"The Razor's Edge": A Response To Dr. Peter Kwasniewski

 Dear Peter,

I wanted to thank you again for your email, in response to my post Long Live Pope Francis which I wrote on the fly while in St. Louis a few days ago.  I wasn't expecting to receive it, as I was surprised you even read the post, but have been thinking about it the past couple days. I promised you two things: to read your article which you asked I read, and that I would wait until after I had prayed at my 11pm holy hour this evening before responding; I have made good on both of those promises.

You began your email with "I couldn't disagree more," (which is of course fair) but I should have sought clarification in our back and forth the essence of your disagreement with my post. I made a few points for consideration: accusing myself, first and foremost, of rash judgment, lack of charity, and sins of the tongue in general, and also in regards to the Holy Father; my inability to suffer well and endure trails patiently; my low-standing in the Church as a common layman and sinner; the ability of God to bring good out of evil circumstances.   

Just as a Carthusian will not have the same religious charism or calling as a Franciscan, or a Jesuit, or a Carmelite, so too I try to accept that I am simply one side of a prism trying to reflect the light of Christ back into the world. I am not an intellectual. Though I sometimes wade into the waters of ecclesiastical politics, I mostly write with a more personal focus: faith, family, manhood, marriage, etc. I rarely spend more than half an hour per post, given my other responsibilities in my state of life. I am a horrible editor, and was never trained or learned to write apart from the act of simply giving it a go for the past thirty years. Apart from a few priest friends, I'm not particularly "in the know" about Catholic insider baseball outside of what I glean from those with more connections and clout. I am certainly a small fish in a vast pond. But I have to trust that God can still work through that, for some whom He deigns to read it.

And so, it's intimidating for me to write any kind of refutation or defense of something I wrote to someone such as yourself who is a heavyweight in this realm. As the prophet protested, "I do not know how to speak; I am too young" (Jer 1:6). 

A few weeks ago I attended a week-long Ignatian silent retreat, guided by a Benedictine abbot, who flew in from Tasmania. It was water in a desert for me--daily Latin Mass, solid spiritual direction each day, meaty discourses, and ample time for prayer and meditation. No web-surfing, no news of the outside world. Although there were twenty four other men present, I never spoke to them or learned their names--silence was maintained at all times (outside of spiritual direction). Even then, I found myself struggling with assumptions, judgments, and annoyances--this guy seems like the pious type. This guy is aloof. This guy is such a Boomer. Etc. 

At one point in spiritual direction, I mentioned that I sometimes pray, like David, "Who can discern his own errors? Clear thou me from hidden faults" (Ps 19:12): spiritual blind spots, if you will. The Dom pointed out a prayer in our book for the Spiritual Exercises, and encouraged me to pray sincerely and ask the Mother of God for this grace--that of weeping for our sins. In the chapel, with about an hour to prepare for Confession, the Lord afforded me this grace, that of true contrition.

What was at the root beneath that rotten stump? The sins beneath the surface of my spiritual veneer--pride, vanity, lack of charity, and unwillingness to suffer. Personal things, which I often write about. Nothing out of the ordinary, but again, they were spiritual blind spots for me. 

Driving back from Ohio that Friday, I made the mistake of committing to an invitation to attend a men's conference for a day back home; I was given a free ticket by the organizer, who had reached out to me after reading my article Why Your Catholic Men's Group Will Eventually Fold that Crisis had published a few months ago, since he wanted to meet me in person. Coming straight off my retreat, the contrast was jarring--instead of silence and traditional sensibilities, I found myself amidst constant chatter and discourse. Whereas the Dom had disappeared during the holy sacrifice of the Mass while on retreat, the "celebrity priest" at this conference made a show of himself versus populum with the altar as his stage. The fruit of silence was sweet and natural, and now I was being pumped full of aspartame. The Latin Mass was an exotic fruit I had been feasting on, and I was suddenly in the cafeteria eating Aramark fare. The contrast could not be more striking.

I write all this because I went on this retreat to learn in the school of charity--how to pray better, how to listen better, how to love better. If St. Ignatius was a soldier, he knew how to fight, and wanted to train others not to obtain the perishable crown, but the imperishable. I was not gifted with a formidable intellect, skills in rhetoric and debate, or overwhelming charity. But I do have faith and pray, and in that God can accomplish what otherwise seems impossible given my deficiencies and ignorance. "My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast" (Ps 57:7).

You had mentioned in your article "ecclesiastical quietism," the idea that "all circumstances and situations would be relative, equally opportunities for accepting God’s will and then suffering whatever He sends." It is interesting, because I am reminded of the 17th century Spanish priest Miguel de Molinos, who was jailed in 1685 on the orders of the Inquisition in Rome for preaching the heresy of Quietism. As a Jesuit and contemporary of Molinos, Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade's theology of "the Sacrament of the present moment" seemed to flirt dangerously close to this heresy. And yet, his message was that everything in life is to be welcomed as the expression of the will of God, and that we must "accept what we very often cannot avoid, and endure with love and resignation things which could cause us weariness and disgust." This, in his words, is what holiness means. In this, he shares the practical wisdom of St. Francis de Sales, the childlike trust and simplicity of St. Therese, and the profound mysticism of St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila.

I mention this because what you wrote in your email--that the line between 'be obedient' and 'put up with being abused, gaslit, led astray' is "razor sharp" in today's church--and in that you are quite correct. As I mentioned, sometimes the posts I write are a tough needle to thread. And I don't always get it right either. 

I often wonder if I was in a personal audience before the Holy Father, knowing that I would fall into the camp of those he classifies as a "rosary counter," "self-absorbed, Promethean Neo-Pelagian," "vain, pagaent Christians" what I would say to him. And I recall the words of the Lord in scripture, "the insults of those who insult you fall on me (Ps 69:9). And so perhaps I would smile in deference, and keep silence as the best recourse in imitation of our Master, who when he was oppressed and afflicted, opened not his mouth (Is 53:7), as well as the words of St. Paul, "we are reviled, and we bless; we are persecuted, and we suffer it" (1 Cor. 4:9-14).

But being right, for me, was not the point of the post which prompted your email. It was not a call to action, or any kind of repudiation of traditionalism in favor of the shores of ultramontanism or hyperpapalism, but simply trying to thread this needle as a common layman of the honor and deference due to the Holy Father as a Catholic in the shade of the seeming cacophony of criticisms against him. As St. Athanasius said, "Our speech is the image of the Word, Who is the Son of God" (Orat. ii. cont. Arian, n. 78).   

In his treatise Sins of the Tongue, Monseigneur Landriot, Archbishop of Rheims, wrote something that gave me somber pause when I read it, 

"Now listen to the counsels of religion. True piety will lead you to meditate often on your own misery and weakness, and without causing sadness of discouragement, it will teach you to have a thorough distrust of yourself; to know your own defects; to take every means of correcting them; to consult serious and experienced men; and to consult them in such a manner as to show them that you are sincere in your desire to be told the truth. After some months, perhaps some years, of this constant watchfulness over yourself, you will have humbled your pride; and, though you may not have entirely rooted it out, it will be no longer visible, and each day will lessen the number of its numerous offshoots. Then your tongue will lose the habit of talking perpetually about your own concerns. You will neither talk of them yourself, nor draw others into talking about them. You will cease making yourself the centre of conversation; you will not go about throwing ridicule, disdain, and discredit on every person who does not happen to suit you, because, without knowing it, they cast you into the shade, and are an obstacle to your pretensions. Both grave and trivial attacks on our neighbor have very often no other source than wounded vanity, and that self-love which is ever seeking to raise itself on the ruins of everything which excites its envy. If you follow these counsels you will avoid numerous sins against charity, while, at the same time, your conduct will be in accordance with the dictates of prudence and practical wisdom...Therefore does the Holy Ghost, after having said that 'in the multitude of words there shall not want sin,' add, 'but he that refraineth his lips is most wise;' as if to show us that the gifts of prudence and knowledge of the world are the accompaniments of virtue." (p. 47-48)

And that, really was the poorly-executed point of my post: that, personally, I would do better to refrain from a critical spirit--whether that be towards my brother or the Holy Father himself--for the sake of my own Judgment. Nor does it mean remaining in a state of ignorance, as I'm quite aware of how bad things are in the Church. It was less about obedience and more about prudence, given that I am not qualified to exercise such criticisms, nor do I gain anything by it, and so the trade off for me is not worth it. That does not mean an overly-pious passivity, or an omission of holy anger when warranted or encouraging spiritual Stockholm syndrome--only that in my own discernment, I have decided to try exercising more prudence in both speech and written word. It's a work in progress. 

In closing, this evening during my Holy Hour I prayed for a word from the Lord in Scripture that might speak to this conversation we are having and given that I am indebted to all your good works in defense of tradition and our spiritual patrimony. When I read that St. Francis and St. Therese were in the habit of opening the scriptures through divine inspiration and accepting what they read as inspired, I adopted the same habit each time I am in the presence of the Lord. And so I opened the scripture, and read from Jeremias:

"For this city hath been to me a provocation and indignation from the day that they built it, until this day, in which it shall be taken out of my sight.

Because of all the evil of the children of Israel, and of the children of Juda, which they have done, provoking me to wrath, they and their kings, their princes, and their priests, and their prophets, the men of Juda, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

And they have turned their backs to me, and not their faces: when I taught them early in the morning, and instructed them, and they would not hearken to receive instruction.

And they have set their idols in the house, in which my name is called upon, to defile it.

And they have built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Ennom, to consecrate their sons and their daughters to Moloch: which I commanded them not, neither entered it into my heart, that they should do this abomination, and cause Juda to sin.

And now, therefore, thus saith the Lord the God of Israel to this city, whereof you say that it shall be delivered into the hands of the king of Babylon by the sword, and by famine, and by pestilence:

Behold I will gather them together out of all the lands to which I have cast them out in my anger, and in my wrath, and in my great indignation: and I will bring them again into this place, and will cause them to dwell securely.

And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.

And I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me all days: and that it may be well with them, and with their children after them.

And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, and will not cease to do them good: and I will give my fear in their heart, that they may not revolt from me.

And I will rejoice over them, when I shall do them good: and I will plant them in this land in truth, with my whole heart, and with all my soul.

For thus saith the Lord: As I have brought upon this people all this great evil: so will I bring upon them all the good that I now speak to them." 

(Jer 32:31-42)

These are strange times in the Church, and I know for myself I will only be able to walk that razor edge of discerning in the dark and confusion when I am hidden in the silent mantle of Our Lady. I have great hope for renewal.

In Gratitude,

Rob

Letter to J

 J__,

Glory to Jesus Christ! Good to hear from you--was wondering if you had deployed yet, so figured you would have been busy and didn't want to contact you until you had settled in. I don't even know where Niger is on a map, so can't imagine living there for the next six months. 

On that note, though, it may be God's good will that you are in fact there now. D and I watched a film last night called "Mully" about a man in Kenya who was abadoned by his family as a child and lived begging as a street boy for ten years, before finding work and eventully moving his way up in the ranks. After a few years, he was an industrious, self-made millionaire. He got married, had eight children with his devoted wife, and was living the material dream in high society. 

One day he encountered some street boys on his way to an appointment in Narobi and he shooed them away. When he finished with his appointment, they had stolen his Mercedes and were nowhere to be found. He filed a police report and was forced to take the public bus back to his home. The whole way, he could not get the thought of those boys out of his mind. He was once in their shoes, after all.

When he returned home, he told his wife and children over dinner that he would no longer work another day for money, and that he would sell everything he had in order to rescue street children. He felt God was calling him to this. He started going to the streets and bringing one, two, four...then tens, twenties, hundreds of street children to his home. He wife would cook for them and wash them. It became pretty crazy after a while, hundreds of children in their home, and his own children were becoming somewhat resentful. Eventually they were sent to boarding school, while Mr. Mully continued bringing abandoned children to his home and caring for them.

The transformation is amazing, and the result of great faith and a wild abadonment to providence. His church elders kick him out, they want nothing to do with this undertaking. Most of the family's friends abandon them, encourage his wife to divorce him. One night as the money was about to run out, the family prays, and a truck with thousands of pounds of grain appears. 

In another instance, after they had outgrown their space and moved the Mully Children Foundation to the middle of the desert during a drought, he begins building a bridge like a Kenyan Noah, just because God told him to. They are running out of water, and he drives four hours each day just to fetch it from the closest town. He realizes the pressure, and so turns to God and once again prays. And God leads him and his wife out to a certain spot in the desert, and he says, "this is where we dig." There was never any successful well drilling in this region, and yet after several days of digging they amazingly hit water! A bonafide miracle, the result of faith. Using the water for the children and his family, but also for irrigation, they construct greenhouses and plant thousands of trees, actually transforming a barren wasteland over time into a lush green landscape with it's own microclimate (including rainfall). Amazing. Highly recommend the film.

It's funny you mentioned the Shia LeBeouf interview with Bishop Barron as well, because I finally got around to watching it yesterday, right before D and I watched Mully. I thought it was an interesting juxtaposition of the very polished, very intellectual, very estalished Bishop sitting down with this newly minted, unpolished, zealous neophyte who uses the word "douchey" in response to one of Barron's questions in the first like five minutes, and who "don't know nothing" about this or that. What he does know is that he at one point had a gun on the table and was saved by God's grace (and no doubt with help from St. Pio himself). I found the using him as a poster-boy for the Latin Mass by gloating trads missed a large chunk of the essence of the interview (though it was a part that wasn't lost on the audience, since Shia was so intentional about bringing it up). 

In the interview I found Shia to be refreshingly honest, unrefined, and real. I'm rooting for him. Though I respect some of the work Bishop Barron does, I have some reservations I can't quite put my finger on; though I do give him credit for having Shia on and deferring to his lengthy monologues without running too much interference. It's an interesting juxtaposition, these two figures. I think he, like you, recognizes that pernicious ego and pride that is at the root of so much of what we do. We get self-assured and righteous and then (hopefully, by God's grace) He humbles us by taking us out at the knees. Sounds like that's been your experience lately as well. The only antitode to pride is humility, and we only gain humility by going back to those basics like where Shia is--that we are sinners, that we still to a degree wear diapers even as adults in the faith, and that we cannot live without supernatural grace. Every time you think you're something, pray to be reminded that you're not (of course praying the Litany of Humility is a good practice as long as you are prepared for the prayer to be answered, which it will). I'd be curious how your experience in Africa will give you some perspective. I still think we are so spoiled here, forget that child-like faith that is so dependent on Providence (as I witnessed in the film I described to you above) in the African people, and how our material well-being is sometimes a great handicap to our spiritual health (for a challenging read, Happy Are You Poor by Fr. Thomas DuBay)

If I could share a musing as well...I know we had talked about the vaccine a couple years ago, I'm not sure if you were forced to get it being in the military, though I know you were resistant to it. I'm one of the only people in my circle I know to have gotten it--though I feel like I made the best decision I could at the time given the information I had, and my wife being in health-care who was taking care of her elderly father in law. Now I just feel that I was most likely lied to, given half-truths about its efficacy, and may have to deal with the unintended consequences of having taking it (2 doses 2 years ago, no booster, kids are unvaxxed). All my trad friends seem edified as more research comes to light, and I feel more and more duped, though at the time I felt my reasons for not getting it did not outweigh the reasons for getting it.

Of course it would have been another issue entirely if taking it made one culpable of sin. That is not the case, however, as the Church had already determined that one could take the vaccine in good conscience if they so choosed to (see Edward Feser's "The Catholic Middle Ground on Covid-19 vaccination" here). 

The reason I was thinking about this the other day was I had a Catholic friend from years past call up informing me that her annulment has been approved, and she was relieved and celebrating (I was aware she had gotten divorced). I was thinking about the vaccine and annulments--how if the Church determines there is no sin in receiving the vaccine, then there is no sin in receiving the vaccine, no-matter what self-appointed Catholic influencers, and even clergy say to the contrary. Likewise, if the Church rules in Her rightful authority a declaration of nullility, then one has to trust that and no self-appointed outside authority has the right to question or render judgment otherwise. The tribunals are the ones who will have to answer and account at the Judgment. We have to trust the authority of the Church.

All that being said, even though it's not a sin to get jabbed and not a sin to remarry, technically speaking, if one receives an annulment, THAT DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN IT'S A DE FACTO GOOD, WELL-INFORMED, OR MORAL THING TO DO! I have known people who knew they probably *could* have procured an annulment, though in their conscience they knew their marriage was sacramental, valid, and unbreakable and sought not to, even as their spouse did (and ultimately remarried or entered into an adulterous affair). I'm also growing suspect of these papal canonizations--St. Paul VI, and now the beatification of John Paul I. And yet, again, it is not my place or within my authority to say they are not saints!  It's above my pay-grade, as they say. That doesn't mean I have to have these popes on my spiritual speed-dial for intercessory prayer, though I (or anyone else) could if I felt some connection to them. But like the vax, like these rubber-stamped annulments, these recent canonizations just have me going 'huh.' Oh well. God will sort it out in the end.

Stay in touch, write anytime, stay safe, and pray for us, and we for you.

R

The Issue With Thomas Merton: Response To A Reader

 A reader writes: 

Hi,

I liked your article and wondered if you were in AV. So I looked you up. I would like to give your article to a friend who practices yoga (she’s a yogi) and Catholicism. But I am also practicing humility by NOT trying to always convince people they are wrong. I pray for an opportunity to share your story with her. I would like to know and was seeking to find out in a search when I found your article, what was problematic about Merton? I do not remember. Why do people love 10 story Mountain ?(Is that the book they love?) Did Merton fall away at end of life? He certainly had a traumatic death! Blessings! 

My response:

Hi ___,

Thanks for writing. I think this is the article you were referencing. The editors changed the original title, which was "No Gods Before Me: The Dangers of Religious Syncretism and My Re-Conversion To Christ Alone," either because it was too wordy or because they wanted more of the focus to be on the ancilary issues I raised in the article concerning Thomas Merton.

I don't want to give the wrong impression--I have more sympathy than scorn for Merton as a man, a monk, and as a Catholic. The 1960's was a confusing, trying time, especially for religious. And part of the where my sympathies lie is that I consider him a kind of spiritual kin, for better or worse, when it comes to personality and spiritual temperament. When I see Merton, I feel like I'm looking in a mirror. Carol Zaleski, author of The Life of the World to Come, described Merton as a "champion of eremitism...torn by desires of solitude and sociability, silence and self-expression, monastic obedience and beatnik spontaneity." I idenitfy with that catch-22 one-hundred percent. 

I also feel like I'm being revealed the plot line of the movie, how it ends. So in that article, I tried to raise the issues I saw in the rearview of Merton's quasi Catholic-Buddhist syncretism in order to re-write my story, my own spiritual trajectory. I think there was a degree of tragic confusion when it came to Merton living out his vocation that was ended prematurely by electrocution in a hotel shower in Bangkok--truly an unfortunate fate, from a number of angles--and one I don't want to emulate. So, take it more as warning than admonishment. 

As a kind of renassiance man, a man from a worldy background who maybe struggled to put to death that life when entering the gates of Gesthemani. There was something very human about Merton, and I think he was aware of his battle with the ego as well, which is maybe what drew him to Buddhism as a supplement to his Catholic monasticism (not that Catholic monasticism needed additional resources in dying to self from non-Christian sources). There is this ever-present paradox with Merton as described in the previous paragraph, sometimes apparent, so much that Catholic psychoanalyst Gregory Zilbourg famously accused Merton of wanting to be a hermit just so long as his was in Times Square with a neon sign above announcing "Hermit lives here!"

I didn't read The Seven Storey Mountain until a year or so after I started a ten year discernment to religious life. I found it, as auto-biography, a compelling read. Merton is a good writer, and he glamourizes (in his early spiritual naivety) the spiritual life and the monastic vocation in a way that makes it compelling as well. It does not surprise me that he drew many men searching for meaning and purpose to the gates of Gesthemani. 

Something I also identified with was that Merton also was prepared to give up his writing upon taking the habit, but as his biographer William Shannon notes, 

“Had Merton been forced to stop writing he would have shriveled up as a monk, perhaps even left the monastery.  God does not give gifts for us to throw them away. Moreover, if Merton had persisted in believing (if he ever really believed it) that were he to use his gift as a writer he could not be a contemplative, his most important message for the contemporary world would have been muted. For if one cannot be both a contemplative and a writer, it would follow that one could not be both a contemplative and a housewife, a contemplative and a truck driver, a contemplative and a teacher, a contemplative and a worker on the assembly line.” (from "Thomas Merton: An Introduction")

Getting back to the topic you wrote about--your friend the yogi--and to tie it into the Merton "issue." Your friend probably has an earnestness, just as Merton did, to seek truth. If I can comment from the limited information I have, I doubt my article would do your friend any good. 

For one thing, it probably won't be taken in good faith because it would come across in the way you yourself recognize: that you are right, your friend is in error, and they need to change as a result of your prompting. In my limited interactions with Buddhists, most seemed to have a sense of intellectual superiority. Because they devote themselves to uncovering the true nature of reality and existence by way of the dharma, there is a sense not that they have it figured out, but that reality is itself not a subject to be 'figured out'...at least in the rational, doctrinal Western application of Thomistic thought and proof-texting our essence as human beings. I know your friend is not Buddhist, per se, but the religions and philosophies of the East have a similar world-view, so I imagine there may be similar strains of thought there.

I don't think there's any harm in sharing it, as long as it's with a 'no-strings attached' approach. Just send it in charity if you feel compelled, maybe with a comment like, "Thought you might find this food-for-thought," or whatever. 

What would be more beneficial is perhaps to start a novena for the person from the sidelines, maybe one asking for the intercession of Bl. Bartolo Longo for her conversion. Don't forget fasting and mortification for the same purpose, done in charity. And it's ok (ie, not a sin) to listen to people, invite them to tell their stories, share what they believe, without judging them. So maybe start there, invite her to coffee and just practice the discipline of listening rather than speaking (Eastern practicioners will respect your practice of dispassionate non-judgment/loving-kindness, ha!) The degree to which you love them in charity and sacrifice for them in secret, petitioning our Lord, our Lady, and all the saints to reveal to her the truth of Christ's death and Resurrection, is the degree to which you will see change (not because of any article or clever apologetics)

As for the final section of your question, of Merton "falling away," I can't judge that of course. I do think he was caught up and re-baptized in the "spirit of the age" and his affair with his unnamed nurse was a evidence of that widespread crisis of vocation and a questioning of what it means to keep vows that was sweeping through many religious communities during that time period. Only God can judge. 

For myself, I eventually came to realize that there was no need to supplement my Christianity with questionably-efficacious practices outside of our tradition when we will never have enough hours in our lifetime to bask in the wisdom of the saints and doctors of the Church who have written extensively on the Christian spiritual life. When you don't have a compass or a map, it becomes a rather dire issue to make one's way in a spiritual wasteland. Remember, Peter began to sink when he took his eyes off Christ in the storm. We must keep our eyes firmly fixed on Christ to stay true to him til the end. And we must always pray for the grace of final perseverance!

I think it's good to note on the topic of Merton's writing that St. Thomas Aquinas at the end of his life had a vision and his life's work (the Summa) remained unfinished. "To Brother Reginald’s (his secretary and friend) expostulations he replied, “The end of my labors has come. All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me.” When later asked by Reginald to return to writing, Aquinas said, “I can write no more. I have seen things that make my writings like straw.” 

So, by all means carry out your vocation and exercise the gifts God has entrusted you with, but with the recongition that our accomplishments in this life should ultimately seem to us like straw for the dung heap, for as St. James says, "friendship with the world is enmity with God." (Ja 4:4). Christ alone is our beginning and our end.

God bless you, please pray for me and I for you.

Letter To Boniface

Boniface,

I hope it's ok I write to you--not related to writing or Catholicism directly, but just as one early-forties Catholic guy to another. I don't know why I thought you might be able to relate or understand, but taking a chance you might.

By the way, I read the Matt Foley piece you had on USC, and it almost moved me to tears as well. I grew up in the nineties on SNL in it's heyday and loved Chris Farley and had a soft-spot for him, but mostly it touched me because of the gritty struggle; addiction is such a tenacious mf; having a 25 year nicotine addiction myself, which I just recently stopped cold turkey a month ago (not the first time, but hopefully the last), I know that feeling of shame, dejection, and feeling like maybe you're never really in the clear. I have always recognized how dependent I am on grace, and take to heart the words of St. Paul to the Corinthians, "take heed, lest you fall." I come from a sinful past, not the grittiest but not the prettiest either; in any case, it doesn't matter much how it compares to others. We are all slaves bought with blood, ransomed when we had no power to lift ourselves from the miry well we had fallen in.

One thing I have been struggling with is a bubbling over, frothing disgust almost which lately the devil seems to be capitalizing on. Beneath the surface, I think, is disappointment--feeling like no matter what I do in the faith, my kids will cede to the culture and apostatize. That no matter how lonely I am in my faith walk, no amount of friendships will plug that hole (which is reserved for God alone). And even just the disappointment with my men's group, and how my expectations for things that last are maybe the cause, when in most cases they just can't sustain themselves over the years and fade away. I have a very Augustinian heart, and find that even as my faith and prayer life is deepening, that my disgust with the world and the things in it has been increasing. I find myself wearied by life, and praying for a swift and early death.

But, I cannot hate my brother(s) and still love God, as scripture says; for I would be a liar. I feel in my bones this tension of needing community, social things, being able to lean on people, and being disgusted with this need, seeing it as a kind of weakness. And yet, solitude which may be deepening for my prayer life and faith, is hard to bear for long periods of time. In this limbo, there's tension rather than peace, like I'm on a kind of rack where my limbs get stretched til they pop their sockets. 

Part of that disgust bleeds over into my own trad circle--a kind of self-righteousness and insularity that doesn't go outside itself. I find I have this calling, it seems, to do the corporal as well as the spiritual works of mercy, as it is what we will be judged on (our charity): feeding the poor, clothing the naked, visiting the sick. I used to do all these things as a "normie" Catholic (I have been trying to get back to the prison where I ministered to inmates, but the prison used COVID as an excuse to continue to close things down to visitors), and yet I see none of this intentionally spoken about or prioritized by the traditionalists in my circle. Maybe they do, and I just don't see it. But I'm afraid of how I will be sentenced at the judgment for my resting on the "well, trads don't do that stuff, that's for SJW normie Catholics, we pray our rosary and attend the TLM which is more efficacious" mentality. 

When I think of my judgment, in fact, I shudder, and I'm not even being dramatic. I'm doing all the "right things"--daily rosary, half hour mental prayer a day, First Friday/First Saturday, Mass, adoration, spiritual reading, etc. And yet I know that kind of perfection of the saints is a long way off due to my selfish nature, unwillingness to suffer, lack of charity to my neighbor, self-love, sins of the tongue, etc. I have no hope but by grace, and I'm not even joking. 

I am so incredibly lonely, despite the fact that I have lots of friends and a great wife and family. I realize, too, I don't really have the grounds to complain about being lonely either given all that. But there's just something gnawing at me, a kind of sadness at this constant liminality of the relationships I do have. I have been hoping this longing would lead me into a greater depth of prayer, but again, it foments into disgust with the world, and yet lacking the sweet consolation of the spiritual. I just have this tension, and sense of loss, and disgust with myself and the fact that what I want from others I can't even actualize in myself for their sake--that is, selflessness, and being there for others when they most need it.

I realize my disposition is more of a female nature--again, it goes back to this disgust at this seeming need to have connection with other people, to share deeply, to love and be loved fraternally...and yet for most of the guys I interact with, this just isn't a thing or a need for them. Most are content to just work and be with their families, and I should be too as a man. But I'm not, for whatever reason. Maybe that longing for the things that will never be in this world is what keeps pushing us closer to God, who can and does satisfy these unfillable longings, and THAT is their purpose. I can't connect with women (because it's not appropriate to my state in life) and I can't connect with men (because of this deficiency in need) and so I try to connect with God in this deep, strange sadness and it's just...silence. The dark silent host that doesn't speak, doesn't affirm, but just IS.

I've gone on long enough. Apologies in advance for laying this on you. I just thought maybe you might understand some of this "wrestling with the angel" and having your hip popped out of socket. 

God bless you, and take care.

R