The Bishops are talking to the wrong people

We all fantasize about what we'd do if we were Pope for a day: excommunicate the Jesuits, shut down the LCWR, banish the Maryknolls to a distant planet, but I'd like to recommend something more modest: force Bishops to speak to their congregation.

We live in a media drenched environment.  We also live in a bureaucratic environment where group-think runs wild.  In that case, it's natural that when something happens that affects the Catholic Church the press wants one person they can contact to get the official response, and the Church likewise wants there to be one official response so there's not a cacophony of voices.  It gets to the point that the former Cardinal Archbishop of LA was reluctant to express a pro-life sentiment and deferred to the leader of the US Bishops pro-life committee.  But the role of a Bishop is not to fall back on bureaucratic policy statements and talking points.  The role of a Bishop is to instruct his flock on the faith.

Last week, the HHS issued a new scheme for its contraception mandate designed to allay the conscience of those who object.  Archbishop Kurtz, the president of the USCCB, promptly issued a statement on the new rules.   I'm sure that statement will soon be posted to my own diocesan website, which does little more than pass along statements by the Pope, the state Bishops' conference and the national Bishops conference.  I doubt anyone actually read it, and it will likely have no impact.  Meanwhile, pewsitting Catholics get a homily that if we're just nice enough to each other, we'll all be happy.

So my proposal is this: for now on all press releases must be issued from the pulpit by the bishop during Mass.  Any bishop is free to make any statement he wants on any subject, but in order for it to get into the papers he has to tell his congregation about it at the same time.  And his entire flock needs to hear it, so each priest in each parish needs to read the same text.  If he thinks the press isn't interested in what he says from the pulpit, then he can work a little more on the text to make it more relevant.  If he thinks the press won't understand complex Catholic terms like "sin" and "morality", he has parishioners who don't either and he can explain what those strange words mean.  It might take two homilies to cover it all, but that's OK. The press will drive to the cathedral an extra time. They get a milage stipend.  If the bishop is afraid that his talks will look dumb in the papers, then they probably will. He may need to come up with something more substantial to say than "Be good."

More about grumblebums

http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2014/on-joy-christian-style.html

I'll accept that there's a difference between a reserved, thoughtful person and a constantly complainer.  No one likes a constant complainer.  But I stand by my point that expecting everyone to act like Cardinal Dolan is unrealistic.

How high are the ways of God

This is pretty stupid, but it makes sense to me.  It's somewhat expanded from something I saw on Fr Barron's Catholicism series (which I won't link to because of the autoplay video).

Consider my dog, Carlton.  He live in the same house as me and experiences the same life I do.  But he's a dog and I'm a man so even though we share the same space, we live in a different world, because of our different natures.

There are many things Carlton and I can both do. For instance we can both eat, drink, walk, run, and sleep.  We do them differently, but it's clear that we're doing the same thing.  For instance, Carlton eats out of a bowl with his mouth. I eat by shoveling food into my mouth with my hands.  But Carlton knows that I'm eating, and he always wants what I have.

There are other things that I can do that Carlton can't really do, but in a broad sense there are similarities.  For instance I can push air through my vocal cords and speak.  He can also push air through his vocal cords and make noise and, if we're generous, we'd call that "speaking" but it's not really.  When I speak I can express complex ideas.  Carlton's communication was brilliantly summarized by Gary Larson as "Hey!"

When Carlton hears Jenny and I talk, it's unclear what he thinks of it.  Does he think we're saying "Hey!" to each other over and over again?  It may not make sense to him, but he knows it's normal behavior.

There are things that I do that Carlton can't do so he gets me to do them for him.  For instance, I can open the back door.  He's seen me open the door a thousand times, but there's no way he can open it himself and he doesn't even try.  But he knows that I'll open it if he scratches or sticks his cold nose on my back when I'm sleeping in bed.

Finally, there are things that I do that Carlton is completely incapable of understanding.  For instance, writing this blog post.  He doesn't know what a "blog" is, he doesn't know what "writing" is.  The whole thing is beyond his comprehension.  Carlton doesn't even recognize that I'm doing anything.  If he watches me working on my laptop, as far as he can tell I'm just starting a glowing screen (we humans do that a lot, counting TV and video games). However, to me, this is one of the most important things I do. I often do work from home and if I didn't I'd be no home to work from.

Now if there's a gulf between Carlton and I, there's an immeasurable gulf between me and God.  There are some things we can both do: think, know, love, create.  I can do none of them as well as God can, but they are recognizably related: perhaps like talking and barking, but still related.  There are things that God can do that I can't and I rely on Him to do them: we call them "miracles".  And then there are things that God does that I can't even recognize because they are so far beyond me.

To push the analogy a little further: Carlton needs me to open the door so he can chase rabbits.  From Carlton's perspective, he'd be better off if I took the door off the hinges.  He could then go out whenever he wants.  He wouldn't get frustrated when there was a rabbit taunting him on the other side of the glass, and he could bring the rabbit back in the house with him, which to him would be a hoot.  He doesn't know that the door keeps the heat out in the summer and the cold out in the winter and he doesn't know that I don't want rabbits in the house (we did have that talk, but I don't think he was paying attention).  Even if I could explain that to him, he might not agree: he likes rabbits and doesn't necessarily object to the weather, either.  The door seems like a nuisance to Carlton but it's for his own good. And then there's all the other stuff he has to put up with like going to the vet and getting a bath.

Similarly, God may miraculously heal someone of cancer and we greatly appreciate that, but it's hard to see why someone gets cancer in the first place.  It'd save a lot of trouble if cancer didn't exist.  Does cancer serve a purpose that's inscrutable to us, in the same way that the door is to Carlton?  We may never know, even in Heaven. 

None of this makes it easier to go through the trials in life.  It's hard to find comfort in philosophical arguments when you're going through an existential crisis.  But it might help to accept our limitations ahead of time so when the crisis comes we can trust that God's will for us is good, even if we don't understand how a specific crisis is "good" for us.

Blessed are the sourpusses

Last year Pope Francis wrote his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium in which he famously lamented the presence of "sourpusses" within the Church.  For a papal document it was notably full of invective, so much so that I still suspect that it was ghost written by Mark Shea.  Pope Francis (or whoever) developed a characteristic, and almost nonsensical, style that I frequently parody among friends.  We call each other "primping neo-Donatist sad sacks".  (It's all in good fun.)

After Evangelii Gaudium threw down the gauntlet against sourpusses, Father Barron picked it up and slapped us again.  In his DVD Catholicism: New Evangelization, he goes to great lengths to describe how if you're not happy, your not saved.  He even finds a pretty, teenaged girl to describe how happiness is equal to joyfulness is equal to holiness.  He fauns over Cardinal Dolan who's shown back-slapping and gladhanding with the parishioners at St Patrick's Cathedral. Well, I'm not so sure.

First of all, I'm not sure that faithful Catholic teenaged girls are the only ones who laugh and smile and enjoy having fun with their friends.  Furthermore, Cardinal Dolan was getting ready to shutter dozens of parishes in New York, which is apparently just fine with the Governor of New York and the Mayor of New York City, so he doesn't seem to be any more effective at evangelization than the comparatively reserved Bishop Conley who has 44 seminarians in a diocese of 100,000 faithful.

Secondly, everyone wants to be happy, and lots of people seem happy.  The current crop of pop-tarts like Miley Cyrus and Beyonce seem happy as they cavort around half-naked.  Is that our standard? If we're not happier than Miley Cyrus we have no hope of spreading the good news?  Do we need to be happy even it it kills us, just like the old Emerson Lake and Palmer song?

Right before your eyes,
We pull laughter from the skies
And he laughs until he cries
And he dies, and he dies.

Finally, the idea that "people will want to be like us if they see we're happy" is something that sounds like it should be true, but I've never seen any evidence that it is true.  I've probably watched 200 episodes of The Journey Home, and I've read dozens of conversion stories.  No one has ever said they joined the Catholic Church because Catholics were inexplicably happy.  I've heard several people say they joined because Catholics that they knew were able to remain peaceful during times of trouble, but that's not the same as outward happiness.  Chesterton once said that the Catholic Church has a thousand doors and no two people enter at the same angle, but apparently none of those doors pass through the laugh factory.  There are groups that get members by their outward happiness, but they are either cults or followers of some New Age nonsense.

We read a lot in the scriptures about how you present your self. We are told to make a joyful noise to the Lord (I should forward that to our liturgist. The noise the choir makes isn't very joyful to me). We're told to not look dismal when we fast.   But Jesus also said "blessed are those who mourn", not "suck it up, you jackwagon".  I don't remember St Paul cutting up with Timothy.  I don't remember reading about Peter and John exchanging knock-knock jokes.

People come in all shapes and sizes and temperaments.  The ancients described 4 humors: sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic.  Jesus came to save them all.   Had he not, Heaven would have no scientists, engineers, accountants or lawyers or Germans, and would instead be populated entirely by salesmen, sports casters and politicians and Irish.  And that would be a strange place.

Jesus came so that our joy would be complete. But joy is not the same as happiness.  You can have joy even as you mourn the death of a loved one.  You can chase happiness with no trace of joy in your heart.

So grumblebums, westminster crabbies, sourpusses and crabbypants unite!  To you belongs the Kingdom of God.  Jesus will wipe away every tear, and perhaps you can smile about that, but don't hurt yourself!