Hail Mary: The Catholic Gateway Drug

Once upon a time I was a teenage Catholic who wanted to go to heaven when I died, someday. I figured I would get the going to heaven thing taken care of and then get down to the business of living life, knowing that I had the afterlife under control. I suppose there was a sort of wisdom in that. That is, I recognized a fundamental principle that "what does it matter if one gains the whole world, if you pay for it by losing your soul." I realized that it would be a bit embarrassing if I made it through life acheiving all sorts of great things, and found that I had missed the grade by a few Masses or a good confession. So I set out to find for myself what I had to do to get to heaven.

 I knew, of course, from my years in catechism class, that if you died after making a good confession you would eventually end up in heaven, by way of purgatory. Bonus points could be acquired by receiving communion and last rites at the hour of death, and, if all else failed there was always an "act of perfect contrition." At the moment of death I would simply make an "act of perfect contrition" and be forgiven and end up in heaven a few minutes later. (My naivete in that regard is subject for a whole other blog!)

All of this was well and good, but I had a sort of idea that I wasn't doing enough. I didn't want to put the whole Catholic thing on autopilot until I was sure it was on the right course with a little wiggle room to left and right, just in case. Given that life could last for a while and unforeseen circumstances might arise, it seemed wise to me to have a fallback plan, a little something that would put me over the top.

In the course of my extensive reading of somewhat childish hagiography I had somewhere come across the idea that if you said three Hail Mary's a day, every day, you were guaranteed to save your soul. There were other options out there, such as wearing the brown scapular or the medal of the Immaculate Conception, but three Hail Mary's seemed the least bother and most reliable. After all, a medal or a scapular can break and fall off, but I am not likely to lose my ability to say the Hail Mary. So I said, "Three short prayers a day, about two minutes of praying if I really stretch it out, in exchange for guaranteed eternal life? Deal!!!"

Little did I know! You think you're just going to say three a day, no big deal, not super crazy or anything. You can rattle through them no problem, and it needn't interfere with your busy schedule at all. It's a sweet deal, but you need to read the fine print.

That is really the reason I am writing this, to warn other innocent teens out there to be careful about saying Hail Mary's. It like the marijuana of the spiritual life. (All sorts of jokes about "Mary-uana" are being consigned to oblivion in my brain right now.) You start out with three a day, and you go along just swimmingly for a bit, but sooner or later a little voice in your head is going to start saying, "Well, three are nice, but wouldn't five be nicer? What about ten? That's only about five minutes of prayer time a day, and then they become a decade of the rosary, which is super extra bonus points!"

But you cannot say just a decade, you have to say the "Apostles Creed," "Our Father" and "Glory Be" as well. And then you have to have something to think about while you are making your way through those five tedious minutes, so you start looking up the mysteries in the Gospel to read about them. Then you start feeling like maybe you should at least try to pay a little bit of attention at Mass, you know, not like getting into it or anything, but maybe, you know, like actually thinking about the Mass and stuff instead of video games.

Who knows where you go from there. You see, it starts out with a little Mary-uana, and then you decide to try out some Eucharist, maybe some spiritual reading, even a holy hour now and again. It is a slippery slope, and, all jokes aside, it is utterly terrifying.

I remember two such instances, both from when I was 19 in Korea. That was when I committed to saying a decade of the Rosary every day, and when I committed to reading for chapters in the Bible every day. Both choices scared the Hell out of me (in the most literal possible sense). In the case of the Bible reading I was afraid of failing, and getting bored with it. I argued myself into it on the grounds that it was not a valid argument against. After all, how is trying and failing in any way inferior to not trying at all? And why would I fail? What was there to prevent me from following through other than my own laziness?

In the case of the Rosary I was frightened because I had a feeling I would like it, and then it wouldn't be enough. I would then be called to a whole rosary, five decades, every day. I was okay with offering God 7 minutes a day, but not 20, and I knew if I gave Him the 7 it would not be long before He would demand the 20. It is the same with giving money or time to ministry or the Church. It is not enough, and we know it is not enough when we give it, and we know that as soon as we are accustomed to this level of "generosity" a higher level will be required. Best not even to mess with it.

This is how it has always been. I have come a long way since my three Hail Mary days, and I know that I have not gone far enough. I have become a hardcore user, I am into Mass, Eucharistic Adoration (the ecstasy of the spiritual life), and spiritual reading. This is where it becomes a slippery slope. You lose the "what is He going to ask from me next" and you turn a corner and you just want to give it all to Him. Not give away, necessarily, because in reality He takes very little from you. Instead you want to give it to Him in the sense that you want everything you have and are to be available to Him for His use, every second of every day, 24/7/365 until the end. You lose all fear of being drawn deeper, and instead fear not being drawn deep enough. Instead of asking "How much do I have to give to make the grade," you ask, "How can I squeeze out just a little bit more to give?" You look back on all the times you have held back and they break your heart. I look back and see how even as recently as this morning I held back, I did not give everything, and I wish I could go back and change it. You see how far short you fall, how enough is never enough because we are utter emptiness waiting to be filled with utter fullness, and anything that at present seems to fill us is nothing but an appetizer. The insane abandon and reckless radicality of St. Francis, St. Theresa of Avila, St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. John of the Cross, and St. Therese of Lisieux, begin to make sense, and to accuse you. When St. Paul's hardcore zealotry begin to make sense, you know you've hit a new low.

Then even the weaknesses in your prayer become the subject of your prayer: "Lord, I pray so poorly. Make up what is lacking in my prayer. My lips are moving but I do not know you in my heart. Reveal yourself to me. I think great thoughts but do not live them in the office, at home, in the world. Live your life in me."

And the descent continues. 

A Sparrow Finds A Home

I love the way the Filipinos design their churches. 

The walls are all gratings, usually left perpetually open, so that the church is continually open. Breezes come through, aided by oscillating fans, which is a low budget alternative to AC. 

The overall feeling is one of warmth and openness, inviting and free.

Other things come in as well, besides the parishioners.

And find a place to make a nest, near the altar of the Lord of Hosts.

And they make a joyful noise unto the Lord!

Little Brother

Dear Matthew,

You are going to Basic Training next week. You already read the book. In fact you read the book before it was the book. But these are some specific things I wish someone had told me before I went to basic training. They are in a very particular order, i.e. the order I happened to think of them in. If I had known then what I know now, I would never have had the courage to do what I did. But if I had not done what I did, I would not know now what I didn’t know then:

·         The Army is a toxic environment. It is toxic to faith, it is toxic to morals, it is toxic to good manners, it is toxic to free-thinking, it is toxic to humanity. However, this does not mean that people in the Army are the enemy. They are people, beloved of God. He died for them. Each one has his own story, his own history of wounds and health, brokenness and wholeness, happiness and sadness, wisdom and stupidity that made him what he is. Know the story, know the person, see him as he sees himself, and see him (as closely as you can) as God sees him. It will change the way you treat everyone in your life.

·         Some people have nothing to say worth saying. But no one is not worth listening to.

·         Push yourself to do your best at everything they put in front of you. Go the extra mile. But do not define yourself by how well you do.

·         Compete with your peers, because it will make you faster, stronger and better. But do not define success by how you measure up to them. You will be faster, stronger or smarter than many of them, but that does not make God love you one iota more than He loves them. Someone will always be faster, stronger or smarter than you, but that does not mean God loves them more.

·         The most valuable things cannot be earned. They are given for free, and the best you can do is try to be worthy of them.

·         Make friends with your peers. Do not do what I did and be a loner, and take pride in that loner attitude. You are more outgoing than I am so that should come naturally. But be prepared to part company without hesitation or possibility of appeal the first time someone says, “Hey, let’s go to the strip club.”

·         Friendliness is not the same as trust. Trust is earned and it is neither implicit nor all-encompassing in most cases. There are more men in the army than I can count that I would trust with my life, but less than a dozen I would trust not to try to lead me into sin on a night out on the town. And there have only been two friends in my entire career that I would trust with anything really important to me. Go out with the guys, but keep your own counsel on what really matters. Una Certa Sprezzatura.

·         Draw your lines, make them known, and never cross them. Don’t be afraid to alienate people who don’t like your faith and morals. If they are fair you will earn enough respect to get on with by being good at your job. If they are not fair, who cares what they think anyway? Unless they are your boss. In which case, well, some days are like that. Morals are more important than promotion.

·         Know your alcohol limit. Figure it out on your own, around people you trust. Take that number of drinks down by about 25-50%. That is your “going out with the guys limit.” Set that number in your head and NEVER allow them to talk you into going over it. Make the decision before you go out. Once the first drink crosses your lips, do not change that plan.

·         When your peer hangs a pinup girl on your wall locker, borrow his lighter and burn it in front of him, and say, “I will not be a part of treating women like objects.” If he does it again, punch him in the nuts.

·         When someone tries to get you to look at porn, ask them if they would kindly shoot you in the face instead. Trust me, you are better off dead. Nothing will kill your ability to love more effectively than porn. You were raised on love. Losing your ability to love will twist you up inside worse than you can possibly imagine and you will feel it. You are better off taking a bullet to the brain than getting hooked on that poison.

·         Do not go it alone. The first chance you get, you find a parish. Give yourself a few weeks to try out the different churches in your area, and then make your decision and stick with it. Register at that parish, get envelopes, volunteer to be a reader, an usher, sing in the choir (I’ll warn you right now, the choir probably sucks, bless their hearts), anything. Be involved. Commit to that parish.

·         Seek out Catholic young adults. If you can’t find a group, make one. Your peers in the army will be a toxic influence. You need a wholesome influence to counter it.

·         Don’t expect your Catholic friends to be perfect. Peoples is Peoples.

·         Don’t expect your Army peers to be demons. Peoples is Peoples.

·         God loves your Army peers as much as He loves your Catholic friends. But your Army peers might need you to translate that love more than your Catholic friends do

·         But then again, I’ve known some pretty wounded Catholics. You are related to more than a few.

·         If a person never knows the love of the brother he can see, how will he ever believe in the love of the God he cannot see?

·         Give your job your best, but do not give it your heart. To the Army you are not Matthew Kraeger. You are not a son, a brother, a friend, a boyfriend, a cousin or a nephew. You are not a person at all. You are an 11B10. Your identity and place are entirely representable as a sequence of numbers and letters, detailing your age, height, weight, physical fitness, rank, job, how well you shoot, etc. Your entire military existence boils down to a sheet of paper called an Enlisted Records Brief. You are fully interchangeable with all other 11B10’s. Give the job your best because it is what you swore to do, but do not give it your all because it is not who you are. My biggest regret is that I spent so much of myself for so long on a worthless job, instead of on relationships with people who could actually care about me. In a lot of ways I made a bad trade, but I never totally lost myself into it, and many people have been more patient with me than I deserved, so I came off all right in the end.

·         Being a soldier is a job. Being a warrior is a vocation. There is a difference. Never confuse the two.

·         Learn everything you can. Everyone has some wisdom no matter how stupid or irritable they might be. Listen to them with a completely open mind, take in everything they say, whether teaching you how to shoot, or how to bandage a wound, or how to march. Listen as if they were teaching the only possible way of doing things. Then, when you have wrung every last drop of knowledge out of them and sifted out the garbage (that takes a while, sometimes it is hard to tell what is garbage and what isn’t) file it away in your mind and remind yourself, “That is one way of doing things.”

·         You have the bad luck to be of significantly higher than average intelligence. This means that at least half of your leaders will not be as smart as you are. Do not for an instant think that this means that you know more than they do, or that you do not owe them respect and obedience.

·         The dumbest person in the Army knows more than you do about something.

·         Always question everything. Including me.

·         Expect an answer. Don’t just question to be smart.

·         Some people will not be able to answer you and they will mock you and tell you to shut up. This does not mean there is no answer, only that you need to find it for yourself because you have gone beyond your teacher’s depth. Remember that when you are the teacher and one of your students goes beyond your depth.

·         You are a human being, not a rock. You are going out with a faith much stronger, more mature and better informed than I had when I went out. You are older than I was. You have the benefit of more experience from your older brothers. But I promise you, you are not invulnerable. If you think there is any sin or folly out there that it is beyond you to commit, think again. Of course, vice will not seriously challenge you, not at first. Once you make your standards known pride itself will ensure that you never back down from them. What will kill you is complacency. Better men than you have become alcoholics, murderers, rapists, drug addicts or just plain lazy bastards and it can happen to you. They did not fail because they were weak. They failed because they were strong, and they trusted in that strength. Only God’s mercy stands between you and becoming everything you justly hate. Remember, because you start out with great gifts, your fall will be more terrible if you fail. If you stop growing in your faith, you will fail. It may take ten years to undo your natural gifts and habits of home. It may take fifty. If you stop growing, you will die.

·         If you keep growing in your faith, it doesn’t much matter what else you do. God will bring you through.

·         By “Faith” I mean relationship, not book knowledge or observance of rubrics. Those will kill you deader than anything else if you trust in them in the absence of a vital relationship with God.

·         But don’t skip the study or the rubrics either.

·         Maintain your prayer life. Without it you will fail.

·         Go to daily mass when you can. I don’t care whether you feel like it or not. It will save your soul.

·         Develop a No Less Than prayer life. It might be no more than a morning offering when you wake up and Hail Mary, Our Father and Gloria as you fall asleep. This is what you fall back on when you simply have no time for your regular prayers. Train yourself to wake up with a morning offering on your lips. It will serve you in good stead when your drill sergeant throws a trash can down the hall at 0400, and the next chance you get to think is 2200 lights out.

·         Guard time = rosary time.

·         Mopping the latrines = rosary time.

·         Standing in line at the chow hall = rosary time.

·         You are a human being, not a rock. You will be contaminated. You will wake up one morning and look at yourself and see a habit that you have picked up that you could have done without. It might be something silly. It might be something vulgar. It might even be something sinful. Do not freak out. Did you expect to be perfect? Set about cheerfully and hopefully undoing it. Cheerfully because God is already working at it. The very fact that you see it means that He showed it to you, which means it is time to start working. Hopefully because He wants to perfect you far more fervently and effectively than you ever could.

·         In the end, you will never save your soul. The best any of us ever learn to do is cooperate with God as He saves us. But the results can be quite spectacular. Read a biography of Mother Teresa if you need an example. Actually, read her biography whether you need an example or not.

·         4 years, 10 years, 20 years, a lifetime. The Army is temporary. Like anything else it is worse than useless as an end. But as a means it can be a road to the service of God in His people, and a path to Heaven. Just keep in mind what is truly important.

·         Remember who you are (easier said than done, as you’re still figuring that out.) You were a Catholic gentleman before you joined the Army, and God willing you will be a Catholic gentleman when you are out of the army.

·         Remember that you are loved. The Army can never love you, but there are plenty of people who do. They loved you before you were a soldier, and they will love you when you are a soldier no longer.

I will be praying for you. I love you, and I am proud of you.

Your Older Brother, who made 93.4% of the mistakes he has just warned you against, and saw the rest of them first hand…

Ryan

I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves. Matthew 10:16

The Holiness Misconception

Recently I received a comment on one of my blog posts from an anonymous fellow Catholic, asking me when I was going to receive the sacrament of Holy Orders (for non-Catholics, that is the sacrament whereby a man becomes a priest in the Catholic Church.) It's not the first time I've heard that sort of question from a Catholic, but the first time I had heard it from a total stranger.

Oddly enough, it is a question I have also gotten more than a few times from protestants, agnostics, and even atheists in the Army. Sometimes it comes with the tone of, "Hey, instead of getting out, have you ever thought of becoming a chaplain?" (Little knowing what is entailed in becoming a chaplain on the Catholic side of the house.) More often it comes as simple curiosity, "So if you're all into religion, why don't you just become a priest or a preacher or something?" Sometimes (not very often) it has been with a slightly sarcastic tone, "Why don't you just go be a chaplain?"

Let's start out by saying that this is not a blog about discernment. That is my own business. Instead, this is a blog about the misconception that both sets of questioners have in common. Actually, there are two misconceptions. The first has to do with what holiness is. The second has to do with what that misconception of holiness means.

The first misconception is, simply speaking, an error in judgment. People judge others as holy or not holy, good or bad, moral or immoral, on purely exterior factors, whether or not they go to Church, whether or not they swear, or have tattoos, or drink alcohol, or a whole host of other factors. None of these are holiness. So a person who fits the picture of what they think holiness looks like is labeled as "religious" or "a straight arrow" or even "good" or "holy." (It may not even be a complimentary picture, by the way. For instance, how many people consider a lack of humor to be a quintessential part of holiness?)

But all of these exteriors are misleading. Holiness, however, is something interior. It comes from the same root as "whole," "holistic," "wholesome." The connotation of that root has to do with the healing of something fractured, repairing something that was damaged. It has to do with putting something into right relation with itself and everything else. The quality of holiness, then, is something that is always becoming for most people on this earth. In that sense total "wholeness" cannot be certainly claimed of any human being in this life. Even Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa were still becoming throughout their lives.

With this concept of holiness, the second misconception becomes clear. In both camps there is an unspoken assumption that holiness is something that only a few people are supposed to attain. There are a few priests and nuns who are maybe just a little strange, but they are the ones who are pursuing holiness, so good for them. We'll be respectful of them as kind of an insurance policy while we go on living our lives much the same as we ever did. This misconception takes different shapes depending on the atmosphere. In Catholic circles it can take the form of friends, family and religious ed teachers gently (or not so gently) nudging that nice boy who looks so pious on the altar, and that good girl who is such a little angel in choir, towards the priesthood or religious life. In the largely pagan world of the Army there is a general assumption that religion makes you slightly suspect as a soldier. It's all right to have religion on sundays, but it isn't supposed to be something that you drag into the mission or off duty hours. It doesn't belong in the barracks or the team room. I remember a soldier I knew, upon finding out that I was going to Daily Mass on lunch hour, exclaiming in disbelief, "No! I can't believe it. I can't believe you're one of those wimpy Christians." (A bold statement coming from him, since he and I both knew that I would utterly crush him at any test of strength or skill he could name (except maybe bench press.))

The truth is that this is a lie. There is no priveleged minority called to be holy, while everyone else is can scrape by with mediocre. Remember, the pursuit of holiness is not a step by step thing. Life is not paint by numbers. Holiness has nothing to do with checking a list of arbitrary rules to follow, and there is no cosmic schoolmaster who runs the scantron of our lives and deems us holy or unholy based on the percentage of correctly filled bubbles. We really are fragmented, broken, damaged creatures, and we really do have the opportunity to become whole, healthy, wholesome creatures. This is the universal vocation of all human beings, to bring themselves into right relation with the God who created them, because then, and only then, will they be in right relation with themselves and each other.

The particular ways in which we acheive this are as various as we are. Everyone, regardless of their state in life, married, single, consecrated religious, ordained priest or bishop; soldier, sailor, tinker, farmer, lawyer; father, mother, child, sibling; rich or poor; homeless or secure; drug-dealers, tweakers, pimps, prostitutes, alcoholics, addicts of all stripes; murderers, adulterers, rapists and child molesters. ALL are called to be holy, to be made whole.

So I don't think of myself as being out of the ordinary. I am just another human being trying to do waht all human beings throughout history should try to do. I just happen to be doing it this particular way, following the gifts and inclinations and leadings God has given to me. You should be doing the same thing, but in the way the God has for you. Whatever love I have for my God and my Faith (how much or little is not really your concern) has nothing to do with my particular vocation. It is just where I happen to be at this moment, and regardless of what work I am doing or how God is using me, I must grow in holiness or end up fading away into spiritual death. Those are really the only two alternatives.

Ask Thugfang: Ex-Catholic in the Bag?

His Right Dishonourable Loathsomeness, Master Thugfang, is a demon of great infamy among academic circles. He is a frequent columnist for “Tempter’s Times”, an assistant editor for “Wickedness Weekly” and current chair of Tempter’s Training College’s Department of Defense Against the White Arts, after the sudden disappearance of the most recent head under mysterious circumstances. Now, His Right Dishonourable Loathsomeness takes your questions. Having problems with a particularly troublesome patient? Meddlesome enemy agents stymieing you at every turn? Don’t wait, write immediately to “Ask Thugfang” C/O “Underworld Magazine.”

Dear Master Thugfang, I read with great appreciation your recent column on the use of family to corrupt infants before they reach the age of reason, and I thought I would write in to provide my own testimony. My patient is an ex-Catholic in her late twenties. Due to the abusive, repressive atmosphere I was able to establish in her home she rejected the Catholic Church entirely when she left home. Now she tries to tell all her Catholic friends how wrong and perverse the Catholic Church is, she never receives the Sacraments. She did try to go to Mass once, but she had an anxiety attack and left right away. That was five years ago. She is so completely insulated against the Faith that nowadays I barely even have to work at all. Yours Truly, Success Story.

My Dear, Darling, Wonderful Success Story,

Please allow me to join you in telling you how amazing you are. As you know (because you tell yourself this constantly) you are undoubtedly the greatest tempter the world has ever seen. Why don’t I promote you to undersecretary of a department, and let you write this column and teach all my lectures? Oh, I remember…

It’s because you are an arrogant little sprite who still thinks anxiety attacks are great fun. The mark of an immature palate is the over attention paid to cheap, passing torments. What can you know of the nuanced, subtle complexity of an entire human life drowned in misery, despair and sorrow? Nothing. You’re too busy with pranks. And you are lazy to boot. By your own admission you are not pressing your advantage on this patient. Not only did you admit it, you boasted!

Do you not understand we are at war here? Or did you think that the Enemy will abandon that patient the way you apparently have? I promise you, in your absence while you were fondly imagining that your work was done for you, the Enemy has not been absent for a moment. His agents never sleep. No matter how far she has run, I guarantee this patient has not closed herself off to them completely. Hardly any of them ever do before death.

Do you congratulate yourself on the work so far? Yes, there have been some successes, but not so deep or so permanent as you blissfully imagine. The patient has rejected “the Church” has she? Fool! She never knew the Church! Not the Church as we know it, that damnably tough bastion of human happiness, freedom and virtue. We see the spiritual reality spread out through the millennia, an agonizingly bright cavalcade of martyrs, poets, philosophers, saints, and millions upon millions of souls forever and ever, eternally, achingly lost to us. Do you for an instant believe that Church is what she rejected? Ha! She hears “Church” and sees her mother yelling at her about her neckline. That is what she rejects. Her “faith” was hardly worth the effort of destroying. Essentially you spent the first seventeen or eighteen years of her life telling her lies about what the Church was. First chance she got she rejected that shadow church outright. Does that put things in perspective for you, you insufferable little know-it-all?

Now, she still believes those lies, to some extent. She really thinks the Church is oppressive and self-contradictory. You had better hope she never learns the truth, because if she does it will cut through all your claptrap like a lighthouse through fog. This brings me to the biggest fault I find with you, given the very limited information in your letter. She tries to convince her Catholic friends to leave the Church. May I ask what the Heaven you are playing at? If you don’t want to lose that soul, you had better put a stop to that quick. Is it not obvious to you that the very fact she tries to argue people away from the Church is because she still really cares? Deep down inside she cannot quite get away from the haunting need to belong to whatever little bit of the real Church that touched her. Even hatred of the Church is not so useful as you might think, and I don’t think she really hates it. It might even be that she really cares about her friends and wants to rescue them from her nightmares. That really is the height of incompetence, to allow anything done from love to continue. Any love, even misguided love, is the Enemy’s territory.

Besides, hasn’t it occurred to you that talking about the Church at all with her Catholic friends is the best way I can think of to endanger all your lies? Don’t you see that it’s only a matter of time before she runs into a Catholic who actually does know a thing or two about the real Church? What do you think will happen then? You’ll be facing a long, long time in a very dark place, that’s what. It is only our unrelenting work within the Catholic Church that has saved your neck thus far. The general mediocrity among Catholic humans in her society is entirely the work of wiser and more motivated demons than yourself. That is what you have to thank for her continued ignorance, not your own skill.

Argument in general is not something I would rely on. Oh sure, it can be an opening for our own particular brand of argument. A flurry of half-baked ideas and barely hidden resentments clothed in cheap rhetoric, that is the closest you ever want to get to real argument. Real argument teaches her to ask whether this thing is true or not. Truth is something we don’t believe in here in Hell. You had better curb the idea in your patient as well, or she will never get here, and then… well… let’s just say we won’t be going hungry.

Not to mention that if she does find her way back in it is likely to be a more serious thing than you are ready for. What I mean is, the new faith she finds through hard searching is likely to be a real faith, chosen in her will, based on her intellect. It is not going to be something forced upon her by anyone. She will have had to face up to her fears and overcome them. She will have had to look your lies in the face and see through them. Hence she will value her new faith. She will also be poignantly aware of the difference between “The Faith” and the distortions and abuses that can creep in, so she will be on her guard against them.

Forget the argument. Put a stop to her even talking about the Church. We aren’t trying to reason her away from it. What you really want right now is a really solid vice or two to saddle her with, something that will distract her and absorb her. Maybe it doesn’t even have to be a vice. Save the Whales will do, as long as it takes up her time and attention away from her need for conversion and repentance. But I think while a cause or a hobby is all right as a distractor if you have to use it (the more vacuous the better) I think you’ll get more mileage out of a vice in the long run. You want something that will call up all that old, half-forgotten shame and guilt she associates with the very mention of the Church, which will cause her to resent the mention of it, and will cause her to insulate herself from those who will mention it. That’s how to get the patient to do your work for you. The sicker she gets, the more she will run away from the only medicine which might cure her. But don’t for a second dare to think you can stop chasing her. Temptation duty is not a vacation.

I have your file in front of me as I write. Perhaps, on second thought, we should meet.

I promise, if you don’t stop slacking off and bring us some results, you will be called back. You don’t want that. I don’t even want that. Really, all I want is to help you do your job better.

Cheers,

Thugfang

A Catholic in a Buddhist Temple, part 4

From the Back of the Beam

Wisdom does not belong, can never be received
In mad dash through the in-stoning of millennia of faith
By the tourist. I try to take it with me, and am all deceived
Blistering my finger, with furious photography
A three hour tour and five hundred costless snapshots
Recording in digits time’s nearest approach to eternity
Is a study in the fatuous. A Buddhist monk in Notre Dame
Would not know what he was seeing, but would see it.
We look in different directions, but we open our eyes.
In this we are much the same.

Wisdom comes to the one who does not try
To take the beauty with him, frozen, shrunk
In two-dimensional flatness, to fit his eye.

Wisdom comes to the one who remains. The monk
Intoxicated by beauty, who stays behind
To search forever for that which first made him drunk.

It comes to him who came, but not to find,
But to leave a bit of himself, a pilgrim’s gift
Of a lifetime of devotion, daily, menial and blind.

It comes to him who, day after day, shift upon shift
Glued countless tiny squares to massive walls
Or carved the hidden gargoyles. All these uplift

Their hearts in glad surrender to….
They know not what.
But He knows.
And loves.
Amen.

A Catholic in a Buddhist Temple, Part 3

Bald Saffron
All life is pain.
Pain is desire
Attachment
We are like the rain
Falling on the fire
Detachment
We hold our place
Some glue
Some kneel
Some beg
And some will never understand
The gluers
The kneelers
The beggars
Because they themselves
See only gluing
And kneeling
And begging
And themselves.
The Gluer does not see the glue.
The Kneeler does not see his knees.
The Beggar does not see the coin.

A Catholic in a Buddhist Temple, Part 2

Fish Smell

Today is the day.
At last, I’ve saved enough
From selling fish to white men
For years, but now
I can pay
For the train ticket, and a meal, and even though it’s tough
I’ll squeeze out enough
For a lucky Buddha to bring home for my wife.
I have waited so long
But my faith has made me strong
And on this, the greatest day of my life
I will finally go
And kneel
At the Lord Buddha’s feet
And feel
Humming through my bones the sweet
Everlasting drone of the holy men
Who do not fish
Or marry or spend
But beg and pray, as I wish
I could do.
But this is where I am.
For me this is enough.

A Catholic in a Buddhist Temple, Part 1

I wrote a four part poem after visiting some Buddhist Temples in Bangkok and reading T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets." The poetry is not great, but I was trying to experiment with a new style.

A Catholic in a Buddhist Temple, Part 1

Wife Beater Tan Lines.

“The schedule is tight. There is barely time
To throw an arm over my homeboy Buddha’s shoulder for a snapshot
With a peace sign thrown up (Buddhist’s are into peace aren’t they?) The climb
Was pretty stiff, but I can check that off my list. My friends are going to freak
At my new profile pic. It will certainly lend authority to my future opinions
(Loudly proclaimed over beer) about what Asians believe, next week
When this vacation is over and I am back in Jersey, working nine to five.
Then off for hot dogs and sunscreen. I don’t know how they do it
The shave headed monks in their orange robes. They’ll probably never survive
Their inevitable brush with skin cancer, but maybe I can get a picture
With them before they go.
Do you think there’s a bar in this town that serves some decent beer?

“And what do you think of that dude we saw, kneeling with his face on the floor
At the foot of the golden Buddha? Looked like a cross between
A hippie and a bum, and smelled like fish. Why would they even let him in the door?
Not that it’s any of my business, you know, if these people don’t believe in baths.
But you know, it kind of detracts from the atmosphere. You know what I mean?
And from the look of this town they need all the atmosphere they can get. Just do the math
And you’ll see that tourism keeps this place alive. So I would think
They’d want to keep the tourists coming, to keep the dollars flowing
And if they want that, they might want to do something about the stink.
Just saying.

I will say this for the little folks, they sure know how to make a tourist trap.
How many of the little brown guys do you think it took? I mean you look at those walls
How many millions of squares of glass glued on by hand? And look at the map
There’s a temple like that every few miles. That’s a lot of glue.
You can do a lot with cheap labor like that. Wal-Mart is a good example
Of what a little initiative and lot of bored Asian peasants can do.
It must be a national pastime for them, gluing tiny things together
I mean what else is there to do for fun around here?
And don’t even get me started about the weather.

HHS Health Reform Strategy: Two Scenarios

There has been a huge hue and cry in the Catholic blogosphere recently in reference to the White House’s recent statement that there will be no broadening of the conscience clause in the Health Care reform bill. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and many other religious organizations in America have been lobbying for this broadening since the bill was passed, and this month, three days before the National March for life in Washington, the White House stated that “This group (Faith based institutions) will ultimately have to offer female employees cost-free contraception, just like others across the country.”


This was not at all what those faith based institutions were hoping for. In a somewhat insulting nod to these organizations, the White House is allowing them an additional year to comply. This is not an acknowledgement of the conscience issue, but to allow more time for administrative changes that will need to be made. “We know that a lot of these organizations may be large organizations, there are approval processes that require the approval of boards,” an administration official told reporters on a call this afternoon. “The transitional period responds to those concerns.”

Unfortunately, these were never actually concerns. This is not a question of “an approval process” as if the implication were that “boards” just need enough time to argue about it before finally bowing to the mandate of Washington.

The uproar has been considerable, though not as widespread as the response to the SOPA bill. Catholic bloggers and bishops, not-for-profit organizations and media personalities have been firing back. I cannot say anything that they have not already said.

I am interested, though, in the Administration’s point of view. What is the end game here? It was a bold strategy, not only the decision to ignore the principles of the largest religious body on the planet, but to drop the ultimatum three days before the largest gathering of Catholics in one place in America. Coincidence? I’ll just say, competent strategists don’t allow coincidences like that. If the timing was not taken into account it was sheer incompetence. If it was, then what on earth was the strategy?

You see, only an idiot goes into battle without knowing his enemy. While there are varying levels of competence in Washington, I’m not ready to believe that the architects of this bill are idiots. They went into battle, and they had to know how the Catholics were going to react. This isn’t an administrative policy we are talking about here, this is a matter of moral principle. The Catholic Church’s opposition to contraception is a matter of history, and She has been before now the single voice in the world condemning the contraceptive culture. We made it through the 60’s without changing that for crying out loud. There is no excuse for ignorance about the Church’s position on this topic. Therefore, there is no possibility of compromise. We literally cannot give in to this law. It would be like forcing Jewish businesses to sell Kosher Bacon.

So I have no choice but to believe that at the very least the Administration knew that there was going to be an uproar. Perhaps they underestimated how rapid and loud it would be, but they took it into account in the decision making process. What part did it play?

I can think of two possible strategies that account for this blatant aggression. The first, and I think the most likely, is ideological. Perhaps the President and his advisors really believe that contraception and abortion are so obviously mainstream healthcare, that anyone who does not provide them shouldn’t be in healthcare anyway. An analogy would be someone who did not believe in prescribing antibiotics and refused to do so on moral grounds. Such a person has a right to believe that, but no hospital in America would hire them. They would not be allowed to practice as a physician, and rightly so. I think it is possible that Obama and his cronies are so in love with the idea of contraception that they have deluded themselves into thinking that contraceptives are on the same level as antibiotics and other routine, life-saving interventions. The rhetoric of “reproductive rights” might well have tricked its authors.

If this is the case then the move to engage in open warfare, as it were, was seen as a calculated risk. They think they are right to force people to take care of their employee’s health and welfare (their view), and they are counting on popular support and even more popular apathy to wear down religious resistance over time. In this scenario they expect to hunker down, weather the storm and keep up an endless stream of propaganda. It will blow over eventually and they will get their way.

The second scenario is more sinister, and I think less likely. In this scenario the motives are not ideological but pragmatic. They don’t give a damn about reproductive rights or contraception or any of that. What they do want is power. The Catholic Church, by Her nature, is always a possible threat to the power of the State, because She claims divine authority to resist laws it deems unjust. In this view the goal is to hamper the freedoms of this institution, consolidating power for the State. What you need for that is to do two things, simultaneously: First, you need to isolate and weaken the institution’s base of support among the population. Second, you need to create the opportunity to take action against that institution in such a way that it will be perceived as legitimate. To accomplish these you need an issue which will be at the same time odious to the institution in question and widely popular among the rest of the population.

So in this scenario this particular issue is not the issue. Instead it is simply a weapon. The goal is to draw intense, outspoken, and hopefully hot-headed or even inflammatory response from the Church, which can then be construed as backward, selfish and intolerant. The Church is forcing her beliefs on employees who do not even share the same beliefs! The hope then is that when the inevitable confrontation occurs, whether the Catholic institutions try to continue operating in defiance of the law, or close their doors, any government action can be presented as preventing the Church from imposing Her ideas on other people. No one will come to our aid in any effective way.

I don’t think this is the scenario, because it means that the Administration thinks the Church is weak enough that they can get away with it. You don’t deliberately provoke an all-out power struggle until you are certain you have the tactical advantage. I don’t think we are at that stage yet. In fact, if anything can bring out a little fight in us, this is it. But in the short term, motives matter very little. In either scenario the crux of the matter remains the same. The side that sways the people will win, and if Obama has proved adept at anything, it is influencing the people. People will point to his crashing polls, but the mystery is not that they have crashed so far, but that they have not bottomed out. The man can spin a yarn, and people listen. This is the most dangerous quality he possesses and we must not underestimate it.

In any revolution or counter-revolution, the propaganda war is the real war. The human terrain is the only terrain that matters.