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As a struggling new psychotherapist I often worked under public health contracts. For five years I worked a 10-hour Thursday at a state-funded alcohol abuse in-patient/out-patient treatment center. (The facility shared a name with a well known alcoholic beverage brand, in one of those typical governmental oversights.) It was a tenure not without its humor: when I would leave for home at night, the parking lot was filled with bicycles, over 50, perhaps, as many outpatients had lost their licenses to DUI convictions. When I would get home at night, I would always announce to my wife that “I’m home from the Tour de France.”
I learned the subtleties of advanced treatment from substance abuse counselors who were wonderfully kind to me, without exception. I suspect that many readers are familiar with the rudiments of 12-step programs, including the much feared fourth step of the moral inventory, the writing and the private one-on-one revelation. (As a pastor in earlier years, I had numerous requests from recovering alcoholics to “hear” their moral inventories in a confessional setting, which I was happy to do.) I learned from sponsors and addiction specialists that the best treatment success came with repeated working of the step cycle, which in practice meant that a recovering alcoholic would undertake a full moral inventory every few years. This struck a strong theological chord with me. I remembered years before, as a grad school theological student, that the noted sacramental scholar Regis Duffy, O.F.M., had discussed with us in class the intricacies of the confessional, including circumstances where a penitent might make five or six visits to the confessional before seeking absolution. As my friend and fellow house friar Regis would explain, penitents needed space and time to adequately reflect upon the seriousness of their acts, the peculiar circumstances of their lives at that time, and the direction that conversion might look like before making a formal request for absolution. One might call this a “penitential catechumenate” approach for short. (For catechists, I will discuss the different theologies of sin, primarily “individual act” and “fundamental orientation” in a subsequent entry.) When I became a psychotherapist, I quickly discovered that patients were often suffering contemporary emotional pain from their own mistakes and decisions of years ago. In fact, a number of my patients had sought professional help before. Why were past mistakes continuing to plague present day life? And why does Catholic sacramental practice permit a penitent to present a sin in confession that was absolved twenty years ago? The answer is surprising simple but amazingly overlooked in psychology and catechetics: it can be found in any competent Psych 101 text book, under the chapter heading of “human development.” We change. Every ten years or thereabouts (see Erik Erikson, d. 1994) we progress into a new and more expansive view of ourselves and the realities of life. A simpler explanation might be “the wisdom of age.” This factor of human life means that we can never go backward with mathematical objectivity in writing our life script; it will always be colored by the greater truths we have acquired along the way. Sinful acts or omissions had a certain meaning in our 20’s. As we age, and we learn about love, the precious nature of time, the values of competency and the dignity of a good name—not to mention our onrushing encounter with Judgment—the “sins of youth” take on a greater significance in our self understanding. This is not “wallowing in guilt.” Catholic belief in Purgatory is recognition of the unfinished business of sin, so to speak. St. Augustine, by his own confession, engaged in petty theft, wasted some of his best early years in arrogant hot pursuit of a bankrupt philosophy, and fathered a child. After redemptive baptism at the hands of the theological giant and Bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose in 387, Augustine became a bishop himself in North Africa and possibly the greatest theologian and prolific writer in the history of Christianity. But the sins of his youth were always with him and influenced his writings, and by extension, the Church’s outlook on many theological ideas and practices that remain with us today. Morally speaking, my Lent of 2015 should not be the Lent of 2005 or 1995. It is the Lent of my history seen today with greater prayer, better understanding of the Gospel demands, greater empathy for those I have injured along the way and poor decision making, and the directive insights of a present-day Church, particularly from a mature confessor or spiritual director to nurture me through the ongoing pain of discovery. “A humble, contrite heart, O God, you will not spurn.” (Psalm 51:17)
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From time to time I have presented workshops to classes of exclusively contracted employees of my diocese, such as teachers’ in-service days. When I am assigned our basic morality course for those days, I make it a point to draw attention to the “faith and morals clause” of teachers’ contracts, because I find that most of our employees do not understand the full implications of the language and their situations vis-à-vis what they intend in the annual ritual. In recent weeks, however, the moral clause of Catholic employee contracts has come into the national news stream. Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami (formerly of my diocese here in Orlando) issued a letter early this year to all church personnel and ministers, indicating that public endorsement of such issues as legalization of same sex marriages on one’s personal Facebook account could be grounds for dismissal. This month the attention has shifted to San Francisco where Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone has codified and expanded the Wenski position into the actual contract and handbook for teachers, to much criticism as well as reasonable support.
Catholic identity is the life blood of Catholic schools, or it should be. I would not pay the dollars for private Catholic education if I believed that Catholic tradition and morality did not steer the ship. If you happen to be a manager for Merck, and you pen an editorial in the Sunday NY Times on the evils of Big Pharma, you are probably in the wrong work place (and Merck will advise you of that while you clean out your desk.) Corporate loyalty is a matter of public ethics, not simply an in-house Catholic matter. On the other hand, our great Catholic tradition of education has, for over a millennium, included spirited debate on such matters as slavery, interest on loans, the Immaculate Conception, weaponry (e.g., the armor piercing cross bow). I can recall my own middle school days when, under the tutelage of the Christian Brothers, we had lively debates about issues of substantive morality, such as the ethics of assassinating Hitler. Educational institutions within the Church have also been major players in explicating the understanding of Revelation in matters of faith and morals. With this in mind, here are some considerations on church contracts that may serve to give us some pause in our pursuit to preserve the Catholic brand: (1) Several generations of inadequate moral (or general, for that matter) faith formation in the classroom or parish formation programs have resulted in a work force with critical ignorance or misunderstanding of Catholic mainstream teaching. (2) The vetting process of the Church is driven as much by desperation as compassionate discussion of belief and employee comfort in a Catholic milieu. (I’m tempted to Google “August hires by Catholic schools.”) (3) Criminal and civil workplace laws may prohibit the kind of vetting and supervision that bishops such as Cordileone would wish to maintain. (4) Morals clauses, in my opinion, are often written with a universal and final tone regarding Catholic teaching where considerable well-founded doubt and discussion is an existential reality or pastoral practice may be at variance. We do not know, for example, what Pope Francis and the bishops will do this year regarding ministry and status discussions of divorce and remarriage. I do not expect any change in the teaching of marital indissolubility. However, there is nothing to prohibit the Church from creating “new canonical categories” of legal acceptance. This is entrenched in our history; the “Pauline Privilege” and the “Disparity of Cult” Dispensation (where a bishop after due diligence permits a non-sacramental marriage between a Catholic and an unbaptized person) immediately come to mind. (5) The enforcement of moral codes tends to be selective and possibly politically motivated. In Florida, for example, a referendum on the definition of a family was passed in 2008, but as in the case of 30-some other states, the civil right of same sex marriage was affirmed in the court. This overturn seemed to have been Wenski’s motivation in his instruction. My point here is simply that if the goal of the morals clause is uniform public fidelity to Catholic teaching, then its application should not be “event-driven,” targeted to high publicity church-society conflicts, but addressed instead to the full tenor of life, as would be true for priests and religious. (6) Following up on the fifth point, it needs to be made clear in the document that in solidarity with the discipline of the Sacrament of Penance, the opportunity for fraternal correction and catechetical growth for the offending employee need be provided. Quick-trigger firings (of which I have seen many in my career) often cause more scandal than the alleged violation of Church teaching. Evidently Bishop Cordileone believes in second chances. He himself was arrested in 2012 for driving under the influence of alcohol (the case was later adjudicated to reckless driving.) A spokesman explained that “even leaders make mistakes.” Yes, they do, and so do their employees. (7) Finally, there is a general lesson here about boundaries. There are many professions, not just Roman Catholic ministry, that require discretion and concern for public reputation. There was a time in our history when teachers, bankers, clergy, lawyers, doctors, and other “community personages” maintained a respectful reticence in what they said and did publicly. Their professions rested on trust, and they enjoyed the confidences of the people they served. As I have said elsewhere, so many of our Catholic ministers just don’t get this. The great irony is that so often their talk-radio gregariousness is what gets them into trouble. Morals clauses can be poorly written; we might do better to emphasize in writing the nature of public and ecclesial trust. Unless you are a cloistered monk or you haven’t paid your cable bill in a while, you are no doubt aware that today is the opening of the film “Fifty Shades of Grey.” Having neither read the series nor seen the movie (although the trailers were inescapable) I get the general theme line of a Hollywood glamorized relationship based upon dominance, violence and vulnerability. The last thing America needs right now—particularly in the face of growing awareness of and outrage over domestic violence—is a film which portrays male dominance over a vulnerable woman. I am grateful to my cousin Mimi for passing along to me a common-sense psychological assessment of the dangers of the movie’s underlying premises, from Miriam Grossman, M.D. I needn’t elaborate further on the medical/psychological points she puts forward.
From the point of catechetics and faith formation, however, here is another eminently potential “teachable moment.” One could argue that the Church’s teachings on sexuality are clear and precise, and naturally that would be correct. To simply reiterate these teachings every time a new cultural crisis comes down the road, however, seems like a shopworn strategy. Since the Age of the Enlightenment, western culture has demanded a persuasive why for every authoritative statement, be it religious, political, or scientific. Where catechetics fails at times is in understanding the importance of the why as integral to the faith formation process. Yesterday, in my “Seeking a North Star” post (February 12) I wrote at some length about the anxiety or the angst (as the Germans would put it) of loss of identity. I spoke of the great philosophic tradition—Pagan, Jewish, Christian—which has and continues to explore the true nature of the human being. I use the term “human” because man and woman can never be divided in terms of their nature and being. When Jesus talked about “the two become as one flesh” in his famous teaching on marriage, he was teaching “ontology” (the philosophy of being”). Little wonder that his listeners could truthfully say that he did not teach like the scribes, whose interests were by our standards rather parochial and conventional. Thus, the catechist must come to understand the nature of the human, what I referred to yesterday as Christian anthropology. From this nature, we can better understand and promulgate a human’s self understanding, help those to see that we are in fact “just a little less than the angels.” This leads to the inevitable questions of morality: what do we think of ourselves? What is our purpose? What kinds of behaviors are becoming of who we are and where we are going? If we look at the culture we live in, we tend to live—in a phrase I used quite a bit with patients—“from stimulus to stimulus.” This is true of individuals and populations. You wake up in the AM with a nervous feeling in the pit of the stomach—how do I live today? The lead in Fifty Shades, as I understand this, has answered that question; like any domestic abuser, the stimulation of intimidation, control, and physical or psychological violence provide a temporary if satisfying escape from the introspection and acceptance of reality that spiritual and mental health demand. If, as you have heard in countless Catholic weddings, “the greatest of these is love,” we need to be clear on what this word means in the context of human conduct, but particularly in our discussion here of unitive sexual love. The sacrament of marriage is in fact a life condition of focused love, where all decisions of a married person’s life are made in the context of wholesome and caring impact upon the partner. Marriage is such a critical sacrament because, perhaps more than all the others, it embodies the nature of humanity in the marital structure as a community of intimate friends and equals: it is a community of generation and formation; and in its sexual play and ecstasy it is, like the Transfiguration, a foretaste of the eternal destiny God intends for all. Where is narcissism, control, contempt, subjugation or pain in this picture? Even outside of Catholic theology, has any great philosopher advocated such an imbalance in human existence? Socrates? Plato? Aristotle? Philo? Augustine? Thomas Aquinas? Catholic moral teaching, rooted as it is in the richness of even natural philosophy per the Catechism, brings self-understanding, purpose, and the comforts of body and soul we were created to possess. Let’s learn it and teach it that way. I am presently reviewing a book for future use in teaching, A Philosophical Introduction to Theology by J. Deotis Roberts. This is something of a return home for me, as my undergraduate major is philosophy from Catholic University’s School of Philosophy. I reunited with my old friend Zeno and his Tortoise (go ahead, prove old Zeno wrong) and then later Pythagoras, who understood reality as numeric balance. (Remember his triangular theorem from geometry class?) But as one progresses to the giants Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the student begins to get the feel of how the pagan (though often religious) thinkers of the Greek world moved toward a more noble understanding of the One who created and sustains it all. Philosophy poses the questions that theology answers. Seminarians must master philosophy prior to beginning their theological studies. The very first chapter of the Catechism (paras. 27-49) discusses man’s drive and capacity for a “natural” knowledge of God (that is, prior to exposure to Scriptural Revelation.)
I get several emails daily from book publishers (at my request) and a good number of them are promoting what we might call aids to prayer. I will confess that I am not a big reader of this genre, as many seem to be “witnessing” accounts. There is certainly nothing wrong with that, and who does not rejoice to see the influence of God on the human soul? The enduring power of AA rests in large part on the miracle (as members often say) in which one’s Higher Power leads to a state of recovery from alcoholic self-destruction. As Aquinas and countless others have taught, the Christian human life is oriented toward human community. The prayer witness of one builds up the Body of Christ. And yet we owe it to God, ourselves and our neighbor to seek communion with the Almighty in the unique life we have been given, with the wonder and awe of those behind us. I tend myself toward classical spiritual reading—the texts that have stood the test of time in the Christian tradition for centuries, those works with a long record of having inspired Christians to prayer in many various times and places. When I underwent psychoanalysis as part of my therapeutic training years ago (I believe the process went on for at least a year) my own psychotherapist, a woman of considerable sensitivity and insight, recommended I read the great Western classic, The Confessions of St. Augustine from the fifth century. I have to admit that I did not quite “get it” at first read. Augustine’s sins did not seem quite so terrible to me. What I eventually came to appreciate—and this is what remains with me in prayer to this day—is Augustine’s feelings about God. In reflecting upon his own unremarkable human existence the eventual Church Father was overcome with a remorse for his lack of love and wonder toward God as manifested in Augustine’s casual indulgences in thefts and other moral breakdowns. There is a very strong affective component here that seared Augustine to the heart and no doubt energized his prodigious contribution to the history and life of the Church. What is also very interesting about Augustine is the gradual maturation of his prayer. Reading the Confessions we see a man who is stressed; his prayer experience is one of deep and painful recollection and assessment. Contrast this to the mature man of prayer some decades later. When the Western Roman Empire began to fall (quite dramatically, with Alaric’s sack of Rome), there was wholesale panic in Augustine’s Diocese of Hippo in North Africa. Many saw these events as the onset of the last days. It was here that Augustine produced his classic City of God, an almost leisurely defense of the Church and a rethinking of God’s plan (God’s City, so to speak, portrayed as God’s reality independent of the sins and foibles of empires.) If we make the effort to pray, we will find that the experience will often reflect the state of our moods and challenges of the present moment. Prayer is not always relief or escape, although it can be. The constant here is that prayer arises from the state of the heart, and we need not be embarrassed by this fact, so long as we follow Augustine and let God do some constructive unraveling. |
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