Category: The Catholic Weekly
I can see into the future
I predict The embattled Cardinal Wuerl, after meeting with the Pope forty-six more times just to talk stuff over, will make a dramatic and tearful farewell, saying he will retreat to a life of poverty and penance because of regrettable mistakes that may or may not have been made by nonspecific episcopal entities such as those other guys over there. Six weeks later, a heavily made-up newcomer, Cardinal Doubtfire, will be appointed in his stead and will have many pastoral things to say in a high, squeaky voice. Phew! So that’s all fixed.
What do we Catholics do now?
By the time I’m done writing this, there will be a new crop of sad or enraging or just plain bizarre headlines about who did what, who knew what, who claims he never knew, who didn’t act and why that was someone else’s fault, and why we should all just relax and trust the hierarchy to do the right thing, starting any minute now.
And of course more and more of our fellow Catholics will burrow even more deeply into their comforting narratives of blame, to shelter them. When we’re confronted with calamity, the easiest thing in the world is to cry, “This is all their fault!” — “they” being the ones whose fault it always is and always has been. This response is worse than useless, but it’s understandable. We want coherence and intelligibility, but right now, it’s so hard to see, in this dim light of calamity. What to do?
Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.
Image via Pixabay (Creative Commons)
Napoleon at the baptismal font
There’s really no sense in saying, “I’m interested in Christ, but only a little bit, please.” You gotta go all in.
So where do Napoleon and his crown-grabbing ways fit it? Well, I have seen a good number of Catholics who strongly identify with Catholicism and are heavily involved with other Catholics. The drive and hunger is there. But as soon as it comes time to kneel and accept something good and meaningful from God, they don’t just gleefully, joyfully go for it. Instead, they grab it out of his hands and bestow it on themselves.
Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.
Image: Marie-Victoire Jaquotot [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons (Creative Commons)
Wounded by silence
Testimony from a friend:
“I was kidnapped, violently tortured, escaped, went to the hospital and the authorities found my perpetrator and prosecuted him. He was arrested and is still serving a life sentence in prison.
Why? Because I had physical bruises, because people could identify the crime. It’s sad but true.
So many other victims of rape and abuses that were silenced will tell me, ‘Your story is awful,’ but I tell them, no, the story of those victims who suffered in silence is far worse.”
Help! Help! Humanae Vitae isn’t a rigorous logical treatise!
I don’t know anything else about Paul VI, so I don’t know if this was on purpose, or whether it tried and failed to make a logical argument. But whether it was intended to be a logical treatise or not, it isn’t one; so let’s stop trying to present it as one, and let’s stop complaining when we discover that it isn’t one.
But what if I don’t love God?
They really, really loved God, enough to willingly die for Him, enough to renounce their families for Him, enough to cheerfully surrender their riches and beauty and power for Him, enough to praise Him with their last dying breaths.
And I? I didn’t love God. I didn’t even like Him.
That worried me.
It’s a great loss when we train ourselves to stop receiving beauty
I can learn to decipher what their calls might mean, but it would be a great loss, a bizarre and ungrateful act, to deliberately train myself to stop hearing their music as music.
Sunshine, buttercups, and rainbow flags
I understand the idea of incrementalism. I understand accepting people where they are, accompanying them, and praying with them as they gradually become more open to the fullness of the truth, whether they’re deeply invested in a homosexual relationship or deeply invested in a contraceptive relationship. You can’t accompany someone unless they decide walk through the door, so you want that door to look as welcoming as possible. Plant flowers. Put a fresh coat of paint. Hang a rainbow flag. It is our job to be loving first, so as to make it possible for people to receive the law and then identify it as the same thing as love. I understand this.
But where do we draw the line between accompaniment and bait and switch?
Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.
Image by BookMama via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Should you go into debt to get a liberal arts degree?
So if you hear someone telling you that a liberal arts education is a luxury in which only the independently wealthy should indulge, I’ll agree . . . if you mean the kind of education that makes you think of your own brain as an exquisite platter of pâté, to be passed around at parties and admired for its velvety richness. Don’t get that kind of education, no matter how much money you have. The world needs exactly zero of that.
But if you mean the kind of education that gives you the unshakable idea that life is interesting, worth thinking about, worth talking about…