Silence is a gift of God, and like all God's gifts it is both a blessing and a curse.
What a great blessing it is, to be offered the chance to be silent. It doesn't come often. Our world is full of constant noise. The pull of advertisements trying to get our attention, of pundits trying to shout each other down, of politicians vying for our votes, of pop music battering down our senses with its relentless beat. The push of our own vanity to get our voice in, to make ourselves heard, to offer up our witticisms and our jokes, our advice and our opinions. What a great blessing it is to be offered a chance to escape this push, this pull, and simply sit in silence, neither being addressed by noise nor being impelled to make it.
Yet it is also extremely difficult to sit in silence. True silence is very difficult to achieve. First one is assailed by thoughts of all the other, more productive, more efficient things one could be doing. I could be doing housework, or paying bills, or checking e-mail, or running an errand. . . Then one is confronted by sheer boredom. Silence is boring. It sits on you like a weight. It cries out to be alleviated, an itch that demands to be scratched.
Then, when you have convinced yourself (truthfully) that you would most likely not be using your time more efficiently (think of all the hours wasted "surfing the internet," anxiously checking Facebook or e-mail, clicking on nonsense and watching inane YouTube videos) - then, when you have finally pushed past your boredom and entered a state where you can hear yourself think clearly, calmly, meditatively - then the real difficulty begins. Because then you are confronted, face to face, with yourself. With who you are, honestly. All your failings, your flaws. Your sinfulness. All the times you have been ashamed or guilty. All the times you have not been who you know you ought to be, who you want to be. You see yourself as you are - a fretful, anxious, tiny little creature, frittering away purposelessly, meaninglessly, without goal or direction, a blind bat crashing into walls, a frantic bird slamming into the bars of its cages because it does not know how to free itself.
But even then you have not mastered silence. Because silence insists we move even past this - past our own thoughts that reveal to us the smallness of our lives. Silence insists we stop that onslaught of thought, and listen. Listen to the voice of God, which can only speak in the silence. Hear as He shows us the grandeur of His majesty, His greatness. See the beauty of His plan for all creation and know - yes, our smallness in this plan, but also the wonder that we have a place in this plan, a place He has destined for us, and us alone, for all time. Feel the humbled awe of knowing that God has deigned to speak to you - to you, wretched creature that you are! - and that His words are words of love and assurance. Give your sins to Him and He will wash them clean. Give your weakness to Him and He will make them strengths. Give your purposelessness to Him, and He will draw it into His purposes. Give your smallness to Him and He will make it great.
Only in silence can we come to recognize our smallness and God's greatness, and only in doing so can we become great - and achieve the greatness God has destined us to achieve.
Monday, February 29, 2016
Friday, February 26, 2016
Giving to Charity - and Dancing with the Devil
At my son's school I help to coordinate the Lenten Rice Bowl Project that benefits the Catholic Relief Services. Yesterday a friend of mine told me that some pro-life parishioners at our parish had sent her information objecting to CRS' efforts to collaborate with secular or non-Catholic organizations in impoverished nations because those organizations often promote abortion and contraception. Some research into the matter revealed that the main objections seem to be coming from a group called the American Life League, who published a very odd article that opens with an implied dig at the leadership of Carolyn Woo as a "woman" and a "layperson." In addition to the charges that CRS is not "pro-life," the article also condemns CRS for its employment of a married gay man. The USCCB has tried to take a stand against such criticisms in support of CRS, but that will never stop some people from trying to be more Catholic than the bishops.
These internecine quarrels can't help but make me sad. We sound just like the Pharisees critiquing Christ for eating with the tax collectors. Now people might object that Christ eating with tax collectors was simply meant to show that He transcended "cultural norms" and was able to see past irrelevant external actions to the "heart." But really his action was more than that. Christ wasn't just showing His transcendence of cultural norms. Tax collectors were sinners, and Jesus never denied that they were sinners. Jesus was not just transcending cultural norms; He was transcending human justice by offering fellowship and friendship to those who were engaged in very serious sin.
But some may argue that CRS has gone farther than simply offering fellowship or friendship; they've offered material cooperation with sin. To me it seems there are two different issues at hand in this discussion. First is the question, as some have argued, of whether or not CRS has directly promoted actions that violate Church teaching while at the same time trying to hide or obfuscate these violations. If CRS is engaging in behavior contrary to Church teaching they should absolutely be called out on it. And certainly I don't object to doing your due diligence when it comes to where you should donate your money.
On the other hand, there is evidence that CRS is trying to remain reflective and responsive about these issues. Moreover, I think we should try to be sympathetic to the fact that they are a worldwide organization that serves many people who aren't Catholic and whose employees likely encounter moral dilemmas I couldn't possibly imagine. And I do think it reflects an excessive hypercriticalness to believe that, before you donate to a charity, you must first scrutinize every minute aspect of its conduct. If you feel that way, I doubt you'll ever find a charity - or even an individual person, for that matter - you'll feel entirely morally comfortable in assisting.
Consider a parallel but more personal case: let's say your younger sister is really struggling financially, and you've given her a loan to help her pay her rent. A few months later, you find out she's had an abortion. Now, perhaps the money you loaned her didn't go directly to her abortion, but you still feel that you materially supported it because the money you gave her freed up the money that did pay for it. Let's say that, after her abortion, she shows up homeless at your doorstep. She's not at all repentant for having had her abortion, but she's looking for a place to say for night. Do you say no? And if so - why?
I leave that question open for consideration, realizing that it's not quite the same as material cooperation between charitable organizations, although I do think it raises similar moral questions. But the second issue in the CRS case, and the one I want to deal with here, regards how we decide when to cooperate with people or groups that don't embrace Church teaching on certain matters. My gut feeling is to say: well, how else are we supposed to convert them except by our witness? And how else are we supposed to witness to them unless we work alongside them and demonstrate our good will?
And even aside from the question of our witness to nonbelievers - are we supposed to not do the good that our faith mandates that we do because we are so afraid of somehow, somewhere coming into contact with the evil that our faith says we should avoid? This idea seems, again, contrary to the Gospel. Recall St. Peter, fearing to eat unclean foods (Acts 10:9-15), and God's declaration: Do not call anything impure that God has made clean. This isn't about God suddenly deciding that the rules of the Old Testament no longer mattered or were just "cultural norms" and not a moral matter. Eating impure foods had everything to do with morality - with one's worthiness to stand before God as a righteous person. But God tells Peter not to be afraid of becoming impure through his contact with impure foods, because God's purity was stronger than the impurity of any food - or, for that matter, any person.
It was on the basis of this revelation regarding food that Peter felt morally justified in visiting Cornelius, the righteous Gentile. It was perfectly possible for a Jewish Christian in Peter's situation to have decided that, because visiting a Gentile was anathema, he should not go to Cornelius even to spread the Gospel. In this way he could have kept himself "pure," even while doing great harm to Cornelius by neglecting the opportunity to bring him to Christ. In the same way, we can keep ourselves "pure" by refusing to give except to individuals or charities who fit some lengthy moral checklist. But Christ seems to be saying: Don't neglect doing good out of fear that you'll be tainted by evil. Rely on my purity to protect you, and be an instrument of my purity to others. If a Catholic organization is, itself, actively promoting actions that violate Catholic moral teaching, that's one thing. But if such an organization remains mindful of its own house, they needn't fear being "contaminated" simply because they cooperate with other groups on projects that do not violate the moral law.
How else are we to call people to repentance and conversion? If we refuse to do good because we object to their evil, all the world will see is our refusal to do good and our self-righteous sanctimony. But if we can find a way to object to their evil while at the same time doing the good we can agree on, we've opened a door. We have found a bridge, and we can use that bridge to lead them to conversion.
We can't wait for people to recognize or repent of their sinfulness before we offer them our hand in friendship and fellowship. That's not Christ's way. There's no evidence that Jesus waited for people to repent before giving them His mercy. Think of the adulteress whom the Pharisees brought before Jesus asking if she should be stoned. There's no indication that she said she was sorry before Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you." Yes, He did say: "Go and sin no more." But that injunction came after He offered her mercy and forgiveness. Sometimes people will argue that we should only offer forgiveness when someone has repented. But that's sort of like insisting that someone stand up and turn around when they're tied to a chair facing a wall. You have to untie them first, before they can rise to face you. And the way Christ unties us is through His mercy, His understanding, His love.
As a mother I sense the truth of this phenomenon. I remember once my son spoke disrespectfully to me and I sent him to his room. I told him to come out when he was ready to apologize. He stayed in there for hours - first crying loudly and angrily, then sitting in silence. Finally I went to knock on his door. He was lying on his bed facing the wall. I sat down next to him, put my hand on his arm, and said, "What you did was wrong. But I still love you, you know."
That did it. He turned around to face me, burst into tears, hugged me and said, "I'm sorry!" It was my affirmation of my love for him that opened the door to his apology.
And that's what people need from the Church: an affirmation of God's love. That comes before repentance is even a possibility. God's action first, then the change of the human heart. This change doesn't occur miraculously or overnight. For an individual it might take a lifetime; for a group or a culture or a nation, it might take centuries.
If a Catholic person, or a Catholic organization, can show people the face of God's love, we must take a chance to do it. We can't wait for someone to convert before we offer them our aid. CRS can't wait for every secular organization in the world to follow Catholic moral teaching before it offers its cooperation in doing good. Yes, it's a dangerous path. It will require constant vigilance; we will have to be constantly mindful that we're not tempted by the world's wisdom. But Christ tells us: do not be afraid. Rely on His mercy, His righteousness, His purity to keep us safe.
These internecine quarrels can't help but make me sad. We sound just like the Pharisees critiquing Christ for eating with the tax collectors. Now people might object that Christ eating with tax collectors was simply meant to show that He transcended "cultural norms" and was able to see past irrelevant external actions to the "heart." But really his action was more than that. Christ wasn't just showing His transcendence of cultural norms. Tax collectors were sinners, and Jesus never denied that they were sinners. Jesus was not just transcending cultural norms; He was transcending human justice by offering fellowship and friendship to those who were engaged in very serious sin.
But some may argue that CRS has gone farther than simply offering fellowship or friendship; they've offered material cooperation with sin. To me it seems there are two different issues at hand in this discussion. First is the question, as some have argued, of whether or not CRS has directly promoted actions that violate Church teaching while at the same time trying to hide or obfuscate these violations. If CRS is engaging in behavior contrary to Church teaching they should absolutely be called out on it. And certainly I don't object to doing your due diligence when it comes to where you should donate your money.
On the other hand, there is evidence that CRS is trying to remain reflective and responsive about these issues. Moreover, I think we should try to be sympathetic to the fact that they are a worldwide organization that serves many people who aren't Catholic and whose employees likely encounter moral dilemmas I couldn't possibly imagine. And I do think it reflects an excessive hypercriticalness to believe that, before you donate to a charity, you must first scrutinize every minute aspect of its conduct. If you feel that way, I doubt you'll ever find a charity - or even an individual person, for that matter - you'll feel entirely morally comfortable in assisting.
Consider a parallel but more personal case: let's say your younger sister is really struggling financially, and you've given her a loan to help her pay her rent. A few months later, you find out she's had an abortion. Now, perhaps the money you loaned her didn't go directly to her abortion, but you still feel that you materially supported it because the money you gave her freed up the money that did pay for it. Let's say that, after her abortion, she shows up homeless at your doorstep. She's not at all repentant for having had her abortion, but she's looking for a place to say for night. Do you say no? And if so - why?
I leave that question open for consideration, realizing that it's not quite the same as material cooperation between charitable organizations, although I do think it raises similar moral questions. But the second issue in the CRS case, and the one I want to deal with here, regards how we decide when to cooperate with people or groups that don't embrace Church teaching on certain matters. My gut feeling is to say: well, how else are we supposed to convert them except by our witness? And how else are we supposed to witness to them unless we work alongside them and demonstrate our good will?
And even aside from the question of our witness to nonbelievers - are we supposed to not do the good that our faith mandates that we do because we are so afraid of somehow, somewhere coming into contact with the evil that our faith says we should avoid? This idea seems, again, contrary to the Gospel. Recall St. Peter, fearing to eat unclean foods (Acts 10:9-15), and God's declaration: Do not call anything impure that God has made clean. This isn't about God suddenly deciding that the rules of the Old Testament no longer mattered or were just "cultural norms" and not a moral matter. Eating impure foods had everything to do with morality - with one's worthiness to stand before God as a righteous person. But God tells Peter not to be afraid of becoming impure through his contact with impure foods, because God's purity was stronger than the impurity of any food - or, for that matter, any person.
It was on the basis of this revelation regarding food that Peter felt morally justified in visiting Cornelius, the righteous Gentile. It was perfectly possible for a Jewish Christian in Peter's situation to have decided that, because visiting a Gentile was anathema, he should not go to Cornelius even to spread the Gospel. In this way he could have kept himself "pure," even while doing great harm to Cornelius by neglecting the opportunity to bring him to Christ. In the same way, we can keep ourselves "pure" by refusing to give except to individuals or charities who fit some lengthy moral checklist. But Christ seems to be saying: Don't neglect doing good out of fear that you'll be tainted by evil. Rely on my purity to protect you, and be an instrument of my purity to others. If a Catholic organization is, itself, actively promoting actions that violate Catholic moral teaching, that's one thing. But if such an organization remains mindful of its own house, they needn't fear being "contaminated" simply because they cooperate with other groups on projects that do not violate the moral law.
How else are we to call people to repentance and conversion? If we refuse to do good because we object to their evil, all the world will see is our refusal to do good and our self-righteous sanctimony. But if we can find a way to object to their evil while at the same time doing the good we can agree on, we've opened a door. We have found a bridge, and we can use that bridge to lead them to conversion.
We can't wait for people to recognize or repent of their sinfulness before we offer them our hand in friendship and fellowship. That's not Christ's way. There's no evidence that Jesus waited for people to repent before giving them His mercy. Think of the adulteress whom the Pharisees brought before Jesus asking if she should be stoned. There's no indication that she said she was sorry before Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you." Yes, He did say: "Go and sin no more." But that injunction came after He offered her mercy and forgiveness. Sometimes people will argue that we should only offer forgiveness when someone has repented. But that's sort of like insisting that someone stand up and turn around when they're tied to a chair facing a wall. You have to untie them first, before they can rise to face you. And the way Christ unties us is through His mercy, His understanding, His love.
As a mother I sense the truth of this phenomenon. I remember once my son spoke disrespectfully to me and I sent him to his room. I told him to come out when he was ready to apologize. He stayed in there for hours - first crying loudly and angrily, then sitting in silence. Finally I went to knock on his door. He was lying on his bed facing the wall. I sat down next to him, put my hand on his arm, and said, "What you did was wrong. But I still love you, you know."
That did it. He turned around to face me, burst into tears, hugged me and said, "I'm sorry!" It was my affirmation of my love for him that opened the door to his apology.
And that's what people need from the Church: an affirmation of God's love. That comes before repentance is even a possibility. God's action first, then the change of the human heart. This change doesn't occur miraculously or overnight. For an individual it might take a lifetime; for a group or a culture or a nation, it might take centuries.
If a Catholic person, or a Catholic organization, can show people the face of God's love, we must take a chance to do it. We can't wait for someone to convert before we offer them our aid. CRS can't wait for every secular organization in the world to follow Catholic moral teaching before it offers its cooperation in doing good. Yes, it's a dangerous path. It will require constant vigilance; we will have to be constantly mindful that we're not tempted by the world's wisdom. But Christ tells us: do not be afraid. Rely on His mercy, His righteousness, His purity to keep us safe.
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Morality, Mercy, and Breastfeeding
There's a saying that if you're conservative when you're twenty you have no heart, and if you're liberal when you're sixty you have no brain. But even though I grew up in a conservative household and still in most ways consider myself to be one, I find that my own journey is taking the opposite route. As I grow older my heart is speaking to me more loudly than my brain.
When I was young and naive, I assumed the world operated under certain, definable circumstances. Children were raised in economically stable, two-parent households. Families were mentally and physically healthy and intact. When I was young, I didn't realize that such a state of affairs was a privilege. I assumed, as all children do, that my reality was the norm, and within this reality certain moral rules were expected to be obeyed. And, indeed, the privileged reality in which I lived made it possible for those rules to be obeyed.
Then I grew up. I met people whose mental and physical health was shattered, who had grown up in broken homes, who had faced severe material deprivation. Seeing them in person, hearing their stories in person, meant more than simply reading about them in abstraction in the newspaper. For my own part, I got married, became pregnant unexpectedly, and suffered severe postpartum depression in the aftermath. I was lucky enough to have a supportive spouse and excellent medical care, but I knew that many women in my situation didn't have those blessings.
I am older now and, though I am probably still very naive and definitely still very privileged, I recognize more and more that the places where personal sin - an individual's decision to violate those moral rules I thought were so inviolable when I was young - and structural injustices overlap are incredibly difficult to disentangle. And it seems more and more unjust to me for the fortunate among us - those of us who exist above and outside of those structural injustices - to condemn the least fortunate for not having the moral heroism to do what for us is no heroism at all.
But just as I was coming to this realization, there emerged in the political sphere a cohort of conservative Catholics (a group of which I considered myself a member!) who, in the wake of statements by Pope Francis indicating a desire to think more deeply about the Church's moral positions on things like contraception and divorce, rose up with the objection that negotiating about, compromising on, or even discussing the Church's position on these matters amounted to a slap in the face - a betrayal of the loyal children of the Church who have tried to uphold these moral teachings. I don't mean for a moment to cast doubt on the faithfulness of these people, or to imply that it's been easy for them to abide by the moral ideal the Church has held up for them. Whether they're using NFP or choosing celibacy after a divorce or even refraining from receiving the Eucharist because they've remarried after divorce, these sons and daughters of the Church are laudably upholding the faith.
But then again, no one could doubt that the elder brother of the Prodigal Son was similarly hardworking, faithful, and loyal. And he too felt betrayed by his father's empathy for his wayward brother. People will object, no doubt: "Well, but the Prodigal Son repented. He returned to his father's house." True enough. But I think we must honestly ask ourselves: are we doing enough to keep the path to repentance open? Are we running out, like the father, to meet these returning sinners halfway? Or have we shut the gates against them with a goodbye and good riddance? How many have we driven into the arms of the devil by our own lack of mercy?
It's become painfully obvious to me that we conservative Catholics have a strong tendency towards pharisaism, so focused on upholding the letter of the law that we have forgotten its purpose and meaning. But we must follow Christ and recognize that morality - living a moral life - is not about obeying a set of rules but about becoming a certain kind of people - people of virtue and charity, and, dare I say, of mercy and compassion.
This is not to say that rules aren't important. At their best, rules are an expression of the spirit, just as the Pharisaic rule not to pick grain on the Sabbath was an expression of the praiseworthy spirit of honoring God on His holy day. But Christ recognized that rules, if followed too rigidly, too unquestioningly, and too legalistically, can become divorced from their spirit and can, paradoxically, contradict the spirit they were meant to embody.
This does not mean we should feel free to change the rules willy-nilly, at the whim of cultural shifts and popular opinion. In our own time, it is important to recognize that abortion, for instance, is an evil and that acquiring one is a grave matter. It is important to know that contraception is not part of God's plan for married sexuality and is therefore a serious affair. It is important to understand that divorce is not God's intention for human marriage and should never be undertaken lightly.
But also not part of God's plan are abusive or adulterous spouses, anencephalic babies, postpartum depression, or even, for that matter, the Zika virus. And we do need to reflect every now and then on whether the rules, as they are practiced and applied, still adequately reflect the spirit they were meant to embody. To think that the Church's moral rules provide us with a script from which we can in no circumstance deviate without imperiling our immortal souls seems to me not only unjust, but a violation of human freedom and an insult to God's mercy. Try to tell me that there is no moral difference between the woman seeking an abortion because her child is anencephalic and a woman seeking an abortion simply because a baby may interfere with her career. The suggestion that the situations are equivalent is prima facie ludicrous, but conservative Catholic moral discourse seems to have no way to make a distinction.
This is a serious problem. If our moral thinking depends upon the world being the "best of all possible worlds" then we will have to face up to the consequence that we are consigning the vast majority of the human race to despair. But we seem so afraid that if we loosen our grip even a little on the moral laws we hold so dear, moral anarchy will reign. We can't imagine a situation in which it might be possible, for example, to acknowledge that contraception, though an evil, may be permissible in some extreme circumstances, without our minds leaping down the slippery slope to the idea that contraception would then be permissible always and everywhere. But there is a world of moral difference between an impoverished woman with little access to health care using contraception to prevent pregnancy during a serious outbreak of disease and a middle-class Western woman using contraception because "now's not a good time." Can we find a way to talk about this difference? Because if we can't, we've only demonstrated the hardness of our own hearts.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Though I've talked mostly about the Church's teachings on sexual ethics here, the real impetus for my writing down these thoughts came from an essay regarding breastfeeding, of all things. A Catholic psychologist with a wide public audience has written an article praising the work of a moral developmental psychologist who has written that breastfeeding is essentially a moral imperative if you want your children to thrive. After what must have been powerful backlash to his article, he updated his piece to add: "People are free to parent however they want. They don't need my permission." But the dismissiveness even of this comment belies his arrogance: he's already stated that it's God's will that you breastfeed, and if you don't your denying your child's birthright.
As I mentioned before, I suffered severe postpartum depression after the birth of my first child - so severe that I was hospitalized twice. Also, in my early twenties I had breast surgery to reduce severe back pain - a medically necessary intervention to improve the quality of my life. At the time I didn't know if I would ever be married or have children, let alone breastfeed them, but I did know that the surgery would very likely make it impossible to breastfeed without supplementation. When I eventually did have children, my low milk supply combined with the depression made breastfeeding an insurmountable feat.
Did I do everything I could to breastfeed? No, I didn't. I could have pumped, taken drugs, bought fancy devices that would provide supplementation while supporting breastfeeding. I also didn't "preserve my children's inheritance" by keeping my breasts intact even though they were causing me extreme pain. And though I tried to breastfeed my first (until I ended up in the hospital a week later), I didn't even really consider it with my second. My priority was to keep my mental health stable enough so that I could care for my baby.
According to Dr. Popcak, I suppose I should feel devastated by the fact that I didn't go to morally heroic lengths to ensure that my children received breastmilk. I know that breast is best for baby, medically and probably morally too. But I wasn't willing to suffer physically disabling back pain or extreme psychological distress. Does this make me selfish? I don't know. I only know that not having back pain means I can now pick up heavy objects (i.e., children) without distress, and not having PPD means I can actually take care of my kids because I'm not in the hospital.
I'm tempted to make a laundry list of the things I have sacrificed for my family's sake in order to "prove" that I'm not selfish, or at least that I've made up for the selfishness of choosing not to breastfeed. But that's besides the point. What is the point is that a life of virtue is not defined by a single choice made in a very hard circumstance, even if that choice is regrettable. We can't do all the good that's out there to do, nor can we avoid all the evil that's out there in our fallen world. We try to avoid doing the bad as much as we possibly can, and we're grateful that we have the Church's guidance on what is bad. But if we're in an impossibly difficult situation, where it's hard to see how to pursue the good without doing bad, or where our only choices are between bad things - well, it seems to me that we have to do the best we can, and rely on the mercy of God and the righteousness of Christ to save us.
If this is true of breastfeeding it must also be true of other things as well, whether it's lying or stealing, or using contraception or even killing another person. I can't make exceptions for myself in my own situation and refuse to extend that courtesy to others. And if we, as followers and emulators of Christ, can't extend compassion to people in horrifying circumstances who are forced to make tremendously difficult moral decisions, simply because we're afraid of implying that we condone those who treat those same decisions with facile indifference - well, then, I fear that our own souls are the ones in peril.
When I was young and naive, I assumed the world operated under certain, definable circumstances. Children were raised in economically stable, two-parent households. Families were mentally and physically healthy and intact. When I was young, I didn't realize that such a state of affairs was a privilege. I assumed, as all children do, that my reality was the norm, and within this reality certain moral rules were expected to be obeyed. And, indeed, the privileged reality in which I lived made it possible for those rules to be obeyed.
Then I grew up. I met people whose mental and physical health was shattered, who had grown up in broken homes, who had faced severe material deprivation. Seeing them in person, hearing their stories in person, meant more than simply reading about them in abstraction in the newspaper. For my own part, I got married, became pregnant unexpectedly, and suffered severe postpartum depression in the aftermath. I was lucky enough to have a supportive spouse and excellent medical care, but I knew that many women in my situation didn't have those blessings.
I am older now and, though I am probably still very naive and definitely still very privileged, I recognize more and more that the places where personal sin - an individual's decision to violate those moral rules I thought were so inviolable when I was young - and structural injustices overlap are incredibly difficult to disentangle. And it seems more and more unjust to me for the fortunate among us - those of us who exist above and outside of those structural injustices - to condemn the least fortunate for not having the moral heroism to do what for us is no heroism at all.
But just as I was coming to this realization, there emerged in the political sphere a cohort of conservative Catholics (a group of which I considered myself a member!) who, in the wake of statements by Pope Francis indicating a desire to think more deeply about the Church's moral positions on things like contraception and divorce, rose up with the objection that negotiating about, compromising on, or even discussing the Church's position on these matters amounted to a slap in the face - a betrayal of the loyal children of the Church who have tried to uphold these moral teachings. I don't mean for a moment to cast doubt on the faithfulness of these people, or to imply that it's been easy for them to abide by the moral ideal the Church has held up for them. Whether they're using NFP or choosing celibacy after a divorce or even refraining from receiving the Eucharist because they've remarried after divorce, these sons and daughters of the Church are laudably upholding the faith.
But then again, no one could doubt that the elder brother of the Prodigal Son was similarly hardworking, faithful, and loyal. And he too felt betrayed by his father's empathy for his wayward brother. People will object, no doubt: "Well, but the Prodigal Son repented. He returned to his father's house." True enough. But I think we must honestly ask ourselves: are we doing enough to keep the path to repentance open? Are we running out, like the father, to meet these returning sinners halfway? Or have we shut the gates against them with a goodbye and good riddance? How many have we driven into the arms of the devil by our own lack of mercy?
It's become painfully obvious to me that we conservative Catholics have a strong tendency towards pharisaism, so focused on upholding the letter of the law that we have forgotten its purpose and meaning. But we must follow Christ and recognize that morality - living a moral life - is not about obeying a set of rules but about becoming a certain kind of people - people of virtue and charity, and, dare I say, of mercy and compassion.
This is not to say that rules aren't important. At their best, rules are an expression of the spirit, just as the Pharisaic rule not to pick grain on the Sabbath was an expression of the praiseworthy spirit of honoring God on His holy day. But Christ recognized that rules, if followed too rigidly, too unquestioningly, and too legalistically, can become divorced from their spirit and can, paradoxically, contradict the spirit they were meant to embody.
This does not mean we should feel free to change the rules willy-nilly, at the whim of cultural shifts and popular opinion. In our own time, it is important to recognize that abortion, for instance, is an evil and that acquiring one is a grave matter. It is important to know that contraception is not part of God's plan for married sexuality and is therefore a serious affair. It is important to understand that divorce is not God's intention for human marriage and should never be undertaken lightly.
But also not part of God's plan are abusive or adulterous spouses, anencephalic babies, postpartum depression, or even, for that matter, the Zika virus. And we do need to reflect every now and then on whether the rules, as they are practiced and applied, still adequately reflect the spirit they were meant to embody. To think that the Church's moral rules provide us with a script from which we can in no circumstance deviate without imperiling our immortal souls seems to me not only unjust, but a violation of human freedom and an insult to God's mercy. Try to tell me that there is no moral difference between the woman seeking an abortion because her child is anencephalic and a woman seeking an abortion simply because a baby may interfere with her career. The suggestion that the situations are equivalent is prima facie ludicrous, but conservative Catholic moral discourse seems to have no way to make a distinction.
This is a serious problem. If our moral thinking depends upon the world being the "best of all possible worlds" then we will have to face up to the consequence that we are consigning the vast majority of the human race to despair. But we seem so afraid that if we loosen our grip even a little on the moral laws we hold so dear, moral anarchy will reign. We can't imagine a situation in which it might be possible, for example, to acknowledge that contraception, though an evil, may be permissible in some extreme circumstances, without our minds leaping down the slippery slope to the idea that contraception would then be permissible always and everywhere. But there is a world of moral difference between an impoverished woman with little access to health care using contraception to prevent pregnancy during a serious outbreak of disease and a middle-class Western woman using contraception because "now's not a good time." Can we find a way to talk about this difference? Because if we can't, we've only demonstrated the hardness of our own hearts.
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Though I've talked mostly about the Church's teachings on sexual ethics here, the real impetus for my writing down these thoughts came from an essay regarding breastfeeding, of all things. A Catholic psychologist with a wide public audience has written an article praising the work of a moral developmental psychologist who has written that breastfeeding is essentially a moral imperative if you want your children to thrive. After what must have been powerful backlash to his article, he updated his piece to add: "People are free to parent however they want. They don't need my permission." But the dismissiveness even of this comment belies his arrogance: he's already stated that it's God's will that you breastfeed, and if you don't your denying your child's birthright.
As I mentioned before, I suffered severe postpartum depression after the birth of my first child - so severe that I was hospitalized twice. Also, in my early twenties I had breast surgery to reduce severe back pain - a medically necessary intervention to improve the quality of my life. At the time I didn't know if I would ever be married or have children, let alone breastfeed them, but I did know that the surgery would very likely make it impossible to breastfeed without supplementation. When I eventually did have children, my low milk supply combined with the depression made breastfeeding an insurmountable feat.
Did I do everything I could to breastfeed? No, I didn't. I could have pumped, taken drugs, bought fancy devices that would provide supplementation while supporting breastfeeding. I also didn't "preserve my children's inheritance" by keeping my breasts intact even though they were causing me extreme pain. And though I tried to breastfeed my first (until I ended up in the hospital a week later), I didn't even really consider it with my second. My priority was to keep my mental health stable enough so that I could care for my baby.
According to Dr. Popcak, I suppose I should feel devastated by the fact that I didn't go to morally heroic lengths to ensure that my children received breastmilk. I know that breast is best for baby, medically and probably morally too. But I wasn't willing to suffer physically disabling back pain or extreme psychological distress. Does this make me selfish? I don't know. I only know that not having back pain means I can now pick up heavy objects (i.e., children) without distress, and not having PPD means I can actually take care of my kids because I'm not in the hospital.
I'm tempted to make a laundry list of the things I have sacrificed for my family's sake in order to "prove" that I'm not selfish, or at least that I've made up for the selfishness of choosing not to breastfeed. But that's besides the point. What is the point is that a life of virtue is not defined by a single choice made in a very hard circumstance, even if that choice is regrettable. We can't do all the good that's out there to do, nor can we avoid all the evil that's out there in our fallen world. We try to avoid doing the bad as much as we possibly can, and we're grateful that we have the Church's guidance on what is bad. But if we're in an impossibly difficult situation, where it's hard to see how to pursue the good without doing bad, or where our only choices are between bad things - well, it seems to me that we have to do the best we can, and rely on the mercy of God and the righteousness of Christ to save us.
If this is true of breastfeeding it must also be true of other things as well, whether it's lying or stealing, or using contraception or even killing another person. I can't make exceptions for myself in my own situation and refuse to extend that courtesy to others. And if we, as followers and emulators of Christ, can't extend compassion to people in horrifying circumstances who are forced to make tremendously difficult moral decisions, simply because we're afraid of implying that we condone those who treat those same decisions with facile indifference - well, then, I fear that our own souls are the ones in peril.
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