Sex, Symbols, Sacraments, and So Forth

C. G. Jung

One of the games Carl Jung and his followers used to play was this.  They would claim that they were not obsessed with sex the way the Freudians were, that they (the Jungians) wouldn't say that

Paschal Candle = Penis  (Freud would say this, and Christopher West does say this)

but instead they would claim

Paschal Candle = Penis = Creative Power of God = the Self = Individuation

("Individuation", by the way, is a three-dollar word for, "Do whatever you want to do").

"The Paschal Candle does not simply symbolize the penis!" they would exclaim (though they'd say phallus instead).  "Because the phallus itself symbolizes creative energy, which symbolizes God, and God is the archetype for the Self - that thing beneath the ego that we must cultivate through the process of Individuation."

But here's the problem - where do you choose the symbol to stop?  Even if Candle = phallus = God = Self = Individuation ... well, what does individuation symbolize?  Could we not go further?  Could we not say ...

Individuation = Rebirth = Baptism = Death to Self and Life in Christ?

This is how bad symbolism, bad mythological analysis, and bad literary criticism works.  It becomes utterly arbitrary.

***

But more than that.  It begs a very big philosophical question.

Paul Stilwell has a long and complex post on the relation between analogy and reality.  

I'm not sure I completely understand what Paul is saying, but I think it comes down to this.  If everything is analogous, then we must eventually ask analogous to what?  There must be some ultimate reality that the thing is analogous to.  Indeed, there must be two things in this equation - the thing that serves as a symbol must be real and the reality it indicates must be real.  But which is more important?

Stilwell points out that marriage, for example, is a real thing with a concrete embodiment - love, sex, babies, diapers, mortgage payments, arguments, forgiveness, and the thousand daily things that make it up.  It is also analogous to the Second Coming of Christ, the great Nuptial Feast in which Christ, the Bridegroom, unites with His bride, the Church.  The latter, in Stilwell's terminology, is the "analogous sense" and the former is the "vital sense".  Stilwell writes ...

He [West] will then take marriage in its "vital" sense and cut it down at the ankles as limited and analogous, while forcing the analogical and subjective into the "vital" plane that is reserved for poopy screaming children and spaghetti on the stove (or in other words, reserved for our becoming sacraments), replacing it as the paramount significance of marriage - that is to say, making the analogical and limited to take that place of marriage which is not limited and analogical. Forcing an analogical sense down thus, we can "rocket-pack" towards our target - to the stars. To the unending celestial orgasm.

 The man who does this, who sees everything as pointing towards something else, suddenly becomes free to see a bogeyman in every bush, or more likely he will

see vaginas around every corner he turns, awaiting the decoding of this saint-in-the-making who is learning to read the sign language of God the alien who left us ineffectual esoteric signs and not Sacraments.

A Sacrament differs from a sign as much as a flower differs from a "reproductive organ".   It is real both as a symbol that points to something else and as a thing we experience and participate in that actually conveys grace.  In other words, it has both an analogous sense and a vital sense - and that vital sense actually communicates what God intends it to (given proper matter and proper disposition on our part).

In other words, is it more appropriate to say that a flower symbolizes female genitalia or that female genitalia symbolizes a flower?  There is an analogous connection - and it is certainly real - but it is not "vital", as Stilwell would say.  Both things are beautiful and proper in their own way - each has its analogical sense and also its full and thoroughly valid "vital sense" - so much so that it is not appropriate to say that one stands for the other, without ignoring the question which stands for which?  To ignore the quiddity or the "vitality" of any thing in and of itself is, ultimately, to deny the Incarnation, and simply to play games.  For what this all comes to psychologically is using one reality as a mere vehicle to get to another reality that interests you more.

And what interests us more?  Well, there is a certain kind of mind that is thrilled by sexual imagery: I would characterize it as a middle school mentality.  There is also a certain kind of mind that is thrilled by esoteric nonsense.  Indeed, we see this even in literary circles with Shakespeare scholars who read the plays as if they were merely coded means of conveying messages that a secret spy ring in a Cracker Jack box could decipher.  In doing so they (as Paul Stilwell would say) cut the plays off "at the ankles".

But the Theology of the Body rises above the ankles.  And, though you wouldn't hear tell of it in pop-Catholic circles, it actually rises above the belt.

For our lives are not mere pointers.  The Sacraments are not mere symbols.  Marriage is not merely a sign of the Eschaton.  And the Paschal Candle is not merely a phallus.  (In fact, it's not a phallus at all).

***

However, what I mean to say here goes beyond any goofy games with symbols.  What I mean to say is this.

God operates in our lives in ways that are more real and more "vital" than we care to notice.  He is not content to be the distant God that things point to; He is a God who shares our joys and sufferings, our very suchness, our very vitality, and the things that exist are not a mere prelude to the Kingdom: they have a dignity - an ontological dignity - all on their own, though it is a fallen and broken one, needing badly to be redeemed.

And anyone who participates in the Sacrament of Matrimony - that is to say anyone who is married - knows the funny mixture of "poopy screaming children, spaghetti on the stove" and a profound and sacrificial love that hints at the Coming of Christ Himself.  It is very tempting for us married men to turn from this, to seek cheap thrills elsewhere - either through adultery in deed or adultery in our hearts - or even to waste our Eros on a kind of dreamy dead end mulling over "what if" - to think that the grass is greener in the other lawn, or that our happiness is not really to be found in bed beside us, overweight, snoring, and mad at us for something we did that day.

But this is life.  This is vital.  And this great mess, frustrating as all get out, is - like the manger (with "poopy lowing animals and nothing on the stove") - the silent herald of a great and rich and wonderful joy to come.

  

 

The Emperor's New Lack of Clothes

The Emperor has no clothes on.  He's naked for all to see, but not all want to see it.

The World's Most Zealous Defender of Christopher West writes

Is it "possible" to look upon someone naked not your spouse without lust? Not only is it "possible"--it's "required" for purity of heart. It's *necessary* that we be able "see rightly" in this regard if ever we are to pass through the active and passive purgation of the senses and toward the deeper "illuminative way" of the spiritual life. 

Now he's not saying merely that lust is a sin and that we should mortify it.

He's saying that in order to approach mystical union with God, one is required to look at naked ladies without lust.   

That's your homework, in other words.  Get to it.

Theological Rewrite

I've been hired to rewrite the above ad to reflect a greater theological accuracy.

"Sadly, many of our beloved senior customers have gone to heaven.  Or possibly to hell.  Old Lady Bernice - yeah, she's in hell.  Purgatory for some, I imagine - though von Balthazar would suggest that there is the outside shot that all of them are in fact in heaven; personally, I knew these women well and old Hans can Ur my Von Balthazar, if you know what I mean.  Anyway, we need some new angels to fill our chairs.  Not angels, per se, who don't have hair - at least not physical hair (after all, how many angels can dance on the end of a hairpin? ha ha - but I digress); but moral angels, by which I mean people of good behavior who tip me well.  In brief, we need new customers.  OK?"

The Great Evil of Daylight Savings Time???

My Conspiracy Theory friends are (strange as it sounds) very angry at Daylight Saving Time, claiming it's the government's way of asserting arbitrary power over us, that it represents man's insane assertion of human will over Nature.  After arguing with them all day yesterday, I've finally come up with a post that should suffice.

You might say I've sprung forward to the truth and fallen back on a handy explanation of it ...

***

If you're using anything other than a sundial (and we've been using mechanical clocks since the 13th Century), noon by the clock is almost NEVER noon by the sun at any place on the earth on any given day. Perhaps twice a year sun noon will correspond to mechanical clock or digital clock noon within a few seconds.

And this correspondence is rarely on the days of Spring or Autumn Equinox. This is because your location on earth will never be matched up with the "time zone" to the exact minute. Solar noon for Eastern Standard Time Maine will be far earlier than noon for Eastern Standard time Indiana. For that matter, solar noon for western Maine will be later than solar noon for Eastern Maine.

My point is we count hours for the sake of convenience, so that we can all plan things. The hours we count have some relation to the sun, but not an exact correspondence. This has been the case for about 700 years. Therefore Daylight Savings Time is really no big deal. It's just a way of adjusting a somewhat arbitrary system that is never in exact accord with nature to begin with.

***

But even making this case has been a struggle.

We live in strange times, whether Daylight or Standard.

Salisbury Cathedral, home of the world's first mechanical clock.

He who Cannot be Trusted in Big Things ...

Across the river from where I live, the neighboring diocese of Belleville, Illinois is a trend-setter.  They led the way with the sex abuse scandal in the Church long before the story broke nationally.

NCR reports about Fr. Kownacki, a diocesan priest from the Belleville diocese ...

Rev. Raymond Kownacki 

• In 1973, a 16-year-old girl, Gina Parks, contacted diocesan officials and claimed Kownacki, during a two-year period while he was pastor of a small parish in St. Francisville and later in a parish to which he was transferred in Washington Park, abused her sexually, had intercourse with her, even attempted to cause an abortion when she became pregnant. ... Parks said Kownacki gave her alcohol, promised to help her get into art school and assured her sex was OK because God "wanted people to love each other."

The bishop, knowing this, and knowing that Fr. Kownacki had molested a girl from Guatemala and that "twin boys from Guatemala were living in the Washington Park rectory and also involved sexually with Kownacki" transfers him to St. Theresa parish in Salem, and writes to the parishioners at St. Theresa's of Kownacki's "knowledge, piety, prudence, experience and general character".

• The diocese gathers evidence that while Kownacki is at St. Theresa's, he molests several boys, including an altar server who would later be awarded $5 million in compensation and punitive damages.

Knowing that Kownacki is molesting boys, the new bishop of Belleville nevertheless transfers Kownacki to Cobden, telling him, "I heartily commend you to all the people of the parish."  Even the chancellor of the diocese at the time, Msgr. Schwaegel, later admits, "everyone at the chancery knew Kownacki was sick and liked to molest children."  

• Kowancki is then transferred to Harrisburg, where "... parishioners complained that Kownacki was paying two boys $150 per week for doing 'absolutely nothing' and as many as five boys were having all-nighters at the rectory."

Six months later another new bishop (the third to have authority over this predatory priest) appoints him pastor of three small parishes.  "I am confident," he told Kownacki, "you will carry out your mission well in building up the Body of Christ."

• In 1986, parishioners complain that Kownacki has teen-aged boys living with him in the rectory. This time, Kownacki is removed and sent for treatment - thirteen years and dozens of victims after the first accusations surface (that we know of; there were almost certainly accusations before the first known one came to light).

Then in 1988, Bishop Keleher appoints Kownacki to take up residence at St. Henry parish in Belleville; the church has a grade school next door and nearby there is a Catholic high school. No restrictions are placed on his ministry or other activities.

The NCR article makes no mention of Bishop Keleher lauding Kownacki to St. Henry parishioners as a man of great piety.  This is probably because he was not being appointed pastor.  Apparently, "knowledge, piety, prudence, experience and general character" from the point of view of a bishop, a public representative of Christ, consist of actions that the rest of us would simply regard as despicably evil.

The NCR article links to the court documents from which they gather their facts.  I personally don't have the heart to read them.

Crud - Explained

My actors and I were once booked to perform at a Catholic Family Camp somewhere in the U.S.

It was one of the spookiest places I've ever been to.  The lack of maintenance was appalling - everything was leaking, badly in need of paint, dreary, run down - truly a Catholic Ghetto in the worst sense of the word.  The crew and counselors take vows of celibacy - lay camp counselors taking a vow of celibacy.  Doesn't that sound like fun?  Kind of like being castrated in order to work at McDonald's.

"We're not a cult," one of the staff told me when we got there.  "Every one in town thinks we're a cult, but we're not a cult!"

Before we performed, I was forced to sign a "rider" to our Theater of the Word contract that gave this camp the right to tape our performance and do with it what they wished - including broadcast it or put it on the internet - with no compensation or royalty to be paid to me.  This was presented to me backstage right as I was about to walk on by the woman in charge, who carried a walkie-talkie and communicated with the higher-ups in mysterious tones as she followed people around the camp.

They had big names booked to speak at this event - and lots of people in attendance.  But the facilities were worse than a meth lab Motel Six; clearly nothing had been done to keep this place up for twenty years or more.

And pictures of their foundress were all over the place - a woman with a bouffant hairdo, enshrined in every hallway.  More pictures of her than of the Blessed Mother.

Now, say what you will - something is amiss there.

And its symptom is Crud.

***

In the murder mystery dinner theater business, I have known more than one owner of a mystery company who was a convicted felon.

And some of my employees have been a bit troubled.  One guy, I later learned after I fired him, was telling every one of the actresses in my company that he was sleeping with all of the other actresses in my company.  He even got one of the actresses to lend him $300 and when he didn't pay her back, he told her it was my fault because I wasn't paying him.

Another actor, I later learned (again after firing him) would travel with marijuana in his socks if we flew him out of town.  He lived in a house that was filthy, and had a sham-ex-wife; which is to say, it was a divorce of convenience, so that the State of Missouri would pay the child support payments he welched out on - even though his wife and kids were still living with him - and even though he was working for money under the table and dodging warrants - it's just that the State didn't know that.

Another actor would vanish for three days at a time.  He would insist upon getting paid in cash, and then we wouldn't be able to get ahold of him for 72 hours or so.  When we would, we would wake him up - even if we called at 3:00 in the afternoon.  He once traveled in a car with another actor on a 3-hour one-way ride and wouldn't stop talking the whole way, driving his partner crazy.  "I shouldn't be alive," he once told me.  "I used to have a drug problem.  Once, while high, I somehow fell off a roof.  I shouldn't be alive.  But I've kicked the habit now," he said with pride.  After he told me this, I paid him in cash and he disappeared for three days.

***

In each of these cases, something is amiss.

When Fr. Wehmeyer parked a camper on the parish lot and the maintenance man saw little boys going in and out of that trailer with Father at various times, something was also amiss.

You can usually smell it.  It's the aroma of Crud.

And sometimes really bad art goes along with a disjointed brain.  I won't go into detail here, but I recently watched one of the most horrid things I've ever seen, which was trumpeted as "Catholic theater".  It made me want to become an atheist again.

It was as bad as the Catholic camp was in disrepair.  It was as poorly conceived and executed as some scum bag stealing money from actresses and blaming his boss for it.  It was as troubled as a camper on the parish parking lot.  It wasn't just bad, it was sinfully bad.  I mean that literally.

And, as one of my friends pointed out to me, the producer behind this fiasco has publicly made a very bizarre and patently false claim amounting to a kind of fraud.  The producer has made a "claim to fame" that's rather nuts, and that could easily be falsified - though apparently no one has bothered to do so yet.

But it fits.  It makes sense.

Because these things go together.  They are symptoms.

When there's smoke, there's fire, and when there's crud there's more where that came from.

Hipster Catholics and Eunuchs

These, I am told, are "hipsters" - and I feel a sudden desire to puke.

A friend and blog reader writes that he thinks one of the hallmarks of the new "Hipster Catholics" - by which he seems to mean the cool young crunchy "independent music" types who are more or less orthodox (unless a bit of heterodoxy suits them) and who are self-consciously and deliberately "counter cultural" and "independent" in a way that shows how seriously and deeply they really do identify with superficial things - that one of the hallmarks of "Hipster Catholics" is "lack of masculinity".  Some of them, he even implies, have an "apostolate", which means they sponge off others while engaging in "ministry".  This is kind of like living off Mom, Dad and student loans while getting your second B.A. in Art History at age 30.

He contrasts them with sober and mature men, who, whether lay or clergy, take responsibility for their own lives and families and finances and whose charity and friendships are more adult and realistic.  And who, unlike hipsters, really don't care how they dress.

But what the hell is a "hipster", anyway?  Until just now I had no idea what a "hipster" was, much less a "hipster" Catholic.

If they're anything like the characters described in glowing terms by this article, then let me state that - contrary to the universal call to Christian charity - I hate every single one of them.

And above all I hate this ... .

They form book clubs and meet in the back of the local open-mic cafe to chuckle over G.K. Chesterton – you wouldn’t understand.

To use Chesterton as a shibboleth for the "in crowd"?  Despicable.  Hang every one of them.  St. Gilbert would agree with me.  At least Belloc would.

***

Meanwhile, I've been Hip since Sammy Davis Jr. used to use that word.  And I've been Funky since before the Funk dried up.  And I've been both Intellectual and Anti-intellectual at the same time - and that's hard to pull off.

But I have never been a "hipster" (or a "eunuch" for that matter, even though I'm married).

I am, however, getting to the age where I may soon need "Hipster Replacement Surgery", and if that happens, I'll be sure to let you know.


ADDENDUM:  Lots of reaction to this post over on Facebook.  As I expected, the humor is offensive to some, especially to hipsters or to those who know and like hipsters.

"That came across as needlessly angry," was my favorite Facebook comment yet.  Of course it's needlessly angry - that's why it's funny.

So let me say, in seriousness - who cares if you're a "Hipster" or a "Boomer" or a "Neo-Cath" or a "Traddie"?  The point is to be an Integrated Catholic, not a Disintegrating One.  If some Hipster Catholics are superficial and let fashion trump Faith, some other types of Catholics let ideology trump Faith - and both are worthy of laughter and ridicule.

So, if the comments over here start to match some of the reaction over on Facebook, just keep in mind that the point of this is that Jesus Christ is more than just a fashion or an ideology, and following Him more than a choice equivalent to what sort of music you put on your phone or what political party you happen to support.

Another Facebook commenter said, "But all of that goes back to the old chestnut, real community. In its void you end up having these artificial excrescences." - and that, I think is really what I'm saying.

The Precision of Abuse - Liturgical and Otherwise

Yesterday, on the road again, my actress and I attended a Vigil Mass somewhere in America.  It was definitely America, though it may not have been a Mass.

The priest was a 70-something soft-spoken slow moving effeminate fellow, and the music was all the Bad Stuff, about a dozen of the worst "hymns" played over and over again on piano before Mass even started, kind of like an episode of The Twilight Zone where you're trapped in an elevator with horrible "muzak" and nobody else trapped with you seems to mind or even notice.

The priest assured us in the homily that when Moses lifted his arms and God's staff before the Israelites battling Amalek (Ex. 17:8-13), he was "giving them instructions on the battle," showing them where to attack and where to draw back, and so forth.  Far from being miraculous (which the text implies, the strength of Israel growing when the staff of God was raised and faltering when it was lowered), this was merely a natural event.  Moses' arms being held up in a cruciform manner by Aaron and Hur was not a foreshadowing of Christ (as I've heard) but just an example of people helping people, which is why we're all here at Mass.  Oh, and don't forget to pray.

He talked a lot about prayer, eviscerating the rather shocking parable of the Importunate Widow and domesticating it so that we all understood the message: "Pray.  And come to Mass to be with one another."

Then, when the Liturgy of the Eucharist began, he not only improvised the "Pray, brothers and sisters" part (#29 here), but made up something that was wildly and strangely unrelated to anything I'd ever heard from the altar.  No mention of "sacrifice" of course, but a totally ad-libbed thing that made no sense.  So I figured I'd better follow along in the missal.  And here's what I noticed.

His liturgical abuse was not accidental and merely an expression of a kind of misplaced enthusiasm, but it was, like the sexual abuse scandal in the Church, very deliberate, specific and precise.

For despite his homily's mundane emphasis on the need for prayer, every time the words "we pray" came up in the text, he deliberately skipped them.  Every time Jesus was called the Son, he refused to say "son" and either skipped the words or made up something of his own.  There were other patterns I noticed, and each was the result of a kind of careful forethought and deliberate planning: for he skipped only certain words and said only certain others.  This man was no simple fool, carried away with a kind of "Spirit of Vatican II" sense of innovation.  Soft spoken, harmless and dull as this priest seemed to be, he had an agenda and was exercising it.

Then we came to the words of consecration, almost nothing that came from his lips matched what was printed on the page.

He did manage to say "This is my body", and he said "This is the cup of my blood" (given up for all) - so I suppose this was indeed a Mass, but he improvised more surrounding the consecration than at any other point in the Mass.  And it was all "feel good" stuff, but again I was left wondering, "Why skip we pray or similar phrases?  Why object to the Son?"

***

Here James Kalb writes that we should be hopeful, realizing that our descent into cultural nihilism cannot last forever.  He notes (rightly) that

Man isn’t the measure, and ultimate reality comes first.

He encourages us to return to great writers and thinkers and to attain personal sanctity, and of course all of that is right.

But if a priest in a small town in rural America has been celebrating the Mass this way for forty years or more, without restraint or correction from his parishioners or from his bishops, and if a priest unopposed blithely but quite deliberately asserts his own queer but indefinable theology against the Church that sustains him, then what are we to think except

Man is the measure, and ultimate reality comes last.

There is an intent behind the things that are wrong in our Church and in our culture, and we are fools if we don't realize the deliberate and focused nature of what we are faced with.

Budding Clerics and Budding Clericalists?

From an article at Religion News Service, Mark Silk writes ...

A decade ago, I heard a Catholic lawyer who’d made a career of representing religious institutions in sex abuse cases describe the difference between reporting a wayward clergyman to a Methodist or Episcopal bishop versus “one of ours.” In the former case, he’d sit down in the Protestant leader’s living room, with the photos of children and grandchildren on the mantle, and the man’s sympathy would at once go to the abused. In the latter, the meeting would take place in a chancery conference room and the first words out of His Excellency’s mouth would be, “Poor Father.”

And a seminarian comments ...

Desmond Drummer

 Oct 15, 2013 at 5:16 pm

As a Catholic seminarian, I know well that the “poor father” (and “poor bishop”) syndrome is alive and well within the next generation of priests. It’s sad — VERY disturbing. Some seminarians feel that their pursuit of ordained ministry in the Catholic Church is some sort of culture war, a sort of resistance against all that is wrong with the world. With such a worldview, any press coverage of sexual abuse allegations and cover-ups becomes a “mainstream media attack on the Church.” At that point, even a bishop who has failed to abide by civil and canon law becomes a victim. In that they may sympathize with a given bishop’s effort in the so-called “culture war,” they automatically attribute reports of cover-up and negligence to an effort to undermine the credibility of said leader or the Church at large. Not a few seminarians have difficulty accepting the fact that their church leaders exhibit gross moral failure.

I lament that such problematic thinking goes unchecked.

I try to keep the topic of the ongoing sexual abuse scandals in the discussions I have on campus. Some seminarians simply cannot handle even talking about it because it exposes a shadow side of our Catholic clerical systems and structures.

I hate to say it, but if a Catholic seminarian is perceived as docile and pious, nobody checks what’s going on in his head in response to these and other critical issues. In my experience, it’s the pious/devotional guys who are completely unable to grapple with this reality and accept the facts as they are.

What the Hell is Going On? and Neil Diamond, Too

Not long ago I asked, "What would you do?" regarding a predator priest in the archdiocese of St. Paul, who had a long history of sexual misconduct with teen aged boys and who kept a camper on the parking lot of his parish, where he eventually molested two boys who were not yet teens.  Nobody told me what they would do, but Archbishop Nienstadt did nothing.  For this he was praised by conservative Catholics.

Well, there's another scandal in St. Paul, and you can read about it in detail at the Minnesota Public Radio site ... but let me summarize it for you.

• While a transitional deacon waiting to be ordained to the priesthood, Jon Shelley caught the attention of counselors at a retreat center, who noted that he had trouble keeping proper boundaries with boys, and "wrestled" with some of them in a swimming pool.

• After being ordained, Fr. Shelley allowed an 18-year-old boy to live in the rectory with him at one point.

• Thousands of gay pornographic images were discovered on Shelley's computer in 2004, some apparently of boys.

• Search terms such as "free naked boy pictures" were found on Shelley's computer.

• When the archdiocese learned of these photos and search terms, they asked Shelley to turn his two other personal computers over to them.  He refused, smashing one with a hammer.

• Shelley was sent to treatment, but kept in ministry.  Psychologists at the treatment center filed an official report on him that states, "Ample evidence exists for the possibility that Father Shelley has an ongoing problem with compulsive sexual behavior in his Internet pornography use."

• Many years later, Archbishop Nienstadt was considering assigning Shelley as pastor.  Nienstadt's chancellor for canonical affairs reviews Shelley's file and alerts Nienstadt, and even shows him images saved from Shelley's computer from eight years prior that were clearly child pornography.  Nienstadt drags his feet on the matter for over a year.

• The chancellor alerts police.  Police show up and request the CDs of the images.  Chancery officials refuse to provide them immediately, stalling for 24 hours.  They eventually provide some sort of CDs that contain no child porn.  The investigator notes, "Whether these discs given to me were the actual discs or copies of those discs after first asking for them, I do not know nor will I most likely ever know,"

• Fr. Shelley - the aficionado of gay child porn - meanwhile, writes a pissy letter to - get this - Neil Diamond - complaining that Neil Diamond's guitarist had accused him (Fr. Shelley) of "indiscretions with young boys."  Shelley is so upset that he threatens Neil Diamond that he'll never take his mother to a Neil Diamond concert again.  [I am not making this up]

• When the "Delegate for a Safe Environment" views this letter, he comments that Shelley "did not incriminate himself."

***

Please keep two things in mind.  Whether you can make a strained case (as Bill Donohue obviously will) that the archbishop is blameless from a narrow legalistic point of view, ask yourself when it comes to Fr. Shelley (as Rod Dreher does), "Who wants to take anything a cretin like that says about Jesus seriously?"

And read this poem, written by a victim of sexual abuse inflicted by a priest, and ask yourself if any decent person in his right mind would risk exposing an innocent child to this, regardless of how narrowly rules and regulations can be interpreted ... 

The darkness is nothing new to me.
It sometimes lightens,
as if there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
But always, always it returns.
A tweak in the medicine here. A new way of thinking there.
A new way of facing God or dealing with spiritually.

Suicide is always knocking at my door
Beckoning me to experience relief
From the pain no one else can
I fight it.
Sometimes better than others.

The impulse to run is there.
Run where?
Don't know.
Away. Alone.
Free from pain. But it will follow.

Why do I have the honor of this pain?
Is God calling me to something more
Of which I am unable to grasp?
I feel alone on an island.
Without human help.
Without godly help.
Nothing works.

I just want to sleep.  Forever.

Witness and Belief

Rod Dreher  brings up some current sex scandals in the Church, some of which I've written about recently on this blog.

One involves Fr. Riedlinger in New Jersey.  Riedlinger was a favorite of Msgr. Rossi, who is the rector of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC - enough of a favorite that Riedlinger claimed he would "vacation" with Rossi (who is a much older man).  Riedlinger would be introduced by Rossi to young seminarians, and Riedlinger would then proceed to hit on these guys and turn the talk around to gay sex.  Some of the young seminarians would complain about this, and their complaints would go unheeded.

Eventually, two of them instituted a "sting" operation against Riedlinger.  Timothy Schmalz and his roommate Ryan posed as a 16-year-old boy on Facebook, and "friended" Fr. Riedlinger, who soon turned the conversation toward sex.

The messages show Riedlinger needed little or no invitation to steer the conversation to sex. He spoke of past encounters and the size of his penis, encouraged Josh to enjoy sex with his boyfriend and repeatedly told him how alike they were in their thirst for pornography and sex.

“I love u dude. Ur a sick (expletive) like me,” Riedlinger wrote.

Riedlinger occasionally sent a message saying he was near Newton, suggesting a get-together. On those occasions, Schmalz declined to respond and made up an excuse later.

The conversations culminated in a graphic, six-hour texting session in the early morning hours of Aug. 3, 2012. The next day, Riedlinger asked to do it again.

Schmalz and his roommate cut off contact two days later and forwarded the transcript and other materials to [Trenton Bishop David] O’Connell [Riedlinger's ordinary].

On Aug. 7, the bishop wrote back, thanking them for the documents and saying he had personally escorted Riedlinger to a hospital for in-patient treatment. The diocese, citing federal health law, declined to say where Riedlinger was treated or how long he remained in the facility.

Schmalz and Ryan said they continued to press the diocese to notify parishioners at St. Aloysius [the parish where Riedlinger had been assigned], saying they worried Riedlinger might have spoken to other teens the way he spoke to them.

Two months ago, the diocese’s victim assistance coordinator, Maureen Fitzsimmons, flatly told Ryan in an e-mail that O’Connell would not do so, according to a copy of the correspondence.

Riedlinger, not so incidentally, was teaching sex ed to middle school students at St. Aloysisus.  He would often brag to Schmalz and Ryan that the boys he was teaching were "phyiscally mature", some even having "facial hair".  "It raised alarm bells," noted Ryan.

***

Dear readers, I can understand sexual crimes and perversions.  I really can.  Many abusers were abused themselves as children, and if there's anything all of us should be humble about, it's the trouble our gonads can get us into.  Few of us can throw stones at someone who behaves in a sick or reckless way sexually. Yes, child abuse is over the line, and horrific.  But there is something worse.

And that is not the sin of the flesh - awful as it is; but the sin of pride, the spiritual sin of those who cover up this stuff, who place kids in harm's way, and who smugly defend their own actions by attacking not only whistle blowers, but also normal people who want this nonsense to end.

Case in point: the way the pastor at Fr. Riedlinger's church handled the situation.  Instead of telling the parishioners that Fr. Riedlinger was trying to have sexual contact with someone he thought was a 16-year-old boy, and letting his flock know that the middle school sex ed students might have been victimized by a priest who liked to talk to 16-year-olds about the size of his penis and who brags about being a "sick (expletive)", Pastor Kevin Keelan ...

chastised parishioners for asking questions about Riedlinger’s removal, saying in the church bulletin that "blabbing" was a sin and that they were not entitled to more information.

Now, friends, if I were to doubt the story in the Star Ledger about Fr. Riedlinger, the sting, Bishop O'Connell, etc. - that one sentence would convince me the whole thing were true.

That kind of moral bullying (used more typically by female Catholic parochial school principals than by pastors) is so completely characteristic of what happens in the day-to-day operations of the Catholic Church that it confirms the whole scenario.  This is exactly how authority figures act in the Catholic Church and this is exactly why so many people are losing their faith.

Rod Dreher writes (my emphasis) ...

The knowledge that he has been sexting with what he thought was a teenage boy about his penis and such does not render the ordination of Fr. Riedlinger invalid, nor the sacraments he confects. This is true, and an extremely important truth to hold onto, because it protects the integrity of the holy sacraments. But honestly, in terms of spiritual authority, who wants to take anything a cretin like that says about Jesus seriously? In terms of authority, every word coming out of his mouth is suspect. Similarly, when Archbishop Nienstedt troubles to teach his flock about holiness, what kind of credibility will he have, if it is established that he buried the evidence of a child-porn priest, and misled police investigators? And: Bishop Finn.

In the future, the kind of bishops and priests who rebuild confidence in the Church’s spiritual authority — and I’m not just talking about the Catholic Church, but all churches — will be the kinds of bishops and priests who testify to the truth of Christianity by the integrity of their lives. 

***

And so, fellow sinners, we can't change our bishops or our priests.

But we can change ourselves.

We can make reparations for the sins of these men - and we can "testify to the truth of Christianity by the integrity" of our OWN lives.

I, for one, have not been very good at that.  I suspect that neither have you.

Let us pray for one another, and let us realize that even though personal sanctity is hard to achieve, one thing is within our grasp.

Basic human decency.

Let's begin with that.  And let's pray our priests and our bishops do, too.

Blank Checks vs. Reality Checks

You would think that if we really were able to get exactly what we wanted, we would be happy.  But that is hardly the case.  Precisely and exactly the opposite is the case.

***

On Tuesday I posted about what I consider the primary symptom of life without God - Unreality.

We can live unreal lives in a number of ways, but sooner or later we get checked.  And even when the check is not sudden or dramatic, God's Reality (which I call Judgment) has a way of checking our Unrealities little by little every day.  This "reality check" consists not so much of us "checking in" with Reality, but with Reality "checking" us, in the sense of a body slam that halts our progress.  And when Reality can't intervene and check us, we suffer.  I have known a few extremely wealthy people, and the worst thing their money does is shield them (and especially their children) from the consequences of bad behavior.  You might say that Blank Checks can ward off Reality Checks.

And the same principle applies to groups - if we get what we want as a society - without the intervention of Reality - we become miserable, cruel and unhappy.

And the greater the Unreality, the bigger the Hell.

***

Perhaps the most tangible portrayal of hell in all of literature is George Orwell's 1984.  Orwell's hell is a hell on earth, and it shows exactly what happens when this principle is carried out in society - the principle that devotion to Unreality makes us miserable and keeps us from anything resembling the Kingdom of God.

Orwell's dystopia is a culture that is devoted to Unreality.  It is a satanic society, the one aim of which is power, for the purpose of becoming God and of destroying man.

"We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable,"

says O'Brien, the Inner Party member, who is in the process of torturing Winston Smith.

How is this philosophy different from what almost everybody believes today?  We believe in "gay marriage" and trans-sexuals and the harmlessness of sexual license because we believe there is nothing called "human nature".  "We create human nature.  Men are infinitely malleable."  There is nothing objective about who we are or why we were made.  There is no design.  There is no form.  There is only one thing blending into another, for there is no "thing" there, distinct from any "thing" else.  We believe in nothing, and in our power to mold the Unreality of life into the False Reality that suits us.  We are gods, sad little gods in a sad little universe that just happened along by chance and the only thing we can do is indulge our appetites, and there's surely no harm in that, as long as we change our own protean forms to suit the demands of our will, our will that grows ever more perverse and hateful.

And we think we can do it.  We think we can alter Reality itself.

And we think it will make us happy.  But the more we get what we want, the more what we want turns vile, perverted, cruel and angry.  Indulgence leads to spoiled children, and spoiled children are miserable.

'And do you consider yourself a man?'

'Yes.'

'If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors.'

O'Brien the tormentor proves to Winston that he is the last man by stripping him and leading him to a mirror, where Winston Smith sees the effects of months of torture and starvation - he looks like one of the ghost-like figures from Auschwitz.  His hair is falling out.  He is emaciated.  He is filthy.  His teeth are rotting.  The torturer reaches in and yanks out a loose tooth.

'Now turn around and look into that mirror again. Do you see that thing facing you? That is the last man. If you are human, that is humanity. Now put your clothes on again.'

This is Orwell's version of the Ecco Homo - "Behold the Man" or better ... "Behold Man!"

This is who we really are, at least when we "follow our bliss" and our bliss comes from Unreality and not from Him who is the source of all Reality.  We are tortured, starved and robbed of love and compassion.  Worse than that, we are the torturers, the manipulators, the tormentors.

This is what Christ showed us when Pilate brought him out bleeding and bruised and mocked and scourged.  This is Man - both the starved and tortured man being held up to ridicule and death, and the well-fed authority figure who is putting him through this.  This is man given his own way, bereft of the Way the Truth and the Life: he is a pitiless victim and a heartless victimizer.  He is an aborted fetus and an abortionist pocketing the cash for the killing.  He is a boy whose life is forever scarred by what the priest did to him in the sacristy and he is the same priest offering Mass and telling his parishioners what a great sin it is to spread rumors about him.  He is Winston Smith, destroyed by a mad society hellbent on eradicating Reality, and he is O'Brien, the dehumanized "new man" who is placidly torturing him.

He is Christ crucified.  And he is Pontius Pilate, crucifying Christ and washing his hands of the deed at the same time.

This is man, when man devotes his life to his own selfish desires, when man loves sin, when man loves what is Unreal.

Behold - man!