photograph in my parent's bedroom of a Colorado river, with the words "Nothing is ours, but time." Time is hard to substitute. God asks everything of us--our whole heart, mind, strength, and soul--but you can't enter into that relationship without giving him that precious resource. 

In our married lives, time is the exercise of love. Because of the busyness of life, it needs to be intentional, set aside. It's always an unsexy shocker to newly married couples when they hear of people who have married for a while "scheduling" intimacy. But that's another example of investment in you marriage. Hard to believe for newlyweds, but you can get so busy sometimes that you neglect or sometimes forget about sex. Sex is the oil in the engine or marriage...and you can't run an engine for long without oil. To the degree you are investing the time in your marriage, your sexual relationship will act as the barometer. So it's good to keep an eye on the gauge. 

Marriage is multi-layered: it's emotional, intellectual, physical, pragmatic, and not the least of all, sacramental and spiritual. For some people, especially if one of the other of the couple is not on the same page, prayer together can be an awkward thing and is sometimes avoided. Like, what do we do? Because my wife and I are on similar pages with our faith, it's relatively natural for us. 

But even when it's not, and it feels awkward to pray together, it's still good to do, and pleasing to God. God gives grace to the simple and humble, so make your prayer mirror that characteristic. Set aside time, preferably in the morning for one another, and the evenings for family prayer. Remember the words of scripture, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me" (Rev 3:20). 

If you and your spouse reserve time and make a place for Him at the kitchen table, He will honor your request.     

Spiritual Direction: Men Need Not Apply

I realized something very unusual today: I don't know a single guy--meaning, a lay Catholic man (not a priest or religious)--who has a spiritual director or is in spiritual direction. Not a single one. Spiritual direction seems almost entirely geared towards, and utilized by, women.

This is curious in some ways, and not surprising in others. After all, isn't it important, essential even, for growing in one's spiritual life, and advancing in holiness? To have a guide or coach even who can push you to put aside vice, pursue virtue, identify threats and temptations to avoid, and deepen one's prayer life? 

And yet, the language of spiritual direction is couched in "developing a relationship with the Lord..."not a problem to be solved, but something to be discovered and deepened and celebrated." There is nothing wrong with this per se, but it one hundred percent appeals to female sensitivities. In many ways, if reflects the expression of the feminized liturgy common in so many Catholic churches today: Sharing. Celebrating. Expressing. Cultivating. Excuse me, I, uh, forgot something outside.

I've had a number of therapists over the years, and almost all were useless because, frankly, their expectation of improvement came from one simply talking and sharing feelings. One therapist I had early on, however, who was working pro-bono, was effective, because she gave me work to do, she had a framework to work within (CBT, or cognitive behavioral therapy), and she meant business. She pushed me to train my brain to think differently in the way a spotter on the bench might yell at you to pump out one more rep. 

Women, for the most part, love to talk, to share, to express themselves, to get feedback. They do this ad nauseum online, interacting with one another, asking questions, commenting on every little thing. Communication is key for many women. Maybe they are attracted to spiritual direction for this reason because they get the chance to do all this in a spiritual context with a priest or religious. 

Men are another thing altogether. Most straight men don't think or relate this way. Relating to the quote above, most DO approach things as "problems to be solved." Discovering, deepening, celebrating--these thing are important, but the language is just so...gay. I don't know any (straight) man whose sensibilities would be perked by this kind of talk. 

So, what then for the men? Is spiritual direction just a thing for women or religious, primarily? Admittedly, it is hard enough to find a spiritual director at all, let a lone a good one. Even if you find one, asking them to take you on is a big commitment, and often the good priests and religious are too busy to do so. And then, if it's just a matter of listening to you talk, but not having any objective training in the interior life himself, it may be the blind leading the blind. For this reason I, like most Catholic men my age, are just doing the best we can with what we have--scripture, the lives of the saints, the Catechism, Mass, Confession, and fellowship with one another.

But it's weird, right? Like, we're called to be saints. God gives us the grace we need, even the most simple among us, to reach this state. And yet, there's a place for graduate schools and PhD programs and professors trained in their respective field to teach those who wish to master a subject. We could say "well, you could also just go to the public library and read 8 hours a day on the subject." But there's a recognition that we need teachers, guides, to reach our fullest potential.

Yes, the Holy Spirit can accomplish this task. As a man, I get my spiritual direction these days piecemeal from various trusted friends and sources. Having had such awful spiritual direction in the past, I have a leeriness I have to overcome, and that's assuming I could even find a spiritual director I connect with who also would have the bandwidth to take me on.

I also think there's this deference sometimes that can happen should you be privileged enough to have a spiritual director, like, "My spiritual director told me to do x, y, z," or "my spiritual director advised _____" so that we can kind of shirk some of the responsibility for our own lives and put it on their shoulders. For some people this may be not be an issue, but I'm sure some see it as an opportunity to not do the work they need to do, or take responsibility for hard decisions. 

But I think there's a hole, a vacuum there somewhere. We can see the Jordan Peterson phenomenon with his Rules for Life shtick attracting so many young men; he is essentially filling that void, albeit in a secular capacity. And we see Fr. Ripperger kind of doing that too on Sensus Fidelium, speaking to both men and women but it's not effete at all, but attractive to male sensibilities. But these are recordings, not a personal coaching/mentorship/tutelage type of relationship and little accountability as well. 

One thing I do think we need to admit, though, is if you are not solid in your prayer life already, and putting in the work and time, you probably aren't ready for spiritual direction anyway. That should be a litmus, and I think it's a good one, especially for the sake of the priest or religious willing to take you on.

Why do I say priest or religious? Can't laypeople be spiritual directors? I suppose they can, but nine times out of ten they will be a woman (or a gay man), and that comes with it the aforementioned sensibilities that might not be appropriate for a man to grow in his faith, or speak to him in a way another man can. 

What are Catholic lay men supposed to do? Are the heights of spiritual perfection not for us, but only for male religious, priests, monks, hermits who have teachers to guide them? What do we do when we face temptations, spiritual landmines, confusion, misappropriation, dejection, imbalance? If other men are like me, we just kind of have to figure it out on our own, making mistakes and re-calibrating as we go, and utilizing the sacrament of Penance often. 

Trad Approved: Why We Use Cast Iron Cookware

Like many guys my age that I know, I'd say I do eighty percent of the cooking in our household. As a result, I get to be picky about the tools I use. For instance, I only have two main (quality) knives (which I wrote about here). 

For cookware over the years, I have used cheap aluminum, stainless steel, Teflon lined, you name it. For whatever reason, I never considered cast iron--it seemed totally impractical, like something from the 19th century that had no use in a modern kitchen. 

Around the time we started attending full time the Traditional Latin Mass, I also "re-discovered" cast iron cookware as a potential option. It's the kind of stuff you'd find at an antique shop, or your grandmother's basement. But as I wrote in the post "What's Old Is New",

"Everything that goes around comes around--what's out today is en vogue next year. My prediction? Mid-century is going to make a comeback. IKEA will still have it's place among college students and transients. But somewhere, at some point, people are going to wake up in their white room white couch white bed clean dustless childless quiet modern home and experience a curious longing for the forgotten comfort of grandmother's delicate tea sets, grandfather's tan armchairs, the soft yellow glow of incandescent lightbulbs, and yes, maybe even the extravagant opportune of a mahogany China cabinet. But it won't be there anymore except in the most high end of antique shops."

I went on to relate this furniture trend to the traditional faith, a materialist analogy I think holds some merit:

"My prediction goes beyond furniture and housewares, beyond trends and tastes and kitchen renovations. When we hit the modern bottom, when the demons start to tip the scales and become too powerful, when the non-denominational particleboard gets wet and warped, when the trans-everything nonsense hits fever pitch...a few will start to pine for an ancient faith. They will go online to order and meetup; they will seek and they will not find (Jn 7:34) except in those pockets in which it has been preserved as the pearl of great price that it is, a soft glow of candles in stained glass windows in the darkness, shards of light reflecting off a gold monstrance in the sanctuary, the quiet ancient chant of plainsong beckoning behind thick solid wood doors. It will be exotic and intimidating, ethereal and forbidden, austere and arduous, foreign and yet completely familiar. The Faith of our fathers, the Faith handed down, the Faith communion that takes place in real time...it will be both old, and new."

When I started using cast iron in the kitchen, I quickly discovered it was superior in many ways to our arsenal of "modern" cookware and eventually threw all that away in favor of a 1 quart pot, a 2 quart pot, a dutch oven with lid (which doubles as a frying pan), and a single skillet. Here's a few things I love about it:

It never gets old. 

I mean, it gets on in years, but you would never be able to tell. You could be using a cast iron pot from the civil war era and it would still function the same today. 

Even, distributed heat

Because cast iron is so heavy and has high thermal mass, it doesn't tend to scorch. One thing I like is that I can turn off our electric stove and the food will continue to cook without me having to watch it, and will stay warm much longer than aluminum or stainless steel. 

Supplemental iron 

A fact often overlooked--cooking with cast iron supplies iron into your diet, which many of us need.

Induction compatible

This is a bonus win. I bought a $40 induction single burner on Amazon. It's amazing, but only works with certain types of limited pots--but that includes cast iron without exception! Induction cookers are popular in Europe--they are super efficient, as they heat by induction via magnetism. You can hold your hand on the surface of the cooker and it is cool to the touch. It is super fast too, so if you want to heat something up quickly without a microwave it takes about the same amount of time. And it keeps the kitchen cooler in the summer, since you're not heating by convection. 

Takes abuse

Throw it in the oven. Scratch the hell out of it with a brillo pad. It can take it. It won't dent or deform. If it gets some rust from resting water, just polish in some lemon juice to remove it. This cookware will last not years, but generations. The very antithesis of a disposable product.

Well seasoned non-stick

Seasoning your cookware installs a ritualistic satisfaction in taking care of something to make it last. Just heat it up and periodically rub in some vegetable oil. Over time, the ensuing nonstick surface rivals teflon but never flakes off and doesn't require using special utensils.  

Just as it would be hard to go back to what came before our transition to the Traditional Latin Mass, it would be hard to give up my cast iron cookware at this point and go back to a "modern" arsenal. I initially overlooked all these advantages of this old-school cookware for a long time, but glad I gave it a chance. If you're open to the things of yesteryear, I'd encourage you to as well!

Grateful People Are Happy People. But Are Happy People Successful People?

 In his article "Why Gratitude Is Good," Dr. Robert Emmons, the world's leading scientific expert on gratitude, noted "You can't be envious and grateful at the same time. They're incompatible feelings, because if you're grateful, you can't resent someone for owning things you don't." People with high levels of gratitude have low levels of resentment and envy.

Gratitude is a little like love--when it matures and goes beyond being a passive feeling or emotion, it becomes an active exercise: an act of the will. People who have regular gratitude practices are not only healthier, happier, and have better relationships, but can aid individuals and teams in persevering through challenging tasks.

According to Dr. Martin Seligman, credited as the "father" of Positive Psychology, there are five building blocks that enable human flourishing – Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. In his typology of the three kinds of happy lives (the pleasurable life; the good life; and the meaningful life), the good life and the meaningful life were related to life satisfaction. Astonishingly, however, the amount of pleasure in life did not add to life satisfaction.

But you don't necessarily have to be a leading PhD and spend decades studying what many of us know by natural observation: grateful people are happy people, because they recognize everything that they have is more or less a gift. This is why the Apostle Paul said that he had "learned to be content whatever the circumstance."

For many people, "being content" is an elusive dream that seems to be always just beyond our grasp. It does not come naturally in our culture, because we are worked on constantly by advertisers ("buy this"), media ("watch this"), pharmaceutical companies ("take this"), to drive home the fact that we are incomplete without x, y, and z. A consumer society flourishes and is fueled by want. Want is fueled by envy. And envy is the antithesis of contentment.

It's funny--when googling "happiness and gratitude," there was no shortage of supporting articles and documents; the two go together like peanut butter and jelly. But when it came to searching "happiness and success," it was an inverse return-- many "success does not equal happiness" articles and studies, but not as much on whether or not happiness leads to success.

Perhaps this is because "success" is largely an objective canon, or standard of measure, in work culture. It can be quantifiably measured in outcomes, sales, subscribers, likes, returns, promotions, wins, ROI, net worth, etc. Whereas gratitude may be the key that unlocks the door to happiness in a person, "success" as we have traditionally understood it is not always so easily (and subjectively) defined apart from that which exists outside the self.

Grateful people are largely happy people. But the same cannot necessarily be said for successful people. In fact, sometimes the inverse is true: the chasing after metrics can often compensate for an inner-deficiency that says one "isn't good enough" as-is. That's not to say it's not effective as a motivator. People with something to prove--either to themselves, or to, for instance, a parent who never told them they were good enough--are often the hardest working and most driven individuals who rise to the top of organizations. It's a laudable, achievement-focused mindset fueled by competition that certainly brings with it certain rewards and accolades. And yet the one thing that most everyone wants but no one knows how to achieve--namely, lasting happiness--remains elusive.

It makes me think of a parable I once heard that went something like this:

"One day a fisherman was lying on a beautiful beach, with his fishing pole propped up in the sand and his solitary line cast out into the sparkling blue surf. He was enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun and the prospect of catching a fish.

About that time, a businessman came walking down the beach, trying to relieve some of the stress of his workday. He noticed the fisherman sitting on the beach and decided to find out why this fisherman was fishing instead of working harder to make a living for himself and his family. “You aren’t going to catch many fish that way,” said the businessman to the fisherman.

“You should be working rather than lying on the beach!”

The fisherman looked up at the businessman, smiled and replied, “And what will my reward be?”

“Well, you can get bigger nets and catch more fish!” was the businessman’s answer. “And then what will my reward be?” asked the fisherman, still smiling. The businessman replied, “You will make money and you’ll be able to buy a boat, which will then result in larger catches of fish!”

“And then what will my reward be?” asked the fisherman again.

The businessman was beginning to get a little irritated with the fisherman’s questions. “You can buy a bigger boat, and hire some people to work for you!” he said.

“And then what will my reward be?” repeated the fisherman.

The businessman was getting angry. “Don’t you understand? You can build up a fleet of fishing boats, sail all over the world, and let all your employees catch fish for you!”

Once again the fisherman asked, “And then what will my reward be?”

The businessman was red with rage and shouted at the fisherman, “Don’t you understand that you can become so rich that you will never have to work for your living again! You can spend all the rest of your days sitting on this beach, looking at the sunset. You won’t have a care in the world!”

The fisherman, still smiling, looked up and said, “And what do you think I’m doing right now?”

Depending on your vantage point and value system, you might see different morals in the tale. Is the fisherman lazy? Unmotivated? Content with mediocrity? Or has he found a secret that somehow eludes others?

What about the businessman--is he a capitalist fat-cat caught in a hamster wheel of materialism? Or is he smart, focused, enterprising, and--dare we say--successful? That is, the kind of person a company would be clamoring to hire.

Grateful people may be happy people, but that happiness is of primary value to the individual who possesses it, and those in his or her immediate sphere. It may or may not be of value to one's employer, industry, or the corporate world at large, and only then to the degree in which it translates into greater productivity, less burn-out, higher yields, more creativity, etc.

Successful people may be happy people to the degree that they flourish in that which they are successful in; that is they gain positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment from their work. But then we might ask, "what happens when one is no longer working for Company X?" What happens in a recession when they are laid off, or they have so lost their identity in their work or corporate culture that they no longer know who they are without their accomplishments and objective "success?" It's a precarious and tenuous place to find oneself in when the rug is suddenly pulled out from under you.

Finally, to come full circle, happy people may be successful to the extent that they can own and define what success actually means, even when it might not square with external, traditional standards. The high school janitor, the supermarket cashier, the insurance salesman, who volunteers in their community, mentors younger people, lives in an ethical manner, raises a family, leaves a legacy for their grandchildren--is this what we would call success?

A person who has learned to be "content in all circumstances" is, in many ways, a free person. Because he trains himself to see all things--even hardship and adversity--as an unmerited gift, gratitude (and by extension, happiness) becomes the byproduct. He has become rich in spirit, the currency of immateriality. He has found the key that the vast majority of people spend their whole lives searching for. He has learned the secret to success, though maybe not as the world might define it. Because he has the freedom to define it for himself.

Going To Bat

 Happy Feast of the Immaculate Conception. 

The Magnificat is a powerful proclamation of God's siding, of where and with whom He stands in time and space. Our Lady during the Visitation, filled with the Holy Spirt, gives testament to YHWH Sabaoth.  We can share in this proclamation, as it draws richly from the Old Testament and vaults it into God doing a "new thing" in Christ. Our Lady is integral to God's plan for that new thing.

What is Our Lady's canticle and how does it relate to God's "siding" with the unassuming elect? 

He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation. 

He has shows the strength of his arm, he has scattered the proud in their conceit. 

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. 

He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has come to the help of his servant Israel for he remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever. (Lk 1:50-55)

Depending on where you are sitting, you should be either very grateful, or very afraid.

Herod makes claim to wanting to worship the new King, but really sees him as a threat to his power, and thus seeks to annihilate him as a man of the world does--with earthy power, and violence.

And yet, the Lord of Heaven and Earth has come for those who fear Him, for the lowly, the hungry, those who come to Him as children to lift them up. Whereas those who refuse to submit to His Lordship--the proud, the strong, the rich--will be leveled. 

Our Lord recounts how hard it is to be rich and enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Mt 19:24). He tells the story of Lazarus and the rich man as a warning (Lk 16:19-31). He says we must become like children (Mt 18:3)--those without standing and without power or clout. He goes to bat for them.

Our Lady, too, as Queen of Heaven and Earth is also our advocate. Would you ever approach the Queen of England, or the Queen of Ethiopia, or some other high matriarch as a commoner? And yet Our Lady, our Queen, invites us to do so: to ask for her intercession, to hide ourselves under her mantel. She goes to war with demons on our behalf and they can't hold a flame to her. 

One of the most important instances in our family's history was consecrating ourselves to the Immaculate Heart. Because we are so weak, so unable to fend for ourselves, it is a comfort to know we can place ourselves under her for protection. We did the consecration to St. Joseph a couple years later, and he too is a model of charity and we have been recipients of great graces because of this most chaste spouse of the Virgin. 

In essence, Mary and Joseph are the model disciples who show us those whom God has sided with. The Lord hears the cry of the poor (Ps 34:6). He didn't have to come for us. He could have forgotten about us. But his love compels Him to save in His great mercy. 

It's an awful feeling not having someone watching over you. Especially when one is put on trial, the powerless and those without advocates often get the short end of the stick of justice. In a fight, you want someone who has your back, that you can count on. The Lord is our sure deliverer, our mighty helper. He can be trusted. He saves. 

Lord, make us meek and humble of heart. To the degree what we have and own keep us from you, take it Lord, for nothing can compare to the riches of Heaven. The Holy Spirit rests on the humble, but pride puts Him to flight. Make us strong in You, with Mary as our Advocate, to plead for us against the terrible Judgement we are faced with. Lift us up, and redeem your people. Amen.

"My People Perish For Lack Of Knowledge"

 Someone left a comment on my recent article Even If Roe Ends We Still Have A Culture of Death:

"This once again misses the mark completely. People being evil is not the main driver of abortion. The main driver is the economic cost of raising and having a kid. There is a reason that so many people who have abortions are under 200% of the federal poverty level. And crisis pregnancy centers do nothing to help in that regard. Anyone who thinks for a few seconds realizes that the vast majority or cost and hardship associated with having a kid happen after birth. Crisis pregnancy centers are not a solution to abortion."

It gets tiresome having to respond to comments that may be well-intentioned but aren't essentially thoughtful, but my editor encourages me to do so so I make an effort. My response to this one, offered here in lieu of an original blog post:

“Crisis pregnancy centers are not a solution to abortion.” Great strawman, thanks for that.

Dr. Monica Miller, Executive Director for Citizens for a Pro-Life Society, was very sober in her assessment in a recent interview after the Dobbs v Jackson hearing:

“Let’s say they seriously restricted abortion. Our country still needs to be educated, it needs to be converted, the Church needs to be strengthened…as we go forward we’ve got another hundred years of evangelization to do on the life issues. And let’s be honest and frank about it–abortion is the consequence of a disordered sexual ethic. 75%-80% or more of the women walking through the doors of an abortion clinic are having out of wedlock pregnancies, they’re not getting support from the fathers who have beggetted these children. So there’s the crisis. Stop that, and you will stop abortion. The two things are connected. Abortion is not just a life issue, it has to do with what is the meaning of human sexuality and sexual commitment. That also has to be healed and attended to, and then we can advance a culture of life.”

I’m essentially arguing something similar in the article: “In other words, even if Roe is eventually overturned, we still have to deal with our rampant culture of death and the fact that people want abortion as a component of their lifestyle.”

From PP’s own Guttermacher Institute:

74% of women seek an abortion because “having a baby would dramatically change my life.”

73% because they “can’t afford a baby right now.”

48% “don’t want to be a single mother or having relationship problems”

38% “have completed their childbearing”

1% were the victim of rape

0.5% were the victim of incest

So, 98.5% of women (and men) are engaging in sexual relations voluntarily and seeing abortion as a way of getting out from underneath the responsibility (financial or otherwise) of having a child (which, obviously, comes from engaging in sexual relations).

To your point about “so many people who have abortions are under 200% of the federal poverty level”:

“Using National Survey of Family Growth Data from the Centers for Disease Control, women living at 100 percent or less of the federal poverty level (single households earning approximately $11,200 per year or less) who are not actively trying to conceive are twice as likely not to use contraception as their wealthier counterparts (those at 400 percent or above of the poverty level, or earning over $44,700 per year). Poor women not trying to conceive are also three times more likely to get pregnant than their higher income counterparts (9 percent compared to 3 percent), and ultimately at 5 times more likely to give birth. In addition, abortion rates among the poor are lower, with 32 percent in the highest income bracket having an abortion compared to 9 percent of low-income terminations.” (Brookings)

Abortion is evil, but my point in the article is because I am skeptical of the “If Roe v Wade is overturned, we have won” and everyone gets to go home. If anything, the cultural battle has just begun. Ask anyone on the street, your random citizen, “what is the purpose and end of human sexuality?” and I will bet 99.8% will give you an answer that is not in line with the Church’s vision (God’s intention, not to mention the Natural Law) of human sexuality. This is the light of not only human reason, but the redemption of our fallen nature in Christ’s death and resurrection. But alas, the words of St. John seem to hold true: “Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”

People have accepted a counterfeit vision and are perishing and losing their souls as a result, as scripture says ” My people perish for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). If Catholics committed to spreading the Truth and Light of the Gospel and the dignity of the human person in a fallen, post-Christian, essentially pagan society thought it was hard-going pre-Roe….just wait til it gets overturned. That’s when the real work (and suffering) begins."

 

I don't have pat answers to this inhumane mess, and it's not my job to fix the world. All I know is that you can't just kill innocent people to make your problems go away. 

Related: Abortion is Slavery ("If We Are Wrong, God Almighty Is Wrong")

"Anxiety Is The Dizziness of Freedom"

 

Years ago I read the quasi-philosopher Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead. It was a thick, curious, cold and bleakly-bizarre book. It is humanist in nature and completely irreligious, and not a book I would recommend reading for a Catholic, but it made me think nonetheless.

Rand's Objectivist philosophy is a strange mix of unfettered capitalism, self-serving egoistic moralism (opposed to altruism of any sort), and staunch individualism anchored in personal integrity. "My philosophy," she wrote, "in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." If one were to transfer it to a political school of thought, I suppose it would be most in line with today's Libertarians. 

From Wiki: 

"Rand's stated goal in writing fiction was to portray her vision of an ideal man. The character of Howard Roark, the protagonist of The Fountainhead, was the first instance where she believed she had achieved this. Roark embodies Rand's egoistic moral ideals, especially the virtues of independence and integrity.

In contrast to the individualistic Roark, Peter Keating is a conformist who bases his choices on what others want. Introduced to the reader as Roark's classmate in architecture school, Keating does not really want to be an architect. He loves painting, but his mother steers him toward architecture instead. In this as in all his decisions, Keating does what others expect rather than follow his personal interests. He becomes a social climber, focused on improving his career and social standing using a combination of personal manipulation and conformity to popular styles. He follows a similar path in his private life: he chooses a loveless marriage to Dominique instead of marrying the woman he loves—who lacks Dominique's beauty and social connections. By middle age, Keating's career is in decline and he is unhappy with his path, but it is too late for him to change."

As I mentioned in previous posts, a good number of guys in my men's group find themselves in this camp (potentially losing jobs due to refusing vax mandate), as well as other friends, and will be facing the fallout in the next few months unless something changes.  It feels almost offensive to say (since it comes across as dispassionate as they themselves are living through this anxiety and personal career cliff), but in my interactions I have been trying to get to the bottom for myself of the "whys" of those who are opposed on this issue. 

If you are faced with the prospect of financial devastation, etc, and you have a seemingly "easy" solution ("Just take the freaking jab already"), what is it that is driving the digging in, i.e. "non-compliance?" Is it purely rooted in what is regarded as an immoral way of testing the vaccine? Is it a kind of boycott of sorts (ie, if we acquiesce to this, what's to stop the tyranny in other future circumstances)? Is it a matter of so-called "stubbornness" of not wanting to be told what one needs to do or not do? Is this a patriotic issue, akin to the British Tea Party? Or is it truly a "pinch of incense" to Caesar, that would betray the deepest part of one's self were they to do so (vaccinate)? Or some/all of the above?

It's a bit lengthy for a blog post, but I thought the plot from The Fountainhead had some themes that possess a curious parallel as it regards to those resisting the vaccine mandate today, since I think many of those "standing alone" to make these decisions may shadow the protagonist in this novel. 

"In early 1922, Howard Roark is expelled from the architecture department of the Stanton Institute of Technology because he has not adhered to the school's preference for historical convention in building design. Roark goes to New York City and gets a job with Henry Cameron. Cameron was once a renowned architect, but now gets few commissions. In the meantime, Roark's popular, but vacuous, fellow student and housemate Peter Keating (whom Roark sometimes helped with projects) graduates with high honors. He too moves to New York, where he has been offered a position with the prestigious architecture firm, Francon & Heyer. Keating ingratiates himself with Guy Francon and works to remove rivals among his coworkers. After Francon's partner, Lucius Heyer, suffers a fatal stroke brought on by Keating's antagonism, Francon chooses Keating to replace him. Meanwhile, Roark and Cameron create inspired work, but struggle financially.

After Cameron retires, Keating hires Roark, whom Francon soon fires for refusing to design a building in the classical style. Roark works briefly at another firm, then opens his own office but has trouble finding clients and closes it down. He gets a job in a granite quarry owned by Francon. There he meets Francon's daughter Dominique, a columnist for The New York Banner, while she is staying at her family's estate nearby. 

Ellsworth M. Toohey, who writes a popular architecture column in the Banner, is an outspoken socialist who shapes public opinion through his column and a circle of influential associates. Toohey sets out to destroy Roark through a smear campaign. He recommends Roark to Hopton Stoddard, a wealthy acquaintance who wants to build a Temple of the Human Spirit. Roark's unusual design includes a nude statue modeled on Dominique; Toohey persuades Stoddard to sue Roark for malpractice. Toohey and several architects (including Keating) testify at the trial that Roark is incompetent as an architect due to his rejection of historical styles. Dominique also argues for the prosecution in tones that can be interpreted to be speaking more in Roark's defense than for the plaintiff, but he loses the case. Dominique decides that since she cannot have the world she wants, in which men like Roark are recognized for their greatness, she will live entirely in the world she has, which shuns Roark and praises Keating. She marries Keating and turns herself over to him, doing and saying whatever he wants, and actively persuading potential clients to hire him instead of Roark.

To win Keating a prestigious commission offered by Gail Wynand, the owner and editor-in-chief of the Banner, Dominique agrees to sleep with Wynand. Wynand is so strongly attracted to Dominique that he pays Keating to divorce her, after which Wynand and Dominique are married. Wanting to build a home for himself and his new wife, Wynand discovers that Roark designed every building he likes and so hires him. Roark and Wynand become close friends; Wynand is unaware of Roark's past relationship with Dominique.

Washed up and out of the public eye, Keating pleads with Toohey to use his influence to get the commission for the much-sought-after Cortlandt housing project. Keating knows his most successful projects were aided by Roark, so he asks for Roark's help in designing Cortlandt. Roark agrees in exchange for complete anonymity and Keating's promise that it will be built exactly as designed. After taking a long vacation with Wynand, Roark returns to find that Keating was not able to prevent major changes from being made in Cortlandt's construction. Roark dynamites the project to prevent the subversion of his vision.

Roark is arrested and his action is widely condemned, but Wynand decides to use his papers to defend his friend. This unpopular stance hurts the circulation of his newspapers, and Wynand's employees go on strike after Wynand dismisses Toohey for disobeying him and criticizing Roark. Faced with the prospect of closing the paper, Wynand gives in and publishes a denunciation of Roark. At his trial, Roark makes a lengthy speech about the value of ego and integrity, and he is found not guilty. Dominique leaves Wynand for Roark. Wynand, who has betrayed his own values by attacking Roark, finally grasps the nature of the power he thought he held. He shuts down the Banner and commissions a final building from Roark, a skyscraper that will serve as a monument to human achievement. Eighteen months later, the Wynand Building is under construction. Dominique, now Roark's wife, enters the site to meet him atop its steel framework."

It was a strange twist of existential fate that hinged on the hero and protagonist (Roark) being unflinchingly true to his ideals (expressed in architecture), as a man of integrity as he sees it, despite the hurdles and financial difficulties and pressures to betray those ideals. The antagonist (Keating), conversely, compromises, conforms, and while it seems to benefit him initially, he eventually is the one with nothing to show for his life. 

This is a kind of existential scenario for many, to face the question of "what do I really believe? What am I willing to suffer for?" In matters of faith, these are largely settled questions for me. But in ancillary issues--politics, personal freedom, patriotism, science and medicine--I have much more that I am unsure of. 

On the matter of integrity and ideology, I also thought about a curious scenario in which one might desire to personally benefit from taking the vaccine (assuming, that is, it is beneficial on a cost/benefit viz a viz risk scale) but be opposed ideologically to government overreach (ie, mandates) and so on the grounds of integrity, choose not to take it on principled grounds (ie, the 'boycott' approach). That is, the weight of participating and aiding tyranny is heavier than the personal benefit of vaccination. Of course, this is a rare scenario, and maybe there is some truth to Rand's contention that we all ultimately act out of self-interest and motivated by individualism. Most people, with rare exception when push comes to shove, just do what is best for themselves. 

Last year I "abetted" if you will someone who happened to be going to the January 6 rally at the Capitol in the sense that I coordinated a place to stay, as they were coming from multiple states away. Of course, I didn't know what was actually going to happen at that event, and I largely don't do crowds or political activism. I wasn't there, but these people I knew went, and made personal sacrifices to do so. Was this a good thing? Is this what patriots do? I mentioned the Boston Tea Party...is it something like that? But then there was that bizarre Q'anon shaman guy, and the deaths, and the storming (whether or not that was intended), and it becomes much harder to stand behind. Makes you question things. Is this what 'resisting tyranny' looks like? Or am I just weak in nature for not wanting to have anything to do with such an event? 

I admitted to my buddy (facing potential loss of employment for refusing the mandate) that while I was not envious of his particular situation, if nothing else I was somewhat envious of his surety that he was in the right on the matter and willing to go all the way in it. It is not easy to live true to one's ideals without betraying them. As Kierkegaard said, "Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom." 

I still haven't quite figured out what it is that motivates my buddy and others (and it may be different for different people) on this particular matter of resistance, but to the degree that they are being true to their conscience, living with integrity, and paying the price, they have my respect.