Now that June is here, I'm reminded of God's supreme grace of giving us the privilege of being used. Because God is so great and so good and so loving and merciful beyond our comprehension, the most we can hope for is to be used "as a little pencil in his hand," as St. Mother Teresa said. What do I mean?
I'm currently writing from a motel room in New London, Connecticut. Four years ago, on June 15th, 2017, my friend Joseph Sciambra (who Christ ransomed from the ravages of the gay porn industry and a life of homosexual hedonism) was soliciting a call for volunteers to join him in the lion's den of San Francisco Pride--to reach out to the gay community to share the saving power of Christ so that he might "save some," as St. Paul writes (You can read my aftermath story of flying out to San Francisco and back in 24 hours and joining him in the lion's den of Pride if you want, here.)
Joseph is not your typical "preach to the gays" figure. As a man who left the gay lifestyle, he has some street cred. He also knows that he was truly ransomed from Hell (he recounts demons flying over his hospital bed as he was near death with the adverse health effects of his hardcore gay lifestyle) by Jesus Christ. He came back to the Catholic faith of his childhood. He gives credit to the traditional priests he found in the SSPX who gave him unfiltered Church teaching without pulling punches in a sea of California wonky 1970's Novus-Ordo-ism. He found in them the masculine archetype that had eluded him (and that he longed for) his entire life. And the Traditional Mass seemed like the last vestige hope of an ability to retain his faith which seemed all but corrupted by modernism.
To tragically complicate matters, he was also a victim (by his own admission) of sexual abuse as an adult at the hands of a traditional order. Though I don't know the details (Joseph is a friend whom I have met in person, but whom I have fallen out of touch with over the past year or so), I can speculate that he thought he had found some trustworthy spiritual guides who, in fact, were no better than the gay predators in the modern Church. Just different vestments.
Attorney Elizabeth Yore, an child-rights attorney who advocates for child victims of trafficking and sexual abuse deems such abuse at the hands of clergy "spiritual murder," which I do not think is too strong a term.
Though I can not speak from the standpoint of abuse personally, from a purely psychological standpoint, it's a perpetual cycle of suffering on two levels--when one steps foot into a church or attends Mass, they relive what they have gone through at the hands of clergy. And so the very person, place, and thing that can bring healing is tainted like a poisoned well which you suddenly cannot drink from.
Secondly, beyond egregiously betraying trust, it warps ones sense of the Fatherhood of God, since priests--for better or worse--act in persona Christi though fallen, unworthy men themselves. Many victims of clergy sexual abuse tragically commit suicide as an escape from the psychological and spiritual torture.
As someone to whom Joseph is not simply a Catholic (though from what I have gathered he has left the Church for Eastern Orthodoxy) social media figure or champion, but rather a brother in Christ whom I have a somewhat personal relationship with, albeit from a distance, I feel I have a warrant, however weak, to write what I do here.
I also do so because it piggy backs with the internet brushfire revolving around Steve Skojec's recent "Crippled Religion" critique of traditionalism as a kind of cult, and his own self-professed crisis of faith in the institutional Church (Though I do not know Steve as well, I have corresponded with him in the past and have written for his site One Peter Five).
What these two men share in common is both laudable and a liability--they share publicly in a seemingly transparent and emotive manner, they produce content related to and revolving around traditional Catholic expressions of faith, and have established an identity related to the aforementioned. They also talk and write about things most people don't want to talk about. While the latest heterodoxy in the Vatican is old news by now (shocker) and little change on the horizon, both have shifted gears from what I have seen to a more personal airing of the problems not just within the institutional Church, but with the church (little c) herself; ie, the body members, and shifting to a lexicon of victimhood in their writings.
Again, I can't really fault them, at least not completely. What did Gandhi say? "I would be a Christian, if it weren't for Christians." Though it has not been my personal experience, I'm sure you would not have to look hard to find off-putting traditionalists obsessed with the length of one's skirt who make a past time of judging other's behavior at Mass. A caricature or stereotype? Maybe. But there is always some truth in stereotypes. As for the focus on their self-described victimization by both clergy and at the hands of those members within the church--those people that may be sitting next to you in the pew at Sunday Mass--well, here's what I'm seeing from my vantage point.
I was speaking with a friend on the phone this evening about my twenties--probably one of the most difficult and tumultuous periods of my life. I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder Type 1 at the age of 23. Initially, I found solace in the diagnosis; it explained why I was the way I was, why I did the things I did; it was "not me, but the sin that lives in me."
But as someone who relishes in being 'special' and set apart, for a number of years I attached myself to the label of my mental illness--not as an excuse for bad behavior, but the lens with which I saw everything through. A kind of 'critical race theory' of the malaised-mind, if you will. It was kind of like a welfare trap--as someone who was 'mentally ill,' I explored the possibilities of going on disability (I had to take leave of absences from work due to my illness and hospitalizations, for one thing, and I wondered if I would ever be able to work full time as a result). Not much would be expected of me. I could live at home with my parents and volunteer, not do anything too stressful, take my seven or eight pills a day that would keep me in a catatonic state and out of jail. It also garnered a kind of sympathy, like a #metoo cancer of the mind. Mental illness was becoming somewhat mainstream in Hollywood with films like Silver Lining Playbook and A Beautiful Mind, and actors "coming out" as having this or that diagnosis to "break the stigma."
But here's the rub--you can't be both sick and well. Diseases of the mind are complicated and the factors multi-faceted. Additionally, not everyone beats it. Some become consumed by the darkness and swim towards the light by way of suicide. Some never work and are truly disabled. My fate could have been written in either of these books. But it wasn't. I'm still not sure why, but I have to have faith there is a reason for it.
Victimhood--whether of one's own brain chemistry or events or external circumstances, makes a claim on your life and forces you to make a choice: will this be your focus and identity, the lens with which you view all of life? Or will you choose something different, something not pre-determined? How you respond, and how you fight to reclaim what has been taken from you--has real implications. What do you say to the 14 year old that was raped and became pregnant through no fault of her own who is considering abortion? How do you respond to the Iraq War veteran that says he wants to run a marathon even though he has no shins or feet? What are you going to tell someone who is thinking about leaving the Bride of Christ because of what they have suffered at Her hands?
A few nights ago I watched an absolutely humbling interview Matt Fradd did with an Irish guy my age whose sister was murdered on her wedding night when she walked in on two men burglarizing her room. To add insult to injury, the two men got off scot-free, where they were tried in a kangaroo court in Mauritius (where the murder took place). The young Irish man and his father had recently come back to their faith through the inspiration of his sister (a practicing Catholic), and they made the conscious decision not to be consumed by anger and revenge. They took Jesus at his word that they were to love their enemies and pray for them. He knew, by grace, that Christ had died for him, forgiven him, and that he has no warrant to lord unforgiveness over these lowlifes--they would be judged, as would he, for their sins.
During the interview, the young man (Mattie was his name) was not bitter or angry; he exuded confidence in grace and profound gratitude for the gift of faith, and his ransoming from sin and death. Ireland has devolved into its pagan roots with breathtaking speed in the past decade or so, in large part from the massive betrayal of faith at the hands of the clergy. Like adolescent children, they have rejected it and thrown it back with a splash in the face of the Church. Yet this young man is like a latter-day Saint Patrick: working at the local level to revitalize the faith among the young; praying fervently and living out the beatitudes. He's just a normal guy like you and me. A victim, yes. But not just a victim. He knows grace and has been transfigured by it, and is now getting to work.
In Dom Scupoli's seminal classic The Spiritual Combat, he cites distrust of self as the fundamental quality necessary to advance in the spiritual life. It comes before all else. And that is what I am seeing lacking in those who have latched on like a bulldog to the tempting chinese finger trap of victimhood. Perhaps it is difficult because of the gaslighting that can often happen to victims at the hands of abusers--they are encouraged to question and even doubt themselves or their experiences. And so when they emerge from those shackles, the tendency to completely trust their experiences as the pen ultimate lens in which everything is viewed comes on strong. If an abuser says to distrust yourself, then by God, I'm going to trust myself on this one.
But in the spiritual life, without a healthy distrust of self--of our motives, our loyalties, our misguided certainties--we cannot really die to ourselves in the way our Lord calls us, and we struggle to trust things outside of the lens of our own experience. In contrast, everything becomes about the self ad nauseum. If someone gives a healthy rebuff in a kind of charitable tough love, we recoil and lick our wounds and avoid them. If someone tries to push us to see past the things that keep one immobilized by our perceived dis-ability, we say they don't understand and are being insensitive to our plight.
Although I couldn't read it (because it was deemed an 'unsecure connection' online), Joseph's latest blog post on his site titled "The Latin Mass Will Not Save The Church" filled me with a kind of sadness just by the title. It one way he is right--the Latin Mass alone, or liturgy alone, or traditionalism alone will not save the Church. "Without charity, I am a resounding gong," the words of St. Paul come to mind. But as someone who has been edified by Tradition (capital T) and the Latin Mass, while not having any preconceptions that it is a cure all for anything, I felt it was more of a straw-man title argument. I'm not sure if others are making this argument--that the Latin Mass will save the Church--but I certainly am not. But it has given me tools in my toolbox, a strong community of charitable normal people--not a bunch of caricatures, but flesh-and-blood brethren. It has given us a strong foundation to build our faith on--not an unshakable one in its own right, but a liturgical cornerstone, with Christ as it's chief mason.
My faith is stronger than ever, though I have been through some doozies the past few years that have shook me and put me close to the edge. In these times, I reflect on my wedding vows--when love fades, the will steps in to steer. And when the will shudders, grace has a way of surprising you. And grace, for it's part, has never failed to deliver. Mother Teresa spent twenty years without the loving consolation of the Savior she loves so dearly. She was a victim soul, but not a victim. She continued to exercise her will, to smile when she was barren inside. Was this "faking it?" Was it inauthentic, phony? I'd take offense at that. For her focus wasn't on herself, wasn't inward and self-ruminating and angry, but joyful and self-emptying. She kept the blinders on like a horse, and she kept it on the cross. This is how we persevere and the only thing left standing when the #metoo adulations fall by the wayside and fade into the distance.
But Satan is working overtime these days. He is splitting us like atoms--from the root branches over Trump and COVID and now this and that scandal in the Church, tribalism, gossip, factionalism, uncharity, judgment, slander...among the members of THE BODY OF CHRIST! He will take the good down with the bad, and even more so. He will leverage doubt and that feeling of "finally, a chance to breath!" when we are sitting and vulnerable and lead us gently from the Way. To say "there is no choice but Christ" is not gaslighting or victim-shaming--it is the charity of a hungry brother who knows where the bread is and is sharing the news with everyone he knows. He should not be ashamed of the Gospel even more than St. Paul was not ashamed of the Gospel, and when he acts in charity and truth and real--not faux--compassion: he may just save your soul.
I'm thinking of that young Irish guy in the pagan wasteland of Ireland. I'm thinking of the Mother Teresas, but also the moms who invite you to her kitchen table so you can cry on her shoulder over tea. I'm thinking of the brother who won't let you off the hook to be honest with your wife who you've cheated on. I'm thinking of those true, real, no BS Christians who have been fed and want to feed others. They have made it their work and their suffering to be saints, come hell or high water, indult or no indult, who have transfigured their crucifixions into resurrections and been healed by the blood of the true Victim who poured Himself out for us. They will not be gaslit. They will not be focused on themselves alone. They will love and do so in charity.
I know they are out there. I have met them, and they fortify me and give me hope--not token hope, and not a hope that can't be betrayed somehow down the line. They're not strawmen and they are not caricatures. They are flesh and blood brothers and sisters who are sticking it out and staking their claims on the promise. And the are not fools...unless you count them fools for Christ, which is a badge of honor. Though we are all as Catholics being splintered like a ship run aground with the in fighting and the fracturing and the distraction planted by Satan himself, these folks are the shards I find myself picking up on shore, piecing together, to form the life raft I hope to save my soul by, the souls of my family, and anyone else we can pull aboard. I will not give into anger. I will not be distracted. And I will be used.
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