TRILOGY: Bk I, Ch 30 (Jackass for the Hour)

TRILOGY: Bk I (Jackass for the Hour), Ch 30

We want transparency and accountability
in the Church

“I think you should have all the transparency you need, Sister,” replied Father Alexámenos, to her surprise.

“Well, then, so, I repeat myself. This is a breakthrough. I’m happy that you see that child abuse is perpetuated by so-called celibacy, and that turning to any Sacrament having a ‘seal’, ‘the Seal of Confession’, is counterproductive. I’m happy that when we want transparency and accountability in the Church, you Alex, will be there to give it to us instead of a cover-up. But really, does that mean you aren’t hiding anything any more?”

“You couldn’t misrepresent my words more than you have, Sister.”

“I didn’t think that’s what you meant,” she replied, with a tinge of bitterness. Like Cardinal Froben, she waited for some catcalls and jeering against Father Alexámenos, but there was only silence yet again. Her nerves were now getting the better of her. The control of her emotions was based on repression, cleverly defined as ‘coping strategies’, instead of the positive wholesomeness of a profound relationship with Christ Jesus in sanctifying grace. Her reason did not guide her emotions. Her emotions bent reason to her projected emotional ideal.

“If you want transparency and accountability in the Church, Sister, you need only to look to Christ Jesus, risen in heaven, through, with and in whom we behold our Heavenly Father. He is just that transparent, and it is He who bears all the accountability we could want, the very wounds of slaughter upon Himself, the wounds of His torture and crucifixion in hands, feet and Heart. If there is any cover-up of this Revelation in mercy which we receive in the Sacrament of Confession, it is the faithless person’s desire not to know that we are known by God, Sister. The Faithless person doesn’t accept the reality of sin, nor Christ’s redemption and His knowing us by His wounds. The question ‘What are you hiding?’ is best directed at those who are faithless, for only they think that they are not known through and through. They try to hide from their own fear of themselves. If they had Faith, they would realise that the mercy of being known by God is written out for all to see in Sacred Scripture. Revelation in mercy is Scripture and Tradition, for we are incorporated by the Holy Spirit into the very Word of God, Christ Jesus, the Word of the Father, the Word who speaks of mercy to us in the sanctifying grace of Faith, of Tradition.”

“How dare you think that Scripture has something to give us as Revelation,” retorted Sister Nice. “That attitude leads to repression of the ‘revelation’ of self to self by psychotherapy, whereby spirituality and psychology are identified and we see God revealed by the human being. We are not subject to Revelation. We are ‘Revelation’. Scripture is simply a wonderful collection of poetry which has become a tool to express this communication of God in ourselves. It doesn’t matter what the authoress meant historically. We read our own history into the text. The historical critical method isn’t finding out what the authoress meant to say in her own time. It means reinterpreting the text with psychological principles, our ‘revelation’, ‘finding’ various strata or layers of political correctness the exegete edits into the text again and again. The discovery of what one thinks should have happened is called historical since it should have been that way.”

“That’s not what Biblical encyclical letters of the Popes have…” began Father Alexámenos, only to get interrupted.

“The leading Catholic exegete said she finds the historical Jesus in Scripture using psychology as an epistemological method, whereby political correctness is the anthropological absolute. She excludes the nice lies about miracles and resurrection with the hermeneutic-of-suspicion.”

“Don’t stop there, Sister. If the exegete presumes a kind of psycho-faith for the author, and interprets the text by firstly prescinding from the Faith, the exegete cannot escape reading his… or her own personal lowest common denominator into the text. Don’t you think so?”

“We finally agree on something, Alex. We’re all nice.”

“But Sister, you’re just congratulating yourself with your claim to read emotions infallibly. Your relativism rejects that the study of the Sacred Page is to be the soul of Sacred Theology.”

“No, Alex. You are the gnostic. I am a scientist. Your bible study cannot be prior to theology.”

“Instead, Sister, the text of Sacred Scripture is meant to be an occasion for our assent to the Faith, which is given to us supernaturally,” concluded Father Alexámenos.

“Get with it, Alex. Do you have no use for psychology?”

“As one bishop of Rome put it, Sister, ‘the intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application. While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons.’ Good psychology is based on a lived spiritual life, not vice versa. The two are never to be equated. But who uses psychology in this way? Are there seminary psychologists who base their work on the truth of reason’s ability in grace to follow the Natural Law and Commandments, and who don’t use a methodology based merely on societal frequency of behaviour? Some bishops cleverly speak of themselves as conservatives backing the Church as they introduce Natural Law into ‘the dialogue’, but dismiss it in the eyes of others by calling it a merely ‘Catholic point of view.’ Is there any seminary psychologist who does not usurp the role of spiritual director, or who doesn’t treat spiritual directors as adjunct counsellors delegated to offer therapy on behalf of the team of formators?”

“Statistical dialectics is what we do,” asserted Sister Nice. “I just don’t understand you. But I do know that your own Episcopal Conference insists that high standards and strict vigilance are especially necessary in evaluating human thresholds pertaining, for instance, to sexuality.”

“High standards? Strict vigilance?” asked Father Alexámenos. “I’m aware that the so-called ‘orthodox’ Catholic media have praised the bishops to the heavens, but have you seen how the bishops define high standards and strict vigilance?” Sister Nice remained silent. “The Americans hold,” he continued, “that affective maturity and healthy psychosexual development along with clarity of male sexual identity are areas of formation to be considered and applied… – get this – according to the principle of gradualism, at each level of formation, even just before ordination.”

“And that’s not a good thing?” asked Sister Nice, incredulous that he saw something wrong.

“Sister… Don’t you see? When they say that in order to live fully an effective life of celibate chastity a knowledge of one’s sexuality and sexual desires is required, they are not only talking about heterosexuality, but, with such relativism, about one’s sexuality, as they say, about those who think of themselves, to whatever degree, as homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals…”

“What?! How can you get that out of that?” she asked. “You are a sick human being.”

“Sister, the bishops don’t speak of masculine sexual identity, but about male sexual identity. Male refers to biology. Male homosexuals may think of themselves as feminine. Using male instead of masculine is no mistake. Militant homosexuals desperately want to be ordained.”

“Your exaggeration betrays something about yourself,” accused Sister Nice.

“Sister, tell me… What does it mean that seminarians are merely to have various levels of thresholds of clarity of male or even masculine sexual identity?”

“I don’t know how to answer you, Alex. You are just so…”

“Why is it,” pressed Father Alexámenos, “that the bishops reductively insist that the guidelines provided by the Holy See must be followed with regard to the admission of candidates with same sex experiences and/or inclinations? They ignore the bit about not ordaining anyone who has had any homosexual inclinations for three years. And why is it that they are so eager to admit those with homosexual inclinations into the seminary to begin with? It should not be a matter of tolerating those who haven’t been ‘active’ for two years, as the bishops have it, but of not admitting candidates who have homosexual or any other kind of strange inclinations.”

“What the bishops say,” Sister Nice said angrily, “is that seminarians should understand and manifest a mature love as preparation for a celibate life, and that human formation for celibacy should aim toward an affective maturity, which is the ability to live a true and responsible love.”

“Precisely the point,” Father Alexámenos shot back. “Why is it that the bishops say that seminarians should understand and manifest a mature love instead of saying they must do so? Why do bishops fall short, saying merely that the programme should aim toward… or that its goal should be… or that it should inculcate? Why don’t they use the word must? Do I need to continue with what is said about the seminarians themselves, that they are merely to have an ability to set appropriate boundaries… by developing self-discipline in the face of temptation? What do the Bishops mean, Sister, by a mere ability to do something when they assume a lack of development in regard to self-discipline in the face of temptation? The seminarians, at least in the exaggeratedly overactive imagination of the bishops, are giving into temptation on a continual basis. Perhaps the bishops are talking about themselves. As it is, the bishops’ minimum, which bottoms out in hell, is merely – and watch the language – that a candidate must be prepared to accept wholeheartedly the Church’s teaching on sexuality in its entirety, be determined to master all sexual temptations, be prepared to meet the challenge of living chastely in all friendships, and, finally, be resolved to fashion his sexual desires and passions in such a way that he is able to live a healthy, celibate lifestyle that expresses self-gift in faithful and life-giving love. Now, Sister, I ask you, why cannot the bishops simply say that a candidate must accept the Church’s teaching… instead of merely saying that a candidate must be prepared to accept… and so on? I think we have to understand that the bishops really mean it when they say that someone can fashion their sexual desires and passions. What an invitation for repression by way of coping strategies! If only the Redemption had something to do with this, more would know Christ as the Bridegroom of His Bride, the Church.”

“Live in the real world, Alex! The bishops admit that those preparing to live out a celibate commitment face particular challenges, especially in today’s cultural context of permissiveness.”

“Yes, well, Sister, permissiveness is not to be defined as a cultural context. Culture is not defined by sin. When Christ has us look to Him, variations of societal rubbish are powerless. If one cannot see by Faith – even now – the wounds on the risen Christ, upon whom all eyes shall gaze, everyone who pierced Him, then all is useless. By Faith, we, as it were, know Him, who is the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and Omega, the One who is, who was, and who is to come, the Almighty. This frees one from any influence of societal fluctuations. In seeing Christ, the Standard of Goodness, one sees who he is before God, including the place whence one was redeemed; one sees the wounds on His risen Body. I repeat, there is nothing, Sister, in any society, of any time or people or nation, which will be a special distraction if one knows Christ, who is the Lord of all. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart’ is not in the future tense. The vision of God is assured…”

“Hah! Now you’re a visionary! I should’ve known! Saint Alexámenos!” mocked Sister nice.

“Real spiritual direction guides one to Christ, not to cringing before particular challenges. That is so typical of American shallowness. Their translation of the Mass has been semi-Pelagian for decades. Their working themselves into holiness has failed. There is no understanding of grace, of the sacraments, of Christ with us, of the nurturing Fire and indwelling of the Most Holy Trinity. Grace is not a thing, but the Living God among us. His love transforms us into love…”

“Don’t you know,” interrupted Sister Nice, “that the bishops say that each seminarian is gradually to have an acceptance and valuing of one’s sexuality as a good to be directed to God’s service, along with a lifelong commitment to growth, which means continuously integrating one’s sexuality into a life and ministry shaped and expressed by celibate chastity? The bishops are correct. You have a serious problem with authority, which is surely a sexual problem in origin.”

“Sister, one doesn’t appraise sexuality from a perspective outside of sexuality, as if there were a basic sexuality of the lowest common denominator shared across the board called neuter. From what the bishops say, there are no candidates who have simply, outright, and with no difficulty, always thanked God that they are men and masculine. The bishops treat sexuality as some sort of package that the seminarians are grudgingly stuck with, and can only gradually be convinced that they are to direct this sexuality to God’s service. This is ill. Sexuality cannot be divorced from who one is. I repeat Sister, that the bishops assume that the entire lives of these candidates, for all of their priesthood, until death, will never come to the point of integrating their sexuality with what, for the bishops, is an impossible goal, a ‘horizon statement’, a life no priest or bishop lives, namely, a life and ministry shaped and expressed by celibate chastity. It’s not a surprise that going to Confession happens rarely, and that the bishops have made exhaustive and abusive demands for the use of psychology. From what they present, they seem to think of the Sacraments, of Christianity, as a failure…”

“You are wrong, Alex. The bishops use psychology correctly. Even if they use psychologists who are atheists, there are rules about the Catholic administration and interpretation of tests.”

“So that a young man who has always been chaste isn’t considered to be a freak?” asked Father Alexámenos. “A methodology whose intrinsic nature is to uphold the lowest common denominator cannot be redeemed by any rules, Sister. That would be like making a rule that all sunsets must be green. It doesn’t work.” Sister Nice just glared at him. “Even some psychologists,” he repeated, “say that they, as gatekeepers, recommended nice, touchy-feelly, wimpish candidates, the very ones almost guaranteed to become abusers. The bishops think they find the reason for the abuse crisis in social, psychological and – with such humility – administrative failures, afraid that someone will mention their attack on Faith, on systematic and moral theology, and on liturgy in the seminaries. I mean, who do you really work for, Sister? Think! Insurance companies receive enormous sums to pay for any eventual failure of priests, even while some companies insist on a style of psychological ‘gate-keeping’ that guarantees a tolerable number of ‘failures’, which, in turn, keeps crippling payments coming from the bishops.”

“I repeat, Alex, that I just can’t understand you,” she said, pretending to be vulnerable.

“You cannot,” he said, “because you wish to throw the Cross away, not grow in grace.”

“So, you admit to having goals in your life?” asked Sister Nice, jumping on the opportunity.

“The Lord’s providence is fine by me,” replied Father Alexámenos.

“Let me rephrase that, Alex,” said Sister Nice. “You must have some goals for your own emotional self-betterment. The purpose of the spiritual life is to enjoy the full range of all possible emotions. Please, share with us your dreams to be able to live your emotions more fully.”

“Seek ye first the Kingdom of the Father and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you as well,” replied Father Alexámenos. “Emotions are not the same as the indwelling of the Most Holy Trinity.” She looked at him blankly, so he continued: “It is not that Christ’s salvation takes away what we justly have to suffer because of Adam’s sin and our own personal sin, namely, that our emotions attempt to lead our reason instead of the other way around,” he continued. “It would be a crime against heaven and earth, Sister, to attempt to take away this Cross which provides an occasion for our acceptance of a deeper life in Christ Jesus. Taking away what we must justly suffer in this life would be like telling Christ to come down from His Cross, because we have a better way of salvation, that of saving ourselves, even from the effects of sin. Instead, He commanded us to carry our cross, daily! You should know, Sister, that forcing the emotions to follow reason is the very definition of repression. The emotions may or may not follow reason, but the person can still do what is right by way of grace. I’m sure you must know the difference between emotions moving one to a pleasurable end, and those which have one conquer a difficulty. Charity is not to be reduced to a mere emotion, but Charity does conquer all; love is stronger than death, strong enough to have disintegrated emotions come into line enough to follow what is holy and good. That Charity can heal the person even emotionally, at least somewhat, and not necessarily completely in this life. Much depends on the circumstances that the Lord is either providing or permitting.”

“But we work hard with people,” protested Sister Nice.

“It doesn’t matter how ‘honest’ or ‘open’ you make someone become with their emotions, Sister, or how many hours or even years or decades of ‘sharing therapy ’ you endure with your clients. Facing reality is not so easy. What you call ‘work’ is – surprise surprise – not facing reality. It is mere self-affirmation, congratulating or humiliating oneself like some sort of ‘saint’ Pelagius. It is a hell to transfer the lowest common denominator of others to oneself, and then force that back on others in one’s uncontrollable affirmation of oneself. The lowest common denominator is, in the first place, mostly a projection of oneself. Instead of all this hell, Sister, one is to rejoice in seeing the true good of others as one’s own good, for that good is God Himself. But, instead, this ‘therapy’ crazed society of ours is the most depressed and self-destructive that the world has ever known. Repression is implosive and, then, explosive.”

“You are a difficult person, Alex. I will have to try again. I repeat that you think of yourself as very spiritual. So, you must have a goal in your spiritual life, a next step where you imagine yourself to be, after which you strive. Otherwise, what kind of priest would you be? Are you not weak, broken, helpless in any way? Are you already the best wounded healer you can be?”

“No priest should imagine a next step in the spiritual life,” said Father Alexámenos. “If he can imagine it, he has fallen into the sin of complacency. What he imagines about his ‘spiritual evolution’ is no better than where he is already. God draws us to Himself now, but not by way of a fairy tale of conforming oneself to a projected, reactionary ideal. Yet, I can say that when I began to pray for long periods and in earnest before the Blessed Sacrament at twelve years of age, I did yearn for a better prayer life, not realising that I already had it all with Christ Jesus, who is the Way Himself.”

“Go on,” urged Sister Nice.

“When I first started,” he said, “it was deadly boring. I wanted to feel like I was praying.”

“I used to identify with that,” said Sister Nice, “but now my space is fulfilled in nirvana.”

“But then I immediately recognised that it wasn’t the prayer which was boring,” recollected Father Alexámenos. “It was myself. I had nothing to offer. It was the Lord commanding me, with the kind of irony shared by good friends, ‘Alexámenos, Enter into Life, the fulness of Life, my Life. Don’t look to yourself. Come to me. I am kind and humble of Heart. You find rest with Me.’ Since then, Sister, I’ve not turned back, nor have I looked forward to some goal. I just look to the Lord, now, no matter what. I want His Life now. Why, Sister, should I imagine anything for the future for my spiritual life when I have the Lord with me now? He’s in charge of my life, not me.”

“If impersonal nirvana doesn’t drive you, Alex, you must have psychological motivation.”

“It would surely be a sign of sickness not to recognise the importance of emotions, Sister, but the spiritual life is not a matter of emotion. Emotion should facilitate putting reason into action, but the spiritual life is not even a matter of natural reason; the spiritual life is a matter of love, of the union of Charity with God and neighbour. It is this Charity which makes the spiritual life reasonable, even when one’s fallen emotions protest. God is Charity, Living Truth. He provides this Love. He draws us to Himself. His crossbeam is gracious kindness, and His burden is light.”

“I never heard that translation of crossbeam instead of yoke, Alex.”

“It’s my own,” he said. “Yoke is figurative, though it expresses what the crossbeam is for.”

“I’m sure you are right while others are insincere,” she mocked. “Is psychology not good?”

“Your psychology, Sister, denies paradox and humour in the spiritual life. Your psychology effectively rejects Christianity as an illness. However, I will say this. A friend with whom to speak after a traumatic experience is good, but that’s to help someone avoid or get out of a shell of fear, but that’s not your kind of psychology. This is not a return to furrows already ploughed, a magic verbalisation looking into the past. It is the friend’s present goodness – which must express God’s Charity – which draws the other person out. It is the draw of love having the capacity to listen, not any fear of fear, which benefits. “Loves casts out all fear; good is drawn from evil.”

“That sounds very much like your description of Confession,” said Sister Nice.

“You’ve expressed one of the greatest misunderstandings that there is today, Sister. You confuse traumatic experience and sin. One is an innocent victim in a traumatic experience, but with sin, instead, one is responsible, at least to some degree, whatever the mitigating circumstances.”

“So you would forbid us to deal with psychotic patients?” asked Sister Nice.

“‘Psychotic patients’, to use your terminology, may need psychiatric care, but no one needs the lowest common denominator of psychological misuse thrown at them,” replied Father Alexámenos. “If there was a neurological cure for autism, for instance, I would rejoice.”

“But Alex, are we not to counsel those whose behaviour falls short of a given norm?”

“If you ever hear of a ‘Catholic’ psychologist who says that guilt cannot be a good thing, or has troubles distinguishing between trauma and sin, you can be sure that he is…”

“How can sin, in your terms, be avoided? How can a person be made well, Alex?” she asked.

“Perhaps a theological-political analogy would be appropriate for you, Sister…”

“Try me,” she said.

“All sin begins and ends similarly to the pride of King Zedekiah, who, in the face of the threat of pagan Babylon, Sister, thought he could fight apart from the Lord. Instead, the Lord had invited him to suffer the castigation of his enemy by surrendering to a hellish exile. It was an opportunity for purification if he bowed to the Lord in humility by God’s grace, admitting his past sin, and his present, preemptive weakness in overcoming his propensity to sin, to trust in himself. Since Zedekiah, instead, thought he could do battle apart from the Lord, what the king was protecting was utterly obliterated. Jerusalem became the whore of Babylon, playing the harlot, being destroyed by attempting to use the very violence of the one using her for egotistical purposes.”

“I repeat, Alex, how can sin be avoided? How can a person be made well?”

“Instead of self-absolution from guilt and weakness, Sister, a going into spiritual battle apart from the Lord, like Zedekiah, one must own up to one’s guilt and weakness before the Lord.”

“But psychology must absolve people of moral guilt,” interrupted Sister Nice. “What if the traumatised person turns to immoral behaviour as a way to create his shell, like a drug addict or alcoholic? Does that not make the creation of the shell amoral, not sinful, a mere indicator of a psychological condition? The ‘trauma’ may be fear of weakness. Fear is our enemy.”

“Instead, Sister, questions of sin as sin are for the Confessional. God’s Charity casts out fear.”

“What?! That is not possible. We change behaviour according to a given norm.”

“Like a Hindu, Anglican, atheist or even Catholic norm? That’s why you equate psychology and grace,” said Father Alexámenos. “For you, there is no supernatural, Living Truth.”

“Relativism has nothing to do with scientific, statistical psychology,” said Sister Nice. “You want to use some non-anthropological norm to exclude some clients. You are not nice.”

“In any case, no matter how Catholic your anthropology pretends to be, Sister, the lowest common denominator which you nevertheless foist on people destroys them regardless of their background.”

“What would you have us do?” asked Sister Nice with a sarcastic tone of voice.

“You can befriend a traumatised person of any faith or culture,” he answered. “Everyone is attracted by truth, goodness and kindness, and, whether Catholic or not, this gives them a reason to come to know the Lord either for the first time or more fully. If people choose what is evil to build a shell around the pain of their traumatic experience, the reason why they are doing this can be explained to them, as well as what a bad choice using evil to do away with evil is. It is a great evil for a psychologist to absolve someone of guilt. True guilt is an occasion to hear the Lord’s invitation to the fulness of His life. Using the evil of the lowest common denominator to do away with evil is like Satan attacking Satan. It’s a joke, even if you don’t laugh.”

“But there is no sin, nothing bad,” insisted Sister Nice.

“Sister, do you think that befriending someone and pretending to put them Pelagianistically into heaven is going to cure anything? Mere explanations don’t help. Convincing someone that he’s forever a victim locks that person out of the mercy and goodness of Christ. Instead of pandering explanations which insultingly hold all people to have no moral aptitude whatsoever, it is a greater Love alone which lifts them out of their fear. This greater love is found with Christ Jesus, beginning with Baptism and later, Confession and…”

“You forbid all non-Catholics to know God!” exclaimed Sister Nice. “I’ll just continue to do what I do.”

“Instead of concentrating so much on methodology that the possibility of growth is suffocated by always looking for your ‘norm’ to take place, Sister, why not explain the Faith, the goodness of God, and of our weakness because of Adam’s sin, and why it is so easy to sin after the corruption known to all children of Adam? Tell them that, to be at peace, it is the tranquillity of the Living Truth of God-with-us, and not external tricks of behavioural change, which will make them better. Otherwise, you force people into depression. People can keep away from occasions of sin and put themselves in a healthy environment with good friends, but it is only a greater love which gives people what they seek. The more people come to know Christ, this greater love, the less traumatised and ‘sick’ they are. These are the miracles I see as a Confessor, the joy of a Father in the Family of Faith. But you think that integral participation in the Natural Law is enjoyed by those who merely talk through trauma. That cause and effect equation is analogous to Luther’s doctrine condemned by Leo X, that people are justified by the Sacraments if they present no obstacle. Fides et ratio! Don’t forbid people to assent to Life, to sanctifying grace!”

“I repeat,” said Sister Nice, “that you may be the first truly evil person I have ever met.”

“Evil, if without grace, yes,” Father Alexámenos agreed. “The best psychology is known by a holy and wise spiritual director and Confessor. Aquinas had an excellent grasp of psychology, as is evident in his Summa Theologiae. For him, it is ‘normal’ to rejoice in the good of others as one’s own good, for that good is the indwelling of the Most Holy Trinity. Thomas says that it is wrong, Sister, to project one’s deficiencies onto others. These two principles, seeing good in others and not being a hypocrite, are turned back to front and upside down by modern psych…”

“But Alex, you seem to be denying yet again the possibility of a ‘wounded healer’ methodology which we use. The healer, knowing him or herself to be broken, can identify with the other person, and offer real help, not just some abstract, trite, platitudinal, condescending advice from on high.”

“But it is precisely that kind of advice, which such a ‘wounded healer’ gives. He… or she, projects him… or herself onto the other person. This ‘wounded healer’ of yours can only offer a ‘been there, done that, and now I’m better than you, so, you had better let me help you’ condescending type of attitude. But that kind of ‘identification’ doesn’t help anyone. That approach is fraught with danger. You risk transferring the other person’s problems to yourself, pretending that you really do identify with them. You also risk allowing the other person to do this with yourself in that other person’s desperate attempt to get help, allowing yourself to be a saviour you cannot be. Being a ‘wounded-healer’ is the sin of modern psychological practice. It’s inversion gone even wilder than anyone thought it could.”

“That’s not so!” exclaimed Sister Nice. “We have statistical science! Have you no mercy?”

“It is true that mercy is filling the need of the other as if it were one’s own need,” said Father Alexámenos. “Mercy, misericordia, ‘misery of heart’, ‘feels’, so to speak, the misery of the other person as one’s own, so that one does fulfill that need of the other as one’s own need…”

“So what’s your problem, Alex?” she asked, interrupting, certain of the victory she wanted.

“However,” he continued, “the need one sees in another is not an identification of oneself with the tragedy of the other, but the living Truth that our Lord bears the wounds of His Sacrifice for each of us. A priest’s advice in Confession is helpful if he presents Christ’s Charity. One can do this by the grace of God if one has first of all received the goodness and kindness of the Lord oneself. It is never tragedy – your ‘wounded healer’ rubbish – which unites us, but only the grace of God, His goodness and kindness, His mercy. Christ is the only true wounded-healer, for by the wounds which we inflicted upon Him are we healed. But it is not the wounds, the tragedy which heals; it is His Charity amid the justice. Yet, there is something tragically forgotten.”

“And what would that be?” asked Sister Nice.

“Your pseudo-Rahnerian/Lonerganesque psychology, Sister, cannot account for Jesus as the soul’s spiritual director. What was lamented as one of the worst evils by Saint John of the Cross is necessarily wrought by psychologists like you. You ‘provide’ all sorts of reasons – none of them able to be scientifically established – as to why someone is or is not going through the dark night of the senses or of the soul. And vicarious suffering of the greatest saints must necessarily be misinterpreted by psychology, and that misinterpretation can truly do the greatest harm to the Church. No one carries the Cross of another, but one does carry one’s own Cross all the more, growing in Charity, if the Lord occasions this growth because of the need of another, someone of any time or place. Love of God and love of neighbour are always simultaneous. There is no middle ground between the statistically generated lowest common denominator – even with some sort of theology claimed to be the icing on top of the cake – and the real norm of fallen man now redeemed by grace. The first looks to sickness, whereby the soul is meaningless, whereby Faith, Hope and Charity are not understood as sanctifying grace, but, instead, as bodily reactions. The other looks to the Charity of the Cross. With your very statistics, you hold each person to be a neat, Cartesian package of therapy: I look to myself alone; therefore I am. Instead, we belong to Christ’s Mystical Body, filling up what is lacking in His sufferings, for which you cannot account. The Spirit moves where He wills.”

“Grace can’t do everything!” exclaimed Sister Nice, almost shrieking her words.

“Spiritual integrity granted by the Holy Trinity’s indwelling is not an addition to therapy, Sister, but the cure. Grace isn’t a thing, but is the Creator’s living presence. Gratia supplet. Grace supplies.”

•••—•••—•••

“But why should you trust the teaching of any priest or bishop?” Mother Bernadette asked Jacinta, testing her. “What are your epistemological criteria? Perhaps you have learned many things from Father Alexámenos just because you had admiration for him… Would that be right?”

“It’s not that I trust him, Mother,” Jacinta replied. “I know Jesus. I know that Charity, the Living Truth, was crucified for me. I know what is consonant with that Truth. If we pay attention to the homilies, day to day teaching, and the encouragement and advice offered in the Confessional by those who offer the Sacrifice of the Mass, it is not because they have something to say. They have the grace of office to help us kneel before the Sacrifice… if they are faithful… if they are Fathers. Children should look to their fathers… if their fathers are faithful fathers…”

“The sins of the Fathers are many…” said Mother Bernadette flatly.

“There is scandal and bitterness,” replied Jacinta. “Many laity do not judge what a priest says in view of his leading them to the Sacrifice he offers. Instead, they esoterically judge what a priest says as cut off from the Mass. They don’t want to be children, even with a saint who would offer them, like a new Abraham, in union with the Lord’s Sacrifice. They begin to fight, despite themselves, what they call the Church’s unjust power, by which they mean the Mass, and priests as Fathers. They hate the Mass, and truth coming from a Father, though they reject what they may not know.”

•••—•••—•••

Sister Nice took a different tack: “A married priesthood would cut down on child abuse. Wouldn’t you like to get married, Alex?” Even with this question, the crowd was silent.

Father Alexámenos then answered, saying, “I have three things to say about Fatherhood.”

“Is this a spiritual fatherhood?” she asked. “I don’t identify with that. I don’t see any male-gendered Christianity in the Church, no masculinity, surely not in the Holy See.”

“Firstly,” said Father Alexámenos, ignoring the usage of such a cliché, “priests would feel more like the Fathers that they are of their parish Families of Faith if…”

“Why do you insist on parishes?” she interrupted. “Power grouping facilitates dialogue.”

“Sister, a parish, a para-oikia, is a family home; a diocese, a dia-oikia, is many parishes with an overseer, a bishop, the Father of the ecclesia, the local church, those called by God…”

“So, no power grouping?” asked Sister Nice.

“As I was saying, priests would feel more like the Fathers that they are of their parish Families of Faith if their bishops would stop playing politics by moving them from parish to parish to parish, rewarding sycophantic priests with nice parishes and ‘expendable’ priests with ‘difficult’ parishes. A real priest wants the so-called difficult parish and doesn’t mind being moved. The problem is the attitude of the bishop’s non-family politics, which is immediately picked up by those in a diocese. I was moved many times, but in my case…”

“We’ve heard so much about priests who are moved around,” mocked Sister Nice.

“In my own case,” he began, “the bishop was using me to resolve difficulties in parishes which had suffered from faithless, abusive priests. I was intensely involved with the parish families I’ve come to know and love. When leaving, I carried the children of God in that parish in my heart; they said that I would always be their priest, their Father, even though I wasn’t physically there. It’s like a father going off to battle; he doesn’t stop being a father. Moving from town to town is precisely what our Lord had in mind, but as a mandate, not a punishment. When bishops move priests from parish to parish as a punishment for the priest not complying, for instance, with the kind of child abuse that is wrought through diocesan mandated pornographic ‘sex-education’, or pornographic so-called ‘child-protection’ programmes, many priests cave in, and, as desired by the bishop, are effectively castrated, acting like robotic administrators instead of being the Fathers they should be. But if priests are not primarily looked upon as those who offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the Family of Faith, it is then easy to speak of ‘priestless parishes’.”

“To sum up, Alex, you think priests are castrated. But we’re beyond that statement of Jesus.”

“No, we’re not! The word is eunocoV, eunuch,” he replied. “Eunh means bed; ecein means to have. It’s someone in charge of the bed, the one who prepares the wedding chamber, the one who prepared the bride. Some pagan eunuchs were castrated, but castration has nothing to do with being a eunuch. The priest, as a eunuch, prepares the Church Militant, the Bride of Christ on earth, by way of the Sacraments, for the Wedding Banquet, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and Calvary, the consummation, so to speak, of that Wedding. Have you never read the parables about the Wedding for Jesus prepared by His Father? or the words of Saint Paul? The priest, in the Mass, is also fruitfully married to the Church through the self-giving Sacrifice of Jesus, by which…”

“Why are doing this to me?” asked Sister Nice intensely, under her breath. “I am the one who gives meaning! It is my symbols which…”

“Sister, Jesus said, ‘Let him who is able to prepare the chamber, prepare the chamber. We priests…’”

“You said you had other points, Alex,” interrupted Sister Nice.

“Secondly,” he continued, “getting priests ‘married’ with the intention of reducing child abuse – an opinion that can be heard on the lips of many bishops and Cardinals – reduces the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony to the level of a superstitious cure-all, which is to be thrown upon the Sacrament of Holy Orders. This would degrade the preparation due to these sacraments, and will only bring about further child abuse, this time called incest. Those who are sick or determined to sin are not to receive either of these sacraments. It’s my hope that those who push for a married clergy for that reason will be laicised. The millstones of self-defence are waiting…”

“It’s outrageous that you think they should be punished at all,” interrupted Sister Nice.

“Thirdly,” he continued, “it happens that I am married, happily married… I am ecstatic in my marriage. It is just wonderful. I am so happy to be a priest, a married priest… blessed is the word.”

Don Hash and padre Emet knew what he meant, but not the crowd, and it wasn’t what Sister Nice expected. She was convinced of his guilt in Haïti, and his being married would destroy her thesis about a married priesthood eliminating child abuse. She had to prove he was a monster.

“Now, Alex…” she said, beside herself, “do you have any children?”

“And I love them so much, and they love me!” exclaimed Father Alexámenos.

“What are their names?” she asked, getting sceptical and impatient at the same time.

==================

Chapter 31 coming soon…

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© 2007-2008 Renzo di Lorenzo — All rights reserved

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