Why I Am a Catholic, Part III: Apostate

In my last, I described my sojourn into apostasy. I had been intending to pass on from that and revisit it a few times later, but I feel it'd be better to camp there for a little while instead. (I've also changed the name of this series, accenting the personal angle that I feel must be taken with this -- accenting it for myself as much as anybody else, since I'm bad at that, but I digress.)

The apostate is something very different from the atheist who is sincerely convinced of atheism. I don't mean the person who has committed some concrete act of apostasy -- the burner of incense to the genius of the Roman Emperor, the signer of the Act of Supremacy, the one who treads upon the fumie. The one who does these things need not be surrendering to anything but the frailty of human nature, under torture or the threat of torture. Or conversely, they may do such things as these, or nothing at all, out of a sincere (if, in the Catholic view, mistaken) belief that God does not exist; or that the Absolute is so different from the Christian God that, for all intents and purposes, He does not exist.

Fumie (literally "things to step on") were used in the persecution of the Church in Japan: they depicted

Christ or the Virgin, and people were required to step on them. Those who objected were exposed as Catholics.

But this is not the kind of apostasy that I am writing of here. The apostate in this sense is one who has been abandoned by God, or has felt compelled to abandon Him, and may or may not be an atheist in the rational sense at all. It's expressed, I think, in the song "Dear God" by XTC:

But all the people that you made in your image
See them starving on their feet
'Cause they don't get enough to eat from God
I can't believe in you
Dear God, sorry to disturb you but
I feel that I should be heard loud and clear
We all need a big reduction in amount of tears
And all the people that you made in your image
See them fighting in the street
'Cause they can't make opinions meet about God
...
I won't believe in heaven or hell
No sinners, no saints, no devil as well
No pearly gates, no thorny crown
You're always letting us humans down
The wars you bring, the babes you drown

That is not the voice of a philosopher, delivering his opinion that there does not happen to be a Supreme Being; neither is it the voice of a teenager who's trying to make his parents mad. That is the anguished voice of one betrayed.

St. Paul's mystery of iniquity is the perennial complaint of the apostate. If I may trust my own weird experience, it isn't simply a matter of having an extremely puzzling riddle to crack. That doesn't help, but it also isn't what's at stake -- God knows there is no shortage of nuts-hard-to-crack in the universe (indeed, as Lady Julian and science conspire to tell us, all that is made is a nut). What's at stake is how the nightmare anguish that exists in the world, in our own lives, can possibly be compatible with the reality of a God who is both good enough to object to it and powerful enough to stop it, and of whom it can't plausibly be maintained that it's none of His business. Why did I have to lose this man over a stupid mistake? How could You let this innocent little girl be tormented? Why did you let these people be gunned down at random by a maniac?

The fact that apostates often wrestle with the problem of evil, in public and in private (frequently in their work if they are artists of any kind), for many years after some decisive renunciation of faith, may be an ironic testimony to the doctrine that Baptism imparts an indelible mark upon the soul. Some of my favorite authors are those, like Flannery O'Connor and Shusaku Endo, whose work depicts, not a knock-down argument for regarding the difficulty as having a complete and satisfactory answer, but the difficulty itself as material for faith: as a part of the human experience that must be treated as legitimate and somehow brought to God, if coming to God is going to have any meaning. Not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by the taking of the Manhood into God. And after all, we start with our own experience in a way that we definitely don't start with divine revelation; howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but the natural, and afterward that which is spiritual.

Translated into more poetic language, the apostate's case might perhaps go something like this:

This is one thing, therefore I said it, He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked.

If the scourge slay suddenly, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent.

The earth is given into the hand of the wicked: he covereth the faces of the judges thereof; if not, where, and who is he?

... Let him take his rod away from me, and let not his fear terrify me:

Then would I speak, and not fear him; but it is not so with me.

My soul is weary of my life; I will leave my complaint upon myself; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.

I will say unto God, Do not condemn me; shew me wherefore thou contendest with me.

Is it good unto thee that thou shouldst oppress, that thou shouldst despise the work of thine hands, and shine upon the counsel of the wicked?

... Thou knowest that I am not wicked; and there is none that can deliver out of thine hand.

Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about; yet thou dost destroy me. 

-- Job 9.22-24, 9.34-10.3, 10.7-8

Job is one of the most neglected books in Scripture -- the majority of allusions to it that I've seen have consisted in the single phrase I know that my Redeemer liveth, ripped from its original context and content, and slapped as a piece of sentimental uplift onto car bumpers and the dust-jackets of inspirational something or other. I can't think of anything more insulting. The fumie at least had actual icons on them. It'd be like taking a picture from Dachau that happened to have a smile in it, and using it to advertise sugarless gum.

But does your soul feel clean?

*ting*

For it is the whole point of the book of Job that God, when He confronts both Job and Job's comforters, offers no answer, no explanation. He gives no account of Himself. As Charles Williams points out in He Came Down From Heaven, God's reply mostly only plagiarizes things Job has already said in his storm of accusation directed upwards. There is no theodicy offered there.

Or rather, there is; it is that offered by Job's friends: Job is suffering because he has, in some manner, sinned, and must repent. Reading Job's outrage, and his abuse of his friends as well as his God, those of us who were raised in the Christian faith might be inclined to agree with them, having been brought up to believe that there are certain things one simply doesn't say to, or about, God. The Almighty's own response to Job's friends is as follows:

And it was so, that after the LORD had spoken these words unto Job, the LORD said to Eliphaz the Temanite, My wrath is kindled against thee, and against thy two friends: for ye have not spoken of me the thing that is right, as my servant Job hath. Therefore take unto you now seven bullocks and seven rams, and go to my servant Job, and offer up for yourselves a burnt offering; and my servant Job shall pray for you: for him I will accept: lest I deal with you after your folly, in that ye have not spoken of me the thing which is right, like my servant Job. 

-- Job 42.7-8

Job, Leon Bonnat, 1880

This is why I cannot and will not despise the apostate, the anti-theist. Those who do despise them have no business with apologetics. I think that no one, however virtuous, can truly grapple with the problem of evil and not understand apostasy. Christ Himself, mounted upon the cross, his face lifted up into heaven, demanded of that heaven, Why hast Thou forsaken Me?

God's effective silence to Job was matched by His absolute silence to His Son. That silence echoes down the corridors of history; it resounds like music in the human heart; deep calleth to deep in the roar of thy cataracts, all thy waves and billows are gone over me; hearts and sufferings coinhere, and at the heart of them all lies the Sacred Heart, still pierced, still bleeding, still burning. The silence was followed by the Resurrection? -- yes, but that was in the macrocosm. We, in the microcosm that we (idly enough) call "real life," cannot see that.

Which means that that referral to the macrocosm, to the Resurrection, cannot really be used as an answer. That reality left its evidences upon history; and I do think that Pascal was right, when he said that there is enough light for those who wish to see as there is enough darkness for those who don't. But to place one's faith in the Resurrection and in the universe that it signifies is precisely an act of faith -- it is not simply the obvious and reasonable thing to do, ever.

That, I think, was my mistake. Not only as a child, but for years afterward, and even in my conversions from atheism to Christianity and from Christianity in general to Catholicism in particular. I never fully grappled with the fact that the act of faith was an act of faith -- that is, trusting a Person, not simply accepting an idea -- not of following a chain of reasoning to its logical end. Following that chain did put me in a position to make an act of faith. I don't regret that. And, while it's impossible to know whether I would have made the same decision if I had grappled with that question during my conversions, I think I might have done. But it has left me to grapple with that same problem now.

I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, Gustave Dore, 1855

I don't believe there is any irreverence in such a struggle; My servant Job hath spoken of Me the thing that is right. Returning to Charles Williams:

No pot -- so far -- has asked questions of the potter in a voice the potter can understand; when it does, it will be time enough to compare pots to men. The criticism is not aimed at Saint Paul, who dropped the phrase in the midst of a great spiritual wrestle, not as a moral instruction. But it has been used to often by the pious to encourage them to say, in love or laziness, 'Our little minds were never meant ...' Fortunately there is the book of Job to make it clear that our little minds were meant. A great curiosity ought to exist concerning divine things. Man was intended to argue with God.*

And how is any of this an answer to apostasy or an argument against atheism? It isn't; that's very largely the point. I believe Christians must accept and respect the fact that, for some people, the problem of evil is an insurmountable objection to God's existence -- the problem of evil as experienced in their own lives. And not accepted and respected as some sort of condescending indulgence of the weakness of others, either. The brute fact is, unless our own heart's been broken the same way theirs has, we don't know what we're talking about.

While, if our own hearts have been broken, we should know better than anybody that faith is a mystery. I don't honestly know why I'm not an atheistic apostate. The brain-breaking problem of how God could allow the suffering that exists in the world, I can't answer; the pain I've suffered, the pain I've caused, in my own twenty-seven years, I don't know what to do with that. Sometimes I understand why I believe, but those times, I couldn't express it in words: I could point at Him, but nothing else, not really. I could pile up arguments this high, putting someone in a position where Catholicism is intellectually possible and even plausible; and without the gift of faith, given mystically, it's not going to matter.

None of which is a reason to waive the rational element in the discussion. It's just a reason to put it in its place.

O LORD, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived: thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed: I am in derision daily, every one mocketh me.

For since I spake, I cried out, I cried violence and spoil; because the word of the LORD was made a reproach unto me, and a derision, daily.

Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay. 

-- Jeremiah 20.7-9

*He Came Down From Heaven, p. 30.

A Blog on the Hobby Lobby Law Bomb

I'll just leave this here, shall I.

The internets are abuzz with Hobby Lobby hate. And Hobby Lobby pride. And Hobby Lobby what the hell are they on about this time. And so forth.

The contraception provisions of the HHS coverage mandate provoked a number of lawsuits, primarily of course from employers such as the Hobby Lobby who object to paying for contraception on religious or moral grounds. The Supreme Court ruled today that the state could not compel employers to provide coverage for contraceptive services.

Christians are to be found on both sides, vehemently decrying and vociferously supporting the ruling, and making remarks about the qualities of a Christian business, on this subject and others. A few thoughts:

1. The women's rights/reproductive health angle doesn't really work as an argument in favor of the original HHS requirements. It is perfectly possible to maintain that the government has no business dictating what does or doesn't happen in people's bedrooms, provided nobody winds up dead or unleashing Gozer the Gozerian. Both of which phenomena, strictly speaking, are as undesirable outside the bedroom as inside it.

Despite vaguely resembling Justin Timberlake, this entity is not bringing sexy back.

Where the argument becomes sticky is when we start saying that the state, or an employer, has an obligation to subsidize things that happen in the bedroom or to eliminate their consequences. And the brute fact is, whether we think it wrong or right, that's what contraception is: making sure that the normal consequences of sex won't happen.

Even referring to this as a matter of reproductive health is at best ambiguous. The issue of sexually transmitted diseases is an issue of health, of course; but treatments and vaccinations for those aren't, so far as I know, what's at stake here -- it's contraceptives that are at stake, i.e. things whose express purpose is to prevent pregnancy. And pregnancy, even if it is unwanted or objectively a terrible idea right now, is not a disease.*

If this were, for instance, a question of people wanting anti-pregnancy measures to be available to rape victims, the conversation would be pretty different, but so far as I'm aware that too is on the list of "not the main topic" stuff here. What's being demanded is employer-covered access to contraceptives so that people can engage in an elected behavior free of consequence, not a necessity to the normal functioning of the body -- indeed, its whole purpose lies in preventing the normal functioning of one system of the body. And, while I don't propose to criticize that elected behavior here, I would point out that it seems inappropriate to make other people (whether we speak of the employer or the taxpayer) fiscally responsible for one's own free choices in pursuit of non-essentials.

The comparison of cosmetic surgery, which has been raised by some writers on the subject,** seems to me a good one. No one need cavil at the idea that some people could, for lack of a better way of putting it, need cosmetic surgery; say, the veteran who comes back from war with half his face missing from a grenade explosion. But cases like this are clearly distinguishable from a general insistence that cosmetic surgery ought to be available to everyone as a right.

2. All the same, the brute fact is also that there is an inevitable inequality between men and women on this subject. To sum it up in a crude oversimplification, if people have sex and one of them gets pregnant (I'm going to assume for the purposes of discussion that this is more or less the old-fashioned sort of sex, in which at least one person of each gender is involved), the man can run away. The woman can't. And that is, by definition, unfair.

That it's inevitable is, I feel, a reply that rises a little too easily to Christian lips. That she should have been more responsible is a reply that rises altogether too easily to the lips of Pharisees everywhere.

God litters our lives with indulgences, letting us off the consequences of our sins; when He chooses not to do that, it isn't because the person who experiences consequences was worse than ourselves -- that is the chief point of the book of Job -- but is, in all likelihood, for reasons that we can barely guess and certainly not state with certainty. In any event, male irresponsibility is a lot easier to get away with, living as we do after both the Sexual Revolution and the demise of chivalry, and a lot of the insistence on a woman's right to contraceptives, or even to abortion, seems to be an attempt to level the playing field.

I would insist that these are, in fact, false solutions to the problem; but, whether I am wrong or right in thinking so, the problem of such inequality in our culture is a real one, and ought to be recognized and sympathized with, not just moralized at. A solution to the problem cannot stop there, but it must start there, because if it doesn't then I think it will not start at all.

3. Whether the Hobby Lobby and co. are jerks or not, this is, in fact, a religious liberty issue. No sensible person, I am sure, would want to deny that religious people can be incredible assholes. This is also an elected behavior, and one just as open to non-religious or irreligious people, but one does see it with depressing regularity. Even if we take the comforting view that this is largely a consequence of the media manipulating the facts at their disposal and presenting the worst face of Christianity, or religion in general, with unjust persistence, it is nonetheless depressing that they've got that much material to work with.

Nevertheless. Whether the plaintiffs in this case are generally unpleasant people, or even raving misogynists, is not actually relevant to the case. What is relevant to the case is the assertion that being made to pay for non-vital goods or services that violate their religious beliefs is unconstitutional, and it is. If we were talking about a vital good or service, like vaccination or blood transfusions, then sure, it'd be a different conversation; but we're not, and it isn't.*** Nor is this conversations even about whether contraceptives are or ought to be available: it is about who ought to bear the responsibility of paying for them; and the contention of the Hobby Lobby et al. is that those whose convictions do not forbid them to do so should be making the payments. Insofar as contraceptives aren't necessary to a person's well-being, I tend to agree.

4. That being said, critics of the ruling are kind of right when they point out other fairly non-Christian behavior on the part of companies and organizations that object to contraceptive coverage on religious grounds. It is a little bit unfair to make this solely a Christian question: there are other faiths whose practitioners are wholly or widely resistant to contraception. But of course it is predominantly a question of Christians -- even, very likely, predominantly a question of Catholics -- and I believe I write chiefly to a Catholic audience. So an examination of our conscience is not altogether out of place.

Do we support businesses whose practices are thoroughly Christian? And are our criteria for what constitutes thoroughly Christian practice dictated by hot-button issues of our own place and time, or by the person of Christ, the tradition of the Church, the exercise of reason, and the voice of the Scriptures?

The Bible says, at most, extremely little about contraception,**** but you know what it does say a great deal about? Avarice. Its warnings to the rich are repeated, they are stern, and they give not the slightest hint of "But you're American, so ignore this." The parable of the camel and the needle's eye is typical not just of Jesus, but of the whole Bible. (It is telling, and typical of our own society, that this is so often explained away today by referring to the Needle's Eye Gate in Jerusalem, which camels had to kneel in order to pass through, making it possible but difficult for a camel to pass through the "eye of the needle"; a charming explanation, were there any evidence that such a gate ever existed.) The howls of resentment that meet any suggestion of legally requiring companies to pay a living wage -- accompanied by the argument that companies won't be able to hire as many workers on account of such a pay hike, because it is in fact physically impossible for upper management to take pay cuts -- are a bad sign. So too, for that matter, is the commonplace close-fistedness of many Christians when approached by beggars on the street, refusing to give anything and even handing out insults instead, on the grounds that the homeless are lazy, probably drug addicts, will misuse the money, and so forth. Evidently that hadn't occurred to God when He lavished His gifts upon us.

You say you need air, light, warmth, and moisture to live? I can do that, but it'll cost you.

This is not only a question of consistency, though I feel that ought to be enough to make us care. Part of the reason that the churches in this country are as discredited as they are in the public mind, especially among the younger generation, is their refusal to apply Christian principles when these are embarrassing or inconvenient to our political allies -- specifically, the GOP, which I don't think really cares very much about Christian principles per se, but does care deeply about Christian votes. This is a failure of the prophetic function of the Church, which is called to denounce all evils, and especially its own, because the purpose of prophecy is not merely to condemn but to summon to repentance, purification, and healing. Charles Williams put the matter so well:

It is at least arguable that the Christian Church will have to return to a pre-Constantine state before she can properly recover the ground she too quickly won. Her victories, among other disadvantages, produced in her children a great tendency to be aware of evil rather than sin, meaning by evil the wickedness done by others, by sin the wickedness done by oneself. The actuality of evil does not altogether excuse the hectic and hysterical attention paid to it; especially to those who appear to be deriving benefit from it; especially to benefits which the Christian spectator strongly disapproves or strongly desires. Even contrition for sin is apt to encourage a not quite charitable wish that other people should exhibit a similar contrition. To grow into the vibrant web of universal and supernatural co-inherence is as difficult as to invite the direct and particular co-inherence of Almighty God. The natural mass is not the supernatural web -- not even when it calls itself Christendom. 

-- The Descent of the Dove, pp. 86-87

So, while I welcome the SCOTUS ruling on the subject, I remain concerned for the position of the Church; concerned rather for her spiritual position than her social position; concerned more, perhaps, in the wake of this political victory than I would be in the face of a political defeat. For defeats are to be expected: the Cross is the pattern of the life of Christ, and of His saints also. When I see an ostensible temporal triumph, I get the uneasy feeling that I'm being had.

Pietro Lorenzetti's fresco Entry Into Jerusalem in the Upper Basilica of St. Francis.

*Condoms are in a somewhat greyer area: however much many religious groups protest of their limitations, they do help to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases when used correctly, though naturally they are no guarantee. On the other hand, that was something of a happy accident, as both the modern condom and its predecessors were designed to prevent pregnancy, not disease. On the third hand, they are neither scarce nor particularly costly, unlike prescription medications, and can be found free in a lot of places.

**I forget who these writers were and where I came across them, but I didn't like to take credit for the comparison as though I'd been clever enough to come up with it myself.

***If we were talking even about the specific health applications that, I understand, certain contraceptives have or can have -- for instance, I'm told that the pill can help regulate a woman's cycle, though the very little information I've even heard on that is conflicting -- then, yes, that specific application would qualify as a health concern. But, see point 1; the narrative has not even professed to be framed substantially in those terms.

****Most readers will maintain that it says nothing about contraception. I would allow that one or two verses whose exact meaning is disputed may be talking about contraception, though I'd resist making them the basis of an argument, precisely because their meaning is disputed.

Poetry: An Antithalamion

To my widower


Study me then, you who shall lovers bee
At the next world, that is, at the next Spring,
     For I am every dead thing,
     In whom love wrought new Alchimie.
-- John Donne

Love is the most terrible of the gods.
Those deities whose demesne is among passions or pleasures
Are scarcely more than sprites or river-gods,
When shaken by the crashing of the ambrosial curls of Love.
Beauty has mastering force in its subtle hands;                                                               5
Truth seems almighty when at first you meet it,
Prostrate before dispassioned clarity
Unmoved and moving; nonetheless,
Love is the older and the stronger power.
Love twines through every other thing:                                                                          10
Through breath and warmth and light, secretly
He insinuates himself through every vein, nerve, and sinew,
Releasing nothing, no one from his grasp.
The murmur that enchants the drowsing lover
In the drugged, dreaming hours perfumed with heat;                                                       15
The Orphic voice, ringing jewel-clear among the entangling flowers;
The divine thundering, above the dread Ocean's face, below the hieratic stars:
None is afore, or after other,
None is greater, or less than another.
Love's single voice rings through,                                                                                  20
Breaking the cedars.

Yes, God is Love, though the word sticks in the throat.
I have known Love
As the honeyed scroll embittering the entrails;
As the devouring fire that terrified the sons of Israel,                                                       25
And was silent to the mantled gaze of Elijah.
I have drunk deep, deep of the fountain of the Spirit
And been cast by the Spirit into the wilderness,
Its nights without fire,
Its days empty and alien.                                                                                              30
I have wandered the dunes and wadis of the pathless waste and eaten of the stones;
I have fallen, fallen from the uttermost pinnacle of the Temple;
I have beheld all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them,
And behind them, as in a glass darkly, a strange pair of horns.
I also have sat outside the great city,                                                                             35
Unable to discern between my right hand and my left,
While the gourd curled up around my head
Only to lay its dried corpse around me in a blast of sulfurous, pentecostal wind.
I also have mourned the pillar of salt, blasphemed among the potsherds and the ashes,
Seen the ram tangled in the thicket only when my hands were drenched with scarlet.        40

I laid myself upon the floor of the Ocean,
Arms crossed for blessing upon my breast,
And listened to the cold drums of the saltwater
Beating mournfully upon rocky shores seven miles overhead.
I chanted my hymn to Love                                                                                           45
And the murmuring song ascended from sea to firmament
As I breathed deeply of the seaweed and feasted upon the old, black earth,
And I was no one to the whale and Leviathan took no heed;
So that I myself was drawn out with a hook -- assumed
From the shelter into which I had fallen, from the bowels of the brine.                               50
Risen in the open air, I stared at the quicksilvered stars,
Shaking before the dread eyes of the heavens who were given charge over me.
And then I heard the Orphic voice, saying,
"Come up here, and I shall show thee what is to take place after this,
Not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh,                                                                  55
But by the taking of the manhood into God."

The pentecostal blast returned, and clove the sea in two;
The fundament of the Ocean was laid bare,
Dry as bones in the wilderness.
The earth shook. The heavens were parted                                                                     60
And rolled up like a scroll that snaps back into its accustomed spiral
At the fracture of its final seal.
Suspended between earth and sky and sea, in the midst of the Throne
I saw the seven holy eyes, and knew
That I, like the ancient prophetess my sister,                                                                   65
Would never be believed when I prophesied unto the breath
Because I spurned the Divine Bridegroom
To whom I had promised my naked soul and body.
The tongue of fire hovers over me indeed, and speaks with the tongues of men and of angels,
But what it proclaims is sealed up with the seven thunders.                                              70
Bowing, I pulled my mantle over my head,
And murmured, "Blessed be the name of the Lord."

All this, all this is written in the terrible book of Love.
Had Delphica or Sibyl or Elijah forewarned me,
I might have refused to sell my soul to God --                                                                   75
Might have refused to write my name in Blood
Most Precious, forsworn the incanted vows and execrations.
Might, might: too late.
The Book of Life lies open and its golden pages are drenched with scarlet
(The wounded Hands bleed everlastingly);                                                                        80
The murmured vows are broken, yet persist,
Renewing themselves, a vine twining through every vein, nerve, and sinew;
Already I know the savor of heaven.
If only I could want what I would want
I should be holy, even now.                                                                                             85

"Sovegna vos a temps de ma dolor,"
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gl'affina.

Which Faith except every one do keep,
Whole and undefiled:
He cannot be saved.                                                                                                       90

+     +     +     +     +     +     +

NOTES

Title. An epithalamion is a Greek term for a poem or hymn written in celebration of a marriage; Donne wrote several, as of course did multitudes of other poets. The prefix anti- means against, instead of, or in the place of.

Epigram. Taken from A Nocturnall Upon S. Lucies Day, written by Donne after the deaths of a close friend and his daughter. The specific reference it makes to alchemy (a longstanding motif in English literature) is reflected in this poem, with references to salt, sulfur, and mercury, which were believed by some alchemists to be the fundamental principles of all matter, and therefore to be capable of producing gold when properly balanced.

4. Cf. the Iliad I.644-651, where Zeus assents to a request from Thetis, the divine mother of Achilles (Cowper's translation):
"'And to assure thee more, I give the sign
Indubitable, which all fear expels
At once from heavenly minds. Nought, so confirmed,
May, after, be revers'd or rendered vain.'
He ceased, and under his dark brows the nod
Vouchsafed of confirmation. All around
The Sovereign's everlasting head his curls
Ambrosial shook, and the huge mountain reeled."

5-9. Suggesting the Platonic triad of the Beautiful, the True, and the Good, but replacing the Good with Love.

8. Suggesting Aristotle's Unmoved Mover, the universal First Cause. Cf. also the closing lines of the Paradiso: "My will and my desire were turned by love, / The love that moves the sun and the other stars."

16. Orpheus, according to Greek and later Roman mythology, had the most beautiful voice in all the world and all time: he could tame beasts with his singing, was able to withstand and drown out the Sirens who lured other men to their deaths with the beauty of their voices, and even charmed Hades, the god of the dead, into allowing him to take his departed wife Eurydice back to the upper world (in some versions of this myth, a ban is imposed which he violates, resulting in Eurydice being reclaimed by death; in others, he is simply successful, and they live out their days together). In the Roman Imperial period, there were religious mysteries devoted to Orpheus, and he was sometimes regarded or used as an analogue or parallel to Christ: the Emperor Philip, famous for tolerating Christians in contrast to his predecessors, reportedly had statues of Christ and Orpheus, among others, in his personal chapel.

18-19. A quotation from the Athanasian Creed (or Quicunque Vult), used occasionally in the public and private worship of the Anglican Communion and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. It forms part of the lengthy definition this creed gives of the Trinity: "And in this Trinity none is afore, or after other: none is greater, or less than another; But the whole three Persons are co-eternal together: and co-equal."

21. Cf. Psalm 29.5: The voice of the LORD breaketh the cedars; yea, the LORD breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.

24. Cf. Revelation 10.8-10: And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, Go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth. And I went unto the angel and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey. And I took the little book out of the angel's hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.

25. Cf. Exodus 20.18-19: And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die. Cf. also Hebrews 12.18-24.

26. Cf. I Kings 19.11b-13a: And, behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake: and after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering of the cave.

27ff. This sequence makes several references to the Temptation of Christ (spoken of in Mark 1.12-13, and in more detail in Matthew 4.1-11 and Luke 4.1-12). Satan is described in these accounts as tempting Jesus first to violate His fast and presume upon His miraculous power by turning stones into bread; second, to test God's election of Him by hurling Himself from the highest tower of the Temple, so that angels would come and rescue Him; and third, to accept the whole earth immediately (rather than enduring the Passion), but as Satan's gift and at the price of worshiping him.

35-38. Containing several allusions to the book of Jonah. Though more famous for the story of the whale, Jonah's mission as a prophet had been to preach repentance to the Assyrian capital, Nineveh. When he did, the people repented; Jonah, who hated the Assyrians, was furious, and went outside the city to wait and watch, hoping that God would destroy the city anyway. The last few verses of the book are specially relevant: And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished himself to die, and said, It is better for me to die than to live. And God said to Jonah, Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death. Then said the LORD, Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: and should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?

39. Alluding, first, to the story of Lot's wife being transformed into a pillar of salt during his family's escape from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19.24-29), and second, to the story of Job, particularly 2.7-10: So went Satan forth from the presence of the LORD, and smote Job with sore boils from the sole of his foot unto his crown. And he took a potsherd to scrape himself withal; and he sat down among the ashes. And his wife said unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die. But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.

40. An allusion to the famous story of the sacrifice of Isaac. In the Biblical account (Genesis 22.1-19) Isaac is spared at the last moment by the intervention of an angel sent by God, and Abraham offers a ram which he found tangled in a thicket nearby (as a substitute for Isaac, or as a thank-offering, or both). It is possible that the story was told at least in part to counteract the tradition in Palestine at the time of sacrificing infants and children to the local gods, Molech particularly.

42. In the Roman Catholic Church, persons ineligible to receive the Eucharist (whether due to unconfessed mortal sin or because of being out of full communion with the Pope) may receive a blessing from the ministering priest instead, to signify which the arms are crossed in an X shape over the chest; this tradition is of course also observed for the burial of the dead.

47. Alluding to two of T. S. Eliot's works. His first poem ever published, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, closes with the lines "We have lingered in the chambers of the sea / By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown / Till human voices wake us, and we drown." Murder In the Cathedral, a much later play about the martyrdom of St. Thomas Becket (written some years after his conversion the Anglo-Catholic faith and during the rise of the Nazi state in Germany), contains several extended lyrical passages uttered by a chorus who are anticipating the murder of the saint, and at one point they utter the line, "I have lain on the floor of the sea and breathed with the breathing of the sea-anemone, swallowed with ingurgitation of the sponge. I have lain in the soil and criticized the worm."

48. Another reference to Jonah, followed by another reference to Job. The precise identity of Leviathan is unknown (a crocodile has been suggested); the pertinent verse is 41.1: Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down? The verse comes during an extended passage in which God rebukes Job for presumption.

52. The stars, in both the Bible and Judeo-Christian literature, are traditional symbols of the angelic host. This particular line suggests Revelation 4.6b, 8: And in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind. ... And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, LORD God Almighty, which was and is and is to come.

54. A quotation from Revelation 4.1, in which St. John the Divine, the seer who penned the book, is summoned into heaven to receive the vision.

55-56. Another quotation from the Athanasian Creed. Having defined the Trinity in its first half, it defines the Incarnation in the second half. These lines come from this sequence, describing Christ: "Who although he be God and Man: yet he is not two, but one Christ; One, not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh: but by taking of the Manhood into God; One altogether, not by confusion of substance: but by unity of Person."

57. Suggesting the parting of the Red Sea; cf. Exodus 14.21: And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea: and the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.

59. Suggesting Ezekiel 37.1-14, in which the prophet receives a vision of a valley full of skeletons, to which he is directed to prophesy. They are restored to the state of full bodies, though still dead. He is then ordered to prophesy to the wind, or breath (the same Hebrew word), which he does, and it enters them and brings them to life. The description of the angels in Revelation, already alluded to, contains several deliberate echoes of other passages in Ezekiel.

60-62. The image of the heavens being rolled up like a scroll is a regular motif in Biblical prophecy and apocalypse, which has been transmitted into hymnody, sermons, and popular imagery. Revelation 5.1-8.1 contains an extended passage in which the Lamb (Christ) receives a scroll from the hand of God, sealed with seven seals, which he breaks one by one.

64. A more specific reference to the scroll sequence in Revelation; note specifically 5.6: And I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth.

65ff. Suggesting Cassandra. In the mythology of Troy, Cassandra was the sister of Paris and Hector, and was a priestess of Apollo. She promised herself to the god, for which he granted her the gift of prophecy, but she then broke her promise. Furious, but unable to withdraw the gift he had given, Apollo added to it a curse that, though always right in her predictions, she would never be believed.

69. References to the outpouring of the Holy Ghost upon the infant Church at Pentecost (Acts 2.1-4ff) and to St. Paul's famous hymn to Christian love in I Corinthians 13.

70. Another allusion to Revelation, this time to 10.4: When the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not. No further reference is made to this enigmatic verse.

71-72. References back to Elijah and Job (cf. Job 1.21).

74. Delphica, i.e. the oracle of Delphi, famous for being Apollo's personal oracle and utterly infallible -- as well as for giving exceedingly cryptic replies to inquiries. The Sibyl was a Roman parallel, located in southern Italy. Both, as well as the prophet Elijah and many other classical and Judeo-Christian figures, are depicted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

75ff. Suggesting (and subverting) the tradition of pacts made with the Devil, usually aimed at increasing one's wealth and power. The most famous of these in legend is, of course, Faust, whose story has been told repeatedly for centuries.

79. The Book of Life is alluded to a few times throughout the New Testament, and is an image of those who are in the favor of God. The most famous reference to it is doubtless Revelation 20.11-15, where the Last Judgment is described, at which absence from the Book of Life is the condition for being cast into the lake of fire.

82. Suggesting the gourd already mentioned, but also John 15.5 and its surrounding context: I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

83. Suggesting another passage from Murder In the Cathedral, this time spoken by the martyred archbishop: "I have had a tremor of bliss, a wink of heaven, a whisper, / And I would no longer be denied; all things / Proceed to a joyful consummation."

86-87. A quotation from the Italian original of Dante's Purgatorio (XXVI.147-148). A loose translation would be, "'O think at times of how I suffer here,' then plunged him in the fire that refines them." The speaker of the first line is a famous poet, Arnaut Daniel, whom Dante meets in Purgatory in the place where the stain of lust is purified out of penitent souls through fire. These lines, in Italian, also make occasional appearances in Eliot's verse, in fragments, notably in the closing section of The Waste Land and part IV of Ash Wednesday.

88-90. These lines are quoted from the beginning and the end of the Athanasian Creed.

Graces Withheld; Or, Sebastian's Fate

I am interrupting my current series to deal with an issue that has been much on my mind in the last several months. I've expressed the thought lately, both here on the blog and in one or two personal conversations, that not everyone receives the graces they need to make them, so to speak, successful at virtue. In response, people have tended to be perturbed and resistant. And it is a strange thing to say. Don't I believe that God wants us to be virtuous, that He is generous, that He sanctifies us because He loves us? Doesn't Scripture itself teach that "God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability"?

I do believe those things, certainly. But let's parse them a bit, shall we?

First of all, virtue is not the same thing as holiness. Virtue means doing the right thing; holiness means loving God. Be holy, and virtue will come, all else being equal; but in every age there is some group of people who stand as a ghastly testament to the fact that being virtuous does not make you holy. The Jansenists, the Inquisition, the Donatist and Montanist heresies -- all had the common theme, not simply that right conduct is obligatory (which is true), but the implication and even the open claim that God loves less those who conduct themselves wrongly (which is blasphemy). There was a saying about the Jansenist nuns of Port Royale in seventeenth-century France that they were "as pure as angels and as proud as devils"; there is every reason to suppose that the Pharisees themselves were, as they claimed to be, thrifty, patriotic, respectable, unswerving observers of the Torah. And their virtues, unleavened by love, made them literally the enemies of God. We are fools if we suppose ourselves immune to that deadliest sickness of the spirit. T. S. Eliot was right: "The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason."

Secondly, I have said that virtue follows on holiness, all else being equal. But that is the catch. In a fallen world, one afflicted with ignorance and moral weakness as well as with sin, all else is frequently not equal. Some people struggle, at times alone, under heavy and bitter crosses the weight of which the rest of us could not conceive. Indeed, I rather think that everyone has some hidden heartache that is known only to themselves and God. The bitter realities of trauma and addiction are their own witness to the fact that not everyone is dealt an equal hand in this life, and that we cannot expect the same unimpeachable correctness of conduct from a heroin addict or battered daughter, that we tend to demand of the happily married mother of two or the well-fed seminarian with his clean-cut hair and clean-kept collar. It is easy to be principled when you are comfortable.

There is a more fundamental error at work here, one that I feel I detect much in the Young Papists. It is the error that holiness will inevitably make you happy.

Of course, from a strictly Aristotelian definition of the term happiness, I tend to agree. But well-being according to the objective good of a rational creature, is really not what people mostly mean by happiness. The Young Papists are a great deal more likely to mean it; but I fancy I detect a certain confusion between the popular and the philosophical meaning of the term. In addition to the (largely true) assumption that virtue will make a man flourish, the ordinary English associations of happiness creep in, to the point that sadness and pain beyond the point of inconvenience begin to seem incredible. To take an example from my own life, that chastity should make someone feel lonely and depressed seems almost like a contradiction in terms -- chastity is a virtue, you shouldn't be unhappy because you're virtuous! There must be something wrong in the way you're doing it, some --

And there it is. The voice of Job's comforters: Somehow, it must be your fault. The supposition, difficult to eradicate from any mind and next-impossible to eradicate from the devout mind,* that if we do not feel happy, it is because we have in some fashion displeased God.

This is a vicious and cruel doctrine. It shifts responsibility for suffering onto the sufferer, rather than doing the one thing Job's friends did rightly: wailing aloud for his griefs, and sitting silently with him in the ashes for seven days before any one of them opened their mouths in disgraceful theodicies. Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? No; at the heart of Christianity is the reality of undeserved suffering. Undeserved, not purposeless -- any suffering can be united to the Cross, filling up what is lacking in the pangs of Christ, as St. Paul said.

But that's the point, you may pipe up. Suffering is a chance to grow in grace. Yes; but growth in grace and growth in virtue are not the same thing. The assumption that everybody is given the graces they need to be morally perfect seems obvious -- it even seems generous -- but it isn't. Could God so dispense grace? Certainly. Equally, He could have orchestrated the universe so that every person, not just the Virgin, was immaculately conceived. We don't know why He didn't, though we can conjecture; but we do know that He didn't. Is it so hard to believe that He has withheld far lesser graces than that from this or that soul, and with equally loving purpose?**

Conversely, the text from St. Paul I quoted earlier, which says that He always provides a way out of temptation, is perfectly true; but it can easily be twisted into a rigorist view that savages every sinner because, technically, they could have done better. Only God does or can know how many souls have forsaken Him because despair ravaged their souls, as a direct consequence of such spiritual cruelty. I at any rate didn't convert for that. If anything, I converted to escape that -- converted from the sola fide that compelled me to prove to myself that my faith was real through an upright life, to the Church of the secret confessional and the doctrine of venial sin. Converted, too, to the Church of mystery; the same apostle who penned that text wrote also of a whole people "imprisoned in disobedience, that God might have mercy upon all."

Evelyn Waugh, the deeply Catholic English novelist, understood this clearly. He puts these words into the mouth of the wisest character in Brideshead Revisited, about her alcoholic brother, a hopeless postulant at a monastic house in northern Africa:

"'[Sebastian will] never be able to go into the bush, of course, or join the order, but the Father Superior is going to take charge of him. They had an idea of making him a sort of under-porter; there are usually a few odd hangers-on in a religious house, you know; people who can't quite fit in either the world or the monastic rule. ... I've seen others like him, and I believe they are very near and dear to God. He'll live on, half in, half out of, the community, a familiar figure pottering round with his broom and his bunch of keys. He'll be a great favorite with the old fathers, and something of a joke to the novices. Everyone will know about his drinking; he'll disappear for two or three days every month or so, and they'll all nod and smile and say in their various accents, "Old Sebastian's on the spree again," and then he'll come back disheveled and shamefaced and be more devout for a day or two in the chapel. He'll probably have little hiding places about the garden where he keeps a bottle and takes a swig now and then on the sly. ... He'll develop little eccentricities of devotion, intense personal cults of his own; he'll be found in the chapel at odd times and missed when he's expected. Then one morning, after one of his drinking bouts, he'll be picked up at the gate dying, and show by a mere flicker of the eyelid that he is conscious when they give him the last sacraments. It's not such a bad way of getting through one's life.'

"I thought of the youth with the teddy bear under the flowering chestnuts. 'It's not what one would have foretold,' I said. 'I suppose he doesn't suffer?'

"'Oh, yes, I think he does. One can have no idea what the suffering may be, to be maimed as he is -- no dignity, no power of will. No one is ever holy without suffering.'"

I've written before of my wondering whether I will ever be chaste, and to what extent I ought to treaty with my powerlessness here. In one sense, of course, anyone is chaste, considered spiritually, provided only that they go to Confession when they do fall; and I have not the slightest intention of abandoning that. But when a person is really powerless -- when no moral effort, short of effectively ending their ordinary life by becoming a literal recluse, will enable them to leave off from a given sin -- what is to be done? How is the damage done to the soul, and to the people with whom they interact, to be ameliorated? I for one utterly discountenance the "scorched earth" approach that many Catholics, particularly traditionalists, tend to advocate: if I were to cut off every relationship that was an occasion of lust -- let alone anything more -- to me, I would have no male friends. (Sorry if that makes any of my male friends uncomfortable.) And I am speaking in cold prose when I say that I have done everything I've been told to be chaste, and persistently lost ground; intimate friendships, physical touch, therapy, spiritual direction, daily Mass, the Rosary, all these things together were not enough; I have suffered many things of physicians, and spent all that I had, and was nothing bettered. How shall I then live?

Of course, I am not unique: there are plenty of people out there in this kind of situation, and it isn't necessarily about sexual love. The point is that the Church has to be a place that welcomes sinners who are still sinners -- not just ex-sinners. And not just people who "fall sometimes," either. Sincere love of God, a virtuous life, and happiness in the popular sense, are all discrete things that may or may not coincide in any given life. That is a painful paradox, but it is one we must learn to live with, if we are to escape spiritual arrogance. It is not ours to say among whom or to what extent grace is at work, save the objective graces of the sacraments. Let Sebastian potter about with his broom and his keys; he may not be a monk, but turn him away, and it may be at your hand that his blood is required.

*There have been religious minds who have really transcended it -- Boethius' for example. But the tug to pass from "God has a reason for this" to "I know God's reason for this" is an exceedingly strong one; and, especially when we enjoy good fortune, it flatters our moral as well as our intellectual self-regard to suppose that other people's bad fortune is in some fashion their own fault. Atheism is not necessarily a safeguard against this sort of superstition, but the self-righteousness that characterizes atheists (when it appears) tends, in my experience, to be of a different cast.

**Speaking of conjectures, I have heard -- though I wasn't able to verify the reference -- that God leaves unchastity as a struggle for some, in order that they may not be swollen by pride.

Out of the Whirlwind

I did warn you that I wouldn't whitewash things.

Not so long ago I posted an essay, drawing on some time praying and journaling, in which I talked about reconciling myself more deeply to celibacy. Like most of my posts about growth in virtue, it was ambitious, hasty, and overrated my ... well, most things.

It's been a year and a half since I had any serious belief that celibacy was a viable option for me. I believe as firmly as I ever have that celibacy is right; but that is a rather different matter. Perfection is always right, and always unattainable; save by the strange graces granted to those who, in some fashion, seem to compel the generosity of God in a way that I do not understand.

People will say that such graces are available to anybody who wants them. I shall say boldly that in my experience, that simply isn't true. To be blunt, I think it is wishful thinking, not sound theology. I challenge anyone to do as much as I did to bolster my chastity -- Mass, daily prayer, Confession, the Rosary, scapulars, icons, the Angelic Warfare Confraternity -- and lose as much ground, and as persistently, as I did at the same time I was doing these things. I was told that chastity would become easier as I formed good habits, and that prayer and the sacraments would foster these habits and transform my life. I was told I'd get stronger. I got weaker instead -- more and more exhausted, more and more unable to cope with the pressures of sex and loneliness and misunderstanding. And, because of that, increasingly confused and in pain that God was not helping me like I was told He would.

This is the part where I'm supposed to say something about an epiphany in the confessional, or discovering the saint whose intercessions finally changed everything, or the indispensable support of my friends, or joining Courage, or a light about God's mercy not depending on my efforts breaking on me. And after that everything was (apparently) easy. I have nothing of that kind to offer.

I try not to resent those who do have such things to offer; I am glad that their pains have been relieved. And, while I dare say some of them are being dishonest, I don't automatically assume that about anybody -- it is a very terrible thing to accuse someone of lying, especially about a matter of such grave importance as their relationship with God, and I don't do that lightly. But I would be lying if I set forth a pious conventionality instead of the naked truth, and the naked truth is that, in the thirteen years since I realized I'm gay, it has gotten gradually harder the whole time, no matter what I have done, and no matter what I have asked for from the Lord. And I do think that, whether it is intended or not, the message that those sorts of conventional Aesops send -- that if you just do this one thing, regardless of what this one thing is, you'll experience victory -- is a false and pernicious message.

Nevertheless I don't doubt His goodness. Nor do I seriously doubt the Church's teaching about homosexuality. Is it so very shocking that an infinite being should choose to do something I don't understand? He's done it before. When the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, it was with terrible irony and not with answers. Why, I don't know; but Job was strangely satisfied, and I don't find that answers are what I need to be satisfied as Job was. Not right now, anyway.

St. Teresa of Avila is one of my favorite saints, and one of my favorite quotes from her is also one of the quotes I hate the most in the whole world. She said -- I don't know when -- that You must learn to bear for God's sake the trial of being displeasing to yourself. I've been wrestling with that sentence for the last two years, with ferocity and anguish; it has dislocated my hip with a touch. I can't understand it, or am only just beginning to. I can never make up my mind whether it's pride or just a lack of wisdom that makes this saying so dark to me. Maybe it's both.

And where does that leave me, exactly? If what I'm really being taught through this agony of failure after failure is patience -- with God's timing, and with myself, since I suppose I haven't much call to be impatient with me if God isn't -- then, with respect to chastity, what should I be attempting? A celibacy I know already, from a decade of bitter experience, I cannot do? If I'm going out and sleeping with men regularly anyway, is it really better not to get into a relationship, that would at least have the merit of being a humanized experience of sexuality? Why is that a compromise, but years of fruitless attempts are somehow heroic, despite the damage it does to other people -- that damage being exactly what a relationship would avoid? Is it even psychologically possible to try to do the impossible? I don't try to fly by flapping my arms, nor could I, because I know I can't (no seriously, trust me, nobody wanted to fly more badly than I did when I was little).

I have no answers. Therefore I offer none.

Mudblood Catholic, Mark II

We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, so that what we believe we disbelieve, and cannot rid ourselves of what we condemn. -- Montaigne

So I've been blogging for about four months on Mudblood Catholic now. I've enjoyed it, and I feel I've been discussing important questions. But my technique and tone have been something like this:

I have heard of people who don't like Handel's Messiah. They are wrong. So wrong.

Whereas -- not to be a drama queen, but my life (not only this year but for the last year or two) has been, well, more along these lines:

If you haven't seen the BBC's Brideshead Revisited, you are also wrong. So very, very wrong.

And that doesn't feel honest to me. It doesn't feel honest to write only one half of the contradiction I find myself living.

Nor is contradiction too strong a word. I literally cannot make sense out of the two halves of my life -- gay and Catholic -- and I cannot let go of either one of them. In fact it sort of feels wrong even to try to let go of either one of them; as if to do so would be to decline the problem of life that God has set before me, for whatever reason.

I've been trying, once again, to read Fear and Trembling, in which Kierkegaard lays out his idea of the Knight of Faith. This knight, whose desire for ideal joy cannot be fulfilled, resigns himself to that fact, accepts that he cannot have ideal joy -- and then, without abandoning that resignation, nevertheless believes that he will get it, because with God all things are possible. I had always thought that, in their insistence on contradictions, the Existentialists were talking nonsense. I am less sure of that now. My experiences of the last year, living in a state of interior contradiction -- continually expecting either that my faith will transfigure my sexuality, or that my sexuality will cast out my faith; and yet neither one happens -- I've been reminded of Charles Williams' words about Kierkegaard in his 1939 book The Descent of the Dove:

'He was the type of the new state of things in which Christendom had to exist, and of the new mind with which Christendom knew them. He lived under a sense of judgment, of contrition, of asceticism; but also (and equally) of revolt, of refusal, of unbelief. Almost always before his days one of these two things had triumphed over the other; or if not, if there had been others like him, then their words had been so lightly read that it was supposed that one had triumphed. No doubt, as soon as Kierkegaard becomes fashionable, which is already beginning to happen, that fate will fall upon him. He will be explained; the other half of him (whichever that may be) will be excused. ... Most Christian answers to agnosticism seem not to begin to understand the agnosticism; they seem to invoke the compassion of God. In Kierkegaard one feels that God does not understand that kind of compassion.'

Most of my Catholic friends, I imagine, would tell me -- some of them have told me -- simply not to identify as gay. You're not gay, that isn't your identity; your identity is a man and a child of God, and you happen to be same-sex attracted, that's all. I'm tempted to answer, You can put a bow on a pig and call it Alice, but it's still going to get mud in the house if you let it in. I call myself gay because my feelings and experiences are, in point of fact, different from those of heterosexuals -- who, I note, are never similarly challenged for the equally identifying language, 'I'm straight.' Using a different phrase will change neither my experiences nor my feelings.

I understand the message they actually want to send, but frankly, I find it pointless at best and mendacious at worst. Regarding my sexuality as some kind of extraneous part of me, as though it doesn't really have anything to do with who I am as a person -- that is not a life-giving thing to tell someone, and it does nothing to change the experience of being gay; except maybe to add the burden that what is, often, an agony of loneliness and repeated failures is unimportant to other people and should be unimportant to me too.

Most of my queer and allied friends, on the other hand, would tell me to drop the Catholic side of the contradiction -- or, at least, to reject the Church's teaching on the subject. Lots of Catholics do. But I can't do that. I converted to Catholicism because I believe it, and I cannot simply decide what I do and don't believe; there is an element of decision in belief, yes, but looking at the facts as honestly as I can has to come first. And those facts led me to the Catholic Church -- a journey I'll discuss in later posts. For now, I'll have to ask you just to accept that Catholicism is, as far as I can see, the only honest conclusion I can come to. And if I trust God to guide the Catholic Church, it doesn't make sense to add caveats on the grounds that I don't like a doctrine or find it hard to bear. The martyrs found martyrdom hard to bear, and I'll take a guess and say that at least several of the martyrs did not specially enjoy being martyred.

It is that lived contradiction that I want to communicate here, especially to my fellow Catholics. There is a notion abroad, especially among young, zealous believers, that if you just accept the Church's teaching about chastity you will find it life-giving, inevitably. It is the 'inevitably' that makes this belief naive, and naive beliefs are dangerous. It is this sort of faith that makes atheists and apostates -- nor, to be blunt, can I blame atheists and apostates, as many Catholics seem willing to. Oh, they just don't have faith. No, they don't. (Or not as far as we can see -- never forgetting that we are, in theory anyway, the ones who believe that Man looketh on the outward appearance, but God upon the heart.) But I am living the contradiction that makes the atheist scoff and the apostate rebel, and it's not contemptible, and it's not funny. By this I do not mean to pay any compliment to myself: I don't like it, I wouldn't do it if I knew how to either leave my faith behind or actually become a saint, instead of remaining in a sort of spiritual demimonde; it is by definition a falling short of the standards of both Catholic and queer orthodoxy. But, while I believe Catholicism, I sympathize with agnosticism and philosophical revolt, and I do not understand the sort of compassion that fails to understand that.

I have been reflecting lately on a text from Job, near the end, when God has answered Job's imprecations against Him with terrifying riddles, and Job has accepted the Divine rebuke. God then says that His anger burns against Job's friends. The ones who were telling Job that he was in the wrong, that he had to repent and confess whatever sin he was, clearly, guilty of. And God's anger burned against their defense of Him. I don't know why; but I sometimes think that it had something to do with their refusal to acknowledge the reality of another human being's experience on the grounds that it didn't fit neatly into their theology. I often think that the tidy pieties of Christians may be met with the frightening rebuke, The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.

I have no doubt that some of my friends would, and possibly will, tell me that I should have continued blogging the way I was doing: that I was sharing great insights about theology, that discussing my imperfections and uncertainties will be a source of scandal, that my personal struggles are no one else's business, blah blah blah. Forgive me for being very tired of that sort of talk, to the point that it makes me a little angry. Personal struggles should not be out of place in church. That is one of the things that makes people leave the Church. And what good is theology itself, unleavened by life? 'I would rather feel contrition than be able to define it.' Man does not live by word alone; the Sacrament Itself consists not only of the flat, tasteless, colorless Body, but of the scarlet and intoxicating Blood. As for scandal, the one and only scandal in the Church that really disgusts me is the scandalous idea that it is appropriate to be dishonest -- which was made horrifyingly manifest in the scandal that made such juicy headlines. I think that, if people are drawn to the Catholic faith by anything I write, it will be because I was telling the whole truth. I will whitewash nothing, for if I do, it will only be my own sepulcher.

Your flavor in my mind goes back and forth between

Sweeter than any wine, as bitter as mustard greens