The Magical Thinking of Devout Catholics

There was a potential murder mystery client that I was hoping to land.  He had worked with every other murder mystery company around, and at that time there were three or four others in St. Louis.  They all told me the same thing, "The man is impossible to work for."  None of them lasted more than a few years performing at his venue.

"But I can do it!" I said to myself.  "They can't work with him, but I can work with him!  After all, I'm more intelligent and sensitive than they are.  I do well with difficult people.  I'll win him over, get him to like me.  I can succeed where all others failed!"

We lasted three months.  He was a monster.

The Right Wing Continues Rallying Around the Wrong People

Edward Pentin, Rome correspondent for the National Catholic Register

It pains me to point out that National Catholic Register, once a fairly solid and trustworthy publication, has become the only mainstream journal (to my knowledge) to buy into the trad hysteria over the removal of one of the worst bishops in the world.

Backstage Bar Fight

I continue to celebrate, in my own quiet way, 25 years of performing murder mystery dinner theater shows.

This is from an email I wrote to a former actress in January of 2006

***

Tonight my actress Linda and I had two shows at a winery in Nashville, Illinois.  The winery only seats fifty people, so I talked them into doing two shows - a 5 pm show and an 8 pm show.  I am hiring a new guy and we had him meet us at the winery to see the early show.

Well, the early show was magical, just a blast.  The guy was very impressed and really wants to work for me.  "Do they always go this well?" he asked.  "Oh, this is pretty typical," we answered, which is true.  "Do you ever have problems with drunks?" he asked.  "Not that we can't control," we replied - also true.

Then he left (between shows) and I turned to Linda and said, "I think we've got this small-venue problem solved.  For wineries that can only seat fifty, we'll just do two shows a night like this, and we'll do just as well as we do at the wineries that seat 100."

Well, since God has a sense of humor and corrects all forms of hubris, especially backstage hubris, the second show was a disaster!  In 17 years of doing these, this was the drunkest crowd I've ever performed for.  We found out later that most of the town of Nashville came, and that they had all been at each other's houses drinking before the show started.  Rough raw rednecks out of their minds on booze.  By the end of the Act Two (after cutting all kinds of stuff and screaming at the top of our lungs, without much effect), one of the drunks got mad at the neighboring table, stood up and picked up an empty wine bottle to throw at them.  I was standing atop a chair as Neddy, with my propeller beanie on, not in any position to stop him, so Linda simply took the bottle away from him and calmed him down.  We quickly finished the show, and made a hasty exit to our dressing area, which was behind a partition in the corner of the room.  While behind this partition we kept hearing the tables yelling, "F*** you!" to each other, and Linda says,

"I've been in bar fights.  We don't want to stay here.  Just gather your stuff and get out!  If the bottles start flying, people are going to come back here to hide, and there will be no way out."

So we start throwing things into the suitcases and garment bags, I leave my costume on and throw my coat on over it, and we zip out through the crowd (who gives us a round of applause) and make it for the front door of the winery.  I'm not even worried about getting the check at this point, so you know we were desperate to get out.  But after this unmitigated disaster (we did only about four pages of a ten page script, cutting wildly, having no control over the audience, having absolute chaos and pandemonium around us), people kept stopping us on our way to the door saying, "That was great!  You guys are fantastic!  We'll be back again!"

Anyway, that's show biz.

The Vatican to Catholics: Don't Get Your Hopes Up

Bishop Livieres, looking like a kindly Lex Luthor.

Below is the press release from SNAP on the Bishop Livieres issue.  

It had appeared as if Livieres had been the first and only bishop removed from office since the Sex Scandal broke over ten years ago.  And even though his case was particularly egregious - making an accused child molester his vicar general, even after being warned by other bishops that the man was a danger to others, and then lashing out against the Vatican publicly - still this appeared to be good news.  It appeared as if Pope Francis was setting the bar very low, but at least he was setting the bar.  After all, if you won't sack a bishop for making an accused child molester and scam artist his vicar general and allowing him continued access to boys, then how serious are you about reforming the very worst element in the Church?

And indeed for the first time since the crisis, the Vatican seemed to be getting serious about the problem, forcing into "house arrest" an archbishop and former Vatican envoy who is reported to have been molesting boys in the Dominican Republic and who was discovered to have over 100,000 pornographic images of children on his computer.

But now the Vatican makes it a point to slap some cold water in our faces.  

Bishop Livieres has NOT been removed for enabling and promoting an accused child molester and scam artist, but for other reasons that apparently the Vatican regards as none of our business, allowing Livieres to spread the story that it's all a right vs. left power struggle.

This is disheartening.  I had written last week that the forces of corruption can only oppose the Spirit of God with an "arm of flesh", and that remains true.  But this same Spirit of God seems quite emphatic here.  We are not to put our hopes in mere men - including our popes and bishops.  Indeed, it seems, we are not even to trust them.

***

For immediate release: Sunday, Sept. 28

Statement by David Clohessy of St. Louis, Director of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (314 566 9790, SNAPclohessy@aol.com, davidgclohessy@gmail.com)

Vatican officials now deny that a controversial bishop in Paraguay was ousted because he hired and promoted a credibly accused abusive cleric who faced allegations of sexual misdeeds in Argentina, Minnesota and Pennsylvania. (He is Fr. Carlos Urruigoity.)

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1404005.htm   

That's basically what we said several days ago:

http://www.snapnetwork.org/rome_evidence_suggests_bishop_not_ousted_due_to_abuse

http://www.snapnetwork.org/intl_paraguay_bishop_ousted_snap_responds

So many people so desperately want to believe that Francis is really addressing the church's continuing abuse and cover up crisis that they interpret his words about the scandal in the most favorable light possible and then allow themselves to feel comfortable and complacent instead of skeptical and vigilant. It's a real shame.

We endanger kids and insult victims when we leap to the most rosy conclusions possible about Catholic officials and their handling of this on-going crisis. Let's give the benefit of the doubt to innocent kids, wounded victims and betrayed Catholics, not to one more popular and powerful Catholic official.

Even now, after decades of horrific disclosures about the complicity of the church hierarchy in child sex crimes, many of us find it hard to accept that a seemingly wonderful priest can molest kids or that a seemingly wonderful bishop can protect predators. And we evidently find it hard to accept that a seemingly wonderful pontiff can continue doing very little to reverse centuries of recklessness, deceit and secrecy with clergy sex crimes and cover ups.

Pope Francis Does the Right Thing

The Buenos Aires Herald reports ...

Pope sacks Paraguayan bishop accused of protecting abuser priest

Pope Francis has dismissed a conservative Paraguayan bishop who was accused of protecting a priest suspected of sexually abusing young people in the United States, the Vatican said today.

The Argentinian-born pontiff has vowed zero tolerance against Roman Catholic clerics who sexually abuse minors after a series of scandals hit the Church in a number of countries around the world over many years. Last May, Francis called such abuse an "ugly crime" and likened it to "a Satanic mass".

A statement said the pope had removed Bishop Rogelio Ricardo Livieres Plano from his post as head of the diocese of Ciudad del Este and named another bishop to run it as an administrator for the time being.

The pope's sacking of the bishop came after a Vatican investigation of the bishop, the diocese and its seminaries, said the statement, which gave no details.

Vatican sources said the bishop had refused to resign following the investigation of the accusations and reports of irregularities in his diocese.

According to reports in Catholic media while the Vatican investigation was in progress, Livieres Plano had promoted a priest in his diocese who had been accused of sexual abuse while serving in the United States.

A US bishop had told Paraguayan Church officials that the priest, an Argentinian national who had been promoted to a senior position in the Paraguayan diocese by Livieres Plano, was a "serious threat to young people", according to the reports.

Livieres Plano had defended both himself and the priest, saying the charges against them were unfounded.

The dismissed bishop, a member of the conservative Roman Catholic group Opus Dei, had also become a polarising figure in the Paraguayan Church and often clashed with more progressive clerics.

The Vatican said Pope Francis had taken the "onerous decision" to remove Livieres Plano after careful examination of the results of the Vatican investigation. He has previously said bishops who covered up abuse would be held accountable.

The dismissal of Paraguayan bishop came two days after the pope approved the arrest in the Vatican of a former archbishop accused of paying for sex with children while he was a papal ambassador in the Dominican Republic.

This is huge.  The priest in question, Fr. Urrutigoity, if reports about him are true, is one of the most dangerous men in the Church, and something seemed to be rotten indeed in Ciudad del Este.

I'm wondering if Opus Dei (itself a compromised organization) will have the chutzpah to try to spin this in Bishop Livieres' favor.   Will the right wing of the Church and the Rad Trads paint this as the persecution of a conservative bishop by a liberal pope?  Will blowhard Bill Donohue, who is paid an obscene salary to lie about disgraced "conservative" heroes like Bishop Finn and Maciel, jump to Livieres' defense?  Or will people realize that this is not only the right move by Pope Francis, but a brave and bold one?

It's sad that these days simply doing the right thing in the Church appears brave and bold.  But until enablers and liars in the episcopacy are sacked, the Scandal will continue.

This much at least we know.  Livieres himself will go on the attack, as he did after the Vatican suspended ordinations in his diocese.  And the money and power behind Urrutigoity will rally to defend him or at least to hide him for the time being.

But at least, every once in a while, someone in the Church does the right thing.  This time it was the Pope.

Dialogue with Spam

Blogger filters out a ton of spam comments from my comboxes.

Here's a fun one that invites a dialogue ...

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I reply,

Dear Spammer,

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You might want to look other articles.

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Russian Porn Viagra Weblog Awesome

US Bishops to Catholics: "We Wear the Mitres, You Wear the Dunce Caps"

Today is the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, in my opinion the most beautiful of Marian feasts.

In today's Mass, there is an optional sequence to be sung or prayed.  It is the Stabat Mater, a 13th century hymn, whose stanzas are made up of rhyming couplets followed by a third line that rhymes with the next stanza's third line: AAB, CCB - like so ...

At the Cross her station keeping,

Stood the mournful Mother weeping,

Close to her Son to the last.

Through her heart, His sorrow sharing,

All His bitter anguish bearing,

Now at length the sword has passed.

This is from the 19th century translation by Edward Caswall of the original Latin hymn.

But in the official version of Caswall's translation, the United States Council of Catholic Bishops have placed on their website some very odd changes, such as this ...

Let me mingle tears with you,

Mourning him who mourned for me,

All the days that I may live.

What the hell???  The official version on the website (and I assume in the Missals) includes only 16 of the 20 stanzas, which is strange - but far stranger are stanzas like this in which nothing rhymes with anything and which throws the whole hymn off.

... until you realize that this is done for our benefit because we're just so flipping stupid.  Because Caswall's translation of the above stanza rhymes, and it runs like this ...

Let me mingle tears with thee,

mourning Him who mourned for me,

all the days that I may live.

Oh!  That's it!  Since we're too ignorant and moronic to know that Thee means You, the bishops take care of that for us by destroying the rhyme and pretty much ruining the hymn.

Of course we don't know that Thine means Yours either, so they take care of that for us, too ...

Virgin of all virgins blest!

Listen to my fond request:

Let me share your grief divine.

Let me to my latest breath,

In my body bear the death

Of that dying Son of yours.

Our Lady of Sorrows?  More like Our Lady of Annoyance.

  

The Attitude Behind the Scandal

Rabbi David Kaye, from To Catch a Predator

There's an episode of To Catch a Predator, the reality show in which men try to have sex with underage boys and girls, and are then recorded in a confrontation with the show's host who reveals that they've been caught on video and that the whole set up is a law enforcement sting - there's an episode where a Jewish Rabbi "essentially tried to rape a 13-year-old boy" and is caught red handed.

Though clearly guilty, the rabbi blames the show's host and pulls a "how dare you suggest such a terrible thing about me!  I'm a religious leader!" pose.  The rabbi's attitude is exactly the sort of thing you see from people who not only abuse positions of power, but who feel entitled to positions of power.  I've been dealing with it in the Catholic Church, sometimes on a personal level, for all of my 14 years as a Catholic.

In fact, a prominent bishop whose history shows a repeated tendency to lie in order to save face and whose record with regard to sexually abusive clergy is filled with shameful displays of half-truths and cowardice, and who's particularly famous for protecting his favorites at all costs, pulls exactly this haughty "how dare you!" attitude when his lofty status is called into question.  He even went so far recently as to claim he has a "stellar" record in handling cases of clerical abuse of minors - which he demonstrably doesn't, and hasn't for more than thirty years.  But how dare we question it!

I mention all of this because I think it gets to the heart of why we allow abuse.

If you think about it, it's not so surprising that there are predators out there who prey upon helpless victims.  Like all evil, we know that that sort of thing is always among us, and we know it's always an aberration.  We live in a world where Goodness is normal (thank God) and where such acts, though always present statistically in any group and always present perhaps as temptations in every heart, are rare.  So to learn that respected figures such as priests or college football coaches or entertainment celebrities are capable of such things is really not what this scandal is made of.

What's closer to the core of this is the systematic flaw, the corruption of an entire system, which serves to protect abusers and thereby to enable abuse.  The best example of this in the Catholic Church is the Legion of Christ, an organization deliberately designed to enable and protect the hellish acts of its founder, an organization which is systematically compromised at a core level.  

But more than that.  We all know how rotten systems can get, from the police department of Ferguson, Missouri to the Federal Government of the United States.  It's not even, then, systematic corruption that enables this evil - for systems are simply constructs of individual people.

What's much closer to the core here is this attitude - this attitude that is simply a manifestation of the deadliest of all sins - pride.  The how dare you! attitude.  The Rabbi Caught with His Pants Down attitude.

***

We see this attitude in action in a story that Rod Dreher relates today, a story that's ten years old and still being told.  Dreher refers to his actions in 2004 when he broke a story about a priest in his own parish who was accused of abusing a teenage boy, but who had managed to avoid the consequences of his accusation by flouting Church law.

Interestingly, this priest (Fr. Clay) was associated with the (reportedly) erstwhile cult leader, financial huckster and alleged child abuser Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity.  There are conflicting reports still up on the internet about the details behind the Fr. Clay story, but this seems to be what happened.

Fr. Christopher Clay was a diocesan priest incardinated in the diocese of Scranton, PA, whose ordinary in 2002 was Bishop Timlin.  Clay was one of three priests accused at that time of raping a teenage male victim - Fr. Urrutigoity and one of his associates being the other two men accused.  Timlin removed Clay from ministry and Clay moved to Texas "where he attempted to recover from the stress of his encounter with the District Attorney’s office in Pennsylvania" (in the words of Randy Engel).

In Arlington, Clay approached his friend Fr. Allan Hawkins of St. Mary the Virgin church, who allowed Clay to function as a priest at the parish.

Now there is some confusion as to whether Clay had been, at the time, "suspended" in Scranton by Timlin, that is, stripped of his faculties and barred from publicly saying Mass or administering any of the other sacraments.  What is clear is that Clay was not excardinated from the diocese of Scranton and incardinated into the diocese of Fort Worth - which amounts to the same thing.  Clay was not allowed to present himself as a functioning priest in Fort Worth, per Canon Law.

This may sound nit-picky, but even Wikipedia can explain incardination ...

The purpose of incardination is to ensure that no cleric, whether deacon or priest, is "freelance", without a clear ecclesiastical superior to whom he is responsible.

When Clay's friend Fr. Hawkins in Arlington approached Bishop Timlin of Scranton privately to ask if Timlin would object to Clay's functioning as a priest at St. Mary the Virgin, he was flouting the rules and subverting Canon Law.  This is why the chancellor of Scranton (the chancellor!) was surprised to learn that Clay was saying Mass in Texas.  

James Early, chancellor of the Scranton Diocese, said Father Clay had told him he had a job in Texas reviewing medical insurance claims.

"He should not be functioning in any capacity as a priest," Mr. Early said.

But eight full years after this all broke, the diocese of Scranton (now under the leadership of a new bishop) ...

... states it has learned that Father Clay has continued to present himself as a priest and dress in clerical garb.  Specifically, the Diocese has been advised that Fr. Clay attended Mass in the Diocese of Fort Worth, where he now resides, dressed in cassock, surplus and stole. The Diocese also relates that Fr.Clay has involved himself in the training of altar servers in Fort Worth and buying them gifts, without the knowledge of the pastor involved, and that the Bishop of Fort Worth has now issued a precept barring Fr. Clay from entering upon the grounds of any parish in the Diocese of Fort Worth. Fr. Clay has now been suspended by the Bishop of Scranton following Fr. Clay’s failure to follow his Bishop’s direction to return to the Diocese of Scranton.  

So Fr. Clay is what you might call a "piece of work".  And very much in the mold of Urrutigoity and his crew, whose own story parallels Clay's in many ways, except it involves a wild area in Paraguay and a diocese that seems to have some very serious problems.

And yet ... how did Fr. Hawkins, the pastor of St. Mary the Virgin, respond back in 2004 when this story broke?  The same Fr. Hawkins who skirted Church law - and a crucial element of Church law - by not approaching his own bishop to incardinate Fr. Clay?  The same Fr. Hawkins who entered into an under the table deal with the bishop of Scranton, a bishop who also flouted Church law and kept things so quiet that he didn't even inform his own chancellor about the matter?  How did Hawkins respond when the truth came out?

Hawkins pulled the Rabbi Caught with His Pants Down move (see above).

How dare you!  This man is a holy priest!  A friend of mine!  Rod Dreher, the journalist who made this mess, is not even an official parishioner here!  What a terrible thing gossip is!  Pray for this good and maligned Father Clay, who may or may not have raped a drunken teenage boy, but who was affiliated with a fraudulent religious order, whose leader shows every sign of being a serial predator and cult-leader in the making, and whose bishop, like me, doesn't even follow basic Canon Law.  Oh, how the righteous suffer!

I'm paraphrasing and parodying, of course, and you have to read between the lines, but anyone who's been on the receiving end of this tone, of this attitude, of this pride, knows this act very well.

Especially the host of To Catch a Predator - who gets it all the time.

When Your Mission Statement is Soaked in Sex

One of my Facebook friends can't quite understand why I think this paragraph from the Mission Statement (such as it is) of the so-called Culture Project is drenched with sex (called "chastity" on the Project's impossible to load website) ...

"The experience was the same, though in different forms, textures, and places around the world. It was savoring a glass of red wine under the New York City skyline or trekking through the paths of the Pocono mountains; it was sitting in an old church or walking along the oceanside; it was reciting poetry or crafting a piece of music or falling in love; it was the personal experience of pressing against reality and finding deep questions and longings aroused. Among the raw questions and desires, one thing remained certain – they had fallen in love with something greater than themselves."

Perhaps if I changed some of the phrasing into pick-up lines it might help.

• Hey, beautiful, I'd like to press against your reality.
• I find that you have aroused a deep question within me.
• Let's drink some red wine and hike the Poconos (and I do mean poke - but I don't mean nose)
• Both my questions and my desires are raw, baby.  Rawwwwwwrrrr.

Thomas L'anneaux (the worlds only Chesterton fan who is also a psychiatrist living in Hawaii) comments upon this strange projection of sexual desire without sexual fulfillment into all aspects of life ...

You know how the Yogis are always smiling on their bed of nails? 

It's curious how the very people who talk about transfiguring the instincts, have a very happy-go-lucky way of flattening them. 

I think you're on to something Kevin, and I'm sure that St. Paul didn't try to turn the "if you burn with passion" into some kind of mysticism.  [My note: see 1 Cor. 7:9)

"The modern world has a curious way of both encouraging the appetites, and crushing the instincts." - GKC

Thomas admits he's paraphrasing that last quotation, which he drew from memory.  The actual quotation is ...

For this is a strange epoch; and while, in some ways, we have quite dangerously encouraged the appetites, we have quite ruthlessly crushed the instincts. 

That's because appetite without instinct is a kind of lust without common sense; it's desire without the simple end for which desire was made.

Deny the simple thing that sexual desire is for (which is not just sexual union, but more fully the establishing and supporting of a family, making babies, living out romantic love in very unromantic ways) and that very sexual desire soaks every thing in sex, including your Mission Statement.

***

Meanwhile, I have written a Mission Statement for this blog.  Tell me what you think ...

Through the various eclectic experiences of life, a life lived with passion, the passion that wells up deep within us as we gaze heavenward on a starry night and see (glass of sherry in hand) the Milky Way spread like a semen stain across the cosmos, we find (don't we?) the rawness of the longing, the grand climax of human existence, which is - as we are all too well aware on those nights we've Skyped and your eyes glisten with that desire to go beyond the mere platonic embrace of two minds tumbling together in nakedness as one - the deep answers to our rawest interior burning: we find God himself; or something very much like him (don't we?) ... what's your name again?

Comparing God's Grace to a Kidney Transplant

This picture actually has to do with the story and it not merely gratuitous.  Read on!

This is a true story told to my actress and me by one of our friends on the road last week.  I have changed the names to protect the innocent, and also because I don't remember the actual names, anyway.

Larry was married to Ruth, and one day Larry found out that he needed a new kidney or he'd die.  Ruth prevailed upon her brother Steve, who agreed to donate one of his good kidneys to Larry.

Larry received his brother-in-law's good kidney, and it saved his life. 

But Larry started having an affair with the recovery room nurse from the hospital where he received his transplant.  Within two weeks, Larry moved out and dumped his wife, whose brother had just saved his life.

The brother-in-law and the wife sued Larry, claiming that there was an implied contract involved, and that the implication at a minimum was that Larry would be faithful to his wife and stay with her - since, after all, without the wife's efforts and the brother-in-law's kidney, Larry would simply be dead.

Larry argued that it's not legal in this country to sell body parts, and that Steve's kidney was donated as a gift, and that therefore there was no contract, implied or express - for it would have been a violation of law had there been.

Larry won.

And I thought, there's a deep lesson in theology behind this.

Love is always a grace.  All God's gifts to as are gratuitous, unearned, unmerited.  We are saved by grace thorough faith, which works through love.  The heart of our existence and of our salvation is grace - a free gift.  That's the origin of it and that's the core of it.

Technically, then, there is no implied contract - for the nature of a gift requires no payment and exacts no reciprocation; and grace is always given freely; otherwise it's not grace, but a barter, a contract, a transaction.  And grace (like love) transcends all of that.

And yet any normal human being is revolted by Larry and by what he did.  We know that, while he's right technically and from a legal standpoint, he is utterly wrong morally.  He's right, but he ain't good.

For there is a reciprocation to grace that is fitting.  It's called gratitude, saying "thank you" to God and to our neighbors.  This is done through wonder, prayer, upright moral living, even suffering and sacrifice.  It's not done by running off with the nurse you met in the recovery room (even if she looks like the gal in the picture above).  It's not done by sticking with your own narrow sins and constricted agendas, despite what God has given you.  It's not done by shutting yourself off from God's grace and from the response it doesn't demand from you, but that it ought to elicit from you all the same.

And if any of you are like me or my actors, who tend to love unwisely, and who tend to give and give and give without getting anything back, realize that reciprocity is at the heart of our response to God and to our response to others and their response to us.  Love is not a business transaction, but it only bears fruit if it involves a give and take - given and taken out of sheer grateful delight.


In brief, the response to a good kidney is to be a good liver.

The Church's Style of Management

If atheists are right, and there is no God, then let's burn down all the churches, for they're all monuments to lies.  If Catholics are right, and there is a God and He is who He says He is, then when He says, "Know the truth, and the truth shall set you free" (John 8:32) we'd better realize He means it.  That much, at least, Catholics should have in common with atheists: a devotion to the Truth.

But if we are too scared to be loyal to what is True, then we will also fail in being faithful to what is Beautiful and what is Good.  The prince of Lies and the God of Truth don't really mix that well.

I write a lot about Unreality on this blog, by which I mean a religious attitude that is divorced from the reality of life.  Unreality is a form of idolatry, of using the things of God for your own small-minded purposes, of leaning on the Church to support your tottering house of cards, of being contrived and artificial, of adopting airs and affectations, of making the worship of God not about understanding and serving the Truth (troubling though the Truth may be), but about shoring up your own deliberately narrowed and circumscribed agenda.  It is the main temptation facing devout Christians of all stripes.

And here's how Unreality works in practice.  

Fr. LaVann

Now, I'm not about to tell this story to shock you with the truly disturbing parts of it - the fact that a man who by all appearances was a seriously dangerous priest (Fr. LaVan) was allowed access to victims by the archdiocese of St. Paul for many years, even up until last December.

In all, LaVan was accused of sexually abusing at least three girls and several women, including one who suffered from a brain injury and was under psychiatric care at the time of the abuse. 

Fr. LaVan also reportedly threatened to murder the husband of a woman he'd been having an affair with, and burn her house down, after she ended the relationship.  As far back as 1988, a psychologist insisted that putting LaVan back in ministry (after he was accused of raping two underage girls and had been temporarily removed from duty) would be "very risky" - and yet, the archdiocese put him back to work and he served in parishes for another 25 years.

It's not all of that that I'm calling your attention to, horrible as it is.

What I'm focusing on is the reaction of Robert Carlson to one of the many complaints against this priest over the years.  Carlson, who is now my archbishop in St. Louis, and who was at the time an auxiliary bishop in St. Paul, wrote a memo to the archbishop (his boss), saying ...

"If we don't want this to build into a real problem it is my recommendation that we accept Father LaVan's resignation from the parish, find a suitable cover story and get him into an in-patient treatment program ... so that this thing does not blow up."

This is Unreal.

And it's the typical way the Church operates.  Lie to the people on the ground.  The Truth will set you free, and all that, but don't ever get real with the Catholics in the pews.

It's a form of weird administration-think.  It's the attitude of an insulated middle-manager type who can't see that there's a disconnect between the marketing and the quality control.  It's the security of clericalism protecting the inanity of mediocre mismanagement.  And Jesus Christ has nothing to do with any of it.

I have no doubt that Carlson will somehow deny this, or "spin it", as he did with his apparent dishonesty in a recent deposition, and that Bill Donohue and other ideologues will "find a suitable cover story" to protect him, and the last thing we will see is a heartfelt apology or even an acknowledgement that when a priest has harmed parishioners and is removed because of that, that other parishioners have a right to know the Truth.  Parishioners should not be lied to, even out of general human decency, much less Christian charity.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.  He is working the gears and dials furiously to keep up appearances.

Darkness in the East

Catholic World News reports that the Vatican has suspended all priestly ordinations in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay.

If this is true, it's an indication that something far more sinister has been brewing down there than just the elevation of an alleged child molesting homosexual cult leader to the position of Vicar General.  This, after Bishop Martino of Scranton, PA made it clear that this man (Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity), who had been operating in his diocese, was not fit for ministry.  The Diocese of Scranton states (my emphasis) ...

Bishop Martino clearly expressed his reservations concerning Father Urrutigoity, who was identified as posing a serious threat to young people. Bishop Martino also carefully and consistently expressed his grave doubts about this cleric’s suitability for priestly ministry and cautioned the Bishop of the Diocese of Ciudad del Este, Paraguay to not allow Father Urrutigoity to incardinate into his diocese. Despite these serious cautions, Bishop Rogelio Livieres informed the Diocese of Scranton that he was allowing Father Urrutigoity to incardinate into his Paraguay diocese.

... and not only to incardinate (to be given the permission and the faculties to function as a priest there), but also to function as Vicar General in the diocese, becoming Bishop Livieres right-hand man.

Urrutigoity was kicked out of an SSPX (schismatic) seminary because of his sexual perversions, but then ran the Society of St. John in Scranton, where he slept with boys as a form of "spiritual direction".  Back in 2002 Scranton's Independent Review Board suggested that Urrutigoity

should be removed from active ministry; his faculties should be revoked; and he should be asked to live privately.

For some reason Bishop Lvieres (a member of Opus Dei) ignored this.

Some in the blogosphere are painting Bishop Livieres as an innocent victim, since he's a Latin Mass promoter.  A favorite trope of some of the more radical traditionalists on the internet is that Pope Francis will stop at nothing to destroy the Latin Mass and orthodox priests.  One blogger is somehow able both to be furious about Urrutigoity having been given authority in Paraguay, but livid that the Vatican should question the very bishop who promoted and enabled him.

It should be noted, however, that preaching orthodox Catholic theology, expressing loyalty to the Latin Mass, and even having a bona fide Catholic Celebrity Rock Star Status is no indication of trustworthiness.  Urrutigoity is Latin Mass all the way, and (allegedly) a child molesting homosexual cult leader to boot.

At any rate, it sounds as if there's a lot more brewing behind the scenes here than the news reports indicate.  To suspend all ordinations is an extraordinary thing, and indicates Rome's concern that the corruption in the "City of the East" goes far deeper than Urrutigoity himself.

Character Assassination - Catholic Style

Dick Cheney's stunt double, Bill Donohue of the Catholic Defense League.

Refusing to address a single one of the facts whistle blower Jennifer Haselberger has revealed in her deposition, in her interviews, and in the abundant documentary evidence that supports Haseblberger's claims about the scandal in St. Paul, Catholic Defense League's Bill Donohue instead goes after Haselberger personally.

And why not?  This is a tactic demagogues of all shapes and sizes have used throughout history.  Avoid the evidence, don't engage on the issues, instead use personal attacks to discredit your opponents.  It may not be the most Catholic or Christian thing to do - but hey, it's us vs. them, so anything goes, right?

Now if Donohue wanted to come after me or pretty much any other Catholic I know, and if he did his digging, he could find a ton of embarrassing and incriminating details that would make it hard for any of us to show our faces in public again.  I have yet to meet a perfect Catholic, and I am far from one myself.  Should my insignificant blog posts pop up on Bill Donohue's radar, he could find enough dirt to destroy me in spades if he put his mind to it.

But what's the best he can come up with to smear the character of this woman, a woman who so loved the Church and was so upset at the cavalier disregard for children and other innocent victims in St. Paul that she sacrificed her own career to speak up about it?  What's the best he can come up with?

The best he can come up with is this.

• As a young woman she quit going to church, but then when she got older she started going again.

• One of her instructors at a very liberal feminist Catholic college in St. Paul happened to be, herself, a liberal feminist.

• A fringe church group has used one of Haselberger's quotes (from a paper she wrote) in their promotional material.

That's it.

No mention of the fact that Haselberger had high hopes for Archbishop Nienstedt because he was so "doctrinally pure".  No mention that everything Haselburger has said or done is consistent with a woman acting in accord with high ideals that are Christian and laudable.  No mention that, if she were really such a foul person, he ought to be able to come up with better stuff than this.


ADDENDUM

It is strange that Bill Donohue has so little confidence in the veracity of Jennifer Haselberger, or of her loyalty to the Church.  The last deposition she gave (before the one released publicly earlier this month) was at the request of and on behalf of the Holy See (in the John Doe v. Holy See case).

To the Anonymous Commenter

An anonymous commenter responded to my post here, with at least one question that I answered here.  And yet he or she claims I'm dodging the points he or she has made.

So let me address them below:

1. Anonymous claimed that the sexual scandal in the Church is over.  This was the point I responded to in my follow up post: It most emphatically is not.  Bishops are still enabling sex abuse, and getting indignant when the press or the courts point this out.  

2. Anonymous takes issue with the number of pedophile priests that are or have been active in the Church (reports range from 4 to 10%).  But the number of abusers is not the point.  The point is how the bishops continue to enable such abuse.  Even if the number is half what Pope Francis suggests - i.e., only 1% - the point is not that number.  The point is what should be done once a crime against a child is committed.  This is what can easily be fixed, and this is what the bishops in their "knavish imbecility" continue to avoid fixing.

3. Anonymous is playing around with numbers from the John Jay Report.  He or she seems to think that the only relevant number is the number of priests convicted of abuse in the court system.  No one in the Church, not even the most untrustworthy bishop, would ever suggest that the number of priests who are criminally charged, much less convicted, is anything but the tiniest fraction of the number of priests who have actually abused children.  

4. Anonymous seems to think I am claiming that the problem is more prevalent now than it was in the 1970's.  It's certainly not as bad as it was then, and I don't know how he or she got the idea I was claiming that it is.

5. Anonymous argues that SNAP is not a reliable source for information about the abuse crisis.  SNAP certainly has a vested interest in this issue, but if Anonymous thinks they're lying or fudging when it comes to the evidence, such as the documentary evidence released by dioceses, law firms and courts all over the country and readily available on the internet, he or she should compare the original source documents with what SNAP claims.  Don't believe SNAP?  Don't believe the New York Times or bishopaccountability.org?  Fine.  Check out the Graves Report in Kansas City, the source documents in St. Paul, the documents regarding the St. Louis cases, etc.  Do a little Googling and you'll find them.  You don't need a filter any more; you don't need a middle man.  This is the internet.  Go straight to the source and find the truth.  I have, and it's very disturbing.

So, dear Anonymous, if you would like to comment further, please comment with a name - even a screen handle, so that we can at least refer to you as someone other than "Anonymous".

And please understand that the truth of this is the truth that will set us free.  The tribalistic lie that this really isn't a problem, it's only the enemies of the Church who are making it so, is a lie that will only make things worse.  If we are Christians, we must love the truth - even the disturbing truth about our own sinfulness, and even if that means shining the light of Christ into the ugly dark corners of our chancery offices.

Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.  For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.  But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God. - the words of Jesus from John 3:19-21.

In other words, don't fear the light.  It's the only thing that can overcome the darkness.

Parsing Tolkien's Letter on Love and Romance

Tolkien's amazing letter to his son Michael deserves a closer look.  Here it is again, with some commentary by me in boldface.  

***

A man's dealings with women can be purely physical (they cannot really, of course: but I mean he can

refuse to take other things into account, to the great damage of his soul (and body) and theirs); or

'friendly'; or he can be a 'lover' (engaging and blending all his affections and powers of mind and body in a complex emotion powerfully coloured and energized by 'sex'). 

Tolkien is setting up here three possibilities in relations between men and women: 

1. A man can relate to a woman merely for the sake of physical pleasure (though really this can never happen, for we can never separate our bodies and our souls, and great harm of some sort comes to those men who try to do this; great harm also comes to the women involved)

2. A man can be "friends" with a woman (before old age, this is almost impossible on any intimate level without the complications of love or attraction, as he points out later)

3. Or a man can be a woman's "lover" - this love being something which engages his whole self, but which still tends to be primarily an emotional experience, "energized by sex".

This is stunningly perceptive stuff, loaded with common sense - as is the rest of the letter.  Read on!

This is a fallen world. The dislocation of sex-instinct is one of the chief symptoms of the Fall. The world has been 'going to the bad' all down the ages. The various social forms shift, and each new mode has its special dangers: but the 'hard spirit of concupiscence' has walked down every street, and sat leering in every house, since Adam fell. 

What beautiful prose, right to the point and very evocative.  "The hard spirit of concupiscence" is our innate predilection to sin, especially sexual sin.

We will leave aside the 'immoral' results. These you desire not to be dragged into. To renunciation you have no call. 'Friendship' then? 

He is giving advice to his son.  Michael does not want to give himself to "immoral" relationships with women (fornication).  But he's not called to "renunciation" (celibacy and the priesthood).  Is friendship then the only option left?

In this fallen world the 'friendship' that should be possible between all human beings, is virtually impossible between man and woman. The devil is endlessly ingenious, and sex is his favourite subject. He is as good every bit at catching you through generous romantic or tender motives, as through baser or more animal ones. This 'friendship' has often been tried: one side or the other nearly always fails. Later in life when sex cools down, it may be possible. It may happen between saints. To ordinary folk it can only rarely occur: two minds that have really a primarily mental and spiritual affinity may by accident reside in a male and a female body, and yet may desire and achieve a 'friendship' quite independent of sex. But no one can count on it. The other partner will let him (or her) down, almost certainly, by 'falling in love'. 

This has to be qualified a bit, lest Tolkien sound too harsh and hypercritical.  

And the qualifier is this: of course, all of us have friends of the opposite sex.  But those are more acquaintances than examples of deep friendship, and the level of emotional and spiritual intimacy is generally tepid or restrained.  It has been my experience that any "friendship" I have with a woman is either

1. At a level of cordiality and restraint: a pleasant acquaintanceship of mutual affection and limited "sharing";

2. Or fraught with "erotic" complications (meaning complications of the love known as Eros, which is more than just sex) - where emotional and spiritual sharing, once past a certain level, invariably leads (quite naturally) not only to attraction but to the building up of mutual obligations, which must ultimately go unfulfilled and renounced by one or the other party - unless the friendship is a courtship building toward marriage.  This is true whether the "friends" add on "benefits" or not.  It's not so much sex that complicates such relationships, but Eros.

But a young man does not really (as a rule) want 'friendship', even if he says he does. There are plenty of young men (as a rule). He wants love: innocent, and yet irresponsible perhaps. Allas! Allas! that ever love was sinne! as Chaucer says. Then if he is a Christian and is aware that there is such a thing as sin, he wants to know what to do about it.

So the problem is love.  How do we love without sin?  Quoting Chaucer leads Tolkien into a penetrating analysis of "courtly love".

There is in our Western culture the romantic chivalric tradition still strong, though as a product of Christendom (yet by no means the same as Christian ethics) the times are inimical to it. 

Note that chivalry grew out of Christendom, but that chivalry is not the same thing as Christian ethics.  Tolkien proceeds to show how chivalry and "courtly love" differs from Christian ethics, and he gives a very mature and balanced treatment of the subject.  

One might wonder, "What does chivalry have to do with the modern world?  How does this affect a young man - or even a mature man - trying to love without sin?  Chivalry is dead, isn't it?  The times are inimical to it, as Tolkien said."  Well, no, chivalry is not dead; it lives on in the Romantic tradition of literature and art, and its notion of Romantic Love can be seen in every movie or novel of the modern age (except very recent pieces of trash like Hangover).  It's a tradition that tugs deeply at our souls, as it is very evocative of Eros and Agape - of our call to love with great passion, interest, devotion and surrender: it takes what Christ has revealed about love and applies it (imperfectly but very effectively) to the secular world.  It is love of God applied to the opposite sex - which has its problems, as Tolkien proceeds to point out.

It idealizes 'love' — and as far as it goes can be very good, since it takes in far more than physical pleasure, and enjoins if not purity, at least fidelity, and so self-denial, 'service', courtesy, honour, and courage. Its weakness is, of course, that it began as an artificial courtly game, a way of enjoying love for its own sake without reference to (and indeed contrary to) matrimony. 

The tradition of courtly love originally began as the building up of what might be called elaborate rules of adultery.  Later, it took on more dignity - but it originally focused on the problem of Eros for the married man or woman who was not finding Eros in his or her marriage.  

Its centre was not God, but imaginary Deities, Love and the Lady. It still tends to make the Lady a kind of guiding star or divinity – of the old-fashioned 'his divinity' = the woman he loves – the object or reason of noble conduct. This is, of course, false and at best make-believe. The woman is another fallen human-being with a soul in peril. But combined and harmonized with religion (as long ago it was, producing much of that beautiful devotion to Our Lady that has been God's way of refining so much our gross manly natures and emotions, and also of warming and colouring our hard, bitter, religion) it can be very noble. Then it produces what I suppose is still felt, among those who retain even vestigiary Christianity, to be the highest ideal of love between man and woman. Yet I still think it has dangers. It is not wholly true, and it is not perfectly 'theocentric'. It takes, or at any rate has in the past taken, the young man's eye off women as they are, as companions in shipwreck not guiding stars. (One result is for observation of the actual to make the young man turn cynical.) To forget their desires, needs and temptations. It inculcates exaggerated notions of 'true love', as a fire from without, a permanent exaltation, unrelated to age, childbearing, and plain life, and unrelated to will and purpose. (One result of that is to make young folk look for a 'love' that will keep them always nice and warm in a cold world, without any effort of theirs; and the incurably romantic go on looking even in the squalor of the divorce courts).

This is one of the most stunning and beautiful paragraphs Tolkien ever wrote.  In it, he manages to criticize the romantic notion of "The Lady" in a way that is so fair and comprehensive that one marvels at the wisdom and perspective of this man.  The chivalric tradition of "The Lady" and the romantic quest she moves us to, can both inspire a man to a nobility of love, and also fool him and hurt him (and others) badly.  For we poets tend to forget that women are "companions in shipwreck and not guiding stars".  This can lead to cynicism on the one hand (there's nothing more ugly and angry than a disappointed lover, whose ideals have proven to be bubbles that have popped) or to "the squalor of the divorce courts" on the other.  "My wife is not My Lady!  My Lady calls to me from afar!  My Lady is hot and sexy and understands me!  My wife is dumpy and crabby and knows me too well to adore me like her knight in shining armor that I long to be!  But my secretary understands me - or my dental hygenist does - or that young thing over there does!  Oh, stars!  Oh, fate!  Why do I have a wife and not My Lady!" (picks up phone, dials 1-800-DIVORCE).

Women really have not much part in all this, though they may use the language of romantic love, since it is so entwined in all our idioms. The sexual impulse makes women (naturally when unspoiled more unselfish) very sympathetic and understanding, or specially desirous of being so (or seeming so), and very ready to enter into all the interests, as far as they can, from ties to religion, of the young man they are attracted to. No intent necessarily to deceive: sheer instinct: the servient, helpmeet instinct, generously warmed by desire and young blood. Under this impulse they can in fact often achieve very remarkable insight and understanding, even of things otherwise outside their natural range: for it is their gift to be receptive, stimulated, fertilized (in many other matters than the physical) by the male. Every teacher knows that. How quickly an intelligent woman can be taught, grasp his ideas, see his point – and how (with rare exceptions) they can go no further, when they leave his hand, or when they cease to take a personal interest in him. But this is their natural avenue to love. Before the young woman knows where she is (and while the romantic young man, when he exists, is still sighing) she may actually 'fall in love'. Which for her, an unspoiled natural young woman, means that she wants to become the mother of the young man's children, even if that desire is by no means clear to her or explicit. And then things are going to happen: and they may be very painful and harmful, if things go wrong. Particularly if the young man only wanted a temporary guiding star and divinity (until he hitches his waggon to a brighter one), and was merely enjoying the flattery of sympathy nicely seasoned with a titillation of sex – all quite innocent, of course, and worlds away from 'seduction'.

Wow.  

It's politically incorrect these days to assert that men and women are different in any way (even physically).  But Tolkien nails it.

As to women's natural desire - I can only think of Lola Heatherton whose showbiz catch phrase was, "I want to bear your children!"  

But back to Tolkien ...

You may meet in life (as in literature) women who are flighty, or even plain wanton — I don't refer to mere flirtatiousness, the sparring practice for the real combat, but to women who are too silly to take even love seriously, or are actually so depraved as to enjoy 'conquests', or even enjoy the giving of pain – but these are abnormalities, even though false teaching, bad upbringing, and corrupt fashions may encourage them. Much though modern conditions have changed feminine circumstances, and the detail of what is considered propriety, they have not changed natural instinct. A man has a life-work, a career, (and male friends), all of which could (and do where he has any guts) survive the shipwreck of 'love'. A young woman, even one 'economically independent', as they say now (it usually really means economic subservience to male commercial employers instead of to a father or a family), begins to think of the 'bottom drawer' and dream of a home, almost at once. If she really falls in love, the shipwreck may really end on the rocks. Anyway women are in general much less romantic and more practical. Don't be misled by the fact that they are more 'sentimental' in words – freer with 'darling', and all that. They do not want a guiding star. 

Guys like me who tend to be poets and idealists find this hard to imagine, but it's very very true.  Women are much more practical than men.  Their thoughts tend to hearth and home (unless they're simply vixens, as Tolkien notes above - and vixens themselves are so twisted that they are quite unhappy with who they are, as a rule).  A woman can be idealistic in her own way, but it's usually not regarding love and romance.  Even women who have affairs usually do so to find attention, not to find the ideal man.  Thus the tendency of women to "settle", to marry men who meet minimum standards (like breathing and showing an interest in them).  It's the woman's job to "settle" - to settle down, something that does not come naturally to men.  

They may idealize a plain young man into a hero; but they don't really need any such glamour either to fall in love or to remain in it. If they have any delusion it is that they can 'reform' men. They will take a rotter open-eyed, and even when the delusion of reforming him fails, go on loving him. 

Maybe this is why they "settle".  A man believes he can always find the ideal "out there"; a woman believe she can always achieve the ideal "in here".  

They are, of course, much more realistic about the sexual relation. Unless perverted by bad contemporary fashions they do not as a rule talk 'bawdy'; not because they are purer than men (they are not) but because they don't find it funny. I have known those who pretended to, but it is a pretence. It may be intriguing, interesting, absorbing (even a great deal too absorbing) to them: but it is just plumb natural, a serious, obvious interest; where is the joke?

This opens up a great mystery.  Sex is always something ridiculous to a man, no matter how obsessed he is with it; thus men are bawdy and enjoy being bawdy.  A man always finds sex somehow humiliating or humbling and therefore funny.  Women take sex much more seriously.  There's no tension between the natural function of sex and the spiritual desires of a woman; in men there is.  Sex is somehow incongruous to us: we love it, but it's not exactly who we are - which is often the source of humor.  Women don't get that joke.

They have, of course, still to be more careful in sexual relations, for all the contraceptives. Mistakes are damaging physically and socially (and matrimonially). But they are instinctively, when uncorrupt, monogamous. Men are not. .... No good pretending. Men just ain't, not by their animal nature. Monogamy (although it has long been fundamental to our inherited ideas) is for us men a piece of 'revealed' ethic, according to faith and not to the flesh. Each of us could healthily beget, in our 30 odd years of full manhood, a few hundred children, and enjoy the process. Brigham Young (I believe) was a healthy and happy man. It is a fallen world, and there is no consonance between our bodies, minds, and souls.

Amen.

However, the essence of a fallen world is that the best cannot be attained by free enjoyment, or by what is called 'self-realization' (usually a nice name for self-indulgence, wholly inimical to the realization of other selves); but by denial, by suffering. Faithfulness in Christian marriage entails that: great mortification. For a Christian man there is no escape. Marriage may help to sanctify & direct to its proper object his sexual desires; its grace may help him in the struggle; but the struggle remains. It will not satisfy him – as hunger may be kept off by regular meals. It will offer as many difficulties to the purity proper to that state, as it provides easements. No man, however truly he loved his betrothed and bride as a young man, has lived faithful to her as a wife in mind and body without deliberate conscious exercise of the will, without self-denial. Too few are told that — even those brought up 'in the Church'. Those outside seem seldom to have heard it. When the glamour wears off, or merely works a bit thin, they think they have made a mistake, and that the real soul-mate is still to find. The real soul-mate too often proves to be the next sexually attractive person that comes along. Someone whom they might indeed very profitably have married, if only —. Hence divorce, to provide the 'if only'. And of course they are as a rule quite right: they did make a mistake. Only a very wise man at the end of his life could make a sound judgement concerning whom, amongst the total possible chances, he ought most profitably to have married! Nearly all marriages, even happy ones, are mistakes: in the sense that almost certainly (in a more perfect world, or even with a little more care in this very imperfect one) both partners might have found more suitable mates. But the 'real soul-mate' is the one you are actually married to. You really do very little choosing: life and circumstance do most of it (though if there is a God these must be His instruments, or His appearances). It is notorious that in fact happy marriages are more common where the 'choosing' by the young persons is even more limited, by parental or family authority, as long as there is a social ethic of plain unromantic responsibility and conjugal fidelity. But even in countries where the romantic tradition has so far affected social arrangements as to make people believe that the choosing of a mate is solely the concern of the young, only the rarest good fortune brings together the man and woman who are really as it were 'destined' for one another, and capable of a very great and splendid love. The idea still dazzles us, catches us by the throat: poems and stories in multitudes have been written on the theme, more, probably, than the total of such loves in real life (yet the greatest of these tales do not tell of the happy marriage of such great lovers, but of their tragic separation; as if even in this sphere the truly great and splendid in this fallen world is more nearly achieved by 'failure' and suffering). In such great inevitable love, often love at first sight, we catch a vision, I suppose, of marriage as it should have been in an unfallen world. In this fallen world we have as our only guides, prudence, wisdom (rare in youth, too late in age), a clean, heart, and fidelity of will.....

Note a few things about this man and his writing.

1. His worldview is profoundly Christian - utterly and totally Christian (i. e., Catholic).

2. He has a clear-eyed even-handed vision of the reality of things as they are: fallen humanity, the workings of the Incarnation in a sinful world.

3. And yet he never loses sight of the ideal.  He is able to look at things realistically without denigrating the ideal that things invariably fall shy of.  And he is very fair to both.

... and from this fairness, one sees immense Charity.

***

Tolkien's letter continues with the story of his courtship of Michael's mother, and ends with his famous acclamation of the glories of the Blessed Sacrament.

You can read that part of it - indeed the whole thing - here.  

Bad Boys and Eunuchs

Eros - looking more like himself than the domesticated Cupid he later became.

One of the things that has caught my attention the last week or so has been a remarkable essay by D. C. Schindler on Pope Benedict XVI's Deus Caritas Est, in which Schindler points out the Holy Father's Magisterial assertion that Love is One (as God is One) and that Eros - the love that is jealous, interested, invested, eager, lively, passionate, a love that possesses and that takes pride in its object - and Agape - the love that is disinterested, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, altruistic, condescending (in the best sense of the word) - are simply two sides of the same coin, two aspects of the same unified thing: Love, viewed from different angles.  Indeed, Eros without agape becomes demanding and destructive; but Agape without Eros becomes clinical, dehumanizing and condescending (in the worst sense of the word).

I am convinced that a deep mystery is here, one that offers a key to much of our modern malaise.

For the problem with the modern world is not too much Eros but not enough Eros (as Allan Bloom pointed out a generation ago in The Closing of the American Mind).  The hook-up culture is not about love or jealousy or even interest.  It's about a terrifyingly disengaged manipulation of other people.  Hearts no longer get broken; people f*** and move on.  That's a symptom of a privation of Eros: the loss of passionate, jealous, caring love.

And I would say that the Unreality we see in the modern Church is also a symptom of the privation of Eros.  We see it in the contrived music, the sappy homilies, the artificial queerness of most church goers.

And we see it in relationships, even among devout Christians - especially among devout Christians, who are perhaps more tempted to suppress Eros than secular people, in order not to be overcome by the "erotic" (i.e. sex).  One of my actresses recently described the relationship her sister had with her one-time fiancee.  "She was his keeper," she said.  "She led him around and made sure he didn't say anything offensive, made sure he minded his manners."  More of an adult babysitter than a lover, it would seem.

How many young women I've known who enter into relationships like that, relationships devoid of passion!  Now, of course, passion, interest, excitement, being drawn out of yourself - these things have their limits and are not in themselves the ingredients of a good marriage, as J. R. R. Tolkien points out in a letter I quoted at length earlier today.  And every guy on earth has noticed that many beautiful and intelligent women are for some reason drawn to dangerous and irresponsible men - "bad boys".  That's because, at least, the "bad boys" are exciting.  "Eunuchs", by contrast (which is what many modern men are) are safe, and are more like pets or children to be kept by a "keeper" rather than men who draw out and engage that dangerous kind of love that stirs in a woman's heart.  And women these days don't have it easy, since most men, either "eunuchs" or "bad boys" are simply "losers".  Or if not "losers", they're unavailable.  Another actress of mine once described the various types of unavailable guys as being "The Four G's" - either Gay (homosexual), God (a priest), Gonorrhea (a scamp), or Gamos (Greek for married).

Well, the course of true love never did run smooth and all that.

Meanwhile, I think Tolkien's long letter on sex and love deserves some parsing.  Stay tuned.