Defenders of the Faith

They’re everywhere, and their presence wounds the Spirit. There are bishops among them, and bishops who give them succor, and also bishops who fear them like the secret police. Their cranky, hateful letters in the newspaper were bad enough, but their nasty blog comments are even worse. They are relentless, bullying, eager to pounce and to pull every conversation around to their singular obsessions, which are either homosexuality or free market economics. They boast an invincible certainty, coupled with an utter lack of compassion. And boy do they have time on their hands.

I ran into one of these lamentable creatures today on the America blog. There was an innocuous post titled, “We are all adopted,” the gist of which was that we are all God’s chosen children, and lamenting the fact that the people of Haiti have yet to be adopted by the human family. The word “adoption” set off this jerk’s radar—evidently it says to him gay parents and test tube babies—and he posted in response a gratuitous defense of birth parents that insisted on attacking and demeaning adoption.

I was sorely tempted to hit him with a blistering response—went so far as to draft one, in fact, but thought better of sending it. Then I resented the time and energy he had taken from me, the anger and hatred he had stirred. It does no good to trade punches with these troglodytes, of course. And I could summon no real charity for his sad and stunted soul locked away in its loveless prison.

Scandal

The real thing is this: For me, an educated, professional, 52-year-old man working at a large public university in a secular society, to publicly kiss a cross is a scandal. What would my colleagues say? My boss? Neighbors? Fellow parents? Friends?

I didn’t have my kid with me for cover. He was in school, and I didn’t insist on pulling him, which would have been another scandalous move. So it was nakedly me and this public display of affection.

Affection? Reverence? Acknowledgement? No other church requires such a definitive focusing act, not that I know of. And that is a reason to cherish the Church.

We endure it sheepishly, distractedly, glancingly, because to really face what we’re doing is too difficult—at least it is for me. Can others make this gesture wholeheartedly? I envy them. For me it is a mere show of piety, and this makes me deeply uncomfortable. I can’t see Jesus; all I can see is myself.

All I can do then is pray: to see more clearly, to grow in faith. To be freed from the iron shackles of self-regard. To sweat blood.

Maybe that’s all that is required.

Good Friday

I took off work and went to the liturgy, as I always do. Walking from the parking garage, I felt the familiar doubt. Why are you doing this? And the corollary temptations: No one else is doing it—only the young and the gullible. It doesn’t matter if you don’t go—it’s only a ritual. You already know what this is about. You don’t need to do it. God will understand. Then: It’s really kind of silly, isn’t it?

It’s a dramatic ritual: the altar is stripped, the priests blazing in scarlet. They come in without music, prostrate themselves, their prone bodies our confession. The silence is powerful.

That much I like. But from there it drags on, with a long stilted reading of the Passion, repeated from Palm Sunday, and an even longer litany of prayers for all categories of people. The homily seems like overkill.

The center of the liturgy is the veneration of the cross, and this is the part that really triggers my self-consciousness. Everyone files down and kisses, touches, or otherwise reverences the cross held before the altar. Should I kiss it, or just touch it? Should I kneel? Everyone is watching (and, if they're like me, judging). It takes forever. The music is lugubrious. Two attendants are wiping potential germs from the wood after every kiss, a modern touch of fastidiousness that to me is both jarring and lamentable.

It’s an old-fashioned act of piety, and it makes me uncomfortable. But of course that’s the point. The whole overlong service is an enactment of shared discomfort. We are required to make some small sacrifice, of our time, our attention, our foolish pride, to remind us, however inadequately, of the larger sacrifice. To the extent that it annoys me, makes me uncomfortable, tries my patience, and is therefore an opportunity to embrace His suffering, it is important for me to attend.

A good priest

June 16

There was mention of Joe H. at mass on Sunday. Father Joe. A good man and a good priest, of compassion and courage. He ran afoul of diocesan authorities for his attempts to minister to homosexuals.

What actually happened was he caught the attention of a handful of truly rabid homophobes, who then, as guardians of orthodoxy, took as their blood mission to run him out of the priesthood. The bishop was not strong enough to stand up to them, was in fact enraged at having been put in the position of having to do so. Joe was to him a problem priest, and was soon disappeared. He has now surfaced in New Jersey, where one presumes that there are other voices in addition to the homophobic. He is still, thank God for the rest of us, a priest.

I wish I had been close enough with him that we could’ve remained friends. That would’ve been some kind of break for me, a break from reticence. Those are my second and third responses to hearing his name; pangs of regret. (My first response was to remember him fondly.)

I tend to blame myself, but in truth, I tried to start a relationship with Joe. Invited him over for dinner, more than once. Engaged him in email correspondence. Approached him on the running trail. We became friendly, but not friends. He had too many sheep to tend, and was in some ways more guarded than I was.

During those dinners here, he opened up. Literally took off his collar and lounged on the sofa, his thick gray hunting socks and huge pale calves protruding from his too-short black pant legs: the image of a New Jersey farm boy. Plied with a bit of Scotch, he dished the dirt, compared being called before the bishop to “getting into a pissing match with a skunk,” and also spoke sanely and sensitively and with conviction about important things. He especially liked Lola, in part, I think, because she is not Catholic. She liked him too, always favored him with a warm hug after mass. But when those dinners were over, the veil went back up.

We knew nothing, really, of his troubles—except what appeared in the newspaper: scathing letters to the editor written by his enemies and the tepid responses from the chancery. Knew that he was unhappy as a diocesan priest, heard that he had tried to join the Maryknolls and was rejected. In preparation for that application, he had gone to South America to study Spanish, and picked up an intestinal bug, and lost a lot of weight. (He was pleased afterward, said he’d been trying to lose.)

And then he disappeared. Eventually I discovered by googling him a couple of snippets indicating that he had gone back to New Jersey, but there was nothing definitive until this past Sunday, when our deacon mentioned that he had come for a visit. I was sorry that I had missed him.