Vigano, Pope Francis, McCarrick and the Glamour of Evil

Many Catholics will be familiar with the question, “Do you reject the glamour of evil?”  It was part of the older form of the renewal of baptismal promises.  The “glamour of evil” is a curious expression that I think speaks to the reaction many Catholics are having in the face of the ongoing clerical scandals in the Church.

Wilde Times

I think most people interpret that phrase, “the glamour of evil” to mean that evil can seem superficially attractive.  If we let it, it has the power to draw us in, even when we know its wrong.  As Oscar Wilde famously put it, “I can resist everything…except temptation.”  But I think there is another dimension to that phrase that this scandal is revealing.

More and more, I am seeing otherwise good, faithful people unable to focus on anything but the latest horrifying tidbit to come across their social media feeds, no matter how unsubstantiated it may be.   I see other good and faithful people who can’t resist goading each other, either because each new vile story is just more proof that  “Pope Francis has failed” or just another example of the “vast right-wing conspiracy that’s plotting to get Pope Francis.”

Cardinal Popper

It seems to me that despite whatever good intentions we may have, we are all running the risk of being unintentionally seduced by glamour of the evil that is pouring out of the church. We have inadvertently become obsessed with it,  like some people can’t get enough of those “Dr. Popper” pimple videos on YouTube, or how you just can’t bring yourself to look away from that horrific accident where blood and transmission fluid are smeared across the highway.  A melange of death and gore.

Look Away…Look Away….

Evil is glamorous, not only in the sense that it can be hard to resist being drawn into it, but also in the sense that it can be hard to look away from it.  If you aren’t careful, it’s tremendously easy to stare at it, and stare at it, and stare at it, until you can’t see anything else.  Until everything good, and godly, and righteous, and beautiful has been drained from view, and all that is left is outrage, and anger, and indignation, and disgust.

Pollyanna Need Not Apply

I don’t mean to imply that we should adopt some Pollyanna perspective that simply pretends everything is just fine while the Cathedral burns to the ground.  I’ve read the PA Grand Jury Report.  I’ve read Vigano’s testimony.  As both a pastoral counselor who works with abuse victims  and someone in Catholic media, I can’t afford to not know what’s going on. I am as unfortunately well-informed as anyone can be about all the latest appalling news.

Moreover, I don’t think we can afford to not be well-informed.  As I have written before, this is going to have to be a lay-led reform, and we can’t lead the reform if we aren’t well-informed.

Even so, we all have to remember to do whatever we can to intentionally and consciously drag ourselves out of the cesspool at least several times a day to remember that God is good.  That there is still beauty in the world.  That the Holy Spirit is alive and well. That there are real, hurting people who need to see that someone…anyone in the Church is still capable of love, compassion, and goodness.  And that nothing good comes from swimming in a sewer and throwing sh*t at each other all day long.

RSVP Satan

Whatever “kind” of Catholic you are (left, right, middle, upside-down), whoever’s ox you would like to see gored, maybe we would all do well to pause a few times a day.  Step away from social media.  Hug your kids.  Give thanks to God for something. Help someone who is hurting.  Just…be kind to someone–for God’s sake.  Literally.

Satan is throwing a huge party, and yes, we need to stay on top of it so that maybe, just maybe, we can stop it from turning into a riot that burns down the entire block (or, y’know, theocratic city-state).  But the one thing I can guarantee is that you are not doing anyone any good by sending in your RSVP to Hatefest 2018 and diving into the mosh pit.

Please. I know it isn’t as much fun as raking muck.  I know that it’s hard to resist when everyone, including the highest officials in the church, are acting like competitors in some coke-fueled mud-wrestling tournament.  But please.  Do yourself a favor.  Do the world a favor.  Do the actual victims a favor. And do whatever you can to resist the glamour of evil. Look away.  A little bit. Just enough to remember St Paul’s words. “Brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (Phil 4:8).

Yes. Be aware. Be informed. By all means, be motivated to act. But at all costs, in big and small ways, please, be a force for good.  Because even if you don’t join in,  there is plenty of evil to go around right now. And unfortunately, I promise it will all still be there when you get back from your break.

Spiritual Trauma and the Catholic Church: How Do We Heal Our Broken Hearts?

Horrifying.  Devastating. Apocalyptic.

The sad fact is, none of these words are adequate to describe the events described in the recently released grand jury report on multigenerational clerical abuse in Pennsylvania and the PA bishop’s response (or lack thereof). In light of all that has come out about “Uncle” Ted McCarrick, as well as all the news from Chile, Peru, Argentina, and before that, Australia, the PA report is just the latest sign that our church leadership has failed.  Miserably. Catastrophically.  Globally. Sadly, its hard to believe that we are not just seeing the tip of the iceberg that could easily sink the barque of Peter.

Of course, the faithful have always taken comfort in Jesus’ words, “You are Peter, and upon this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it(Mt 16:17-18).”  These words are true as ever, thanks be to God. Unfortunately, it is clear that many, if not most, of our church leaders have exhibited a leadership style less in keeping with our Lord’s words than with Edmund Burke’s, proving that,  “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

The bonds of clericalism have left our leaders bound and gagged, incapable of even the degree of fraternal correction required to maintain the most minimal levels of human decency and moral rectitude.

Hitting Close To Home
On a personal level, as I read through the PA grand jury report, I unhappily discovered that, as a child, I had a fair amount of contact with at least two of the men who were eventually removed from ministry. One was involved in the parish school I attended for junior high.  I interacted with him regularly as an altar server and lector for school masses.

The other was the asst. vocations director in the years I was discerning the priesthood.  Thankfully, I was never abused.  In fact, neither of these men ever treated me in any way that made me uncomfortable at the time. But I can’t help the sick feeling that rises up in me when I think back on those days and consider what could have happenned had the circumstances been even a little different.  What if I had been alone with them just a few more minutes?  What if they just happened to be a little less in control of themselves that particular day?  What if…?

From Thrones Corrupt
My head is spinning too much for me to offer any coherent thoughts on what we, the laity, need to demand in terms of reforms, but believe me, it’s almost all I’ve been thinking about lately. I read the report just before attending the anticipated mass for the Feast of the Assumption. Our gathering song was Bernadette Farrell’s beautiful setting of the Magnificat. When I got to the line, “…But mighty kings will swiftly fall from thrones corrupt” I found myself bursting into tears. The air went out of my lungs. I couldn’t sing or speak.  Something about that lyric perfectly articulated the feelings I had tried to keep at a professional distance as I read the grand jury’s report. I had to leave the pew to compose myself.

Staging An Intervention
Despite the disorienting effect all this is having—not just on me but all the faithful–the one thing that is clear to me that any authentic reform cannot come from the bishops. Even if there were enough good bishops to enact real reform, as a group, they have lost all credibility to teach or govern, much less sanctify.  Change has to come from us. The laity.  We cannot simply ask the bishops’ permission to lead this effort.  In a spirit of genuine but tough love, the elder children need to do whatever it takes to insist that our drunken parents give us the car keys.  And we must refuse to give them back until we are convinced that they have sobered up.

As I try to think through my own reactions to this crisis, both in terms what it means to my dearly-held Catholic faith and what it demands of me as a prominent lay Catholic and pastoral counselor, a few thoughts come to mind about how we can reclaim our bearings and our faith as we move forward to rebuild the church in Christ’s image rather than the world’s.

Dealing with Desecration
The emminent psychologist of religion, Dr. Kenneth Pargament, describes anything that threatens a person’s ability to access their spiritual resources (e.g., their ability to draw comfort from their faith, their ability to engage in healthy spiritual practices and connect with God, or their ability to seek support from spiritual leaders) as a “desecration.”  A desecration could be sickness, betrayal, doubts and spiritual crises, or other traumatic events that threaten my ability to draw comfort from my spiritual life.   I can’t think of a better word for this present situation.

Unhealthy Responses
Pargament notes that people can have either healthy or unhealthy responses to desecrations.  Unhealthy responses include things like…

-the abandonment of one’s faith

-the complete abandonment of spiritual practices,

extremism (obsessively asserting my “right-ness” even in the face the wrongs I am committing)

hypocrisy (where I decide to hold others to a standard that I, myself, refuse to uphold),

-and demonization of self or others (where I look to assign blame rather than seeking effective solutions).

The Healthy Alternative
By contrast, a healthy response to a desecration involves what Pargament refers to as Centering the Sacred.  It is a three-step process that allows a person experiencing spiritual trauma to sort though the wreckage and establish a foundation for healthier spiritual coping moving forward.

The first step is Recognizing the Limitations of Current Strivings.  That means taking time to reflect closely and intentionally on whether the former approach I took to my spiritual life is adequate for helping me deal with the traumatic events I’m facing.  For instance, perhaps my previous vision of God was “too small” and I didn’t believe that God was big enough, or loving enough, or merciful enough, or powerful enough to handle the struggles I am currently facing.  Perhaps the spiritual practices I relied upon to maintain my connection to God in better times just aren’t sufficient to help me maintain that connection in difficult times.

Rather than simply giving up on God or my spiritual practices, I need to view the desecration I am experiencing as an opportunity to increase my spiritual bandwith.  To allow my vision of God to grow or to reinvest in spiritual practices that are up to the task of helping me stay connected to God, my faith, and my values through this trial.

The second step is Letting Go.  I need to be willing to stop approaching my spiritual life in the same old way and stop doing the same spiritual practices despite getting less and less out of them. I need to see the desecration I have experienced as a challenge to develop a more mature, expansive, and engaged approach to faith than I have previously exhibited.

This is hard.  When we are going through trauma, we don’t want to have to be the ones to change. We’re the victims, after all. We want the circumstances to change so that we can keep being comfortable doing what we always did. But this doesn’t work.  In fact, it just sets us up for new, and possibly more devastating desecrations down the road. We have to be willing to let go and change our approach to our spiritual life and practices so that they are sufficient to bear the burdens we are asking them to carry.

Finally, we need to Center The Sacred.  When we first experience a spiritual wound, our pain, anger, and fear take center stage in our lives.  If we cling to these things—even with the positive intention of protecting ourselves—we will become stuck in a place of emptiness, anxiety, obsession, and rage. We need to make the effort—and it is almost always an effort—to place any spiritual beliefs, practices, and supports that do enable us to stay connected to God, our faith, and our values, at the center of our experience. That doesn’t mean that we ignore our emptiness, anxiety, worry or rage.  It means that we have to work to process those feelings through our faith instead of processing our faith through our feelings.

Sometimes we can do this on our own. Sometimes we require the assistance of a wise spiritual director or pastoral counselor.  But either way, focusing on this process allows us get our spiritual feet back under us so that we can do what needs to be done.

Moving Forward.
Whatever we, the faithful, decide needs to happen to resolve the broader spiritual crisis in the church and among our church’s leadership, we can only begin the process if each of us first pause to regain our  own spiritual center. Authentic change can be motivated by pain, but it can’t be driven by it.

It’s only natural to want to respond to our pain and anger by wanting to jump up and DO…SOMETHING!  And, granted, there is a lot to be done.  But that work will be better served if we can take a moment to work through these three steps for ourselves so that we can regain as strong a connection as possible to our own spiritual resources.  Because, let’s face it.  This is God’s church.  It has to be his plan we follow to fix it.  And we’re going to need as much of his help as we can get to do it.

Prayer Power – A New Study Reveals The True Meaning Of “The family That Prays Together, Stays Together.”

We’ve often heard the phrase “The family that prays together, stays together.” While this adage—originally coined by the Venerable Fr. Patrick Peyton—has rapidly grown in popularity, the Journal of Family Psychology recently conducted a study to evaluate the true effects of couple and family prayer.

The researchers conducted a national study evaluating 198 diverse families in a manner which viewed family prayer as a ritual within religious families. The results of this study demonstrated seven related themes between couple and family prayer and the connectedness of the individuals.

These themes indicated that couple/family prayer serves as a time of family interaction and togetherness, an opportunity for social support, and a means for passing religious practices among intergenerational family members. Moreover, as couple/family prayer included issues of concern for the individuals, couple/family prayer proved to help reduce relational tension between those praying together, and provided feelings of connectedness, bonding, and unity between the couple and/or family. Lastly, couples and families reported that when they felt disunity within their family, they found it more difficult to pray together.

When families experience this feeling of disunity and difficulty praying together, the results of this study suggested that couples and families increase their practice of rituals such as family meals. The participant results showed that “the place of prayer in family life was interwoven in the context of other naturally occurring rituals,” further stating that, “Perhaps, families may begin by considering family prayer as a family ritual that can become as naturally embedded in family life as are these other rituals. Instead of exclusively focusing on praying together, they may consider improving other family rituals and then extend the family’s ability to come together to naturally participate in family prayer.”

Overall, the results of this study demonstrated that couple and family prayer provided opportunities for togetherness, social support, interaction, and connectedness. As stated by the authors, couple and family prayer provides a ritual that is a “potentially unique pathway to family cohesion.”

For more on how to pray as a couple, check out Praying For (& With) Your Spouse: The Way To Deeper Love and tune in to More2Life—Monday through Friday, 10am E/9am C on EWTN, SiriusXM 130!

Overcoming The Resentment Overload

We all know the feeling of resentment. It can grow slowly and then quickly feel overwhelming, or it can hit us all at once. No matter how resentment sneaks up on us, it can be extremely difficult to let go of.

We often feel guilty about resentment and, of course, resentment isn’t something we want to hold on to. But the Theology of the Body teaches that God designed our bodies to work for our good and the good of those around us. If we learn to listen to the ways God is speaking to us through our bodies, we can hear him guiding us on how best to take care of ourselves and other. All of our emotions–including feelings like resentment–are part of our body’s response to our environment. When united to God’s grace, our emotions can give us important information. But what could God possibly be saying to us through resentment?  Well, Theology of the Body tells us that healthy relationships are mutually self-donative. That is, a healthy relationship can only exist when both people are doing everything they can to take care of each other. Resentment is the feeling we get when we feel like we are giving more to the relationship than the other person is. Resentment is a warning light on the relationship dashboard that asks us to check if our relationship is really still mutually self-donative or, if somehow, we are allowing ourselves to be treated more like an object than a person. Understood properly, resentment shouldn’t lead us to pout or withdraw, it should lead us to do healthy things like express our needs, or ask for help, or clarify the other person’s intentions. If we deal with our resentment gracefully, it will help us make sure that each person in the relationship is giving as much as they can to protect the health of the relationship and doing as much as they can to look out for the wellbeing of each person in the relationship.

What can we do to truly be able to overcome resentment?

Name the Need–The first thing to do if you are feeling resentful is to identify and name the need that isn’t being met. Do you need help? Do you need a little TLC? Could you use help getting a break? Is there a problem between you and another person that needs to be resolved? Resentment tends to occur when a need sits on the shelf too long and it starts to spoil. Instead of beating up on yourself for feeling resentful, bring your resentment to God. Say, “Lord, help me to name the need that is feeding my resentment and help me to address it in a way that glorifies you and makes my relationships healthier.” Once you know what the need is, you can make a plan to meet it instead of letting it continue to spoil on the shelf, feeding that growing sense of resentment.

Speak the Need–Sometimes, even when we have identified a need, we have a hard time feeling like it’s OK to meet it. We tell ourselves, “We shouldn’t have to ask for help.” Or, “I shouldn’t have to say anything about this.” Remember, the theology of the body tells us that the voice of God speaks to us through our bodies. If you are feeling resentful, God is asking you to find a healthy, godly way to meet an unmet need and make your relationships healthier and stronger. Trying to talk yourself out of meeting that need is like trying to ignore the voice of the Holy Spirit! Once you’ve identified the need that is feeding your resentment, it’s time to make a plan to meet it. Go to the people around you and say, “I really need your help with X.” Don’t worry if they aren’t receptive at first. Be confident in the need that God is asking you to address. Remember, healthy, godly relationships are mutually self-donative. Sometimes that means that we have to be willing to stretch ourselves a little bit to work for each other’s good. That’s not always fun, but it’s always good. Give the people in your life the opportunity to stretch themselves a little for you. Don’t let doubts about others rob them of the opportunity to learn to love you as much as you love them.

Get Help to Meet the Need–Sometimes, even when we have tried our best, getting our needs met can be…complicated. If you find that you can’t stop feeling resentful no matter what you do, or if you are struggling to actually identify your needs in the first place,  or articulate them in ways that the people in your life can actually hear and respond to, it’s time to get some new skills. Don’t give into the temptation of thinking that there is nothing you can do just because you can’t figure our what to do on your own. Remember, if God is calling your attention to a need, God has a plan for meeting it. Talk to a faithful professional counselor who can help you learn how to cooperate with God’s plan for meeting the unmet needs that are feeding your resentment.

To learn more about overcoming resentments check out God Help Me These People Are Driving Me Nuts! Making Peace with Difficult People and be sure to tune in to More2Life—Monday through Friday, 10am E/9am C on EWTN, SiriusXM 130.

If you are looking for a faithful professional counselor, contact Pastoral Solutions Institute at 740-266-6461 or visit us at CatholicCounselors.com.