catholics do what? – Mama Needs Coffee

Catholic Spirituality, Catholics Do What?, deliverance, Evangelization, Lent

Guide to making a great confession

February 26, 2019

Our eldest made his first confession last month, and I decided to avail myself of the opportunity to (finally) memorize my Act of Contrition. I figured at age 36 and with a moderate following on the internet of people coming to me to read about Catholic Things, I should perhaps be prepared to recite this basic prayer I’ve been saying at least a dozen times a year, on average, since childhood.

If you’ve spent any time in the confessional then you are perhaps acquainted with the existential terror that can fill one’s soul when the moment is drawing nigh: Fr. is winding down his “advice and accompany” section of the Sacrament and you’re about to go onstage, so to speak. With sweating palms your eyes dart right and then left, looking for the laminated card kept on hand, I suppose, for 8 year olds and people coming home after a couple decades away from the box. (Because surely everyone else has memorized this thing by now.)

Sometimes you find the card, and other times you maybe fumble through something fresh and original like “O my God I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee who are so good and I firmly intend to avoid the near occasion of sin and MY GOD JESUS WHO DIED ON THE CROSS HAVE MERCY ON ME.”

Now dripping with sweat and performance anxiety, you make eye contact with your bewildered confessor and smile uncomfortably trying to telegraph that you are, in fact, done now. And he may or may not stretch out that awkward pause trying to figure out if he just heard your act of contrition or some original spoken word poetry and then you get your penance and you’re done.

Anyway, as we worked alongside our school to prepare Joey for his first confession, I availed myself of the copied print out he brought home to memorize. Before he turned off his reading light each night we’d say it together, at first using the paper and eventually, sooner than I’d have guessed, reciting it on our own.

Who knew how quick it would go, memorizing it? Not I, who recited some garbled approximation of it with increasing panic during each confession of my adult life.

This experience got me to thinking, what other tweaks could I make to best avail myself of this precious Sacrament of healing?

1. Go frequently

I love going to Confession. That wasn’t always the case, but about 5 years ago, right around the time we moved back from Rome, I started going once a month. Not a huge increase in frequency, but enough that it became both easier to examine my conscience and recall my sins and also more comfortable – joyful, even – to make my confession.

According to canon law one is obliged to confess only once a year, and only mortal (grave matter, full knowledge of the gravity, and willful intent to commit) sin at that. Frequent confession is permitted and even, it seems to me, encouraged, in this section here:

Can. 988

1. A member of the Christian faithful is obliged to confess in kind and number all grave sins committed after baptism and not yet remitted directly through the keys of the Church nor acknowledged in individual confession, of which the person has knowledge after diligent examination of conscience.

2. It is recommended to the Christian faithful that they also confess venial sins.

If I’m confessing venial (not grave moral matter, not premeditated) sins, which comprise the bulk of my sins these days, thanks be to God, then the more frequently I confess, the more venial sins I unload – because I’m guessing I rack up a couple dozen a day. Or so. Maybe more on Mondays.

I have found that the more I practice examining my conscience, the more sensitive my conscience becomes, funny that.

I’m still not up to a regular, daily examination, though I would like to get there eventually. It helps to take more frequent inventory, though, and brings failures and acts of cruelty and anger to the forefront of my mind so I can file them away for next time. I want to compare it to going grocery shopping without being home to look in the fridge or pantry first. You have a general sense of what to put on the list, but it might surprise you to know how exactly how little milk is left in the fridge.

2. Find a regular confessor, or try to go to the same priest every time, if multiple options are available.

Having a regular priest with whom to practice this sacrament can be a tremendous source of spiritual progress. Maybe confession isn’t readily available in your area, and if so, you’re not alone. I firmly believe that the supply has to rise in response to the demand, and that if more Catholics start turning out for Confession, the parishes and dioceses will have to reform the availability to meet the need. If a line of 20 souls, or even 10, are routinely turned away over the course of a month of Saturday afternoons, perhaps it will occur to Father to extend access beyond that single 40 minute time slot. If it does not occur to him and if polite requests are not well received, perhaps you can communicate yourself best in a letter or an email, signed from all of his confession-desiring parishioners.

If all else fails you can always contact your bishop and respectfully (kindness goes a long way, too) inquire whether there might be a way to increase access to the sacrament in your diocese. It would be a tremendous motivation to (most) bishops to hear this from their flocks.

If you do have good access to the sacrament already, consider having a standing arrangement, either formally or informally, to confess to the same priest each time. Better yet if you can, make your confessor your spiritual director; to be able to receive this sacrament of healing in the context of spiritual direction is a tremendous gift.

3. Make it a (family) habit

In my research into other moms’ best practices for raising Catholic kids, many of them seem to be working from the same playbook. Have a regular day each month for family confessions, and make it opt-out rather than opt-in. Just assume your kids all need to go, as you do, every month, and make a regular appointment out of it.

Extra credit points for taking them for ice cream or hot chocolate afterwards to emphasize the sweet taste of forgiveness.

4. Write it down

We encouraged our son to do this for his second confession after he’d revealed that it was awfully hard to remember more than one sin. He especially liked the possibility of burning the paper afterwards, though I think we ended up just tearing it up and tossing it out.

It’s helpful to get things down on paper sometimes, and can be useful in looking for patterns and occasions of sin, etc. Having things listed out with dispassionate objectivity can really help dispel any shame or anxiety around saying the thing you’re dreading having to confess.

Spoiler alert: if he has been hearing confessions for even a month’s time, the priest has heard it all. Seriously, all. My friend told me just 5 weeks after his ordination he had already heard every possible existing sin confessed at least once in his second month of priesthood.

You won’t shock him, trust me on this one.

5. Find a good examination of conscience

(and commit yourself to making a frank and regular assessment)

This is the best examination of conscience I’ve found, and it helped me to identify some bad habits that, frankly, I was failing see as sin and therefore failing to confess. For example, I’d seen my habit of working on Sundays as more of a minor shortcoming because #reallife.

Now I’m recognizing more and more that when I seek out big house projects to work on, take big shopping trips beyond what is absolutely necessary, and toss in load after load of not-technically-essential laundry on Sundays, I’m failing to set aside the Lord’s day both to worship the Lord and to enter into His rest, trusting that He will make up the difference. I realized that no, I didn’t trust God to make up for lost time on Sundays. That maybe other people could take that day to worship and relax and recharge, but that I could have used an 8th day of the week, frankly, and so used Sunday more or less as a second Saturday + Mass tacked on.

Finally, maybe this one is obvious, but invite the Holy Spirit to come into your heart and illuminate your sins when you are preparing to confess. It is to Him that we are seeking to be reconciled, and it is Him to whom are hearts are most fully known.

And it is also to Him whom we confess.

Father is the open phone line, the email server, the wifi router to heaven. He is there to receive contrition and to transmit grace and forgiveness and freedom, in return. He is not the source but the conduit of grace. And his is not the power to absolve, but Christ’s alone, entrusted through the ministry of the Church to His faithful servants, His priests.

It bears pointing out that even bad priests can hear confessions, and that even wicked men can say the Mass and confect the Eucharist and, in the name of Christ, absolve us of our sins. It is a profound mystery that Christ would entrust His treasury of graces to fallen human beings, and would extend these saving graces to us through other broken, fallible human beings equally in need of salvation.

Lent will be here in a little more than a week. Perhaps the Lord is calling you to make time for confession this year, perhaps for the first time in many years. A priest gave us his number one tip for confession at a retreat I attended last weekend: just chill out. And come.

He is waiting for you.

abuse, Catholics Do What?, current events, Evangelization

2 things I believed about the Catholic Church that were totally wrong (and why anyone would stay Catholic)

February 12, 2019

How about a little remedial ecclesiology today? (Trigger warning: if you don’t like going past 1200 words, this piece might stretch you 5 uncomfortable minutes past your limit. I know, I know. Same! I tried my best to rein it in.)

The summer of shame is well in the rearview now, and we’re underway into a whole new calendar year. As 2018 waned, the days shortening and the nights darkening, it seemed that there would be no end in sight for the rage and pain felt by faithful and lapsed Catholics alike; how could this vile evil be seeping forth from the Church we knew and loved?

For survivors of abuse – men and women who knew all too well the evil that often lay hiding in plain sight – this pain was compounded by perceived silence and cowardice from high. Where were our pastors and shepherds back at the height of the summer’s scandalous and widely-splashed headlights?

Little by little we began to grapple with the ramifications of too few pastors speaking out due to, perhaps, their own lack of credibility. It’s awfully hard to condemn the log in your brother’s eye when you’ve got a telephone pole sticking out of your own retina. Others held back out of fear, perhaps at the advice of legal counsel. Still others felt – rightfully – personally horrified and enraged by the failures of their brothers when they had themselves been struggling heroically, often with little support, to walk the walk.

Many Catholics left. Some had distanced themselves eons ago, but made their separation a public affair after ingesting the wretched evil laid bare in the Pennsylvania report.

Others quietly stopped trusting, stopped believing, and stopped attending.

For those who stayed, each of us have had to answer, if only for ourselves, why we did.

Peter, do you love me?

God knew that each of us who profess a faith in Jesus Christ and the Church He founded would need to dig deep in these days “to give an explanation for the hope we possess.”

It’s not like this was a curveball to the Almighty. He tells us plain, “Whatever is done in the dark will be brought into light.”

In other words, truly private sin is a human fantasy. Maybe it’s one of the oldest fantasies – I wonder if Eve thought, somehow, that the same God who had fashioned her from nothing, breathed life into her lungs, would somehow fail to notice her small act of rebellion? Like He was super busy checking on the mountains and fish and stuff.

Anyway, I’ve had numerous conversations with Catholics and non-Catholics alike over the past 8 months. Answered hard questions from strangers about why we’ll stay, about why we’ll never, ever leave.

But I can’t say I haven’t considered it. Back in July when revelations were coming to light seemingly faster than the Internet could link to them, I was daily overcome with rage and sorrow. And confusion. What I knew about the Church, the papacy, and the gates of hell all seemed, well…wrong. And I felt adrift.

I am a JPII Generation Catholic, as they say. I fell in love with the mystery and the history of Catholicism during the early years of Benedict’s papacy, called home by a mysterious grace seemingly wrought just for me in the final hours of St. John Paul II’s life. My conversion solidified and matured at Franciscan University of Steubenville where I encountered the word “theology” for the very first time. I probably know more about Catholicism than the average Sunday Mass-going Catholic, if only because of the Aquinas and Kreeft and Hahn and DeLubac I was assigned to read.

And I still considered leaving.

It turns out you can’t reason your way into continued belief. Faith is, at the end of the day, a gift. And an act of the will.

I am becoming increasingly aware that faith is both gift and choice. And that, having been handed the gift, I will be asked over and over throughout my lifetime to reaffirm my choice, and to continue to grow both in love and in knowledge of the Faith with a capital F.

Catholicism isn’t mine to interpret or define as I see fit. A radical notion for a postmodern mind, but one that we all fall prey to from time to time. My impoverished philosophical foundation led me to believe some fairly common fallacies about the Church which greatly intensified my pain and confusion this past year. Here are two of the errors I didn’t even realize I was carrying around in my brain; consider this a sort of “Ecclesiology 101” (ecclesia = church, ology = study of).

Myth 1: The Holy Spirit picks the Pope.

I don’t know that I literally thought this was what happened, but I certainly behaved as if I did.

Standing in a sodden St. Peter’s Square and breaking into wild jubilation with a hundred thousand strangers while watching that white smoke billow out of the Sistine Chapel chimney on the night of Pope Francis’ election didn’t do much to help dispel this myth. The papacy has always felt big and kind of magical to me. Probably because of the circumstances of my awakening to the Faith, and because of the big moments we’ve shared as a family with different Holy Fathers.

Nevermind that the Church, in 2,000 years of Petrine ministry had numbered in her ranks countless ineffective popes, weak popes, mediocre popes and outright evil popes. Because my Church history was an inch deep and my love for the modern popes was a mile wide, I was primed to be deflated by any shortcomings in a Roman Pontiff, either perceived or actual.

Reality: The Holy Spirit inspires the actions and deliberations of the College of Cardinals, assuming they are actively seeking His Will and living lives of virtue. (If I could double bold that last line, I would.) And then the Holy Spirit guarantees that whomever is elected can’t make a fatal mess of things.

As best as this armchair theologian can figure, the Holy Spirit really does this heavy lifting when it comes to preserving and protecting the Deposit of Faith:

The apostles entrusted the “Sacred deposit” of the faith (the depositum fidei),45 contained in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, to the whole of the Church. “By adhering to [this heritage] the entire holy people, united to its pastors, remains always faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. So, in maintaining, practicing and professing the faith that has been handed on, there should be a remarkable harmony between the bishops and the faithful.” CCC 84

…And in preventing heretical or erroneous teaching being promulgated “ex cathedra” or “from the chair” of Peter. Translation: The Pope cannot err when proclaiming, with the full weight of the Magisterium and in keeping with the revealed Tradition of the Church, the truth of something pertaining to faith and morals.

Can the pope have a mistress? Father illegitimate children? Be a heretic, privately? Give dumb answers to questions journalists ask? Believe wrongly that the superior flavor of gelato is crema? All yes. Which is so freaking hard to believe. But bear with me. Because myth number two which I believed was:

Myth 2: the Pope is the head of the Catholic Church

I mean, we do have a hierarchy, do we not? As an American who lives in a society of rules and laws and order, familiar with the organizational structure of human institutions, this is another one which I, frankly, sort of took for granted. Hence the outraged tweeting for the Holy Father to DO SOMETHING. FIRE SOMEONE. WHAT IN GOD’S NAME IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING??? last summer.

But, um, guys…the Church is not just a human institution.

Protects, defends, and transmits? Occasionally, when it suits, and sooner or later.

He is the leader of the Church on earth. The head of the Church’s hierarchy, the shepherd of the Universal Church on earth. But it isn’t Pope Francis’ Church, any more than it was Pope Benedict’s, or Pope Innocent’s, or Pope Gregory’s, or Pope John Paul II’s.

Reality: Jesus Christ is the head of the Church.

“Christ is the Head of this Body:” Christ “is the head of the body, the Church.”225 He is the principle of creation and redemption. Raised to the Father’s glory, “in everything he (is) preeminent,”226 especially in the Church, through whom he extends his reign over all things. CCC 792

Jesus died for us, for His Church. Jesus had to forfeit His life in exchange for ours, hot mess that we were/are. And in an interesting throwback to myth number one, Jesus only personally chose the first pope: Peter.

So why have a pope? Why have a Church? Why have a Bible? Why not start from scratch every generation and do archeological and anthropological research to try to piece together anew what the OG Christians of Corinth circa 67 AD must have practiced and believed?

Is that what Jesus willed for us? To have to start from zero every time the saving water trickles over the brow of a new Christian, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son…”

The Trinitarian formula for baptism, by the way: how are we sure that’s a thing? Should we each be researching and verifying and making sure for ourselves way out here in 2019 that we’re practicing Christianity as Jesus Christ intended? If that’s the case, thank God for Google, rising adult literacy rates, and the printing press, right?

But the Church is for all people, for all times. The Church is not only for moderns with internet access and small group Bible studies. The Church is not only for white people with comfortable sanctuaries and good youth programming. The Church is not only for prisoners in need of mercy, for orphans in need of fatherhood, for prostitutes in need of conversion and redemption.

The Church is for all of us, for all of humanity, past, present, and future. The God who promised “I will not leave you orphans” has not abandoned us to our own devices.

We do not have to rely on our own wisdom, our own clever understandings of theology – or our not-so-clever understanding, for that matter – or even on the goodness of one particular person who holds a position of power at a given time in history.

St. Jerome says “ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” The words of the Old and New Testaments wash over me every time I go to Mass, whether I’m sitting in recollected silence or wrangling an nasty toddler. I am steeped in Scripture when I sit in the church, which is mysteriously both a building and the Body of Christ, of which I am mysteriously a member and an essential physical component. I am brought into deeper relationship with Jesus Christ through the ministry of His Church and the encounter of His Word. The Church is both guardian and guarantor of the written, living Word of God.

I cannot turn away in solitude from the Body of Christ while clutching the Word of Christ to my heart.

What I read in Scripture casts new light in what I practice on Sundays. The liturgy is rooted in – not added on to – the Bible. Without the Church, we’d have no Bible.

Without the Church, we’d have no Sacraments. Without the Church, we wouldn’t know what to believe- we need the Church’s authority to teach, lead us, and sanctify us.

Because we can’t live without Jesus.

No matter how badly we humans behave. Perhaps because of how badly we humans behave; we need Him all the more. Come hell or high water – and perhaps the water will come right up to the gates…we need Him.

books, Catholics Do What?, Culture of Death, current events, decluttering, design + style, minimalism

Coffee clicks: What the Friday?

February 9, 2019

This week was one for the record books in terms of watching news come across the wires and wondering not once, not twice, but, well…a lot more times than that if we are, in fact, all still living in reality.

The Virginia governor who suggested keeping resuscitated hypothetical newborns comfortable until “doctors and parents” decide whether or not to….what, kill it? Literally we’re discussing after birth abortion now. Aka murder.But massage that language enough and you’ll get fascinating mind benders like “post-birth abortion” and “4th trimester abortion” and “newborn fetus.” Anyway, seems like he was a great guy in high school, too.

But wait, that’s not all! During President Trump’s SOTU address he made a few impassioned pleas for unity around the idea of not killing babies who accidentally survive abortions. Unsurprisingly, by this point in the week, these were not pleas that enjoyed bipartisan support.

But you know, it’s not all bad news. This episode of CNA Newsroom was one of the more beautiful things I’ve listened to in a long time. The comment towards the end of the second segment where the mother speaks about “emotional closure” is a profoundly edifying concept to meditate on, particularly in light of our culture’s desperate, clawing fear of suffering. We’ll do anything to avoid it, crush whatever innocent thing stands in our way, and yet the true path to serenity and long term emotional wellbeing is often found cutting directly down the middle of that suffering.

This is the real poverty of nihilism and atheism: To be alone, to be made to suffer alone and without meaning. For this reason I can think of almost nothing more devastating than abortion, separating mother from child, severing a most fundamental human relationship, and leaving a child to suffer terribly, and alone. Abortion is never the answer. Yes, even when it’s “medically necessary.”

Ashley’s ode to her oldest on his 9th birthday had me thinking how crazy fast things are starting to go. Especially as I did the math and realized I’m half a year away from having my own 9 year old. That’s wild to me. I must be getting older, because those “blink and you’ll miss it” statements used to make my eyes roll. Now they make them water:

“With a blink, it will be gone and ghosts of Lego messes and dance parties past will haunt me with such longing—uncaring that I spent every waking moment with them. It won’t ever be enough..”

Should Catholic politicians who publicly endorse – even clamor for – abortion be excommunicated? Perhaps. But I think it’s unlikely to happen, and even less likely to accomplish anything meaningful in the life of the excommunicated, as per the intention of the censure. Better to withhold and restrict reception of the Holy Eucharist which is the public affirmation we make as Catholics that we are united in practice and in belief with the Catholic Church and all that She professes.

Possible alternate headline: “Millennial takes socialism to its (il)logical conclusion”.

Tearing through this book, “Cozy Minimalist Home” – Myquillen Smith’s follow up to her runaway bestseller “The Nesting Place” – and guys, I AM HERE FOR IT. I rearranged my entire main floor this morning and it looks like I spent a grand at Home Goods. (Husband: I did not. I spent nothing.)

Before:

After:

p.s. My entire “what I read in 2018” book list is here if you’ve got a case of the Februarys.

Have a great weekend wherever you are!

Catholic Spirituality, Catholics Do What?, Evangelization

Why do Catholics go to church every week?

December 12, 2018

Alternate title: Aw mom, again?!

This past weekend we had a double whammy of obligatory worship: a holy day of obligation on a Saturday and then the regular Sunday obligation of Mass the next day.

My kids whined and squirmed and demanded to know whyyyyy we had to go baaaaack when we had just been there the previous morning. There were some sniffles and a lingering hacking cough, involved, too, so, in total, we actually ended up attending 4(!) separate(!) masses(!) to get all the healthy-ish people where they needed to be.

I was thinking about the feat we accomplished and the juggling required, and grateful that we both have jobs that don’t typically require weekend work and free us up to attend pretty much whatever Mass time works for us. We also live in a major city and have a laundry list of different times and locations to choose from, which is a luxury I don’t take for granted.

I explained that having to go to Mass is a privilege and a gift, not a drudgery and a drag. I also admitted that yeah, it’s not always entertaining. That even adults struggle to pay attention and to sit still, and that I don’t leap out of bed with joyful expectation on Sunday mornings and run to Jesus.

Still, the reason we go has less to do with God commanding us and more to do with God giving us what we need to flourish.

God gives us our Sunday obligation to meet our needs, not His. He gives us Himself in the Eucharist to sustain us.

While it’s true that our obligation to participate in communion, receiving the Lord in His Body and Blood, is only annual according to canon (,), our presence with Him at Mass is required on a weekly basis. (And if we are in a state of grace and properly disposed to receive Him – recently confessed/not in a state of mortal sin – then He gives Himself to us willingly, over and over again.

This is what is known as the Sunday Obligation, and it requires a Catholic to attend Holy Mass every week, either as a vigil Mass on Saturday night, or on Sunday itself. Missing Sunday Mass intentionally with full knowledge of the gravity of doing so is actually itself a mortal sin.

Crazy, right? Of course, there are circumstances beyond our control that might keep us from church: sick kids, a serious injury, a deployment, a career as a first responder requiring shifts that would all of Saturday and Sunday sometimes, etc. But to miss Mass intentionally for a soccer tournament, while on vacation, or out of a desire to sleep in or hit up Home Depot bright and early?

Nope. Not sufficiently grave reason to excuse the Sunday obligation.

What a demanding God we Catholics worship. Couldn’t He lighten up a bit and given the frenetic pace of most modern family’s lives?

Let me put it another way. I feed my children every night. I am richly blessed to be able to do so, and I want to nourish them as well as I am able. (Some nights the level of nourishment is more apparent than others, but for our purposes here, the analogy is sufficient.) I invite them to the table and fill their plates every night because I love them and because I care about their health and wellbeing. I could feed them less frequently, but it wouldn’t be best for them. I could also excuse them from sitting down at the family table and toss a granola bar their way while they engaged in some other activity, but it wouldn’t serve them well long term. It wouldn’t build our family relationship the way a meal around the table does (or is meant to, anyway. Fingers crossed for better behavior from the preschool set at some point, eventually)

They need real food that nourishes their bodies, and real connection as a family to nourish their hearts.

God didn’t have to leave us a tangible, fleshly reminder of His presence. Didn’t have to pour Himself out, literally, as physical food and drink to be consumed.

But He did. He chose to give us more than could be reasonably expected. He lavishes us with the physical gift of Himself because He knows it will meet our needs – physical and spiritual – more completely than anything else in this world.

Even if we don’t fully understand it. Heck, even if we don’t fully believe it. Even if we feel utterly unworthy to approach it. There is a reason we recite the words of the Roman Centurion just before we approach to receive Communion: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.”

There can be any number of reasons for our unworthiness. Doubt, fear, anger towards God, apathy, lack of faith…the list is as endless as the number of faithful in the pews. But He still comes. And because He knows how good it is for us, He requires us to come back again and again, every week, for as long as we draw breath.

God doesn’t need our worship. But we need to worship God.

We are created beings, externally oriented toward the Creator. We can turn away from Him, of course, and we do so over and over again, sometimes permanently. But it hurts. We were made to be in relationship with Him and with one another. When we turn away from that for which we have been made, we fracture something essential to our happiness, to our wholeness.

This imperfect nugget of “why” is something I’m trying to give to my kids. Trying to help them frame their understanding of God as lavish Father, not demanding dictator.

Catholic Spirituality, Catholics Do What?, Contraception, Culture of Death, Evangelization, Marriage, NFP, planned parenthood, pregnancy, Pro Life, scandal, Sex, sin

NFP for clergy

November 7, 2018

That title, right? I know. But, yes. Seriously.

After one of the talks I gave in Nashville last month, a group of nice young Catholic guys who were, I surmised, discerning the priesthood, came up to chat afterwards and to say thanks for being on campus. We got to talking and one of them in particular was a little taken aback when I enthusiastically expressed my hope for every priest and seminarian in formation to get a basic education from a trained professional (or an experienced married couple) in at least one method of Natural Family Planning.

“But why,” he wondered (sincerely and earnestly, I must say) “would a priest need to know about that…stuff?”

I smiled and started to tick off the reasons one one hand. “Well, for instructing engaged couples, for assistance when giving spiritual direction, for time in the confessional, of course, so that their homilies will be challenging and well informed, so they can walk alongside couples in their suffering and in their joy. Just to name a couple off the top of my head.”

His eyes widened as he nodded his head, “I guess I hadn’t thought about all the ways it could be helpful.”

For parish priests especially, the bulk of their flock will likely be made up of people who are married or will be eventually, so it would serve them well to be prepared to speak on something that is as foundational to marriage as sex and procreation.

Many, many priests with whom I have corresponded or spoken with over the years have reported having little to no formation or formal instruction, if any, on NFP. Is it any wonder that so few Catholics practice NFP when so few pastors have ever spoken of it from the pulpit, let alone in the confessional?

I don’t mean to imply that there are no good priests striving to teach and preach what the Church does on love and marriage. There are! But we need more of them.

Tomorrow morning I will have the privilege of speaking to a classroom full of seminarians, future priests all, God willing. I’ve been invited by their sexual ethics professor to talk about the “lived experience” of NFP, specifically:

“It would be great if you could:

– Offer your testimony.

– Show the different sufferings and difficulties of periodical abstinence/ with the Fertility Awareness Based Methods (NFP) for a couple. Don’t be afraid of making it real. That will be a great preparation for the seminarians.

– Touch on the just causes (psychological, physiological, financial, social) that may make NFP necessary. Why it is good that we (the Church) don’t have a concrete list of situations.

– The blessings of NFP – Even if it is very difficult, it is the only way of living with true love… How NFP has helped you or other couples in their communication… And therefore, why NFP is not “Catholic” contraception.

– Different methods of NFP and contraception.

– Of course your personal experience with couples opposed to NFP

– Experience about how contraception is different…”

So, you know, just the basics. Gulp. I figure I’ll at least have time to touch on what our own experience with NFP has been.

The elevator pitch version goes something like this: get engaged, sit inattentively through CCL (sympto thermal method) classes as part of marriage prep, disregard all charting with joyful abandon and conceive honeymoon-ish baby. Welcome another baby 18 months after that. Nervously learn Creighton (mucus based method) bc postpartum NFP is hell on wheels. Move overseas, change diet and lifestyle radically, conceive “method failure*” Creighton baby. Move back home. Conceive second Creighton baby, this one with some intentionality. Learn Marquette (monitor based method). Successfully postpone for 18 months. Conceive “operator error” Marquette baby. And here we are now, almost 9 years into marriage and coming up on baby number five’s 1st birthday next month.

In sum? We’ve learned – and trial and errored – our way through 3 different NFP methods at this point. Marquette is the clear winner for us, for my physiological makeup, for our circumstances, etc. etc. etc. But we had to keep trying, keep making adjustments, and most of all, keep seeking out help and additional education.

(*None of our children were “unplanned,” or “mistakes.” We are fully aware that the nature of sex is ordered to procreation. That even if all the signs and symptoms point to infertility during a particular time in my cycle, each time we enter into the marital act we do so prepared to welcome new life.)

Fertility awareness based methods of family planning are not for the faint of heart. They aren’t “Catholic contraception,” though as with any human endeavor in this earthly life, they can be used in selfishness.

But they are inherently morally sound.

They require communication, selflessness, patience, sacrifice, continuing education and, yes, chastity. Chastity which is the universal call of every Christian. Chastity which our Church so desperately needs a remedial course in. Chastity which frees us rather than oppressing us, opening up the cramped enclosures of our naturally selfish hearts to be more receptive to the other, to be able to see more clearly the value and dignity of the beloved.

It ain’t easy, that’s for sure. And if you grew up in a family where contraception was the norm, went to public school where the Planned Parenthood sponsored health curriculum was taught from 5th grade on, started taking hormonal birth control yourself as a young teen with “skin problems,” it can sometimes feel like living in an actual alternate reality.

I always like to point out when discussing the current situation of the Catholic Church in America that our pastors were raised in the same cultural milieu we were. If you’ve never heard of NFP until you’re a twenty-something doing mandatory engagement courses in one of the dioceses that actually require NFP instruction, what makes you think that your 60-something pastor who went to Holy Mountain of Mediocrity for seminary in the seventies has ever learned anything about it himself?

We may be starting from a broad baseline of ignorance, in many ways. And it’s good to acknowledge that, yes, the Church has largely failed to transmit this teaching. The Church in the sense of we, the laity, have largely failed to receive this teaching. And the ambient culture has certainly rejected this teaching.

So we have work to do. Let us begin to make progress in supporting the couples who take up the cross of monitoring and consenting to the reality which is their actual fertility, whether it be high, low, or non-existent.

Let us ask more from our pastors, from our bishops, and from the men in formation to become our future priests. Let us take it upon ourselves, as laywomen and men, to continue to delve into the teachings of the rich Christian tradition of marriage and to pray for greater understanding and greater unity with our spouses and with our Lord.

Fathers, we need to hear from the pulpit, in the confessional, and in passing conversation that you understand what the Church teaches about married love, and why.

That you have yourself a basic working knowledge of NFP. That you have resources for your flock, and if you don’t, that you are working to provide them: things like subsidized instruction, free meeting space on church grounds, regular invitations to certified method instructors (multiple methods, please!) to come in and give weekend seminars and postpartum refresher courses for your parishioners. Qualified and orthodox teachers to share the wisdom of Theology of the Body and a basic knowledge of Fertility Awareness with your teens and young adults. Low or no cost babysitting (safe environment certified care providers, of course) for couples who need to learn a new method, or who never learned any kind of NFP at all.

Being a priest in 2018 is, I imagine, no easy row to hoe. We know you’re overworked and underpaid and stretched too thin, and we are profoundly grateful for your yes to Jesus.

We also wish there were more of you.

Teaching Catholic parents about openness to life and the ongoing art of discernment of family size could be a real, practical way to address the vocations shortage in the long haul. It’s no panacea, but it would certainly help.

And hey, fathers? We’re rooting for you.

Catholic Spirituality, Catholics Do What?, Evangelization, feast days

Our morning at the congregation for saints

October 11, 2018

One of the best/weirdest parts of Catholicism is definitely the Communion of Saints. If you think hard enough about how the Bible talks about dead people and how all Christians uniformly revere St. Paul and St. Luke and St. John and the rest of the NT crew, it’s not too difficult to wrap your brain around what we Catholics believe about our heavenly intercessors, and why. But for some people it proves to be a real theological and conceptual sticking point.

Some common objections: “but they’re dead!” Well, not if you believe in eternal life with Christ.

“You can’t pray to a human person! Only Jesus answers prayers.” But we don’t pray “to” the saints, we ask them to pray for us. Which is Biblical.

“Who are we to say that someone is definitively in heaven? That’s just silly.”

Well, not to keep beating the dead horse that he fell off of, but St. Paul comes to mind. And the Virgin Mary. And St. Joseph. Moses. St. Timothy. St. Barnabus.

“Okay, okay, but anyone past Biblical times … we can’t know for sure if they’re up there. Sola Scriptura and all.”

Well, there is the small matter of the Catholic Church having compiled and declared which books of the Bible were canonical, preserving the words and eyewitness testimony of Christ (along with the Jews and the Jewish Scriptures) from antiquity to the present day.

Really it comes down to a matter of faith. Either you believe that Jesus is God, that He died and rose again, that He took our sins upon Himself on the Cross and offers us salvation and eternal life with Him in heaven, or you don’t.

If you do believe, I highly recommend cultivating a relationship with His saints and martyrs so as to have some great role models and powerful intercessors to lean on. (Some of my personal heroes: Mother Mary, St. John Paul II, St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Zelie, St. Joseph, St. Therese, St. Joan of Arc, St. Thomas More, St. John Vianney, St. John Bosco, St. Padre Pio, St. Mother Teresa, St. Michael, St. Josemaria Escriva, and Servant of God Julia Greeley.)

Our trip to Rome last month was for one primary purpose: to deliver the documents detailing the diocesan investigation of the cause for canonization for Servant of God Julia Greeley. Learn about her here if you haven’t heard her name before. The tl;dr is that Julia, a freed slave who worked and lived in Denver at the turn of the 20th century, is known as Denver’s “angel of charity” for her service to the poor, her apostolic zeal, and her devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. My husband was appointed “vice postulator” to her cause, and so we’ve spent the past 3 years getting a unique up close view of the Church’s saint-making process.

That he was tapped to head to Rome as the official carrier of the documents was icing on the cake. Zelie and I couldn’t resist tagging along for the ride as his plus one and two. We were in the Eternal City for a little under a week, and it was a beautiful, restorative and almost entirely stress-free affair (the flight home is sealed deep within my subconscious memory for future nightmare material.)

On the Friday morning of our trip, we got up bright and early and headed to 8 am Mass in St. Peter’s with my Italian co-workers, the CNA/EWTN Rome staff, lingered with the crew for a brief coffee break, and then dashed back to our hotel in the Borgo to retrieve the documents for Dave’s big appointment at the Congregazione delle Cause dei Santi.

Now when I reference “documents,” I don’t mean a nice leather portfolio with a few signed papers, or even an accordian file, but 4 enormous legal boxes (wrapped in red ribbon and sealed in wax with the Archbishop of Denver’s episcopal crest) which contained more than 17,000 pages of documentation. As the gentleman serving as postulator for Julia’s cause quipped while we waited in the lobby “that’s a lot of words for a woman who was illiterate!”

The documentation details everything known about Julia’s life, from her time on a plantation in Missouri as a domestic slave, to her life of charity in Denver, and included the forensic analysis of her mortal remains and countless first hand testimonies culled from various ecclesial and government archives about her character and her work.

After some deliberation about how exactly to get all that stuff to Italy, we ended up checking each of the 39.9 lb boxes as our checked baggage (thanks, Air Canada!) and prayed anxiously at the baggage claim at Fiumicino that they would arrive unscathed.

Arrive they did, and with wax seals still miraculously intact.

As we ducked back into our hotel room that morning to load up the boxes, Zelie had a wardrobe malfunction that required some serious scrubbing and swapping of garments. I urged Dave to leave without me, figuring I’d definitely be able to catch up with a guy in a suit dragging 150+ lbs of cardboard boxes across the cobbled streets outside St. Peter’s Square in the late morning heat of Rome.

Well, I was wrong, and when Zay and I did arrive at the building south of the Square where I knew the office to be located, there was no husband in sight. Trusting myself to the mercy and kindness shown to women with babies by every Italian man I’ve ever met, I tickled Zelie’s chin to make her smile and confidently pushed the stroller past the armed guard in the courtyard and up to the security station inside. Using my broken Itanglish and pure native charm, I convinced the bemused gentleman that he should wave us into the secure elevator and up to “Santi, santi!” to catch up with my beau.

Baby power being what it is in Italy, he acquiesced, and so Zelie and I burst into the outer office for the dicastery in the midst of a confused crowd of nuns and monsignors sitting behind desks. (Okay, okay, they were sisters, technically.) They cocked their heads at us as I smiled and asked if anyone had seen an American guy with a lot of boxes.

Eventually we reunited with Dave and our postulator, a dapper German fellow in a bespoke suit who bemusedly pushed the umbrella stroller through the marble corridors once I’d switched Zelie to the baby carrier to quiet her shrieks.

While waiting for our appointment (running predictably on Italian time, to sweaty Dave’s chagrin) I surveyed the tables near our seats. They were covered with holy cards depicting Blesseds, Venerables, and Servants of God from all over the world – an array of currently open causes of the Universal Church. I grabbed a few cards for Fr. Jacques Hamel, martyr priest from France, slaughtered at the altar by Islamic terrorists while praying the Mass a few years ago.

When it was finally our turn to meet with the priest who reports to the head of the dicastory, Zelie was fast asleep, and so I was able to pay close attention to the proceedings.

Causes awaiting finalization, filed and waiting. When a cause is completed, it will eventually moved to the Vatican’s secret archives.

I have to say, after years of research and work and a few formal liturgical ceremonies on Denver’s end, Rome was so typically Italian that I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. At one point the monsignor looked up from the documentation he was affixing his signatures to and quipped “the director’s office is one side of this wall, and the Adoration chapel with the Blessed Sacrament and the office of miracles is on the other. So you might say everyone who is filed away here my office is in Purgatory, stuck right between Heaven and Hell!”

Once the signatures were complete and the interview finished, Fr. opened a door in the side of the room to a – I’m not kidding – giant, overstuffed utility closet filled with packing bubbles, cardboard boxes, and giant Rubbermaid containers. Our clean white boxes jauntily tied with red satin ribbon and embossed wax seals trundled into that closet looking like American overachievement incarnate.

Looking a little wearied by the state of the storage room, Father dropped to crouch and shoved some cardboard boxes aside, using his foot to nudge a pile of bubble wrap further out of the way.

“Here you go, let’s put Julia* right here. No, no, let’s push that other box over, she should stay together.”

(NB: Julia’s mortal remains are not in the boxes, just her files.)

And after a few photos and a handshake, that was that.

Afterwards Dave and I toasted his success with prosecco for Julia, “I’m glad you got to come with me, babe. That was pretty amazing.”

I kind of thought so too.

We clinked our glasses together, laughing over how she would probably respond to all the pomp and circumstance surrounding her, and how typically Italian Italy is, and always will be.

I hope I get to sit down with her one day in heaven and find out. Until then, Servant of God Julia Greeley, pray for us!

(If you have miracle stories of answered prayers from Julia’s intercession, submit them here.)

abuse, Catholic Spirituality, Catholics Do What?, Culture of Death, current events, Pope Francis, scandal, sin, Suffering

Flipping tables in the temple

August 22, 2018

I have fielded countless emails, Instagram messages, comments, and texts from faithful Catholics these last few weeks. Most carry the same tone of concern and horror for what is coming to light: an egregious lack of transparency and honesty in the hierarchy, a terrifying lack of integrity where it comes to matters of sexual morality, and a smug assumption that the average Joe – or Jane – in the pew would never find out.

We’re finding out.

I shared my frustration with a priest friend yesterday, a faithful man who is valiantly struggling to lead his religious community in holiness. He shares my rage. He sent a letter to the parents of the young men who are in formation in his community, outlining the steps their community takes to ensure that chastity is the rule and not the exception. It gave me some ideas for what I can do as a parent to ensure that my children are safe and well-informed, as it becomes necessary and age appropriate, of the current crisis we face in the Catholic Church.

My oldest is not yet 8, so thankfully we are not having detailed conversations or answering horrifying questions about the current news coverage. We have done an okay job of shielding them from the details. I could probably be more careful with my phone conversations or dinner table talk when the kids have scooted off to play.

We have always instructed our kids openly about body safety and boundaries, encouraging them to tell us if anyone ever makes them uncomfortable or asks them to do something that scares them or makes them feel funny.

We’ve given them the real names for the various components of the reproductive system, and have emphasized repeatedly that only mommy and daddy and the doctor (with a parent present) ever have the right to touch their genitals, and then only to help them if they are sick or to wash them in the bathtub or at diaper changing time.

We’ve talked about grown ups or older kids or even age-group peers who make their tummies feel funny, who hug too hard or touch in the wrong places. We’ve had a couple incidents with our kids being put in uncomfortable positions by other children, and as we’ve navigated the fallout we’ve refined our family rules and our best practices as parents.

We don’t do sleepovers. We don’t do overnight camps or send our kids on out of town trips with other families. We have certain family members and friends whom we trust to baby-sit, and we politely decline other offers or avoid situations where we are not 100% confident in the sexual and moral integrity of the adults in question. We don’t send our kids to the neighbors’ houses to play for the most part, and we don’t allow them to play with their friends in our own home with their bedroom doors closed.

It sounds overprotective, but from our experience, it is basic common sense. Our kids are not smothered. They ride their bikes unescorted around the block, they run wild and free in playgrounds and parks and at parties and barbecues with our friends, they speak confidently to adults when they are in our presence, and they climb as high as they are able to in the trees of their choosing.

We do not want them to have a stilted childhood, but we do want them to have a safe one.

As they get older, we will increase their freedom. We will let our boys serve at the altar if they feel so called, and we will ensure that any altar server training or trips include parent volunteers. We will continue to welcome our priest friends into our home, providing concrete examples of holiness in religious life to our children. We will bring our kids to the sacraments, particularly reconciliation, trusting that our pastor and associate pastors are beyond reproach, and also insisting on confessionals with see-through doors or confession in an open pew in the main sanctuary. We will begin having the painful conversations about bishops who hurt seminarians, about priests who hurt children, about men who pledged their lives to God, but who lived their lives for satan.

We will do this in conjunction with instructing them about healthy sexuality. About the good and holy gift of marriage, and of sex within marriage as a bonding and creative force for holiness and sanctification and new life.

We will teach them about the complementary nature of men and women, explaining that some people struggle in their sexuality and have wounds that cause them great difficulty in their lives. We will teach them about the inexhaustible mercy of God in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and the life-long struggle for chastity and sexual integrity that is the responsibility of every baptized Christian.

So my question to you, dear fathers and bishops, is this: what will you do to help us?

Will you continue to turn a blind eye to sexual deviance in your seminaries? Will you turn a blind eye to homosexual activity in your ranks? Will you shuffle the bad apples around from assignment to assignment, destroying the lives of children and entire families in the process? Will you own up to the mistakes that have been made in the past, and commit to taking immediate action when predators strike in the future? Will you hold yourselves to a level of purity that is beyond reproach as an example to those who are subordinate to your authority?

Will you overturn some tables with us, now?

Will you rage with us against the evil that stalks our institutional Church like a demonic predator, rooting out the perpetrators and helping bring them to prosecution to the fullest extent of the law?

Will you link arms with us in fasting, in penance, and in prayer; in calling for and facilitating the criminal prosecution of the men who have ruined lives and snatched away souls?

Will you bring to bear on the problems we face the full weight of your priestly authority, performing exorcisms as necessary and demonstrating with your own example a model of

penance and purification that we can all emulate?

Will you wage war with us?

We, the parents of those who are the greatest in the kingdom of God, the children, await your answer.

And we won’t accept “no”.

I have linked here to a letter I drafted to the US nuncio on behalf of mothers, in particular, calling for a full criminal and ecclesial investigation of the US bishops, initiated by Pope Francis. Feel free to adapt and copy for your own use, or to respond to have your signature included with my letter. I plan to send it on August 31, the final day of a novena of penance that our local religious community is leading.

abuse, Catholic Spirituality, Catholics Do What?, Culture of Death, current events

A letter of petition to the Nuncio for the Roman Catholic Church in the United States

August 22, 2018

Most Reverend Christophe Pierre

Apostolic Nuncio to the United States

3339 Massachusetts Avenue, NW

Washington, D.C. 20008

Your Excellency,

We are Catholic women, baptized members of the Body of Christ. Mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters. We are faithful to the Magisterium and reliant upon the mercy of God which is poured out upon us in the sacrament of penance when we fail to live up to the demands of Jesus Christ who is the only way to the Father. We are filled with sorrow and rage at the accusations and allegations, the cover ups and controversies, all the vile and demonic filth that has spilled forth in the news in recent weeks.

We weep for the victims, for the shattered lives, the broken bodies, and the tortured souls. We turn to His Holiness Pope Francis, and we beg, we implore, and we demand that he take action against any credibly accused predatory priests, bishops, and religious. These men and women to whom the children of God were entrusted with the most precious gift a human parent can offer – his or her child’s physical and spiritual safety – have failed utterly in their mission from God Almighty to defend the least of these. We demand that he as pastor of this universal flock take swift and severe action against those who committed heinous crimes against children and against adults over whom they held positions of power.

We also ask Pope Francis to proclaim boldly the universal call to chastity for every baptized believer, to condemn unequivocally all sexual acts outside of the holy bond of matrimony between husband and wife. We humbly submit ourselves to this same standard and beg the mercy of Christ when we fall short. We must be able to trust that our chanceries, our rectories, and our seminaries are submitting likewise to uncompromising purity and fidelity, and that there is zero tolerance for homosexual or heterosexual activity of any kind.

For the sake of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, our Savior and our Judge, we implore you to take action now. Do not delay where justice and mercy demand a cleansing by holy fire. Do not withhold the least authority of the law, both civil and canonical. Root out this duplicitous and satanic rot which compromises the integrity of the very foundation of our One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

In the name of Mary, Mater Ecclesia and Theotokos, we entrust our petitions to you,

Signed:

(your name here)

(All content is available free for use and reproduction in its original form for the use of the Catholic faithful. You may change the pronouns and references to suit your station in life.)

abuse, Catholics Do What?, Contraception, Culture of Death, current events, Parenting, prayer, scandal, sin, spiritual warfare, Suffering

What’s a faithful Catholic to do?

August 16, 2018

There is a tremendous – and warranted – outcry of rage and betrayal in the Church right now.

I’m not talking about the usual suspects in the media and the voices coming from the cafeteria line, either. I’m talking about the men and women who have sacrificed and stood steadfast, serving the Church with their professional lives, settling for smaller salaries and raised eyebrows at cocktail parties when they disclose their line of work. The little old ladies who are daily communicants. The blue collar workers who pray a Rosary on their lunch breaks and fast on bread and water on Wednesdays. The underpaid Catholic school teachers and the harassed Catholic healthcare professionals.

In other words, the faithful.

The ones raising larger than average families on smaller than average budgets. Refusing to cave to the extraordinary societal pressure to relieve the emptiness of their wombs at any cost, and opting for adoption or even childlessness over IVF. Bearing patiently the slings and arrows of public opinion when it comes time to defend the Church when her ways are not the world’s ways. Tossing aside the contraceptives and using NFP instead. Forgoing the “pleasures” of pornography and honoring their marriage vows. Remaining celibate and suffering in loneliness as an abandoned spouse or a same-sex attracted person. Sacrificing to educate their children in the Faith in the face of extraordinary difficulty. Refusing to reduce the immutable dignity of every single human person to an object to be used or discarded.

And defending Holy Mother Church with the ultimate gift – one’s fidelity to the Faith – even as the world around us spins farther into secular materialism.

Fathers, these children of your flocks are suffering. Suffering over the grievous injuries done to those other children, the ones named in the Pennsylvania report, the ones whose innocence was shattered, whose dignity was spat upon, who suffered in their very bodies the wounds of Christ tortured and crucified.

We cannot sleep for weeping over these images, crying out to heaven that men ordained to act in the person of Christ at the altar could also rape, pillage, and destroy the most innocent.

We need to hear from you.

We need to hear lamentation and rage, resolution and public penances. We must know that you stand on the side of Christ, crucified and risen. That even if your diocese is beyond a shadow of suspicion in August of 2018, your father’s heart breaks and your stomach roils in anger over what happened in our Church – no matter which diocese and no matter what year.

Many of us carried heavy hearts into Mass for the Feast of the Assumption of Mary yesterday, lifting red and swollen eyes to heaven during the readings and beseeching God for any answers, any explanation.

Too many of us – not all, but many – were met with deafening silence from the pulpits when the time for the homily arrived. The silence tore deeper into the wounds rent by the horrifying grand jury report; there was scarcely time for a scab to form over last month’s McCarrick revelations.

We need to hear from our fathers. We need to hear your anger, your shame, your outrage, your sorrow, and your profound and sincere resolution that this evil will be purged from the ranks of the Church hierarchy, no matter what the cost.

When someone intentionally injures or violates my child, even if – and perhaps especially if – I am not the cause of the injury, he or she can count on my swift and unapologetic rage.

We need to see your hearts, fathers. We need to see and hear our bishops doing public acts of reparation and penance, or resigning the privilege of office if the circumstances warrant it.

We need to hear our priests – especially our pastors – speaking uncompromisingly and unceasingly about what is happening, about the war zone we American Catholics find ourselves in, about the corruption and satanic violence within our own ranks, and about what is being done to bring about justice.

If your bishop hasn’t issued talking points yet or the diocesan-level HR department is cautioning restraint, damn the restraint. Your people are suffering, and they need to know their spiritual fathers are mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it anymore.

What can we, as lay people, do at a moment such as this?

Pray. Pray as you never have before. Pray a daily Rosary with your family, if you have one. With your spouse or significant other or roommate. Alone or with a recording, if you have nobody else to pray with. Ask especially for the intercession of Our Lady of Fatima, St. Charles Lwanga (Google his martyrdom story) and St. Catherine of Siena.

Fast. Give up social media one day a week, or limit it to a few minutes a day. Get rid of one of the three or four platforms you’re using entirely, maybe. Offer up those pinpricks of dopamine denial for the cleansing of the Church, and for the souls of the victims living and deceased.

Purge your home of anything that is complicit with this culture of death. Vaguely pornographic media. Explicitly pornographic media. Showtime or HBO DirectTV or maybe even your high speed internet, if it’s an occasion of sin for you. Go through your library and destroy anything that is influenced by the occult. If your right arm causes you to sin, cut it off. We must be beyond reproach as Catholics going forward if we are to have any credibility with this world and, more importantly, with Christ.

Throw away your contraception. Your mind altering drugs. Your habit of gossip, of masturbation, of criticism, of getting drunk, of cheating “just a little” on your income taxes, of cheating on your spouse, of ignoring your children.

In other words, be a saint.

Our times call for great sanctity to counter this grave evil. And sinners like us, myself first and foremost, are the only material Our Lord has to work with.

Other practical suggestions:

Email, call, and write to your bishop’s office (and while you’re at it, to the Holy Father himself.) Be respectful and unrelenting in asking for a public meeting or an explanation of what your diocese is doing to address these evils. Ask your bishop what his plans are to clean up your local church if housekeeping needs to be done. Find out what measures are in place to protect youth and children and seminarians and old people and not so old people. Ask what standard of sexual integrity is set and maintained by the diocese of X. Do the same with your pastor. Be persistent. But love your Church enough to not stop until you get a satisfactory answer.

Tell your priest, once you’ve finished asking when his next related and excruciatingly clear homily will be preached, that you are praying for him. And then do so. Offer a specific act of penance every day for your priest. For any priest you know. Give up your daily coffee, your nightcap, your nighttime pleasure reading, a workout, salt on your food, etc. Do not leave our courageous priests and bishops unarmed in this time of agony for the Church. They are suffering as Christ did in the Garden of Gethsemane, and they need our prayers.

We have decided for our family, that to avoid even the appearance of scandal and to protect all parties involved, it is best to avoid ever putting our priest friends – or any priest – in a situation where they are alone with a child of ours. I’m not talking about casual one-on-one talks with Father on the playground during recess, but being alone in a car, in a closed room, in a private home, etc. We are also exceedingly cautious about whom we leave our children with, and take into consideration the circumstances of any home or place they’ll be visiting. Most abuse takes place within the context of the extended family or trusted circle of friends, and we have chosen to err on the side of potentially giving offense by being “too careful.”

May Christ Jesus in whom we place our trust and confidence convict in our hearts a profound sorrow for all who suffer, and a firm resolution to spend ourselves utterly in striving to prevent future evil.

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.

Catholics Do What?, Culture of Death, Homosexuality, Sex, sin, Suffering

When deferred maintenance hits the fan

August 1, 2018

Yesterday our sewer main backed up. I happened upon the grisly scene when I entered the basement. I stood transfixed, an overflowing basket of laundry on my hip and a stench in my nose. At first I didn’t realize what I was looking at. I got angry, my mind racing to assign blame to the horror I was beholding.

“JOHN PAUL!” I bellowed up the stairs, certain that the mess was a case of litter-box cleaning gone hideously awry.

Are my kids ever going to be old enough to be responsible for their own chores? Why would he dump the litter box on the ground down here? Why is it wet? Oh…

Once I realized that it was raw sewage we were dealing with, my anger melted away. First into disbelief and then to shame for having yelled at my poor 6-year-old, and finally to horror as I realized that I was the grown-up who was going to have to deal with this.

“Sorry buddy,” I called up the stairs to the wrongly accused, “there’s something wrong with the pipes. Tell everyone to go into the backyard until I figure this out.”

The rest of the day passed in a blur of phone calls and sewer technicians tromping in and out of the basement and the sound of many toilets being flushed over and over again. Nearly 8 hours and $500 dollars later I was crouched down scrubbing away at the horrific aftermath (using the cat’s litter scoop, appropriately enough) and willing myself not to vomit and add to my misery.

Dave and I laughed about the entire situation over drinks later that night, shaking our heads in regret that we had neglected to take immediate action on the results of the pipe inspection we’d had performed last August before we’d closed on the house. A main-line cleanout must have fallen to the bottom of our laundry list of things needing immediate attention once we moved in. So while we were tearing up dirty carpet and peeling back stained wood paneling, our pipes, the very guts of our home, were continuing to deteriorate. Every month that went by where we paid attention to some cosmetic detail rather than addressing a crucial functional problem, we were skating by on borrowed time.

In our defense, the report really did slip our minds. Or at least, it slipped my mind. I was so focused on making our house beautiful that I was not super concerned with anything of a more practical nature. When I did think of the less glamorous stuff that needed to happen – installing a radon system in the basement, having the asbestos popcorn removed from the ceilings, etc – I would brush it aside, telling myself we’d take care of it “someday.”

Meanwhile, it was really important that we install hardwood floors in our dining room. We scrimped and saved and stretched uncomfortably far to make it happen, and I told myself it was essential because the kids would spill food there! It had to be a hard surface! We didn’t want to waste money installing an inferior product that we’d just be updating one day anyway…

So we did it, and our house looked better and better. At least on the surface.

The thing with deferred maintenance is that it usually ends up costing you more, in the long run. Sure, you don’t have to take that initial painful hit by dealing with the problem when it first presents, but as the rot progresses, it often does more damage than even the initial discovery would have yielded. The $100 we “saved” by postponing a main line cleaning ballooned into a $500 emergency situation, draining our resources and making a disgusting mess that affected the entire family.

The Church finds herself in a similar situation today. Deferred maintenance which allowed evil to take hold. Rot spreading silently through the ranks, corrupting and defiling when it should have been swiftly and relentlessly exposed to the light. Horrific crimes plowed under and buried while the facade remained polished, presenting an attractive – and unrealistic – image to the outside.

Shame on Dave and I, as parents, for not taking action sooner and making sure our house was well maintained, safe, and reliable. Thankfully, our failure to act will yield nothing more harmful than some traumatic memories of mommy yelling unrepeatable words and dry heaving while carrying trash bags to and from the basement.

The damage the Church is suffering now, and will continue to suffer in the months and years to come, will be far worse.

I am horrified, as a Catholic, by the stories that are coming to light because of the now-Archbishop McCarrick situation. (Click here for a balanced assessment of the issue if you don’t know what I’m talking about.)

I am horrified as a mother.

I am horrified as a mother of sons.

I am horrified as a friend to good and holy priests, and as a Catholic under the jurisdiction of a good and holy bishop.

People will leave over this. People will walk away from Christ, who has the words of eternal life, because of the failure of some of His shepherds. People walked in Judas’ time, and they will walk in Theodore’s time, and woe to those who cause these little ones to suffer. It would be better for them to be cast into the sea with a heavy millstone around their necks than to cause that suffering.

We should never defer the maintenance. Bring it out into the light, all of it. Let us once and for all drag everything out into the light and put our houses in order. That goes for the clergy as well as the laity. The pornography. The child pornography. The homosexual behavior. The pedophila. The copies of 50 Shades of Grey and the innocent online affairs that “don’t hurt anyone,” really.

There is no such thing as a private sin. There is no injury done to the Body of Christ that does not affect all of its members.

Lord, have mercy. Help us get our house in order. No matter what the cost.

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