Tag: obedience

“Well, excuse me if I care more about innocent babies than criminals!”

st peter square

Catholics who are in dissent from the Church  – those who reject Church teaching on contraception, or male priesthood, or whatever — often say that the Church is right about everything else, but regrettably wrong about this one issue.

And those of us who are not in dissent respond incredulously, “How could that be? How could the Church be right about the resurrection, and transubstantiation, and eternal life, but wrong about this one issue? How do you even swallow that idea?”

But it’s just as senseless to say, “I care so deeply about this one important moral issue that I refuse to even acknowledge that there are other important moral issues.” And yet this is exactly what we’re hearing in the wake of the four paper’s joint editorial condemning the death penalty in the U.S.  The comboxes are pretty much wall-to-wall reiterations of this argument: “Death penalty for criminals? Who cares? What I care about as a Catholic is ending the slaughter of the innocent unborn!”

This attitude displays a deep and disastrous misunderstanding of the consistency and interconnectedness of Church doctrine. The Church is consistent. Utterly consistent. All of her teachings spring from a unified understanding of what God is like and what human life is for.

So if we are going to pish-tush at some teaching of the Church — like the teaching that the death penalty is only to be used as a last resort when there is no other way of keeping society safe* — calling it “marginal” or “liberal,” or saying that we just can’t get ourselves to care about it? Then we are very close to being in dissent. At very least, we have what I might call a “dissenting mentality”: pretending to submit to the guidance of the Church, but actually only adhering to and defending the doctrines which appeal to us, while ignoring, scorning, or even openly defying the ones which we don’t like.

[the following paragraph added at 11 eastern for clarity:] I’m not talking about people who truly believe that the death penalty is, in some cases, the only way to keep society safe. I believe they are wrong, and that in this country, in this century, there is no compelling reason to execute any prisoner. But who I’m talking about is people who openly reject what the Catechism teaches:  who say, “The hell with that. Blood demands blood. Some people are just scum of the earth, and justice demands that we wipe them clean.”

If some doctrine makes us uneasy, and we admit that we don’t like it or understand it? No problem! That’s just being honest, and we all have some catching up to do. So pray, pray, pray, turn it constantly over to God, beg for understanding and the grace to submit, and have passionate arguments with people you respect. That’s fine. God never commands us to be instantly calm and happy about All the Catholic Things.

But for your own soul’s sake, if you have reservations or doubts, don’t be flippant or nasty about them, or, God forbid, proud of them.  Belligerently parading around with a “dissenting mentality” is like going to a friend’s house, greeting the host nicely, displaying perfect manners during dinner, — and then going to the bathroom and crapping all over the floor.  And then writing a gracious thank-you note for a lovely evening.

Guess what? It’s all one house. If you want to be a good guest, you have to behave yourself in every room.

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*2267 Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, non-lethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm – without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself – the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity “are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”68

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Obedience Gives Us Jesus

Icon_of_jesus_baptism

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons 

Why tell us that Jesus is the Son of God as soon as He does the one thing that the Son of God doesn’t really need to do? What does this tell us?

Read the rest at the Register.

Why it’s all right to say I “have” to go to Mass today

This morning, I was stunned — stunned, I tell you! — to realize that today is the feast of the Immaculate Conception, which is always a Holy Day of Obligation in the United States, even if it falls on a Saturday or a Monday. I posted something on Facebook about “yes, you HAVE to go to Mass today.”  I felt a familiar qualm about using that language, “have to go to Mass.” As someone inevitably points out, we don’t have to go to Mass; we get to go to Mass. If Catholicism were outlawed, or if we had to walk four hours through the tundra to get to the sacraments, we’d probably realize pretty quick that our “obligation” is more of a privilege!

And yet, there is a sweetness to simple obedience, too. Here are something I wrote back in May of 2013, when I was stunned — stunned, I tell you! — to realize that Ascension Thursday is a Holy Day of Obligation.

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Humblesse Oblige

 

On Thursday morning, I had the following thought process.  Raise your hand if you can relate:

Let’s see, Thursday, Thursday.  Almost done with the week.
Let’s see, Facebook, Facebook.  Ha, look at that cat . .  Oh, poor lady, gotta pray for her . . . Ugh, MSM hypocrisy . . . Ha, look at that other cat . . .
WAIT.  Holy Day?  Of obligation?  Today?  Wait, no, they changed it to Sunday!  Or did they?  No, not in my diocese!  Phew.
Okay, but we really should go, even if we don’t have to.  I should go because I want to and because it’s a privilege, not because I have to!
But wait, I can’t, because I already made that appointment, and we were on the waiting list forever, and we already missed the morning Mass, and if we go at night, when will we eat?  Okay, we’ll have to find some other way to commemorate it.
But wait, I guess my diocese is in a larger ecclesiastical province, whatever that is!  I think it is a HDO!  But why didn’t they say anything about it last Sunday??

As it turned out, Ascension Thursday is a holy day of obligation where I live – and that’s kind of rare in the United States.  Most bishops of have moved the feast to the following Sunday, so you can fulfill your HDO obligation and your Sunday obligation at the same time.

On Holy Days of What-Was-Formerly-Obligation, we very often hear cries:  It shouldn’t feel like an obligation to go to Mass, anymore than it’s an obligation to eat a delicious feast!  If we truly understood what was happening at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, we’d be breaking down the door to get inside,and not hoping we get let off the hook.  Why, there are seminarians in Nigeria who live inside abandoned detergent bottles.  Tell them why you ‘can’t’ make it to Mass today, just because you aren’t obligated to.”

These things are all true.  And yet people who say them are glossing over something central to our existence as children of God:  the sweetness of obedience for the sake of obedience.

It would be wonderful if we simply always wanted to go to Mass.  It would be Heaven on earth if we enjoyed doing all the things we ought to do.  And sometimes it really does work out that way.  As we increase in holiness, our desires become more and more aligned with God’s desires, and there is less and less of a struggle between what we want to do and what we ought to do.

But knowing how you ought to be is not the same as being that way. The Church gives us obligations because she knows we need them.  This is an idea which sets the Church apart from so many other religions:  the much-derided “rules and regulations” that the Church lovingly imposes show that the Church understands human nature.  If we were only ever invited or encouraged, we’d hardly ever turn up.  I’d like to think I’m different, but I know I’m not.

And so we have our obligations:  go to Mass, confess your mortal sins, fast and abstain, and so on.  These obligations are in place because they confer grace to us.  They force us to do the things that are good for us.

But the obligations are there for another reason, too:  they give us a chance to obey.  We obey even if we’re crabby, we obey even if we have a headache, we obey even if we feel tired or bored, or if we feel guilty or unworthy.  We obey, in short, because we know who we are:  we are children of God.  We are under His protection, and that means we’re also under His authority.  What an uncomfortable concept for the 21st century American!  I do what I’m told, because that’s my job — it’s who I am.  Obedience for the sake of obedience acknowledges our imperfect natures, and God receives this obedience joyfully.

If obedience for the sake of obedience seems shabby and pathetic to you, think of it this way:  Sometimes, I delight in shopping for nutritious food, in preparing it in a delectable and attractive way, and in watching my children happily nourishing themselves.  It would feel odd to say I’m feeding them because I’m “obligated” to.  I want to!  I like it!  And that’s how it should be.

But sometimes, when dinner time rolls around, I’d rather just grab a bottle of wine and go hide in my room.  But I gotta give them dinner, and I’m really glad I totally understand that it’s my obligation to do so.  Now, it would be great if I always had that marvelous feeling of satisfaction and delight when feeding my kids.  But I suspect I’m working more time off purgatory when I feel nothing of the kind, but I do it anyway.  This is what motherhood means:  sometimes being the one who delights in working for your kids, and sometimes being the one who works for kids despite a complete absence of delight.  I know I’m a mother, so this is what I do.

It used to be that high born people were bound by a sense of noblesse oblige.  Because of their social rank, they felt themselves obligated to behave honorably and responsibility.  You could say that modern Catholics ought to cultivate a sense of “humblesse oblige” – the notion that we are obligated to obey because we’re sinners, because we’re fallen, because we’re children.  We obey because God is God, because the Church is the Church . . . and because it doesn’t matter if we’re delighted about it or not.  We obey because we willingly gave ourselves over to obedience to God the Father and to the Church, our Mother.

I’m grateful for the obligations the Church imposes.  And deep down, I wish she would impose more, because I’m lazy.  I’d like to see some Holy Days of Obligation moved back to weekdays, and I know my Lent would be more fruitful if my sacrifices weren’t optional.

All the same, it’s a good idea to remember that I obey, it’s because the thing I’m doing is good for me . . . but also because obeying itself is good for me.  Obedience for the sake of obedience isn’t everything, but it isn’t nothing, either.  At least it reminds me of who I am.  Humblesse oblige!

How I learned to stop worrying about wifely obedience and love my husband

s and d wedding

Ephesians 5:22!  Ephesians 5:22! Let’s all panic about Ephesians 5:22!

Nah. I’m not afraid of it anymore. But it’s not as big of a deal as I thought it was, either.

I’m not going to tell you what a Catholic marriage ought to look like. I’m just going to tell you what our marriage looks like, now that I’ve stopped trying to make it TheCatholic Marriage and started letting it be Our Catholic Marriage.

 

When I was first married, I was dying to leap feet first into the perfect Catholic relationship. So I took a deep breath and prepared to Ephesians 5:22 the heck out of my husband. He would tell me to do something, and I was going to obey him, by gum. (Like many couples, I yeah-yeahed my way past Ephesians 5:25-28, where the husband is supposed to treat his wife like Christ treats the Church, which is approximately ten krillion times harder than just obeying your husband.)

So I waited. And dammit, he never required me to obey him. Sure, he expected things of me — some reasonable, some unreasonable. We were just married, and we had a lot to figure out. But in general, the issue of obedience just didn’t come up. I was afraid this meant that we had a spiritually inferior marriage — that we were limping along with some kind of second rate modern system which would get us through the years, but which was keeping us from . . . something. I don’t even know what. Spiritual fruit of some kind, which I didn’t even know enough to recognize the lack of, because I hadn’t sufficiently molded myself into an obedient wife.

 

Where did this idea come from?  Wifely obedience is portrayed in many Catholic circles as the main feature of marriage — more important than prayer, more important that personal formation of any kind, more important than caring for children, more important than anything.  Just wifely obedience as a state of being.  Gotta submit, gotta obey, gotta be meek, gotta acknowledge your husband’s all-encompassing domination over the family with every breath, every word, every gesture, every thought, every decision. Without wifely obedience, we have chaos, we have the feminization of men, we have divorce and bitterness and unhappiness of every kind. When the wife isn’t panting to obey, marriage becomes a black hole into which, with a faint scream, the domestic Church as a whole is sucked, never to return until the Second Coming, when Jesus comes back for the main purpose of yelling at all those lippy dames.

But here’s the truth: If marriage is in a shambles, it’s not because of wifely disobedience. It’s because of a very old reason: selfishness. Sometimes it’s the woman who’s selfish, sometimes it’s the man. Sometimes it’s both of them.

When my husband and I got married, we were both young, and he would readily admit that he didn’t have any more life experience or wisdom or inside information about anything than I did. He’s better at some things; I’m better at others. There are some things we’re both bad at, and  need to hold each other accountable for. The “he decides, she complies” model? What for?  Our relationship had never been like that when we were dating, so why would it change when we started a family and things became complicated?

 

We fought a lot, and sometimes still do; but gradually, we started to realize that when we disagree about something, it’s usually because we aren’t listening to each other, or don’t believe yet that the other person understands something that we don’t. Usually, when we really start to listen (and sometimes we have to have the same fight over and over and over again before we can really hear each other), it actually becomes very obvious that one of us is right and the other one is wrong. And then it becomes easy to know what to do: you do the right thing. We’ve been through enough crap together to know that neither one of us is going to push hard for something that would be bad for the family. If he really, really wants something, I trust that he has a good reason; and vice versa.

In general, the person who bears the brunt of the decision at hand is the one who gets to make the call.  So if he wants to make a career move that I’m not crazy about, it’s ultimately his call, because he’s the one doing the job. If I want to make a major change in the kids’ education and he’s hesitant, it’s ultimately my call, because I’m the one who spends more time with the kids, and the I’m one who deals most with their daily schedules.

But here’s the thing: even if there’s something that affects one of us more than the other, there are zero decisions which only affect one of us. Even little stuff. That’s how it is when you’re one flesh, for better and for worse: nothing is just about you. What is the point of joining together if you behave as if one of you is more important than the other? That would be bad for both of you.  One spouse making autonomous decisions without considering the other person is like trying to set a course if you know your latitude, but not your longitude. You’re gonna get lost.

 

Here’s what everyone needs to understand about the grace of the sacrament of marriage. One of the main ways you receive it is . . . guess how . . . through your spouse. It’s not as if the husband can just go about his husbandly business being a good husband by standing in a shower of Husband Graces once a week. No, he learns how to be a good husband by drawing closer to his wife.

Many years ago, my husband was going through a really rough patch. He had tons of serious problems all at once, and he couldn’t sleep for the anxiety. He lay in the dark, begging God to help him out. And then he suddenly realized that I was there, in bed, next to him. And that was the answer. Not that I could solve his problems — I really couldn’t — but I was there to help him. That’s why I was there.

 

Authoritarian husbands often point to Mary and Joseph to illustrate “He decides, she complies” as the true Catholic model. But what do we actually know about St. Joseph? Mainly that (a) He utterly failed to stand on his rights and get rid of that seemingly disobedient, seemingly sinful, seemingly rebellious young chit of a girl who turned up pregnant without his say-so, and instead he (b) cared for his wife and child.

And what about that idea that a husband should love his wife as Christ loves the Church? What do we know about Christ? Mainly that He served and gave and served and gave, and then He died for her, and then He came back to life so that He could serve and give some more. That’s what we know.

In our marriage, obedience is an emergency tool. My husband uses it when I am being truly insane: when I’m delirious, or exhausted, or too overwhelmed with guilt and self doubt to think clearly. Then he asserts his authority and insists on . . . taking care of me.

I can also see obedience being useful if a man simply has the kind of personality where he needs to have his way; or if the wife has the kind of personality where she simply doesn’t want to deal with things. Obedience would help the marriage survive, in the same way that a tourniquet might prevent you from bleeding to death — but it’s hard to imagine that that kind of system isn’t fostering selfishness and childishness. It’s like what Fr. Longenecker said about gender roles, only more so:

Rigid gender roles are subjugated to the law of love. Loving our spouse and children in a free and generous way is what it’s really all about. Gender roles are not law; they are there to help us achieve complementary love.

There you go. Don’t worry about whether or not you’re fulfilling Ephesians 5. If your marriage is loving, then you’re doing it right.

How does it work in your marriage? Do you and your spouse — or you and your peers — have conflict over how the issue of obedience? Have you come to understand Ephesians 5 better over the years?