Theological Parsimony

 

 St. Augustine, the wisdom-loving brilliant and talented rhetorician, was put off by the Christian scriptures initially after reading Cicero and being stirred for a love of wisdom, citing the Bible’s “painfully unstylish Latin.” He was seduced for almost a decade by the Manichean sect, whose esoteric teachings appealed to his intellect. Augustine would realize later, however, that the Christian Scriptures are “a text lowly to the beginner but, on further reading, of mountainous difficulty and enveloped in mysteries.”

I recently wrote an article for publication titled The Means and Ends of the Mass. It was a bit of a tenuous threading of the needle to get the premise I wanted to communicate across (and I'm not even convinced I did it well), but in doing so I stuck to the most basic of sources: scripture and the Baltimore Catechism, which I was a little embarrassed about because both are not the most sophisticated sources. 

Like Augustine, prior to and early in my conversion, I was put off by the Ned Flanders cultural banality of Christianity as I saw it, but was nonetheless seduced by more esoteric variants that sought to meld New Age, Gnostic, and Eastern ways of thinking with Christianity. Bede Griffiths, Thich Nhat Hanh, Thomas Merton, and Thomas Keating were standard fare on my bookshelf. I would read Pierre Theilard de Chardin's thesis on the Omega Point and the "Noosphere" and think myself pretty theologically sophisticated, when the fact of the matter is I didn't really understand it at all (I sometimes feel that way trying to follow Fr. Ripperger as well, albeit in a different way). In my mind, Christianity on its own was like steak and potatoes, vanilla sex, and Volvo station wagons.  It needed some "dressing up," the way my buddies in high school would adorn their stock 1996 VW Jettas with racing stripes and rear spoilers. 

This, of course, led me to various wayward forays into dangerous spiritual territory, that Grace had to once again reach down and set me straight from. Now I find myself, as I get older, appreciating a kind of "theological parsimony" when it comes to making sense of the faith and the challenges of the modern world. 

Parsimony, as it relates to the philosophical principal inherent in Occam's Razor, suggests that we should prefer simpler explanations and solutions over more complex ones, all other things being equal. This came to mind as I brushed across a recent video of Jordan Peterson talking with Russel Brand (who had recently been baptized) on the topic of "the Collective Unconscious, Christ, and the Covenant." Now, it seems both these men are on a journey to faith, and I don't want to reproach a man who is turning away from sin, as my friend Boniface adjures, by being too critical. These men are deep thinkers and public quasi-intellectuals, and they wildly gesticulate for hours while slurping the intellectual marrow from the femur of faith. But sometimes the simplest solution to life's problems are right in front of your face:

Repent, and believe in the Gospel

The lives of the Fathers give a kind of alternative to the philosophical pontificating with meat and potatoes metanoia lived out. Take, for example, St. Anthony's single-mindedness in unlocking the door to paradise with the key given to us in the Living Word:

When Saint Anthony was about twenty years old, he lost his parents, but he was responsible for the care of his younger sister. Going to church about six months later, the youth reflected on how the faithful, in the Acts of the Apostles (4:35), sold their possessions and gave the proceeds to the Apostles for the needy.

Then he entered the church and heard the Gospel passage where Christ speaks to the rich young man: “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come follow Me” (Mt.19:21). Anthony felt that these words applied to him. Therefore, he sold the property that he received after the death of his parents, then distributed the money to the poor, and left his sister in the care of pious virgins in a convent. [1]

I may have mentioned this before, but my favorite figure in the Bible is the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8, whose model of docility to teaching, firm intention of purpose, and purity of heart is one I hold close to my heart:

Now an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip, saying: Arise, go towards the south, to the way that goeth down from Jerusalem into Gaza: this is desert.

And rising up, he went. And behold a man of Ethiopia, an eunuch, of great authority under Candace the queen of the Ethiopians, who had charge over all her treasures, had come to Jerusalem to adore.

And he was returning, sitting in his chariot, and reading Isaias the prophet.

And the Spirit said to Philip: Go near, and join thyself to this chariot.

And Philip running thither, heard him reading the prophet Isaias. And he said: Thinkest thou that thou understandest what thou readest?

Who said: And how can I, unless some man shew me? And he desired Philip that he would come up and sit with him.

And the place of the scripture which he was reading was this: He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb without voice before his shearer, so openeth he not his mouth.

In humility his judgment was taken away. His generation who shall declare, for his life shall be taken from the earth?

And the eunuch answering Philip, said: I beseech thee, of whom doth the prophet speak this? of himself, or of some other man?

Then Philip, opening his mouth, and beginning at this scripture, preached unto him Jesus.

And as they went on their way, they came to a certain water; and the eunuch said: See, here is water: what doth hinder me from being baptized?

And Philip said: If thou believest with all thy heart, thou mayest. And he answering, said: I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

And he commanded the chariot to stand still; and they went down into the water, both Philip and the eunuch: and he baptized him.

And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord took away Philip; and the eunuch saw him no more. And he went on his way rejoicing.

It's neat to see these public intellectuals and cultural figures lately approaching the shores of Christianity and wrestling with its claims. Perhaps God is using them, and as He said to Isaiah the prophet, "see, I am doing a new thing." But I think the theological parsimony of the Ethiopian eunuch and the simple obedience of St. Anthony is refreshing amidst the torrent of words and conjectures that some of these figures employ, as if Christianity is not "enough" on its own that it needs to be re-baptized in the waters of Jungian archetypes or tantric vibrations. 

Sometimes the simplest explanation is best: you are a helpless sinner who must submit to the Lordship of Christ to be saved. Fear Him, do not sin. Ponder on your bed and be still. Make justice your sacrifice and trust in the Lord (Ps 4:4). All the dancing and pontificating we do to get to that point serves its purpose...provided it does in fact lead one to that pivotal decision to leave their nets and follow him. After that, watch out, because grace has a way of changing you from the inside out.

Those Who Walked In Darkness Have Seen a Great Light

 

I was really happy to have come across an interview that the adorable and hilariously off-the-wall comedian Theo Von did on his podcast "This Past Weekend" with the newly baptized former tattoo artist Kat Von D. Here's a short clip of the two hour interview interview to give some context:

I knew Theo from his comedy, but wasn't familiar with Ms. Von D until I came across some news on Yahoo or something that she was baptized and had become a Christian. I appreciated the interview with Ms. Von D as a baby Christian, and Theo as just a truly authentic, non-judgmental guy. Ms. Von D mentioned that she was expecting to get hate from all sides for her decision to turn away from her former life and to give her life to Christ; but she was surprised that most of that animosity came from Christians themselves who thought that a "Christian should look a certain way", and not her fan base (who were largely supportive and understanding).  

Judgement (especially when it comes to externals) is one of the ugliest sweaters a Christian can don. It ferments hypocrisy, smolders charity, and thwarts evangelism. It should have no place in the Christian life of a believer--and yet it does. As someone who was previously engaged to a woman who was tattooed from head to toe, and who was featured in tattoo magazines (but who have none myself), I know I don't always fit the part myself. 

The funny thing is, converts like Ms. Von D probably have the power, by the Holy Ghost, to lead more souls to Christ who have been lost to the culture--souls that many of us laboring in the field have trouble reaching. If you doubt what God can do with those who don't fit the mold of what a believer should look like, you'd better call Saul (Paul). 

I know I haven't posted much about the liturgical season of Advent we are now in, which is usually my habit--if you want Advent reflections, you're probably better off hopping over to the National Catholic Register or Catholic Digest. But I think there is an Advent message in here somewhere, and it goes back to Isaiah the prophet:

"The people that walked in darkness, have seen a great light: to them that dwelt in the region of the shadow of death, light is risen." (Is 9:2)

Baptism is a shared sacrament among Christians of all denominations (as any convert knows, you are not "re-baptized" when you come into the Church because your baptism in the Lutheran, Episcopal, or non-denominational church conferred grace, provided it was done with water and "In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit"). So, I always celebrate when someone is washed free of Original Sin in baptism, but even more so when they are closer to the grave than they were when they were infants. Do I wish and hope Ms. Von D to find the fullness of truth in the Catholic Church some day? Of course. But we all have to start somewhere, and "we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose" (Rom 8:28).

Ms. Von D also seems sincere in her conviction. She threw out her books on witchcraft, covered the majority of her tattoos in blank ink, sold off her shares in her namesake beauty brand, closed her famous tattoo shop, and listed her $12 million California mansion for sale. It seems she has taken to heart the words of another questionable convert, St. Paul, to heart: "Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin" (Rom 6:6-7). 

We often forget as Christians that "look and play the part" (not to mention being guilty of "majoring in the minors" in our Catholic safe spaces) that the Gospel is branded as "good news for the poor" (Lk 4:14-22). Christ did not come to save the righteous, but sinners (Lk 5:31-32); for it is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick. This is also the message of Advent, as well--while most of us are baking Christmas cookies and cozying up around the fire with eggnog and carols and shopping for presents to give to our loved ones, the world outside is steeped in darkness without a light. It is the nature of God in Christ to seek out the lost, to lift them out of the miry pit. Christ spoke in no uncertain terms about those that "wash the outside of the cup while the inside is filled while the insides is filled with greed and self-indulgence" (Mt 23:25-29). 

The poor disrupt our comfort, our spiritual equilibrium--they do not live predictable lives and do not always act in predictable ways. I commend this pastor who taught a valuable lesson to his congregation when he disguised himself as a homeless man and showed up at his own church only to be mistreated. 

But it is for the poor, the lost, those who walk in darkness that Christ has shined the light of salvation on. He became poor among the poor--poor in spirit and humble in means. We really cannot afford to forget that as Christians who make claim to the throne when we should be trying more to be like children. The mantle of the door to Heaven is not high off the ground--only those who are low to the ground will enter through it. 

My heart really swelled to hear Ms. Von D's turning away from the darkness and into the light. May God continue to guide her into the fullness of Truth, and use her for His purposes to bring others home. 

The Novus Ordo Made Me A Stronger Catholic. Here's Why

 

I periodically attend a weekly virtual meet-up with converts through The Coming Home network. Many come from Protestant backgrounds, and while some may have had negative experiences in their respective denominations, many speak warmly and charitably of the tradition they were raised up in, recounting a love of the Bible and being embraced by the community.

But as the saying goes, "Weak Catholics become Protestants and strong Protestants become Catholic." 

When I came into the Church in the 1990's, the Novus Ordo was the standard menu fare. Although I was confirmed in the Byzantine rite, most of my experience and formation on campus during those formative years was in the context of the New Mass. I simply didn't know there was an "Old" (Tridentine) Mass.

And for all practical purposes, there wasn't, at least not in my sphere of influence. The 1984 indult granted by Pope John Paul II was before my time, and Summa Pontificum wasn't promulgated until 2007 (nine years after I came into the Church). This squishy middle period in history was where God decreed I land. I was beyond grateful, and with the Psalmist I gave thanks: "You lifted me up from the miry pit, and set my feet upon a rock" (Ps 40:2).

I never fell in love with the Mass--growing up going to the Divine Liturgy with my father, it was not the incense-imbued novelty for me it is with many Latin Catholics. Nor did the New Mass exactly inspire. I felt like there was a lot I had to overlook in it, though like a child, I didn't have the language to articulate the shortcomings (which today, are clear as day). 

Instead, the Mass was where I went to meet the Lord who had ransomed me and whom I encountered personally. It was there I placed on the plain, unadorned altar my own inadequate worship through the corporeal body. 

The idea then was "it's enough that they (the students) just come." Come as you are. Like the fasting requirements of the universal (Latin) Church during Lent, it was a pretty low bar. And, presumably, whatever it takes to keep people out of mortal sin. 

But that was enough for me. Times after Communion were sweet, intimate. The Lord, I felt, had endowed me with the gift of tears during those years, because I often wept over my sins as they contrasted to His divine goodness, Him whom I had just received under guise of bread. 

I also found a subset of more serious and well-formed Catholics through various clubs and the Newman Center with whom I could live out my faith in prayer and worship, retreats, and service to the poor.  But I think I sensed early on there was more to the Church than the standard fare, a deeper aquifer beneath the surface. When our chaplain invited myself and a handful of other guys out for a vocation weekend at the nearby Benedictine monastery, I thought I had found my calling. This was a true and authentic expression of how the Catholic faith could be lived out. Not that it should be lived out this way, for God does not call all men to the consecrated life. Maybe, though, he would make an exception with me. 

Monasticism emerged as a counter-movement to the perceived laxity of post-Constantinian Catholicism in the West. When it was becoming harder to die for the faith as a martyr, those wanting to live out their faith in a more intentional and sincere manner would instead die to self in the desert. I spent part of the summer after my freshman year, six months a Catholic now, in a discernment program at a contemplative (also Benedictine) community in New York state trying to emulate those early Cennobites. Pray, work, study---this was my rented life for five weeks, and I loved it. Or at least, I wanted to love it. But no matter how many monasteries I visited and discerned with over the next ten years, it always fit like a shirt one size too small--chaffing under the arms, and a little too tight in the chest. 

If the monastic life didn't fit (even if the idea of being a monk did in my mind), the prospect of marriage didn't seem to be fitting either. I chalked that up to not wanting or having a vocation to the married life. But part of it could have been not having met the right person to be married to. I was content to be alone, but I was simultaneously lonely. The solitary life, attractive as it was, was also a shirt one size too small. My petition to be accepted as a postulant at a monastery in New Mexico was charitably declined, and I was starting to despair that I simply had no vocation at all. 

My conversion was not intellectual, but personal. Christ had ransomed me, as in the woods years ago the scripture for me was fulfilled:  "For I, the LORD your God, will hold your right hand, saying to you, 'Fear not, I will help you.' (Is 41:13). I fell in love, and the love was not in the adornments, but with the person of Christ himself. In making known that love to me by a kind of personal Transfiguration, Christ revealed his true nature as Redeemer and Sanctifier--his true self. 

Because of these revelatory experiences and where they took place for me, I thought Christ made his home in the wilderness, since that was where I encountered him. I wanted to pitch my tent with him on Mount Tabor. But instead, I had to descend to the campus auditorium on Sundays to share him with a crowd of students who didn't seem to care if He showed up. What do I have to do with these people? I thought it was you and me? I would pray. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands (Acts 17:24-25). I had fallen in love and had never wanted the honeymoon to end. But the day after the wedding feast, you have to move in and get about to the task of being married day after day.

When I was in discernment, I was (in between visits to different communities as an Observer) dating a sweet, wonderful Catholic girl who would have made a great spouse. But the timing just never worked out. And timing is never an accident. When you meet someone is as important as anything else and it doesn't happen apart from God's will. 

But what if I had met her at a different time--when I was more settled, ready to get married? I did reach that point in my life eventually, but it ended up being with a different person. Again, this did not happen apart from God's will and for His intended purpose. His way is perfect, and all things work for the good for those who love him (Ps 18:30; Rom 8:28))

I think about that in the context of the Latin Mass. Like many people who have discovered it, you think "Where have you been all my life?"  But were it God's will that I found it when I first came into the Church, would it have been an adornment that could, God forbid, be taken off like a robe? What if it were the Mass itself that attracted me, rather than the One who was on the altar there? I was fed and sustained with my daily manna in the New Rite without fail during this long liturgical sojourn. When I grumbled unknowingly in my heart about the manna He sustained me by, he sent meat by way of the Latin Mass (Ex 16:12).

But it was grace that saved me, not the Mass. It was God who found me, not the other way around. And He that was born in a unadorned and uninspiring stable willed that I have my upbringing be under this roof. I cannot change that any more that I can change when or how I met my wife, or the parents I was born to. For if the course of that history had changed by my will rather than His, I might never have met her, and might never had been born at all.

God has given me the grace of sustained faith over the past twenty five years not because of the (New) Mass but, oftentimes, in spite of it. Because for the majority of that time, I did not have the benefit of beautiful churches or always-reverent liturgies. I was not in the company of Navy Seal Catholics, but often the opposite. I could not rest on the laurels of orthodox teaching, so I had to learn discernment. In this marriage, I really had to work at it to stay married. And it forced me to dig deep and keep at the forefront of my mind just Who it was I was married to. To do otherwise was to risk sinking into the sea of unbelief (Mt 14:22-23). 

I realize that this experience is my own, but I don't think I am alone in it. Even Moses had an affinity for his kin though he was raised up as an Egyptian (Ex 2). Most of us (some more than others) have a degree of trauma from our childhoods, whether we realize it or not. Even though many of us who attend the TLM act like enlightened college freshmen coming back home after their first semester of college, telling our parents how wrong and stupid they are about basically everything, they are still the ones who raised us, fed us, educated us, and did the best they could for us. They made you who you are today, even though you are not the same person now that you were then.  You be grateful for that, and give thanks that you, too, have been born from and ransomed by this hand. 

Sunshine In A Bottle

 When I first came into the Church, I had a tough time with Mary, the Mother of God. Not for any theological reasons, but simply in a relational sense. One often hears of struggles people have with God as Father because of their wounds with their own father. For me it was the opposite--my father exemplified the unconditional love shown by the father to the prodigal son in Luke 15. But with Mary, it was an issue of her being peripheral. 

I have a good relationship with my mother and love her dearly, but I realize in sitting down tonight I don't mention or write about her much. And that's how I viewed Mary, the Mother of God, for a long time--not sure how she fits into the picture of my newfound faith. I learned to pray the rosary during those first years as a Catholic, but it was hardly my favorite prayer. My recitation of it seemed to stay on the surface of things above the depths, which now in hindsight, would be a good description of my relationship with my mother. 

My mom may quite possibly be one of the nicest and most pleasant people you will ever meet. I have described her to people who haven't met her as "literally, sunshine in a bottle." My brothers and I joke about her "permagrin"--that is, the fact that she is always smiling. I don't think it's superficial, either. She is a genuinely happy person.

But part of that happiness and effervescence is perhaps why I had trouble relating to her growing up as a broody teenager who thought about things deeply and was discontent with the supericial and fleeting nature of existence, and even today as an adult. My mom is a smart, educated woman, but she doesn't necessarily "go there" when a conversation gets too deep. She prefers to stay on the surface rather than stare into the sun with the naked eye, and will sometimes change the subject to something more essentially palatable if the discussion vears too existential. Maybe this is how she is able to maintain her positive outlook on life, by not staring straight into the abyss on the daily the way I tend to sometimes. 

I've put her through the ringer growing up, and between dealing with me and my dad and our mental health issues, she is stronger than I give her credit for. She also has a natural deference to my father's authority in most matters, though my father also recognizes how much he relies on her to complement his own deficiencies. Their marriage has withstood a lot in large part to this model, and I give her credit for it.

But there is also a degree of frustration on my part in expecting my mom to be someone she is not from time to time. For one thing, as much as I would love for her to come into the Church as a Catholic, she remains outside of it. It is not a negative in our relationship, and there is no antagonism, but I have trouble understanding people who do not consider the four Last Things: Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. The impetus is not there. I want her to know herself the joy that is our hope, not the happiness tied to the externals or pleasures of this temporary life. But ultimately, these decisions to pick up our cross and follow the Truth wherever it leads must come from the individuals themselves.

It's hard to reconcile sometimes. How will the good Lord judge my mom when she comes before Him? Am I effectively living with the cognitive dissonance of trying to reconcile a modernist concept of your religion not mattering, of being a "nice person" (which my mom most certainly is!) with the exclusive claims of the Church, the necessity of the sacraments? Maybe it's why I trend towards throwing myself on God's mercy and fearing His just judgement in the same breath. I fear the hellfire myself, but I also fear it for my family.

Ultimately, the Mother of God broke into my and my wife's life and flooded us with grace and afforded us her protection (by way of the Miraculous Medal). She is no longer peripheral. We pray the rosary regularly and are indebted to her for that grace.

I still hold out that that same grace might break through in my relationship with my mom. I want her so badly to be Catholic, and she's not, and I don't know what to do with that. I respect her enough not to force the topic, but maybe I'm not doing enough either to make the prospect hard to resist. And it becomes hard when you know that the popular sentiment of "good people go to Heaven" and "being kind is the most important thing" is false when you know the people you love fall into that category. "Lord, who can be saved?" As He tells us, "with men, it is impossible. But with God, all things are possible" (Mt 19:26). 

Beauty Will Not Save The World

Doestoevsky's famous line in The Idiot "Beauty will save the world" has been adopted by traditionalists as a subdued rallying cry to undo the damage of wreckovations, restore the liturgy, and Make Catholicism Great Again. I have been to some beautiful churches and cathedrals (like Sacré-Cœur, for one) and they indeed give testimony to the Psalmist's song, "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows his handiwork." (Ps 91:1)

Unfortunately, many of our modern-day churches do not inspire such majestic awe. From the strictly utilitarian to the downright ugly and architechuraly banal, one finds themselves having to believe not because of their surroundings in these environments, but in spite of it.

I was listening to a convert recount her journey into the Church last night (start at min 35) who began her search for the Truth by way of philosophy as an atheist. She recounted her stumbling blocks to the faith, "I couldn't take my (intellectual) friends into the church and say, 'see how beautiful it is', because it wasn't. I couldn't take them to the Mass and say, 'see, isn't this transcendent?' because it wasn't." She mentioned that she was attracted to the Mass but at the same time repulsed because she could see those present at the Mass seemed not to believe any of it, as reflected in their dress, posture, and lack of reverance. It could be up for debate whether the modernist churches and the liturgy in this context failed to inspire faith in those worshipping there, or if they were built to simply reflect the existing faith (or lack of it) in the modern age.  

Like my own journey, however, it was in reading St. Augustine (Confessions, in this case) that this particular convert was led to pray for the first time and instilled in her the burning desire to be baptized. Perhaps it was because this convert (and I) read ourselves into Augustine's wrestling--that his problems and struggles were our problems and struggles as well--that made Confessions such a formidable part of our conversion.

One of those struggles for Augustine was having been exposed to eloquent rhetoric at an early age, he found the Christian scriptures not eloquent or flowery, but crudely written and uninspiring from a literary point of view. And yet it was not Cicero, but the Lord himself that captured the heart of the rhetorician through the living Word in order that he might rend it in two. Augustine reflects on his first encounter with the Bible, here, 

"I resolved, therefore, to direct my mind to the Holy Scriptures, that I might see what they were. And behold, I perceive something not comprehended by the proud, not disclosed to children, but lowly as you approach, sublime as you advance, and veiled in mysteries; and I was not of the number of those who could enter into it, or bend my neck to follow its steps. For not as when now I speak did I feel when I tuned towards those Scriptures, but they appeared to me to be unworthy to be compared with the dignity of Tully; for my inflated pride shunned their style, nor could the sharpness of my wit pierce their inner meaning. Yet, truly, were they such as would develope in little ones; but I scorned to be a little one, and, swollen with pride, I looked upon myself as a great one." (III, 5)

The "Beauty Argument" is one that makes sense intellectually--build it (beautiful), and they will come, to co-opt a line from Field of Dreams. Once people see the beauty of Catholicism, they will be unable to resist the allure of Truth. It's a wager being made when many other efforts to "revitalize" the Church--reform the liturgy, YouCat and World Youth Day, Bishop Barron's Catholicism--have fallen flat and failed to produce a wave of converts.

So, I'm making another wager in light of the world we live in--beauty will not save the Church. It is a worthy thing, and reflective of God's nature, but it's not enough. I think we are entering a new epoch in which our age is so blinded by delusion, so corrupted by modernism. so obstinate and stiff-necked in our pride and sin, that there is not going to be a raising but a razing; not a renaissance, but a decimation. Not a comfort, but a severe and unrelenting beating.

Our Lady has over and over again been trying to get our attention. Fatima, Akita, Quito, and others. And her message is direct and consistent: repent and do penance. Not eloquent, not flowery. Direct and crude.

Have we, though? Has she really gotten our attention? Have we taken it to heart and changed, amended our sinful lives? The evidence is to the contrary. Those who take the messages seriously may, but the majority of the world is asleep at the wheel. Men became so wicked that God had to do a "great reset" with the flood in Genesis. He promised to never again send a flood (Gen 9:11). 

And yet our Lady's message is consistent with that of her Son's:  “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish" (Lk 13:2-3). 

I think God is getting ready to get a big stick out to bring us home. I sent you saints, stigmatists, miracles.  You did not listen. My Mother tried to warn you, you would not listen. Now you're going to have the ears to hear, but only because everything you have held on to will be taken away from you and you will be unable to do otherwise. "And when he (the Holy Spirit) is come, he will convince the world of sin, and of justice, and of judgment" (Jn 16:8). 

I pray that when the Lord does come, he sears us with fire to burn away the dross of what covers us from seeing ourselves as we truly are--helpless sinners, completely depedent on the mercy of God. I pray that they churches--the ugly ones, the beautiful ones, the humble village churches and the great cathedrals alike--will be so filled not with tourists and admirers, but with sinners crawling there on their knees in tears. I pray that priests have the fortitude to withstand hours upon hours, almost prisoners in the confessionals, because the lines will stretch for miles with no end in sight. I pray that it will not be too late to repent--to see clearly--but that our Lord might give us one last chance to turn away from our sin and turn towards Him. 

In my opinion, beauty is the icing on the cake, the cap of perfection of Creation. But when a world is so blinded by sin and degenirate that they call what is beautiful ugly, and what is ugly beautiful, how can they be converted by beauty? Perhaps it is ugliness-the ugliness of seeing their sin not through a glass darkly, but face to face with eyes that cannot be closed--that will sear their conscience and move them not to admiration and swooning, but tears and rending their hearts before Him. 

"It's Been God All Along"

 I have always told the Lord, "If I have brought but one person to you, I will die happy." All glory to God, I think I can say that has happened, though I was only about one percent of the equation.. 

A few years ago a friend from high school--I will call her Kay--reached out to me via Messenger. Though I couldn't find the original message, I remember that this friend was being drawn back to the Church and had reached out, I think, because she knew so few Catholics. 

I always knew her as an extremely perceptive and intuitive person, but I hadn't seen her since high school. She was living in a metropolitan area on the West Coast now, married with two children. She had been taking her kids to a Protestant church, but kept being drawn to Catholic churches, especially those with Latin Masses, and adoration chapels. In an email exchange we had a few years ago, she tenderly noted that she could not bring herself to go in, but lingered outside the doorway. "No words really to describe the experience."

For me, there is honestly nothing more moving than to see a soul being stirred by grace, but especially when it's someone you know. I have had people and friends I've tried to share the Gospel with who I thought were open to it; not in an aggressive way, but just by planting seeds, and it can be deflating when they never seem to sprout. But Kay was different. I didn't really do anything or play much of a part, besides maybe offering some material to read by way of my blog. Rather, I just had the good grace to witness the Holy Spirit nudging and moving her to come home. A true privilege worth living for. 

Her last Confession was also her first, some 30+ years ago. She shared in that email from a few years ago that, 

"My Confession is scheduled for Thursday morning. I feel like I’m standing in two worlds. Just recently I found Flannery O’Connor’s quote “Grace changes us and the change is painful.” I had no idea. My whole life I’ve walked through the world seeing “meaning” and “beauty” everywhere I looked, and now I know it’s been God all along."

I hope she will forgive me for sharing that, but it gives me hope; we are being ransomed, all of us, in dribs and drabs. The days of the mass conversions of St. Francis Xavier are not so common in our culture today. Maybe souls escaping the Titanic of our culture and finding their way to shore on life rafts, or pulled upon rescue boats, is as much as we can hope for. I take to heart St. Paul's words to "become all things to all people...so that I may save some." (1 Cor 9:22)

But again, it has little to do with me or you except that we are foot soldiers, pencils, instruments in God's hands to sow the seed. We have little capability to make it rain, shine the sun, pollinate the buds. The best we can do is labor, scatter, till, and fertilize. The rest is grace. But isn't it a wonderful thing to see a flower bud, a tree bear fruit, in its due season? It is a miracle of nature. 

We can never force or manipulate grace, however. God is loving but wholly sovereign, and the Holy Spirit is like the wind that blows where it wishes (Jn 3:8). The featherweight pods of grace are carried across the fields, floating until they rest on a tender heart. But a heart cannot be rushed or hurried along. It reminds me of a passage from Nikos Kazantzakis' Zorba the Greek, 

"I recalled one dawn when I had chanced upon a butterfly’s cocoon in a pine tree at the very moment when the husk was breaking and the inner soul was preparing to emerge. I kept waiting and waiting; it was slow and I was in a hurry. Leaning over it, I began to warm it with my breath. I kept warming it impatiently until the miracle commenced to unfold before my eyes at an unnatural speed. The husk opened completely; the butterfly came out. But never shall I forget my horror: its wings remained curled inward, not unfolded. The whole of its minuscule body shook as it struggled to spread the wings outward. But it could not. As for me, I struggled to aid it with my breath. In vain. What it needed was to ripen and unfold patiently in sunlight. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to emerge ahead of time, crumpled and premature. It came out undeveloped, shook desperately, and soon died in my palm.

This butterfly’s fluffy corpse is, I believe, the greatest weight I carry on my conscience. What I understood deeply on that day was this: to hasten eternal rules is a mortal sin. One’s duty is confidently to follow nature’s everlasting rhythm."

When I think of my friend Kay, I think of the mercy and goodness of God first and foremost, and then the privilege of witnessing grace working to flower faith in its due season in my friend's heart. Her marriage and her relationship, in her words, has completely transformed. Meaning and beauty is everywhere, but now with the eyes of Christ the Divine Artist, my friend's heart has been able to fully bloom and recognize the threads in the tapestry of her life. A contrite heart, O Lord, you will not spurn.

When I think of my friend, I breathe a sigh, because I can go to my eternal rest a sated man, can enjoy a happy death. Because the Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad (Ps 126:3). As she noted, it's been God all along. I was just glad I was able to be gifted a ticket to the show.

A Watershed Moment For The Successors To The Apostles?

A friend sent me a tweet from a bishop the other day condemning this or that action. We are living in an age where the bar of expectation is so low that we see a "courageous" tweet as worthy of admiration.  

I'm sad to say I have stopped expecting much of anything from our bishops except a kind of administrative functioning. I wrote in a past article somewhere that I stopped thinking "the bishops have our back" long ago. I also have grown weary of "strongly worded statements" as I wrote in Converts Are Made By Witness, Not Pastoral Letters.

But it looks like the bishops may have a chance to redeem themselves if they are to take a unilateral and unequivocal stance in denying, in a spirit of charity and for the salvation of their souls, pro-abortion politicians who obstinately persist in advocating for such egregious threats to life and formenting the sin of public scandal. The bishops have the chance to not only draft some kind of statement, but actually enforce it on a national level. 

Will they do so? It remains to be seen. My thinking is that ship has sailed a long time ago, but if given the grace of courage and fortitude, they have the opportunity to surprise us and salvage what credibility they may still possess by nature of their divine appointments. 

My friend Peter Kwasniewski expresses my own thoughts well on the matter:

"Can one watch the USCCB without horrifying fascination at its dialectic of paralysis and its bureaucratic inefficacy?

Here is a body of men entrusted with upholding the divine law, the natural law, and the law of the Church, voting democratically whether or not they will teach and enforce the divine law, the natural law, and the law of the Church. Here is a body of men who inherit the name and power of apostles, deliberating about whether or not the slaughter of infants in the womb is enough to merit the withholding of the glorified Body of Christ, which is eaten by heretics to their damnation.

The USCCB makes it possible at once to perpetuate the useless documentation of platitudes and to hamstring the real efforts of individual bishops to proclaim and protect the truth. Those who say that the issue of communion for pro-aborts must be left to the discretion of individual bishops are effectively shelving the entire question, because politicians are from one diocese but live and work in another (or in several). The responsibility falls through the cracks. 

What is needed here is a unanimous and exceptionless national policy. The lack of such is perceived, rightly I would say, as an implicit statement that the Church's teaching is of little or no importance and may not even be true, and, moreover, as an implicit denial of the Church's own authority in this area, which is superior to that of the State in regard to the moral law, divine revelation, and ecclesial government.

Now that certain pro-abortion "Catholic" politicians are boldly defying the bishops, we will see if they are capable of concerted action as befits successors of the apostles, or if (once again) they will settle for the mouthing of idle reminders sponsored by a mere majority in a voting body. The truth of Christ should never be seen as the subject of a voting body."

There is no doubt if they do not back up their words with action, they will be railroaded over and dismissed just as easily as they always have for the past half-century. If they do, they will endure a beating in the public square, and I'm not sure all of them are up for a pummeling. 

There is a great scene in Of Gods And Men where the old Trappist monks in Algeria are put in this position of having to dig in and take a stand. The Abbot acts like a true father, but the monks are still rightly scared and concerned for their future. The monks are asked "do we stay or do we leave?" And they vote to stay.

I hope and pray our bishops will do what's right and have the courage to lay it down in a way that backs up what most of us who believe in the True Faith have been trying to do on our own, but without the office or clout. They have it, and canon law supports it. They are in a difficult position, in large part to their own decisions over the past decades not to enforce something that should have been enforced all along, and need prayer. If they don't do something meaningful, they will lose whatever shred of credibility they possessed, and such pro-abortion politicians will be emboldened and act like the Philistine Goliath taunting the Living God. If they do back up their "statements" with meaningful action, they will take a beating for it for sure. But maybe it will help contribute to a renewal in the Church in the end. After all, converts are made by witness, not pastoral letters.

“Whatever That Is, I Want That”

 I was watching a beautiful conversion story this afternoon of a post-abortive woman who was homeless at age 16 and who had no exposure or knowledge of God or Jesus Christ. When she observed her daughter (who went to a Catholic school) kneeling at her bed and praying, this woman’s spirit was moved and she said to herself, “whatever that is, I want that.”

For those of us who have come to the Faith from the outside looking in, it often starts with a gnawing for authenticity, love, peace, and a well to draw from that never dries up. For me, it was encountering a largish Catholic family, with a picture of the Sacred Heart on their wall (the first time I had seen such an image of Christ), who knew their identity and had something I couldn’t put my finger on. It was something I wanted and didn’t have.

I think this is really the rootstock of many conversions. If God is a lover of men, he draws us to a foreign love by means of attraction. And peace, goodness, trustworthiness...these are attractive features of Love itself, seeking consummation in the soul it draws. When one tip-toes toward it, and eventually becomes inebriated by Love itself as a all-encompassing, tidal force mist, we realize what we have been seeking our whole lives without knowing it was there all along, wanting to be found.

Our Lady too is a “beautiful Lady.” She attracts us by her goodness, her maternal care, her peace. She is not harsh or unsightly. We want what she has—which is Christ himself, her own flesh—and she leads us to him by way of attraction. 

When we knock, God answers, as scripture says. He who seeks will find. Divine Love is not gnostic in nature, reserved for only a few. It makes itself attractive because virtue and goodness is attractive by its very nature and is true to that nature. It wants to be wanted, pines for completion—to give a restless heart rest, to make it whole. 

Sometimes we don’t know what we really, really want until we see it somewhere—as in a passing glance at the elusive peace a child seems to easily possess while kneeling at her bedside in prayer, or a family that loves one another. But that love and peace...it comes from somewhere. It attracts and draws one out, as in a honeymoon—slowly from the shadows, until it can capture it completely with a commitment to say ‘yes’ to that love, so that whatever that is, that thing we want...it’s no longer hidden but has just waiting to be found this whole time. 

"The Time For Preaching and Teaching Is Over"

I asked a friend this evening, "Do people read books anymore?"

"No. They don't," he replied.

"What's the point, then?" I asked.

"The people who read books like those that you or I or anyone of like mind might write have all read what we have to say by better people. And the thing is, nobody who needs to read your words ever will. The target audience is immune." 

I thanked him for the reality check, and confirming what I already suspected.

"Everyone is over exposed and over "published." The like-minded end up having conversations with the same pool of people. It's all been heard." 

This friend of mind, I know, has eyes that see--maybe too much sometimes. But I know I can turn to him to get it straight. Then he went on to say something that stopped me dead, because I had been thinking it for a long time without the words to express it:

"I once had a vigorous disagreement with a religious, who was absolutely right. He said, "The time for preaching and teaching is over.""

"I was shocked by that, but...he was profoundly right."

"What did he mean by it?" I asked, still reeling a bit from the cold stiff truth.

 "He meant it on a large scale, a metaphysical scale, a historical epoch scale. Not that one couldn't teach and such...but that the preparations now are not evangelistic. They are one hundred percent witness and prayer."

I had to take this to prayer. I crawled on my hands and knees into the "hidden room" (which is really just a three foot by twelve foot pipe closet) where I had moved my kneeler and crucifix and icon, to have a little bit more hidden-ness to finish my rosary. I joke with my priest friends that it can double as a priest hole if things get bad, or a kind of spiritual entombment where no one would even know where you were in the house if you wanted to to be so hidden. Though I crawl in in the middle of the night for late night prayer, I could probably make better use of it. It's like a writer's desk--you get the perfect desk, and then you find yourself with writer's block all of a sudden. 

What did this religious mean, "the time for preaching and teaching is over?" My first reaction when my friend mentioned it was YES. But then, why? Haven't the Word on Fire videos brought many spiritually curious people to intellectual assent of the faith? Haven't we been learning to make "intentional disciples" in parishes and through workshops and conferences and retreats? Haven't we been DOING something to address the "failure of catechesis"by LEARNING more about what the Church professes, TEACHING more about the truths of the Faith, EVANGELIZING by having discussions on social media with non-believers? Haven't we been preaching the good news to the poor, the imprisoned, as a kind of spiritual product to be considered to improve one's life, gain eternal life, attain peace?

I'm sorry to be so negative, but I'm in a bit of a stripped down state of being right now. The words my friend shared by the erudite religious--the time of preaching and teaching is over--point to a harsh and unsettling reality we are faced with as followers of Christ in war.

In fighting off demons of despair shooting arrows in my back, another wise friend also sent me a scripture that made me exclaim, once again, "Wow":

"And the places that have been desolate for ages shall be built in thee: thou shalt raise up the foundations of generation and generation: and thou shalt be called the repairer of the fences, turning the paths into rest" (Is 58:12).

But we are not in this state yet either, I suspect. We are in an in between. The well-produced teaching and catechetical materials, the preaching to a pagan culture--I have lived through these endeavors and been a part of them myself. I don't know how effective they are, or if they are making wrong assumptions about things. I do have a friend who makes rosaries and plants them for people with instructions on how to pray it; he does is clandestinely. Someone he knew even picked one up and considered it a sign to come back to the faith. So you never know. 

But we are not saving masses here, we are pulling stray bodies on the ark who, I'm sure, are ultimately grateful to be there. Like writing a book these days, it is, I'm afraid, ultimately futile. Not to those who have been saved, who would consider it anything but. And there is it's place--of course, we need to preach and teach when called for, one on one. But we are not going to convert the world by well-produced series on the history of Catholicism, or using any of the tools of the modern age. Those going to the front lines are getting mowed down by the culture because they are ultimately going alone with no shepherds to have their back, no critical mass to support them long term. The Steubenville degree and Thomistic defenses of Natural Law in a disordered society, I'm afraid, may not hold their weight against the breaches. 

"We are living in the age of witness and prayer." Bold witness and confident prayer, the kind that works miracles. What does this mean? What does it look like? 

I attended First Friday Mass this evening and there was a new face, a young woman who has fallen away from the faith and somehow found the Latin Mass in the state (the only one) and showed up. She seemed moved, hungry, but just mostly willing to recognize it as an outpost in an otherwise harsh wasteland, one that she seemed especially grateful for. We made small talk after Mass, and I told her we all hope to see her again and when Mass times were, that she was welcome, that it is a respite from the war. I think she will be back. "That some might be saved," as St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, being all things to all men. 

Do we really need more books? More blogs and podcasts? More catechetical materials? More parish programs? Everything is being stripped down around us, maybe it's time to strip our faith down to the essentials as well, the powerful essentials rather than tepid peripheries. To pray well, to witness boldly. To strip out what is not needed, to enter into the loneliness of stepping outside the kind of 'matrix-esque' mirage of technical engineering and just get back to square one. Then count the cost and do the work ahead of us, but knowing that our time is running short and things are ramping up--a time in which teaching and preaching may very well fall on deaf ears, and in which prayer and witness is all we have. 

The Dead of Night

A friend recently sent me a conversion story of a woman who had come to the faith. She wrote down her story after her confirmation as an adult. This friend of mine had simply planted a seed in a mom's group, somewhat innocuously, for her to consider the Catholic faith. This was in the midst of the other moms badmouthing the Church.

What I see time and time again, for those who come to the Faith, is that those stray seeds that may have been cast in off-moments--a word here, a book there, a conversation or an experience of grace--tend to sprout during those times in which they are alone. Self-reflection--when it is used as a end in itself--we can probably do without if it doesn't lead us somewhere deeper than the here-and-now. But for those who are open and searching, even just a little bit--these are the ones our Lord can use.

Our Lord uses the analogy of leaving the ninety-nine to search out the one sheep that was lost. I think that's a pretty good ratio of those who come into the Faith--1:99. In my experience, the Lord draws us away from the crowds to speak to us, just as he himself communed with the Father alone.

We've been hearing a lot about mobs, and there is something frightening about a group of people who have lost their autonomy and sense of reason. It's akin to being swept up in a riptide. Whether you want to or not, you are being pulled out to sea. 

Jesus may have preached to the masses (Mt 5), and he may have permitted the crowds to lay palms at his feet (Mt 21:8), but he also had to deal with the mobs that sought to put him to death (Lk 23). There was no reasoning with them, for nothing but blood would appease them.

But perhaps one or more went back to their clay house after this would-be Messiah had expired, and thought. They lay in their bed in the dark of night, and could not get his words out of their head, "forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Lk 23:34).

It can be a high bar when we think of the great evangelists like St. Francis Xavier converting not tens or hundreds, but thousands of people to the true Faith. In a post-Christian pagan country such as our own, it would be no small miracle to have a large crowd convert on the spot at the preaching of a disciple of Jesus today. Usually, conversion is more of a gestation than a spontaneous birth. It steeps and it marinates, it forces us to question things. I believe it is reserved for those willing to look at themselves as they truly are, and who recognize there is something missing.

Not always, but often, this happens in the solitary places--the back pew in an empty cathedral, the lonely apartment after a night on the town, the emptiness after a one nigh stand, the car on the way to work when there is no one to counter the innocent questions: "Why am I here? Why am I not happy? What is really true?" If we never visit these places in which we find ourselves alone, responsible for our own thoughts and not subject to mob rule, when the air is quiet enough for the waves of discontent to lap at our innermost parts--we may never truly find ourselves willing to not only ask the questions, but take the steps to seek the answers.

Thankfully, for those who open themselves to seeking truth wherever it leads, who recognize their inadequacy, and who find themselves unable to be dissuaded by detractors and the mob--whether its a group of moms or cowards masked for destruction--they may just find the answers they are looking for. Like Nicodemus, they may come to Christ in the dead of night, speaking against the mob even when they are drowned out, because of a ray of spiritual perception that transcends it's brutish fury.

Because grace moves in to fill the space between, to gently whisper in one's ear, to introduce friends and even strangers into our paths who either plant the seeds or help them grow. They sprout in the dead of night, watered by a silent din, and eventually take root and can no longer be contained by the vessel of our intellect or culture. It's a precious time in the life-cycle of faith, these tender formative years, and we must shield it from the mob like a mother hen shields her young. When faith is full-grown, it needs its own pot; it can no longer be contained. It must go forth, bearing seed, reproducing itself, one person at a time.

Be Not Ye Damned

A few days ago a friend called me because he wanted to talk about belief. We got reacquainted after his daughter began asking the "big questions" about faith and religion, questions to which he did not have answers. Although he was raised in a mainline Protestant denomination, when I asked him where he and his family worshiped he said they did not currently attend church.

I tend to tread somewhat slowly and carefully in speaking with people who have a natural curiosity about faith and religion, specifically Christianity and more specifically, Catholicism. After discussing some commonalities, and me sharing some of the basic tenants of Christian belief--which he wasn't unfamiliar with--the issue of baptism came up.

He confessed his struggle to reconcile how those in far parts of the world who, through no fault of their own had not been exposed to the teachings of Christ, could be damned. He also admitted to disagreeing when I stated that baptism is what grafts us into God's family, and that it is necessary for salvation. I said that Christian missionaries throughout history left homeland, comfort, and security to carry out the Great Commission--the command (not suggestion) of Christ to "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Mt 28:19); that "No one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit, and that "Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved" (Mk 16:16). While stressing that God is not bound by the Sacraments and can save whomever He wishes, I also said as clearly as I could so there was no mistaking its importance: "Baptism is necessary for salvation."

In the Catholic faith, the sacraments are efficacious and act ex opere operato ("by the work worked"). "From the moment that a sacrament is celebrated in accordance with the intention of the Church, the power of Christ and his Spirit acts in and through it, independently of the personal holiness of the minister. Nevertheless, the fruits of the sacraments also depend on the disposition of the one who receives them." (CCC 1128) This is why we baptize infants, much to the dismay and/or consternation of Protestants who stress the "personal affirmation of faith."

But baptism confers real grace. You cannot be saved without it, and you are wholly hindered in the battle against the forces of darkness without that grace.

As I tried to expound on the relationship to the internal modus of belief and the external witness of water baptism (exemplified in the words of Jesus to Nicodemus that one must be born again--that is, born of water and the spirit (Jn 3:3, 5), it was the nature of water that came to mind:

"When you come to belief," I told him, "you are transformed so that you are a new creation in Christ. The old man is left behind and you are an entirely new man. This is the response of the will moved by grace.

"But this belief is made manifest explicitly in baptism--you are not longer sitting dry on land, but you are immersed. You cannot be "a little wet" in such a state. You are either wet, or dry. Baptism leaves an indelible mark on the soul, which can never be erased or undone."

Ven. Fulton Sheen makes this point as well when he says "Water very often is the natural boundary between city and city, state and state, nation and nation, continent and continent, tribe and tribe. Those who live on one side of water are “separated” from those who live on the other. In the early days, before rapid communication, it was a dramatic experience to pass from one territory to another. This symbolism, therefore, was well fitted for the Divine Master to indicate the separation of the Christian from the world, as the water which was divided in the Red Sea, was a symbol of the separation of Israel from the slavery of Egypt."

When I go into the local prison to share the Good News I always make it clear, in no uncertain terms:

REPENT AND BE BAPTIZED

BAPTISM IS NECESSARY FOR SALVATION

FOR YOU KNOW NOT THE HOUR OF YOUR DEATH

I tell the men there every time, in case they think it unimportant or ancillary. You want to be a new man? You want to resist the devil? You had better repent. And you had better get baptized.

We have our little photo ops and family luncheons when children are baptized. But in many parts of the world, (adult) baptism marks an intentional grafting from one family to another, and, often, a complete severing. Baptism is the outward sign of this inward severing from sin and death that has very real repercussions. For what believer would profess Christ and refuse to be baptized? Some may for fear of reprisal, but even that drives home the point that it is significant and a definitive crossing of a line in the sand. It is the mark of a Christian, a true believer and follower of Christ.

The gifts the Spirit pours out makes the impossible, possible--unattainable forgiveness, unexplainable miracles, supernatural faith, and yes, love. One Islamic leader stated at a large conference of Muslim clerics "Do not allow your people to have close contact with Christians because if you do the Christians will love your people into their faith."

In Baptism, the Holy Spirit makes his home in a man. "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:38). When one receives the Holy Spirit, he then has, by grace, the opportunity to be moved by the Spirit. "But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come" (Jn 16:13).

The State of the Household: An Introduction

My name is not important. I am like many husbands and fathers, who are doing their best to raise their children and be faithful to my vows, to teach the Faith and pass it down through generations to come, to provide, and to live out my own vocation in my particular state of life. We have come a long way, and done many one-eighties to realign our lives with the life God wanted us to step into.

I had come into the Church at eighteen years old. For ten years, in my twenties, I thought I was going to be a monastic, "for it is better not to marry," as the Apostle writes. I was a late bloomer of sorts "in the world," because I had focused so much on leaving it behind once and for all. For as St. John says, "if the love of the world is in you, the love of the Father is not." (1 Jn 2:15). When I was rejected from a monastery after applying to be a postulant, and met my wife-to-be a year later, my vocation became clear. Prayers were answered in ways unexpected. The hand was put to the plow, and there was peace.

My salary working in social services (the only job I could find) was modest, but my wife had been doing well for years in the health profession. When she was promoted to the manager of a department at the hospital, she was making good money, though she paid for it in stress and busyness. At heart, she always wanted to be a wife and mother. We got working on the second part of that equation not long after we were married, having a son and a daughter in rapid succession. Our personal faith was strong, but we were far from orthodox in many aspects of the Faith. Contraception was a thorn in the side, because of my conscience (corrupted as it was by lousy catechesis and years of liberal Catholicism that I thought was normative), but I had no example of anyone not using it.


For dual income earners, two or three kids is usually the breaking point. Our daycare was costing us my salary, and "the hustle" of shuttling the infants to and from the center was, we figured, just what you did. I had shirked the idea of responsibility for most of my life, valuing freedom and autonomy above all things, and so the idea of a traditional model of my wife staying home and us living on my salary was not even on the radar. Of course she would work. Daycare (and later, a live in au pair) was budgeted for, and we figured was not forever, so we could manage it. But we had to put a cap on those kids. Originally we had planned to stay in the city and shell out for private Catholic schools, but figured it was a better financial move to relocate across state lines to a better school district and make use of the public schools. I had gone to public schools my whole life (my wife attended Catholic school for hers). It was just what you did. We bought a house we could afford in a "good" school district, and our son started kindergarten.


I wasn't quite a Mr. Mom, but I did try to do as much around the house as I could since my wife was in the more stressful position work wise. I cooked, I cleaned, I did laundry, I picked up the kids when she worked late. Something was not "as it should be," but we didn't know any different, the way a fish doesn't know it lives in water. When our kids were two and three, that was the hardest period. If we had another...well, let's just say we weren't sure we could handle it.

It's a long story I have told elsewhere, but when we found a Miraculous Medal in a pew on vacation, and my wife started wearing it, things started to change. The sacramental grace that was unleashed was like water wearing down a rock. My wife's mother died suddenly shortly after finding the medal. We had a miscarriage. Our sex life was white-knuckling trying to avoid pregnancy. It was all about control and "being responsible," which meant emulating the world that I had tried to spurn a decade ago.

Living a radical faith is easier when you see it done, so the Lord "sent us some brothers (and sisters) to show us the way and model for us what authentic Catholicism looks like. It started with a blog I stumbled on, as well as some lectures by Dr. Janet Smith ("Contraception, Why Not?") to prick our conscience. We began to give up control, make changes. We threw away the condoms. I was still adamant about sending the kids to "the good public schools," but then the transgender bathroom things started making the news, and something didn't seem right about that. My wife had a desire to homeschool, which was crazy considering it would be a waste of our high school tax privileges. I had just started a new job with a slightly higher salary and some good benefits. The Lord sent us some homeschooling families, and we saw the fruits with our own eyes. We had an au pair after our third (miracle) baby was born. But the whisper in our hearts was "trust Me." And so we began to. Our knuckles were not as white as they used to be.

When my wife made the decision to leave her full time high salary job a couple years ago, her heart was coming more in alignment with her favorite Psalm, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart" (Ps 37:4). We were making it work financially, with some graces and blessings to aid the transition. The baby came with some bread under his arm, as the saying goes. Our son had had some behavioral issues in kindergarten (manifesting when he got home from school, probably from the stress of being in a classroom setting), which began to dissipate the more things progressed with homeschooling.


My wife continued to work a few shifts a month at the hospital bedside, and a funny thing happened with the $60k loss of income--I started to step up. I picked up extra jobs, tightened our budget, and hustled. I became more invested in my own job, and took more pride in being the main provider, though the initial thought scared the hell out of me. I had my own issues as a result of struggling to hold down employment in the past on account of a mental illness, but miraculously--and largely in part thanks to the newfound stability found in marriage, despite the stressors--the symptoms I had suffered under for so many years began to disappear. I was stable, our household became more stable, and our marriage strengthened. Our sex life was healthy and natural and frequent, which solidified the bond between us. My wife tends towards submissiveness by nature, but in bringing things into 'right order,' it was like a natural puzzle piece that just found it's way to it's rightful place. She learned to cook. She tried to keep the house clean. It wasn't quite Leave It To Beaver, but it was trending that way. And we had more peace. Something was working.

We were still attending Mass at a local parish, but were introduced by a friend to the Traditional Latin Mass, which we attended one Sunday. I wasn't taken with it at first, but what became a more pressing concern for me was the transmission of the Faith to our children. I didn't see this happening in Novus Ordo parishes for the most part (with some exceptions, of course). I also taught 5th grade CCD and saw the fruit of it, which was largely useless. The foundation we were building on did not seem solid. So despite my liturgical ignorance and not being drawn to traditionalism initially, we started attending Mass in the Extraordinary Form once a month. Eventually the schizophrenia of switching between what seemed to be two totally different churches and Masses became too difficult, and we decided to hold our nose and jump to the TLM exclusively. The community we found ourselves in (again, by grace) was very welcoming, not cliquey, and largely "normal." It took about a year to feel comfortable, but now we can't image going back after, again, seeing the fruits. Our son is learning to serve at the Mass (all boys), and is enthusiastic about it even. The feminized nature of the liturgy in the N.O. was always a source of embarrassment for me without realizing, because I never knew there was an alternative. But now we found, there was, one suited to male sensibilities, who in turn umbrella their wives and children and make them want to lead, to take responsibility for the spiritual trajectory of the household. I found other men as well--again, "God sent me some brothers"--to practice the faith with in word and deed, and most have a more traditional model of leading their households than what we had initially.


A highlight of Catholicism is a synthesis of the subjective experience of the moving of the Holy Ghost with the objective foundation of Truth and doctrine to guide it. It is hard, which appeals to a man's sensibilities and makes him his best self, much like a good wife, a good marriage does. Right authority, right order...right living. Everything is hard while still falling into place, which produces peace as the byproduct, not the objective. Love deepens in the submission of the wife when her husband take seriously his charge to head his household. Children emulate their father in the faith, and grow close to their mother when they are afforded the time with the family unit.


I started this blog for both men and women, for they are the two lungs--like faith and reason--that lay the foundation for our world: the family, the building block of society. You start from the ground up, and build with the mortar of faith and the bricks of tradition. We have the blueprints from the Magisterium. We have the energy to run the machines from grace. We have the model of what "what it looks like" in the Holy Family. And we have the goal, the skyward building, in the celestial home we hope to make it to: Heaven. Is there anything more important?


"For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior." (Eph 5:23)

I Don't Belong Here Anymore

In getting ready to appear as a guest on EWTN's "The Journey Home" next week, I have been going over the past twenty years in my head. Why did I become a Catholic? What attracted me to the Christ, to the Church? Where did I come from, and what does it all mean?

My story is a bit of a "conversion wrapped in a reversion." In outlining it in chronological order (so I can keep things straight in my head for the show), I realized that the timeline looked like a weightlifters barbell--2 significant years on the beginning end, 2 significant years on the other end, and long stretch of "in-between" floundering to live the faith with integrity from age 18 to 36. I'd like to shelve the beginning part of that journey for now (I've shared some of it here and here) and focus on a detail I had forgotten about until I started writing it down.

It was the summer of 2016, and I was in Colorado for a bachelor party. Now, ever since high school I have loved to party, and even as a new Catholic I never stopped. I went to parties, threw parties, and would party into the morning with friends. I never had a drinking problem, but temperance was a virtue I had trouble developing. I prayed, went to Mass every Sunday, read spiritual books, but was 'friends with the world" (John 15:19), trying to have my cake and eat it too.

This particular bachelor party I was not really looking forward to attending, but I had to, for various reasons. The guys were younger, and I knew they partied hard; I was getting older, but still susceptible to influence. The first day I tried to not partake in any of the revelry, but concupiscence and appetites are a funny thing, and by day 2 I was crushing the opposition in drinking games. I found myself mirroring Paul's words, "I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do" (Rom 7:15)

At one point near the end of the weekend I went in my room in the mountain house the crew had rented, and sat on the bed. I wasn't in full on praying mode, but I was really hoping God could get me out of being there. No body else there seemed to have any pangs of conscience or problem with going full tilt since they weren't believers, and yet here I was, feeling the tension of having one foot in the world and one foot in the Church, not living as a good example as a Christian, and not be able to go in with full abandon either.

I always carried a small Gideon bible with me whenever I traveled. I took it out and sat on the bed and prayed a quick prayer for help. I remember to this day, I opened it and the first thing I read was

"Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourself of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and you have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator." (Col 3:5-10)

I was struck dumb. I recalled the story of St. Augustine in the garden, picking up the scriptures at the words he heard from a child, "Take up and read, take up and read." What he read was this:

"Not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual excess and lust, not in quarreling and jealousy. Rather, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh." (Rom 13: 13-14)

I called a Christian friend back home, a man of integrity, and told him what had happened when I opened the scripture, what I landed upon, and how it cut to the heart and left me exposed to my inconsistency. He was encouraging, but in that room I felt alone in a crowd. I didn't belong there anymore.

In the Imitation of Christ, Thomas A Kempis wrote about this wretched 'in between' state of a lukewarm religious in a way that hit home:

"A fervent religious accepts all the things that are commanded him and does them well, but a negligent and lukewarm religious has trial upon trial, and suffers anguish from every side because he has no consolation within and is forbidden to seek it from without. The religious who does not live up to his rule exposes himself to dreadful ruin, and he who wishes to be more free and untrammeled will always be in trouble, for something or other will always displease him." (Chap 25)

Fence-sitting had never born a lot of fruit in my life. Reading the Word of God in the passage in Colossians made me realize it's a lousy place to be, and that friendship with world makes one an enemy of God (James 4:4). Who was I kidding? I had to get off the fence. The past two years has been a series of grace-encounters and renewal that have sifted weeds from wheat in my life, and introduced me to people that don't make me feel like so much of an outsider in my faith.

We all need that from time to time, being called to be in the world but not of the world. I pray for the grace to take that to heart, and to never go back to straddling the line. Now when it comes to my faith, I'm invested. It informs my choices, even when they come with costs. I'm in too deep. Thankfully, there's no where to go but deeper.

No Gods Before Me: The Dangers of Religious Syncretism, and My Re-Conversion To Christ Alone

Like many young men who read him, I was taken with Thomas Merton. I connected with him on many levels, from his struggles and complex personality to his path to conversion, his thirst for experience, and being a seeker. Though I discovered his writing about a year after I came into the Catholic Church in 1998 at the age of 18, I felt I had found a spiritual kin, and considered him a kind of older brother in the Faith.

Like Merton later in his life, I had always had an interest in the East. One of my earliest exposures to it was a small thin Penquin paperback I found in high school titled "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones," a collection of ancient Zen and pre-Zen writings. They were eccentric and esoteric, while also being simple and parabolic. What really drew me to it (this was prior to my conversion to Christianity) was that these Zen monastics were serious about finding the truth of existence, and sought after the Dharma "the way a drowning man seeks after air," as the saying goes. I also read a lot of "Beat" literature--Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg. I wanted to be a writer, and Jack Kerouac was by far the biggest writing influence in my life. He and many of the other beats were into Buddhism as well, so I just took to it, their kind of rag-tag Dharma bumming and never-ending quest for kicks and Enlightenment.

In high school I read and studied the basics of Buddhism: the Four Noble Truths, the Eight Fold Path, the sutras, and of course the enigmatic koans and parables found in my little Zen paperback. I meditated--not with a strict regularity, but I would set up a straw beach mat under the maple trees in our back yard and cross my legs and just count my breaths and try not to think. It was somewhat neutral (this breathing) I suppose, considering I had no religious faith to speak of and no real exposure to Christianity, but that would soon change by the time I got to college.

I came into the Catholic faith by way of personal conversion and encounter with the Holy Spirit; I really didn't reason or think my way into it. Although Buddhism held appeal intellectually, I knew experientially, and by God's grace, that I was a sinner in need of a savior, that I could not save myself, and that Christ was the answer. I wanted to protect those experiences, and the Catholic faith seemed to be the most authentic and true to the roots of Christianity; it was Truth, after all. And so, I became Catholic. Unfortunately, I had laid the stones for an Eastern intellectual foundation on which I would build the life of faith with my newfound Catholicism. The brick and mortar was Christian, but the foundation it was built on was Buddhist. So I ran into some difficulties throughout my early years as a Catholic, that were exacerbated by those who were supportive of a kind of mutually-complementary synthesis of Western Christian belief by way of Eastern praxis.

I discerned monastic life for about ten years (I discovered Merton's writing about a year after beginning that discernment process), which led me to visiting different religious communities across the country. I spent my first summer at a contemplative Benedictine monastery in New York as an observer, and subsequent summers in New Mexico and Virginia. It was at a Trappist monastery in Virginia that I worked closely with their vocation director, who agreed to serve as a spiritual director for me during this period of discernment. We exchanged letters for many years, and he was very kind in taking the time to write. He also was generally encouraging of my interest in Eastern spiritual practice, seeing it as somewhat complementary to the Christian contemplative life. I suppose this is where the "Centering Prayer" practice began to grow out of, and I eventually was given a book by M. Basil Pennington, OCSO, on the practice. I also read about Catholic monks like Bede Griffiths who devoted their lives to living in a way that synthesized traditions. So, I thought, maybe there is nothing wrong with this, it is a non-traditional way of getting closer to the Divine and maybe Catholics can learn something from the East.

During all this time I attended Mass regularly, was convinced of the Truth of the Catholic faith, but did not realize the dangers--or at least the lack of fruitfulness--in being of "two minds" seeking to supplement or synthesize Catholic truth with the practice of Eastern meditation and mindfulness. I thought it was kosher, so to speak, to seek a deeper experience in prayer in this way, and I really had no guides or teachers to tell me otherwise. I was kind of making my own quasi-monastic-hybrid blend of spiritual practice, taking the "best of" two opposite traditions and seeking to synthesize them.

For me, in my pride, I was put off by who I saw as the 'goody two-shoe' Catholics who were pious and devout, because I was nothing like them. I struggled and struggled to be good, to turn away from intoxication, fornication, and the like, but I continued to live like a prodigal, vacillating between two worlds--the flesh and the spirit. I felt very alone in my faith, but largely because I had shunned conforming to an established tradition and praxis and was piecing together my own esoteric quasi-Buddhist Catholicism. I didn't see any contradiction; looking back, I can see it as a wholly Gnostic and self-serving approach.

I continued in this vein for a number of years. What did this look like in practice? I continued to try to practice Centering Prayer and contemplation as I understood it from Fr. Pennington's book, and the piecemeal compilations of Eastern practice. Friday nights in my apartment I would listen to a master of the shakuhachi (Japanese flute) on CD ode to the kumuso, the mendicant monks of the 13th century Fuke Zen sect, as a way of deepening my meditation.

One night I walked down the street from my apartment and into the woods of Fairmount Park to meditate. I knew there was a "hermit's cave" known as the Cave of (Johannes) Kelpius from the 17th century less than a mile into the woods and I decided like the Buddha in front of the Boddhi tree, I would meditate there all night. It was a site popular with the Rosicrucians, an esoteric mystical sect, who had erected a monument there. I laid out my straw mat and lit my candle and some incense and sat cross legged in the dark cave and began to meditate. But I was disturbed by what felt like a malevolent force, spirits, and it freaked me out, as this was not a positive spiritual experience. I left before sunrise, shaken, and did not return there.

I attended talks by the Dalai Lama when he came to Philadelphia, and also Buddhist retreats in New York City when an acclaimed Lama came to the Shambhala Center on West 22nd St to offer teachings. I simply saw this as training in the mental and spiritual life. Yes, it was not strictly Catholic, but if I could gain control of my mind perhaps it would help my spiritual life and life of prayer as a kind of complement to it. I was on my own, spiritually speaking, and no one was warning me that maybe this was not the best idea. I did not find the American Buddhists in NYC or in Philly to be very friendly people. They were cold and impersonal and seemed to be more concerned about their own self-awareness than that of others. They did not talk to me, but I didn't care as I was there to learn and train.

My practice in meditation was taken to the next level when in November of 2007, after a breakup and needing a change and looking for greater discipline, I booked a flight to Thailand after hearing about a Theravada Buddhist wat (monastery) deep in the jungle of the southern province of Surat Thani named Suan Mokkh, founded by Venerable Ajahn Buddha­dasa Bhikkhu ("Slave of the Buddha"). Buddhadasa was a reformer--he tired of the corruption and laxity in the city wats and sought a purer form of Buddhism, getting back to the Theravada (old school) roots. I flew to Bangkok and made my way south to embark on an 11-day Vipassana (meaning "to see things as they really are") retreat. There was no way to 'sign up' for the retreat, you just had to show up at the gates and hope that the monks let you in.

There were people from all over the world wanting to learn the dharma and the ways of mind-training. It was a rigorous monastic schedule of meditation, yoga, and teaching, and strict silence was expected to be observed. We were not allowed to write either or take notes. We slept in individual cells on a bamboo mat atop a concrete slab, with a wooden block for a pillow (the infamous "wooden pillow"), washed in cisterns, had a candle for light, and ate vegetarian meals. The gates to the monastery were locked every night, so no one could leave. The monks who lived there would regularly meditate in the jungle in where they knew to be tigers present, so as to cultivate an acute awareness that comes when one is so close to death (being devoured by a tiger at any moment).

There were strict rules governing behavior as well. The required tenant of 'no killing' extended even to mosquitoes. At one point during sitting meditation a mosquito landed on my leg and I could feel every movement of its stinger inserting itself into my skin, but I couldn't kill it, nor could I scratch the itch of the welt when it developed. The silence and not talking was very difficult for many people as well. At one point the young Irish man whose cushion was next to mine failed to show up for meditation one morning. I heard (from another participant, after the retreat) that he couldn't take the rigor anymore and climbed out the bathroom window and over the monastery gates in the middle of the night and ran off into the forest! Although it was rigorous, I enjoyed the structure and the tranquil setting and the simple pleasures that come from not having many material comforts. I really thought that studying and practicing non-sectarian Buddhist meditation would make me a better Christian. No one was telling me otherwise.

I did have one Christian friend, though, who questioned it, when I returned home from Thailand. She basically said point blank, "What's with all the Buddhist stuff? Are you becoming a Buddhist?" She was a faithful Christian. I tried to explain that no, I was Christian, anyone can practice meditation and take what they want from it, whatever is useful, and leave the rest, but it wasn't very convincing. But I don't think she bought it; we are not in touch anymore, though I would like to ask her if that was part of why we did not stay in touch. But otherwise, I did not have too many Catholic friends, no one to kind of call me out on all this syncretist nonsense.

A few years after my experience in Thailand, I came across a few articles on the internet that gave me pause and made me just slightly begin to question the efficacy of this kind of religious syncretism. The first was titled, "Can I Trust Thomas Merton?" on a website called Catholic Spiritual Direction. The author said,

"My advice? Well, it’s not like the Church is hurting for solid and perfectly trustworthy writings on the spiritual life. I personally don’t know why anyone would want to carefully sift through this kind of literature when it is clear that Merton had serious issues. It seems a bit like sifting through the refuse at the back of a good restaurant. You are likely to find much that is of nutritional value, but why not just go take your seat at the table for the best and purest meals available? I would encourage you to stick with the spiritual doctors of the Church."

Now it seemed kind of square to question Thomas Merton since he was so beloved by so many people and was such a renaissance man and after all, he was a Trappist monk so he was authentically Catholic. Right? In seeing my own tendencies and personality in Merton, though, it made me think, "what if I, too, had "serious issues" like Merton? In fact, I knew I did have serious issue. I was struggling with bi-polar disorder, submission, obedience, chastity, temperance, prudence, patience, gluttony, fornication, idolatry, and blasphemy. All this hip meditation was perhaps training my mind and making me fit in with my secular friends (who I deeply cherished) but was not redeeming my character and may, in fact, be justifying my sinful and self-destructive behavior.

So, the Merton article gave me pause. There was one more article that I came across titled "Yoga: A Cautionary Tale" that also made me begin to question the things I could not see beneath the surface of my spiritual life. I was not big into yoga, but we did do yoga at the retreat every morning. I did not know the Theravada stance on 'Buddha as a god," but there were certainly statues everywhere and I just didn't know what kind of spiritual influence I had subjected myself to during all these years, the way you may drink water tainted with an odorless, tasteless chemical that causes cancer. Yoga was not my issue, but in regarding it as a more macro-issue of non-Christian 'worship,' I just began to get uneasy. My sins during this time, the volatility of my spirit, and (as I realized years later) not being in a state of grace all made me vulnerable to influences that may not have been of God.

The woman in the Yoga: A Cautionary Tale article made mention of a deliverance priest named Fr. Mike, and I knew a guy I went to college with who was named Mike, became a priest, and did deliverance ministry now as a priest, so I wondered if it was the same guy. I never reached out to him, but when I was at a conference in Detroit last year for the street evangelization apostolate I am a member of, I witnessed healing of many people of infirmities. I asked one of the men healing in the name of Jesus to pray over me "for forgiveness and deliverance from any of those things from my past to which may have been not of God." I did not know for sure, but I just had a suspicion that those years of being in an esoteric spiritual wasteland of my own making was not good. And I begged God's forgiveness for it.

I don't care much for labels--being a 'traditionalist' or a 'social justice warrior,' a 'conservative' or a 'liberal.' But I will say that I have become much more traditional in the practice of my faith. I remembered the words of the person who wrote them on the Catholic Spiritual Direction website: "like sifting through the refuse at the back of a good restaurant...why not take your seat at the table for the best and purest meals available?"  God helped lead me--via Confession, inner-knowledge of my sins, and certain sacramentals (such as the scapular and Miraculous Medal)--back to the Faith that was not tainted with these kinds of esoteric and gnostic attempts at enlightenment.

Even now I am somewhat wary or delving too much into spiritual things of contemplative practices, since I don't have a guide, and choose instead, like St. Therese of Liseiux, to just trust the Lord. Attending daily Mass and rosary, monthly Confession, regular prayer, and remaining in a state of grace have become indispensable for my spiritual life as a Catholic. I still have a long way to go in terms of mental prayer, as Catholics understand it, but I find that being obedient to the Lord and Church teaching has taken a greater role in my life now that I have abandoned these Eastern practices of meditation. I can instead focus my energy on serving the Lord and not being "a man of two minds," as St. James says.

I am glad at least prior to becoming Catholic that my parents had me baptized--I shudder to think where I would have been without that grace at least. And after becoming Catholic, He continues to be patient and gently correcting me in my waywardness as I find my way. He has sent me orthodox friends to help me in my journey, "strong meat" in the way of traditional writings and teaching, and grace to discern those things which are not healthy for me spiritually, and courage to leave them aside. Our Catholic faith is too rich, the depths too deep, to need to look outside of it for nourishment. It is all right there; the Lord has given us everything we need to attain holiness and salvation. You cannot serve two masters.

I am a prodigal. I've eaten the husks and have finally found my way home. I can never repay the Lord for all He has rescued me from. I simply have no other way to explain the graces in my life--a supportive wife and woman of God, a healthy mind, a spirit properly disposed to the workings of grace, and a life ransomed from death and confusion. I can say with confidence, like the Psalmist, "The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes." (Ps 118:23)