Me and My friend Seth

Gangs of New York, 2002

My friend Seth is forty years old and has outlived at least half of the 9 lives allotted to even the feistiest cat. We now live a thousand miles apart, as we have for most of our adult lives. He has remained in our hometown, built a family and a life there around the seasons, while my husband and I came north fifteen winters ago. Our connection is sporadic but always warm and fraternal, like a big brother who has seen anything I'm about to show him but endures my antics anyway.

Seth's mother braided my hair and baked apple pies for all of our childhood. When his cat gave birth to kittens in his bed -- a handbuilt lofted bed perfect for forts and scary stories -- his stock rose exponentially in my five-year-old mind and has stayed there since. We played hide and go seek among the spruce trees and trailer parks of our densely forested, working-class Alaskan island. The snuggly rhythms of early memory gave way to some chaos in our respective homes, and we've also shared the messier milestones of adolescence and adulthood.  

Our parents are probably more surprised to see us raising ten children between us and baptizing them into a faith neither of us were raised in, than they were to pick us up from the police station together off and on in the early 1990s. Seth taught me about weed, subversive music and the delicate balance of supply and demand. We played F*ck the Police at top volume and did our best imitations of the bravado presented on MTV. His father was my only visitor when I was shipped to a nearby island for residential drug treatment. 


I will note here Seth's physical presence: he is massive. Foreboding, even. An uncle of mine who employed him as a commercial fisherman remarked that Seth is the quintessential gentle giant. He was a wrestler in high school and has always kept his strength in check; never bullying and even using his imposing physicality to defend would-be victims from teasing or worse. There's one particular story about the school bus that brings me near tears each time I tell it -- and the irony seems to be that the boy being bullied was of correct breeding and political class but wispy and nerdy, while Seth was the scrappy hero. That boy from the bus went on to some really prestigious East Coast college I can never remember the name of and now works for a Fortune 500 in the art dept (last I knew), while Seth put down roots in the same neighborhood from which the school bus shuttled him to & fro. When I watch the (glorious) movie Overboard I still see Seth in the oldest son. Noble and quiet but certainly not without spine. Perhaps his power lies in the suggestion of violence without having to deploy it. 


I thought of Seth in a special way after reading this piece. I emailed it to him, along with a half dozen other men and women, childhood friends all, with whom I often share banter about current events. We don't agree on every issue nor seek to convert each other -- we just like to stay in touch and rap about lifestyle and philosophy between diapers, work and errands. We're able to learn from one another without resentment or bitterness, pride or retribution. I see now that our unity may be a threat to those without agency in the present White House. Seth shared the piece on social media only to be accused of racism and effectively silenced. I would laugh if it weren't so sad and entirely missing (or proving) the point of the post.

Today, taking stock as if I were a raven perched in the treetops, listening to the foment of human pettiness in the wake of President No Good Really Bad, reading scribes from all corners, ruffling my feathers -- I see that the erudite leftist minds neatly bunch us all together. We are White. We are to be aggregated and educated, or at least ignored. Our varied opinions and experiences do not matter, for we share the embarrassing ethnicity of being Anglo-Saxon. Our immigrant stories are irrelevant, for we must absorb fresh wisdom, prostrate ourselves to the latest arrival. We're descended from countries that lack the exotic pedigree to grab the audience of National Public Radio with tales of victimhood. 
 
Never mind that Seth's children aren't even white, or that my husband is only second generation American, with grandparents who came as illiterate teenagers hoping to earn enough money to return to Portugal and buy a horse. If that hints at a certain pride, it's simply pride in the achievements and perseverance of someone else. It would never occur to me to ascribe pride to my race. I don't need census bureau stats to validate my existence, and I have 2,000 years of cultural heroism in Christ and His Bride to "fall back on" for identity. My kids attend a school with just seventy students. Laotians, Alaskan Natives, African Americans, Hispanic children from pockets of Central and South America, Caucasians. No one notices. We have families with foster children, families of truckers, clerks, engineers, physicians, pilots, families built by adoption and those with transient children. Our stated goal is to make saints. We look to martyrs, soldiers and scholars with equal fervor. We are not divided and we are not afraid.

As I said in the email scribbled to friends when I shared Dreher's post this morning, the weird alt-right thing gets no traction with me -- but the objective point being made by his commenter is quite illuminating.  Foreboding? We'll see. I do know this: the guidance of a nuanced gentleman who takes no guff is an invaluable force for children. Come what may, both Seth's children and mine have that in their fathers. 

If the American Left insists on fragmentation along lines of race, the carnage is predictable and its genesis rests squarely on them. They play with fire. Although the USA is unique, and this experiment of unity is worthwhile, we are all still human beings. I grieve the idea that men like Seth (who I use here without permission and not as a mythic hero; he's just a dude I know) are being trashed. Again to repeat myself --- white men are allowed to be anything except victorious. I would submit that the creepy racism of America was exposed, burst like a boil on Satan's ass, not with the election of a black man to the Presidency, but of a white one. Why is that?

desperation is better than despair

(There's not really a point to this blog post. Mostly a brain dump, and I hope the Ben Stein piece will reach more eyes. As a writer, there's supposed to be a one-or two sentence takeaway possible afterwards, right? this doesn't meet that criteria, but I'm very sad and wanted to share.)

I've just heard the news about Robin Williams' grappling with the beginnings of Parkinson's. It's a comfort to know he was sober, according to his wife, and it makes sense that physical sobriety is in fact unbearable without a program of recovery. To an addict, the toxic (for us) substances are the solution, not the problem. Strictly speaking, "the problem" begins when the drugs run out or stop working. Also, other people seem to have a problem with our ... antics.

Among the attitudes I encountered while asking friends and family the Weed Question, there was an almost un-nameable strain of, "Stoned losers are always going to be stoned losers, so who cares." This stung ~ as a former stoned loser and an escapee from addiction, I couldn't reconcile my own experience with such extreme dismissal of the human journey. In my mid-teenage years, after writing off notions of family and faith as naive, but before meeting judges and hospitals, I was given the benefit of men like Mr. Eddy --- who somehow intimated that I was made for better stuff than even the best dope around. Notably for those who love him, Mr. Eddy is in his third decade of living with Parkinson's Disease. I think of Robin Williams, with John Belushi hours before his fatal overdose in 1982, and the decades of public joy and productivity which followed -- all created by an addict saved from the trash heap.

As to the Parkinson's Disease, facing certain physical decline is often touted as a reason for "assisted suicide" and abortion. We hear fallacies about being 'productive' as the measure of a life. I think of John Paul the Great and his witness of a holy death. I want to blame the culture of death for its utilitarian treatment of people, but blame belongs other places, too: misapplication of psychoactive drugs, highbrow culture, Hollywood, lowbrow culture, selfie culture, Major Depression, the Sexual Revolution (see utilitarian treatment of people), and predictably, the whispering plunder of the Devil himself. Lower power indeed. Like Bob Dylan says, You Gotta Serve Somebody.

Last year, Simcha wrote a memorable piece about beating a cause to the point of becoming deaf and dumb, and I risk doing that if I pretend to know the details of this tragedy. And as my husband shrugged, "Do you know how many people offed themselves yesterday? Nobody cares about them. Even this claim of caring is selfish. He was a thing." (this is how my husband talks, but he's not endorsing --- just describing. He is the best describer I know.)

Before despair comes desperation. When desperation is shared, it recedes. By the same selfie culture which pierced his blameless daughter, Robin Williams' privacy was finally so desecrated that his options for spiritual salvage seemed to close in on him.

With a few kids who have a flair for dramatic, we've begun conversations about the ultimate isolation of the performing arts. They can be fulfilling, noble and ordered to the good, sure --- but the risk of becoming a 'thing' to surrounding caretakers, pawing fans, or well-intentioned managers seems ever-present. No matter our affection or connection with an artist, it's not my Christmas morning that will be empty without Robin Williams. He was someone's Daddy.

NB --- I have to link it again ---  every word of Ben Stein's take rings true, from where I sit.  I wasn't a big fan of Robin Williams' raw comedy because of the hints of sex-tinged stuff that put me off, even as a kid/before I could name or recognize the "blue" as blue. My preferences aside, his talent was so grand and generous, his range so vast, that his loss feels like a hunk of the earth dropped away. I guess it has. Addiction has only three ends, unless arrested ~ jails, institutions and death. May God help me to be less selfish. To reach for Him through sharing my needs with others, and doing my best to meet theirs.

Will return in May

Catherina of Siena

I'm not blogging during Lent (it's been pointed out that I should share that information. I'm of two minds on that idea, but there ya go ... ) We're traveling soon, my heart is filled with awe and gratitude at the way God pulls us toward His graces.

The Catholic Church is the best "thing" that ever happened to me. This much I know.

my husband has a phrase for this

I think he says "Satanica Pandemonia". Lord, have mercy. And but for the grace of God, there go I. Too much. Violent topless mob attack men defending Cathedral.

And, lest we rest  in the hope that our shores prevent such incivilities ~ here are some American teens.

St. Francesca Xavier Cabrini, Virgin

November 13 is the feast of one of our family's patronesses for home education. Mother Cabrini is the first American citizen to be canonized, and she established 67 schools, hospitals and missions in her 67 years. She was physically small and sickly all her life, yet a magnetic force of love and piety in all she did. The inclusion of Xavier in her religious name is a nod to her own plans & designs (she hoped to go East), yet Pope Leo XIII asked that she serve the Italian immigrants in New York City.

I think she wouldn't have much patience with me and my tangential flakiness; maybe that's why I like to think she'll pray all the harder for our family.

You know how sometimes the lives of the Saints seem inaccessible, overly pious or just foreign to our times? I'm finally reading "Story of a Family" about the Martins. It's an engrossing read, they're terribly inspiring, especially since they're laity, but overall ... slightly exotic for me. I do love the way the temperaments of holy men and women run the gamut. Something about Mother Cabrini really appeals to us, and I cry when we read this slim jewel aloud during the first week of school lessons each year. While I haven't planned anything Italian or special (our day is too packed and the biggest of the little ones are recovering from head colds) to memorialize her, my constant prayers to conform my will to God's will are boosted by her example today.

Can an Atheist Get Sober?

After the most grievous, fruitful season of my young life, I'm sorting through the lessons. Through my limited scope, I'm discovering a fraction of what it feels like to love, and to be powerless. If God's inexhaustible Love for us feels anything like this for its Source, I'm happy to remain a fleck on the windshield of life.

Part of this summer's journey has meant a return to the 12-step meetings that saved my life fifteen years ago. I selfishly gained the gifts of sobriety (becoming employable, a husband and family, a busy life) and left my duties to still-suffering drunks behind. I also left behind the spiritual growth that propels us, one day at a time, in recovery. Although I didn't pick up a drink or a drug in the six years that I stayed away from meetings, I retreated into my faith. This isn't a fact I'm overly maudlin about, but it is a fact. We either 'grow spiritually or die', is a recognized truth for addicts. I've moved through the deep shame and regret of leaving this first facet of good living behind --- that progress being due to the unfailing welcome of beautiful strangers who now inhabit my heart and my home. Thank God they were still there when I put my hand to the doorknob. The worn carpet, bad coffee and tattered slogans on the wall spoke in sacred, silent tones. May I never forget where I came from.

In a flash, I was relieved of my embarrassment at the realization that I'd concocted two different Gods: one for alcoholism and one for Christian living. I had a merciful God and a legalistic God. To reconcile the two was not the kind of protracted analytical exercise I first expected; rather, God returned wholly to me the same way He first appeared --- in my utter surrender. We know the expression 'there are no atheists in a foxhole', hinting at the simplicity and willingness of the human soul to cry out for divine aid when all other hope is lost.

The Twelve Steps are undeniably rooted in Christianity, even mirroring Ignatian and Benedictine spirituality so closely that Bill Wilson (their author) was once asked by a priest if the rumor was true --"had the Steps in fact been written by a Jesuit seminarian?" These roots are not restrictive, however, and the program is presented in the most unobtrustive way. Any seeker of God is free to their conception of a Higher Power, and this is no doubt a wellspring of their efficacy. The fruits of Christian love and service abound, free from moral authority or hierarchy. We exist in concert with recovery from profound, intimate trauma, and humans of every possible stripe are well-represented in our numbers. We are bikers and doctors, mommies and felons, sometimes all in one person. It's this variety of experience plus the purity of our mission, that gives us the ability to reach one another. And here I come to the question first posed --- can someone who denies the existence of God make use of the 12 Steps? YES. A thousand times yes.

Picture a symphony. If you have any experience with a musical instrument this will be easy.  I played the clarinet gleefully and with mediocrity as a teenager, never reaching first or second chair but learning rapidly and deeply enjoying the experience. And we had a conductor who was one in a million. This conductor exists and is leading the show whether I acknowledge him or not --- a 'higher' power, if you will. I can reasonably get by and gain new techniques by copying the person sitting next to me. I never even have to look at the Conductor unless and until I'm willing to find that specific direction. What's vital is only that I discard my way, my self-will, and my ideas about how it should go. Humility, that elusive condition, is essential. I can copy the technical skill of another player, I can merely pretend to play ('fake it 'till you make it'), I can dither between numbers and let others carry the weight. I don't even need to be copying a player of the same instrument; I may play the clarinet but be enamored with the bassoon. It doesn't matter. All have varying results but all are different than hiding in the gutter or the catwalk --- if I'll come in, sit down, assume some postures, and allow for a new way of living from the inside out, I have a chance.

Taken as a straight parallel, any souse has already done this. In active addiction, many of us eventually exit polite society, learning a new vocabulary, new cultural norms, and a host of frightening new "skills" as we descend into hell. We trust in all kinds of unseen forces, for better or worse, to carry us through to the next fix. This mimicry of addicted life is much like the map out of the morass and into healthy and whole life --- just copy the people who have what you want.

The principles of getting well after a period of degradation so bleak that we find ourselves beyond human aid are universal and personal. It works to replace 'atheist' with the spiritually arrogant (hi!), the proud, the lazy and the skeptic: we lay aside our old ideas in exchange for a new way of living. This is simple yet difficult. If it were easy, Skid Row would be empty. As usual, this painful, privileged sojourn is best summarized in the perfect locution of wounded healers, reaching for their own:

bring your ass and your heart will follow.

A Life Without Sin

When I met my husband, he posed this question very early: "What is Satan's greatest lie?" (To certain girls, it doesn't get much more romantic than that. I know. I was eighteen. You hush.)  That the answer --- "Satan's greatest lie is that he doesn't exist" --- came from Anthony, not French poetry or even a Kevin Spacey movie, was the beginning of my fascination with and attraction to him. My husband seems like a bombastic personality to many people, but how quickly he deflects my swooning over these moments now. ("Honey, I probably got it from a movie. I was just trying to sound deep.")

We were married one year later. We lived together for the entirety of our engagement. The doors of Christ were thrown widely open for us, sinners seeking an anchor without much knowing we were drowning. We've needed a life raft more than once in our travels together, including being civilly divorced and remarried, and relapsing on a host of favorite vices, all the while clinging to the virtue of Love itself and our unquenchable thirst. That 'God-shaped hole' I first heard about as a teenager, and visited in adulthood by finding the heartfelt vocabulary of Saint Augustine, has never left us. We are grateful.

And yes, we immediately began having sex when we met ---- that's how people express an interest in getting to know each other, in the world we came from. I don't make these admissions out of pride or even shame --- just an attempt to be clear about my moral formation. I also mean to draw a larger conclusion about the arrogance of chronic sin, and how it blinds us to our own brokenness. This is well-illustrated by a Western priest's report on the number of people standing in line for confession vs. those in line for communion on Sunday, comparing the ratio now to that of forty years ago. Hint: one is shrinking while the other is growing. I described this to my husband and he replied sardonically, "See, it's working, Father! People are living lives without sin." Our sadness isn't smugness.


If you didn't know grandstanding has found new heights
via cartoon imagery, you should check out social media!

No Guts, No Glory
In the wearying discussions about same-sex 'marriage', both online and offline, the conclusion is clear. Either align yourself publicly with the crushing tide of nihilism, or prepare to opt out of cultured society. The prevailing argument ("Don't H8! ForniK8!") has revealed a dirth of contemporary authority so vast, I find myself shocked.

I don't hold a shred of ill will towards people who have gay sex, but I'm also not that impressed by it. Christians know the ground to be level at the foot of the Cross. Letting sexual sin be defined as sexual sin is enough for us --- please work it out privately. For reaching this unglamorous conclusion, we're termed "nothing but hateful, ignorant bigots". Ignoring the effects of overturning the expressed will of voters, or the implications of further eroding states' rights, these simplistic dismissals are met by applause in the name of tolerance. Short-sighted, heartless and frankly moronic comparisons to interracial marriage are made.

Dialogue either stops or turns lukewarm when a person announces they have a gay relative. I remember when my affection for the gay people in our life was enough to satisfy my hope that I was making the right decision by saying nothing on this subject. I considered hearing no resistance as evidence that I was on the winning 'side'. Is there a notion that our individual lives and peers are sufficient for the wisdom we need? Must I seek a deposit of faith and wisdom from anywhere broader than my family reunion or the university? What a plebeian bore I am, then. I'm watching a parade of souls begging to be redeemed by United States Supreme Court Justices. When we refuse to conform our hearts to the authority of Christ, isn't it curious that we'll force conformity on the people around us? We long so deeply for approval, all the while yelling about rebelling against the patriarchy.

I know some really nice drug dealers --- hardworking men who donate to charities and support their families. Should that remove any objections I have to the trade? Moreover, does it free me from the responsibility to think? God's greatest earthly gift is our sense of reason --- we must employ it fearlessly if we believe the state of our souls depends on accepting His ultimate gift of salvation.

So why can't I just 'shut up'?
My duty to my Creator includes sharing what He has done for me. God's truth sets us free from a host of suicidal tendencies, most of which fall under the umbrella of selfishness dressed up as license. (My rights!) My friends have written more personally. In the short time I've been maintaining this glorified Pinterest page I call a blog, I've felt called to write on topics outside of polite conversation, mostly because those are the topics I think about and find most relevant.

It's not about me, or some climactic reveal when it comes to my views. Nobody cares or is surprised, on the whole. I'm sad to be called a bigot, but eager to form my witness in a way that welcomes private dialogue with my "Questioning" friends. (Let's use the word for questioning politically correct trends, not methods of getting off sexually. Only one of these requires secrecy in our society.)

My alternative is silence, or a sort of counterfeit truce. Notice this truce requires silence only from those who uphold a heterosexual ideal for marriage. I'd rather have honest and respectful conversations than pretend. 

The Catholic Church is the sole purveyor of a consistent pro-life ethic, and her teachings on abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, birth control, and sexuality don't deviate a whit. Yet our silence, confusion and disobedience has contributed massively to the desecration of marriage. Possessing the truth isn't enough, we have to share in an honest and love-affirming way. We can ask those whose faith we admire to help us in discussing this freely. If it's all so noble, why the insistence on euphemisms?

We rightly want to be affiliated with noble causes, and when a Facebook friend tosses out a vague cliché about injustice or civil rights, the temptation to join in can be strong. This is where silence is better than a forgery. Not everyone is an activist. Ask questions in real time and in real life of people whose spirituality you admire. Listen for authentic love. Be careful of who you consult. Nothing sends me running in the opposite direction faster than attempts at faux sisterhood, and life is filled with sources of bad theology dispensed by people with Good Hair. I'll take my moral waxing from someone who wouldn't think of waxing anywhere else, if you don't mind. I'm not making attention to fashion trends a litmus test which must be failed in order to have intellectual credibility, but --- oh wait, yes I am. Great thinkers necessarily seem to opt out of the parade of vanity. People who neglect hygiene in order to socialize (or not) are often fantastic. The day my eyebrows are finally just growing in concentric circles, you'll know I've reached scholastic nirvana.

The bare truth is, marriage was redefined fifty years ago with the introduction of no-fault divorce and artificial contraception. This is detail. Gird your loins: if sex is merely the joining of two people (without the possibility of creating a third), then so is marriage. The unexamined life Socrates warned against has won. Ironically, it can't stop preening in front of the mirror.

Shoe Leather Evangelization, as God Intends

The shoes always made me slightly uncomfortable. Yes, I'm talking about the red papal shoes, a bit of flair on which I tried not to pin too much symbolism. "He's the Pope, he can wear whatever he likes," was my ultimate response. A flash of color, a spark of life, these are no bad things, right? Isn't it true, though, that in our world of blips and sound bites, it was enough for those who find comfort in rejecting the Catholic faith to see the symbol of custom Italian shoes as a harbinger of excess and disconnect, a dismissal of our wounded world?

Perhaps the only thing that makes some among us more uncomfortable than the appearance of excess, is the appearance of material wanting. We read that Cardinal Bergoglio's friends bought him some new shoes just as he departed Buenos Aires for Rome, since the pair he was wearing were pretty shabby.

Spiritual truths are, by their nature, simple. I've always found conviction and inspiration in the question, "What if we spent at least as much time working on our 'insides' and we did on our 'outsides'? Francis' Argentine life seems to overflow with this possibility. Even the charming description of his sister's reaction shows us we are not witnessing a fluke of Catholic religious life. He's doing it right. It's been reported that as a priest he spent most of his time offering masses and hearing confession. He's spent over four decades among our wounded world, gaze fixed, heart entwined, hard at work and prayer. We must now pray for every priest, bishop and Cardinal who lives similarly. And ask God to show us how to do it too.

We can check 'yes' in the box for both camps' requests, from radical stewardship to unwavering fidelity to Magisterial teachings. These camps of Catholics need not be disparate. And here's the crux, if you will: it's not so much that our new Holy Father has fulfilled each of our criteria. He does --  yet he adds more. God is adding more to the dimensions of our hearts and lives, by having less and doing more. For one camp this means a braver, more visible evangelization. As then Cardinal, Pope Francis spoke of our church needing "to spill onto the streets, for Jesus is the King of the Streets." For still others it will mean an equally brave interior quest which results in assenting (or not) to the teachings of the Catholic faith in order to call themselves Catholic (or not).

Pope Francis has said 'yes' to God, humbly giving himself to our world, in this age and beyond.
Just like Mary.

Who was/is Pope Emeritus Benedict? Deeply dignified, a man of resplendent faith, insistent on sharing the transformative power of God's love.

Francis appears to be this and delicately, more --- by showing us less. Less of himself, more of God.
Just like Jesus.

It seems each person who clamored, even casually, for the Church or the papacy to change is getting their way. What's more, we're being newly invited on The Way.

Most Annoying Wife Auditions, Take One

My husband couldn't be expected to keep sleeping, in the wee hours of last night, when I happened upon this one. I elbowed him awake to share, courtesy of Edith Wharton by lamplight :

"There once was a man who had seen the Parthenon, and he wished to build his god a temple like it. But he was not a skillful man, and, try as he would, he could produce only a mud hut thatched with straw; and he sat down and wept because he could not build a temple for his god. But one who passed by said to him:  "There are two worse plights than yours. One is to have no god; the other is to build a mud hut and mistake it for the Parthenon." "

The Pill: No Big Whoop?

Your moon cycle is your friend.

Confronting a lie is tough, but confronting the behemoth pharmaceutical industry begins with squeaky, questioning wheels. I invite you to become one of them.

President Obama is currently at the helm of an unprecedented assault on religious freedom, fundamental liberty and conscientious objection. I will leave the legal and historical arguments to minds better trained than mine. Barack Obama and his cohorts are but a symptom of what ails us. I want to talk about The Pill.

Hormonal contraception is the cultural norm for American women and teens, with 2010 marking fifty years of rapidly increasing use. We have been fed a host of well-crafted lies about our bodies, our destinies, and the role we should expect to play in controlling both. Creepy scientific findings are rejected without much logic, as if platitudes about liberation are as far as our reasoning abilities have been extended. 

Catholics have embraced the pill at a rate equal to everyone else, so the tentacles of this artificial intrusion aren't unique to any group. Entrenched mass acceptance doesn't make it the best choice for women. Liberation from fear is simpler, healthier and enhances a relationship.

As a married woman who happily fumbles her way through NFP, my own point of view may seem overly pristine. Let me assure you that I couldn't have treated sex more cavalierly for a portion of my life, and we endured infertility for the first half of our marriage. The former is just biography, and making bad decisions doesn't increase my credibility. The latter gave a piercing clarity to our grasp of the full purpose of sex itself. When a trusted process doesn't work to our demands, its function often takes on a heightened importance.

Not to trivialize the subject at hand, but is this ever more stark than with computers? If I there's an infinitessimal delay in retrieving data, I'm peeved. If something actually breaks, I experience an interior defrag process, the depth of which is embarrassing to admit. I like to read. But back to my womb, your womb, and the wombs you love...

To suggest that women reconsider use of artificial birth control is a strike at the heart of postmodern feminism, to which I owe a certain gratitude. So be it. Hear me roar, suffragettes.

Or rather, hear the Boston Women's Health Collective do their own roaring. Compared to their magnum opus, Our Bodies, Ourselves (1970), Pope Paul VI's landmark Encyclical, Humane Vitae (1968) is a breeze. Let's examine both. The italicized passages are the words of the Catholic Church, followed by a corresponding section from Our Bodies, Ourselves unless otherwise noted.

First, on the origins of life:

"The question of human procreation, like every other question which touches human life,
involves more than the limited aspects specific to such disciplines as biology, psychology, demography or sociology. It is the whole man and the whole mission to which he is called that must be considered: both its natural, earthly aspects and its supernatural, eternal aspects." 

"By the end of the second month the growing embryo, by this time called a fetus, is a very fragile one-inch long mass of differentiated tissue acting as a parasite within the mother's body."

+++

On the holistic ingredients of Natural Family Planning:

"The right and lawful ordering of birth demands, first of all, that spouses fully recognize and value the true blessings of family life and that they acquire complete mastery over themselves and their emotions.

Self-discipline of this kind is a shining witness to the chastity of husband and wife and, far from being a hindrance to their love of one another, transforms it by giving it a more truly human character."

  

"The method requires a lot of self-control

and cooperation between partners."

+++

On contraception effectively
reducing women to  sexual objects:

"Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection." 

  

"The pill can bring increased pressure on a woman to have intercourse with any man who wants it, or to do it with her husband or long-term lover any time he wants to whether she wants to or not."

+++

On Discerning Family Size: 

"With regard to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised by those who prudently and generously decide to have more children, and by those who, for serious reasons and with due respect to moral precepts, decide not to have additional children for either a certain or an indefinite period of time."

"Lots of experts have lots of expert opinions on the number of children in the "ideal" family and the spacing of those children, but it is up to each of us to make our own decision about how many children to have and when to have them." Ourselves and Our Children, 1978

+++

Women's Roles:

"Also noteworthy is a new understanding of the dignity of woman and her place in society, of the value of conjugal love in marriage and the relationship of conjugal acts to this love." 

"We and what we did were as valuable as men and what they did. ...It still surprises me that I can create something other than a child." 

+++

On the necessity and value of chaste periods:

"With regard to man's innate drives and emotions, responsible parenthood means that man's reason and will must exert control over them." 

"Anxiety diminishes because being alone is a very positive experience. It has given us back our integrity, our privacy, our pride." (on celibacy)

++++

It appears we have some points to agree on, such as the general aim of human dignity. There are sympathetic themes, but we know the documents to be diametrically opposed. Our Bodies Ourselves was a manifesto against reproductive enslavement, filled with more militant emotion than science or direction. Humanae Vitae, in its compactness, addresses so much of life's difficulty and beauty. It opens with the strength of the arguments of the day for using scientific gains to rationally space births. The reader is then swept into a broader realm, away from temptation and self-centeredness.  Especially when contrasted to the cynicism of OBOS, the good Pope is a romantic poet.

"It is sad not to see the good in goodness."
Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol



To describe their work as cynical is not discounting their passion or humanity. Firstwave feminists are real women, who poured their lives into this work --- often neglecting their own children to champion the power of another mother (or not). But they were pioneers, not settlers. I have inherited the dystopian realm they envisioned, and it's gross.

It is immoral men who benefit most from artificial birth control, giving them dominion over women in a way so delicate and difficult to explain after it has been granted for decades. This is no accident, if some study is given to the forces behind this movement. (Hint: It didn't start in 1970) So much sexual mystery is destroyed when men and women's complementary desires are fragmented into opposing forces. Men are harmed, too.

A girl who has never been wholly accepted barely counts it as a loss. To young men, specifically, I would ask: How dare you look into the eyes of a girl you profess to love, while hiding from her life-giving force that you can't possess or understand? Fear of this power tells you to treat her like a pretty vending machine, perhaps extracting offspring at some later date. As humans, we are much more than machines. 

I contain multitudes, as the poet implores.

So do you.

I parcel myself out for no man.

Shut Up About My Priest

I'm a sucker for gurus. A bit of a teacher's pet as a student, I still go into new social settings with an autopilot for pleasing authority. Not proud, just sharing information.

So what to do with the authority figure of the Roman Catholic priest, for a girl like me? My introduction to these holy men couldn't have come in a better form: the gregarious canon lawyer who walked Anthony and me through marriage preparation classes. I still admire that he kept a straight face as he came back with the results of our exhaustive questionnaire at one of our first meetings. "You seem extremely well-suited for one another," he began. "Only three major discrepancies are showing up when I compare both sets of answers: money, sex and children." Yes, great news. Because those things are mere periphery in adult life, right?  Alas. We somehow aced a section of the silly quiz called "lifestyle expectations", and the rest is history of some sort.

In many settings, to say the word priest is to invite grandstanding over power, perversion and dereliction of duty. (Money, sex and kids, anyone?) Those cases are tragic and very human exceptions to the rule. We're supposed to pray for them. And prosecute where fitting.

But today my indelicate plea is not on behalf of the men gone astray. I'm talking about the good, smart, dedicated men who serve a billion Catholics. They come from every conceivable echelon of society, and go forth to minister to a crowd who is equally diverse.

Our little family has known about twenty of these men, which I realize is hardly a representative sampling. My data also skews hard in favor of the rareified Western Province Dominicans.

Vicki Thorn, foundress of Project Rachel, admitted her own surprise at the requests of post-abortive mothers to meet with a priest rather than a therapist in beginning their healing. This is a small but unparalleled example of the dark places made light by Reconciliation through our shepherds.

We have also been given friends reclined at table, scholars and counselors, hacky-sack players, wilderness guides, and men who act in persona Christi at the altar. I don't expect these roles to stir reverence in their disinterested detractors. I'm not asking for high-fives, but I am asking for silence. Shut up about my priest.

Secular tyranny has a foe in me because its heretics are branded without so much as a formal creed to violate. I do have some ideas about what it takes to be considered unclean, however. 
I. don't. recycle. Anyone who goes beyond my reduce and reuse inclinations is fine by me. But this is not a moral contest. I'm not in your church.

Extreme and inaccurate characterizations run both ways. The temptation to build a cult of personality around popular priests is a reality. The good ones don't allow it. They point to Christ, in their every action, and our duty includes keeping that distinction clear. One is a guy, sent by A Guy, in obedience to The Guy. Thankfully, my own unfair expectations of priests have been tempered through familiarity. The earthly joys they set aside in order to answer their Holy Orders --- frankly, that sacrifice continues to stun me.

We regularly invite the priests of our Cathedral parish for meals, and our family life is newly animated by each of their arrivals. I hope the cacophany of a young family is replenishing to them. For every casual six hour meal, there have been poignant moments which reveal their mission and set them apart all over again. Some of those moments feel chiseled into the walls of my home. Last year, a favorite priest was late arriving for tacos. We worried. Father Vincent  eventually made it to our door, and out of the childrens' earshot, explained the delay. As he removed his black wool coat and accepted a mug of coffee, he briefly described being called to a wintry driveway to anoint the body of a man who had dropped dead next to his idling pickup truck.

Smug one-liners about Roman Catholic priests too often go unchallenged, and their burden grows because of it. Their burden is my burden, if I'm doing anything right. As the suffering flock looks to these men for guidance, may the title of Father be spoken with the love it merits, or kindly left alone.

Just So You Know You're Welcome Here