The Shirt That Never Fit

 

As I have written here before, all I ever wanted to be was a monk. From the age of 19 (a year after becoming Catholic) to the age of 28, I discerned a religious vocation. Over the course of those nine years, I visited the (Contemplative) Benedictines, the Trappists, the CFRs, and even inquired with the Carthusians, doing periodic Observerships across the country and corresponded for a number of years with the vocation directors of the respective communities. To me, monastic life made sense and seemed in my mind to be intentional Christianity simply taken seriously and lived out in fruitful expression. 

And then I met my wife-to-be, and in a matter of weeks knew that marriage, to this woman God had set aside, was my true vocation.

Happiness is a by-product of our vocation, not the target we are aiming for. God's ways are not our ways, His wisdom surpasses all understanding, and He knows us better than we even know ourselves and wants what is best for us "that we might have life, and have it more abundantly" (Jn10:10). Because of that, when we are pliable and seek His will for our lives, things have a way of fitting into place. The priest or religious who is called to that vocation, despite the challenges and crosses, finds peace and purpose, and yes even happiness. The same goes for those whose vocation is marriage. Happiness is not at odds with the crosses that inevitably come with those callings--for Christ embraced his Cross; he loved it, because his vocation was to die, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Were he to have come down from it and settled down with Mary Magdalene (as Nikos Kazantzakis sketched out as The Last Temptation of Christ)...well, we don't have to go there.

I talked about this in a previous post, this idea of the 'close but no cigar' situation we sometimes find ourselves in: in vocations, relationships, jobs, identities, and life in general,

"The analogy I have always used to describe this experience (or discernment) that seemed to describe it best was akin to finding the shirt you always wanted at the local thrift store, trying it on, and finding that it's one size smaller that what you typically wear. You can make it work if you walk out of the store with it. But then you begin to notice it chaffs under the arms, rides up an inch too much at the waist, and is just snug enough to be uncomfortable. It looks great--it just doesn't fit. Because it wasn't made for you. 

You could use the 'trying to fit a square peg in a round hole' analogy, but it doesn't quite work because no matter what you do in that situation, you can't ram it through. It would be almost easier if it was like this, because the fact that you have the wrong piece would be apparent from the start. You wouldn't spend ten years trying to make it so (that would almost be an apt description of a kind of insanity). 

You could use the 'puzzle piece' analogy, which is closer to the mark, but that isn't quite it either. You know, when you find a 'close but not cigar' piece in a puzzle, and it's almost the one you are looking for, but you'd have to slam your fist down on the table to force it, which would distort the edges and present an inaccurate picture. 

No, I think the shirt analogy works best in this circumstance. You want to look good. You found a good deal on a great brand. Surely, it should fit, despite the label saying 'Small' rather than 'Medium.' The stitches aren't breaking, the buttons aren't popping off. You can tolerate the discomfort to an extent, but it's far from fitting like a glove. You always kind of feel it, even if you convince yourself otherwise. 

When we don't pay attention to these things, these little chaffings, we can sometimes miss the ways in which God is telling us "this isn't for you. I have something set aside for you. But you have to trust me." Because God rarely speaks to us audibly, we have to rely on these signs and signals to discern whether we are trying to conform our will to God's, or God's will to our life." 

If I would have tried to force God's hand, and said "I'm going to become a monk come hell or high water," and assuming an Abbot who was not as discerning accepted me a postulant, I think it would have been like that one-size-too-small shirt. It may have worked, even for years, were I to push down those nagging feelings of dis-ease. And the religious life is a good life, objectively speaking. But I would not have flourished, either spiritually or in a human sense, but would have stunted.

I write about this experience as a pivot-point to how it relates to those who are either openly gay or struggle with same-sex attraction (SSA). I parse those two categories out separately because as we know, and as the Church teaches, sexual orientation or proclivity is not the same as a willful embrace of the homosexual lifestyle. Just as it is easy to point out the "clown Masses" in the Novus Ordo as an indicative example of post-conciliar abuses and deficiencies and use it as ammunition in the Traditionalist arsenal, this is not the norm. Rather, it's the beige, lukewarm banality of the New Mass in the majority of churches that is normative and the real problem at hand. 

In the same manner, we cannot point to BDSM actors, TransPorn or the extremes of homosexual deviancy as the norm. Yes, it is out there. But also out there are those in stable homosexual partnerships, those who are gay and single, those who teach and work and hold office and, yes, even attend church among you. Some may be married to members of the same sex, some to members of the opposite sex. Additionally, there are those who may struggle with SSA and not identify as "gay" but who nevertheless maintain lives of chastity, have deep prayer lives, may attend the TLM, and not feel any inclination to identify with the LGBT community. 

It is a hard pill for the world to swallow, but the teachings of the Church, by way of holy scripture and tradition, is that not only are homosexual acts a grave depravity, intrinsically disordered, and contrary to the natural law (CCC 2357), but that the inclination itself is objectively disordered (2358). And so we run into this issue of human flourishing. Is it possible to compartmentalize that part of ourselves--our sexuality--and still flourish and be psychologically healthy? Can we live (and by happy) without sex? Are those with SSA somehow not whole as human persons? Additionally, how can those with such proclivities and attractions willingly submit themselves to a spiritual authority (the Church) that teaches that those inclinations are, in fact, "disordered"?

As any psychologically healthy person knows, sex is a big part of life; whether you're having it or not having it, married or single, gay or straight--it consumes a lot of our thoughts, our behaviors, and how we live out our lives and pursuits. Because it is a gift from God for the continuing of the human race, and has the power of fire (which can warm a house and cook food or burn down a village), we must treat it reverently, carefully, and soberly. 

In many ways, the mystery of the Incarnation points to how we integrate our sexuality with our personhood. For God, in taking on flesh, was in another sense "out of his skin"--that is, the Father's home is in heaven. For many during the Patristic age, the Incarnation was a complete scandal, for the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands (Acts 7:48). So how can God take on the body of a (finite) man? How can Jesus as God find himself at home in a human body? It seems--disordered, in a sense. 

Integration is no easy feat. Those who find themselves called to the vocation of marriage may find it is not easy to live with someone so different than themselves. Learning the nuances and subtleties of lovemaking takes time and tenderness. Deferring one's own self-interest, day after day, takes work. If I am saved by God's grace, it will be as a married man. In the confection of that Sacrament, my identity has been altered--I am not longer one among another, but "one flesh" with another.

And we don't always get this right, either. People grow apart, change. Betray one another. Jump ship, break their vows. Act out. Forget love. Those who are divorced (but sacramentally married still in the eyes of the Church) find themselves with new and heavy crosses they are called to bear. When a partner gets ill, or comatose, the spouse can find themselves saying "this is not what I signed up for." Those who are widowed with a gaggle of young kids find themselves alone, grieving, and burdened. In all of this, as in all of life, we cannot run from our crosses because our crosses were made for us. They are wrapped up in the mystery of our vocation. 

But I think for people who are gay or struggle with same sex attraction, there are additional layers. I don't have statistics, but I would imagine a higher proportion may have been victims of childhood abuse, either realized or unrealized. Not all of course, but wounds and trauma can be deep-seated in many cases. Because our sexuality is wrapped up with our identities, our sense of self, our personalities, and everything else, when that is set off-track by the psychological and spiritual murder of sexual abuse, it is not an easy feat to find wholeness and healing. The lower-cost alternative, in many cases sadly, is to mask it.

You may be wondering at this point why there is a picture at the top of this post featuring three men--my friend Joseph Sciambra, celebrity provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, and Catholic journalist Michael Voris--that seems to have nothing to do with what I have been writing about up until now. As public figures in the digital age, they can be open targets for both the right and the left. Joseph is an open-book (for better or worse) online and does not hide his past life as a former gay porn actor and his conversion to Christ, as well as his animosity towards the Catholic Church and leaving it for Orthodoxy; Milo has not been in the news much lately, but has always struck me as a complicated individual, a walking paradox of his own construction who also happens to be Catholic; Voris and Church Militant was never my cup of tea (I always thought their brand of journalism was reckless and sloppy), but of course with the news of his ousting by the CM board it's not hard to notice that, sadly, his secrets were eating him alive. 

For these three SSA men, theirs was the "shirt that never fit." For Joseph, who has suffered abuse (both sexual and ecclesial) at the hands of the Church, he found he could no longer exist in the Stockholm-like situation of remaining Catholic. I do not judge him (which doesn't mean I condone his flight to the arms of the East, only that I understand it). For Milo, his hatred of "the left" and embracing his identity as an “alt-right f*g" was a both perplexing and savage. He sought out his identity in politics, in social media, and in the spotlight--a kind of gay right Paris Hilton--and no exposure was bad exposure. Voris I suspected had struggles with SSA (which was later confirmed), and his bulldog demeanor of hunting down and rooting out enemies of the Faith seemed to be channeled from something deeper within himself. I do believe he loves Christ and the Church, but that there are other issues at play psychologically and spiritually that need to be worked out.

I hate admitting this, but it was fairly obvious from my laptop vantage point over the years that these three particular men were not whole, were wounded and constructing their respective houses as best they knew how. Their constructed personas were compensations, not vocations. 

In Joseph's book Disordered, he wrote about spending his whole life looking for that wholeness in the arms of other men--not because that was the Promised land, but because those arms opened wide and gave him a rental home. And that, I think, is the struggle for most, if not all, gay men: what will make me whole? If my inclinations are, in fact, "disordered," I can turn myself to order myself to the disordered (in the gay lifestyle), or I can "disorder" and contort myself into the order of Catholicism. The first is a deadend, and the second (while it holds the potential for wholeness), when undertaken without addressing the necessary healing, is a recipe for not only cognitive dissonance, but disastrous scandal.  

If the wisdom is in the means, however, it begs the question: is there a middle way between these two unsavory roads? Because I am not a gay man, this not my road to walk. But to think there are not men and women with SSA who kneel with us in the pews at Mass, who live in our neighborhoods and community, who we are not called to love as pro-bono charity cases but as brothers and sisters and equals would be naive at best and an injustice at worst. We need to come to terms as Catholics that we are living among the walking wounded--gay and straight alike--and get off our spiritual high horse and ivory internet towers. The work of healing is hard enough; that we are erecting field hospitals in a war zone to treat the wounded necessitates we become whole ourselves.

All men are called to conform themselves to the cross of Christ, and our crosses are tailor made. Christ died not for some, but for all (2 Cor 5:15). The journey to wholeness--of which our sexuality is just one part--is one we are all called to labor towards, just as we work out our salvation in fear and trembling (Phil 2:12). When we are not whole we employ counterfeits, costumes and personas, in our attempt to find the shirt that fits. For some its a Givenchy suit; for others, it's a pair of stilettos and a halter top; still others a feathered pink boa and a rainbow sash. 

But in all cases, the loving eyes of Christ who calls us to wholeness gaze straight through the wardrobe to the dressing room of the heart. Just as he appeared in the Upper Room to Thomas and the disciples without forcing the door to offer his peace, so too he sees the heart of man (1 Sam 16:7) underneath the clothes we don. He brushes away our past and our sin with a gentle sweep of his arm, steps over the fortified barriers we erect to keep him out because of our wounds, smiles at our feeble defenses and protests and sits down at table to sup with us. 

If you say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me," you will soon know that even the darkness will not be dark to Him; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to Him. For He created your inmost being; He knit you together in your mother’s womb. And when you are made whole, you will praise Him--because you are fearfully and wonderfully made. You will find then the shirt that fits.