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abuse, current events, Homosexuality, Living Humanae Vitae, Pope Francis, prayer, Rome, scandal, Sex, sin

Disillusionment with the Church

November 12, 2018

Remember believing in Santa? Shhhh, my kids still do. Maybe that’s a bad analogy. Maybe you never believed in Santa. What about this: maybe you believed your mom or your dad to be invincible. Kind of superhuman or untouchable. And then you weathered your first big blow up between parents and an adult child. Or a shocking cancer diagnosis or the revelation of some kind of massive failing. I’m reaching for that feeling of deflation and just raw sorrow, of sort of coming unmoored and feeling unrooted. That has been the past 5 months for me, as a Catholic laywoman.

The Church whom I trusted implicitly, all my life, has broken my heart. Every morning there is a new story about some scandal, a message in my inbox about a parish whose pastor went on “administrative leave,” was arrested following – or at least incriminated by – some new allegation come to light.

The weight of it has ceased being a conscious burden; now it just feels like a sort of lingering heaviness, not unlike the way a clinical depression blurs the edges of reality and tamps down the colors and delights of daily living. I don’t mean exactly that I feel depressed about the Church, but that my perception of the Church has been shattered.

Even writing “the Church,” I’m not longer entirely sure what I mean. Do I mean the Roman curia? The Pope? The local bishop, who is technically my reference point for the authority of the hierarchy? Do I mean the parish down the hill where we worship? Our wonderful priests there who hear hundreds of confessions a week?

In many ways living here in Denver with such a vibrant Catholic community we have been isolated from much of the pain and scandal on an immediate level. In another sense, this makes things very strange when I feel “safe” in my own parish but feel utterly ill at ease in “the Church” at large. The Universal Church.

Our time in Rome this Fall, however beautiful, was also painful. Walking on a tour through the Vatican gardens, for example – what should have been a thrilling opportunity – was marked with sadness. “Here is the monastery where Pope Benedict retired to. There is the place where he used to like to pray, when he was more mobile.” My heart clenched painfully as I wondered, not for the first time, why God has allowed this season in the Church to come to be.

Why are we here? What does God, in His Providence, plan to accomplish with this wreckage and chaos?

And what can I possibly do, a mom with five kids, a little bit of internet real estate, no theology degree and no real position of influence within the Church?

Pray, obviously, which I have been. But I want to be transparent with you guys about how much I’m struggling with this. Every other week or so I try to make it to confession (see above: amazing parish) and one of my predictable recurring sins right now is one against charity towards the Holy Father, towards the bishops.

My choleric and justice-oriented mind does not comprehend that while I have been hustling and doing my level best to hold up my end of the bargain with God (and failing over and over and over again, naturally, bc sinner) there have been predatory priests preying on children. Homosexual bishops grooming and raping seminarians. Company men more concerned with promotions than with the people whose souls they signed up to shepherd. (And yes, I know there are good priests. And mediocre priests. And priests who are struggling manfully with heavy habitual sins. These aren’t the guys I’m thinking about.)

Priests hearing the confessions of ordinary Catholics who come to the sacrament of absolution struggling to live chastely, who are wrestling with any kind of addiction, who are trying to get their temper, their lust, their appetite for whatever in check; who are failing, crying out to the Lord for mercy, asking for absolution, who are coming back again and again and swimming upstream in this miserable culture of death, priests who meet up with an illicit lover later that same night, who shuffle an abusive priest to another assignment, who turn a blind eye to the failings of their brother bishops and keep on keeping on…

It boggles the mind.

And so while the surprise has abated and the rage has cooled, the lethargic sorrow remains. I thought I knew what the Church was. I never believed the clergy to be above reproach or without sin, but it didn’t occur to me that there would be priests leading double lives. Why not? I don’t know, I guess I’m an idiot? An idealist?

I don’t have a good wrap up. And it’s not like I’m over here wallowing in sorrow and questioning the existence of God or anything. But I am wrestling with what it means to be Catholic right now. Not because I would ever walk away, but because I am so angry that none of these guys did.

I know so many good priests. Good bishops too. As a parent, this is probably the most frustrating part of the whole crisis: are my children safe in the Church? Can we trust the men who we do know and love, going forward? I trust our bishop, and our parish priests. I love and respect and believe the religious community who we share so much of our lives with. Is a personal relationship going to be the necessary litmus going forward? Trust but verify?

I hate this place for our family. And I hate it for our Church, even more. There is no such thing as a personal sin. All sin is corporate. And everything that is done in the darkness will be, eventually, revealed in the light.

(p.s. This was written last Friday. How much more appropriate it seems today.)

Catholic Spirituality, current events, Pope Francis, Rome, sin, Suffering

Finding grace in the Eternal City

September 19, 2018

I woke up blinking and disoriented in the chilly darkness of our hotel room, craning my neck to see if any light was squeezing through the cracks of the blackout shutters. I rolled over and grabbed my phone, which was displaying the current time on the east coast of the United States in military format. Zelie’s morning chortles echoed from down the hall, bouncing off the marble floors and reassuring me that it was, in fact, morning and we’d all mostly slept through the night.

I roused Dave, lifted the baby from her plush Italian pack-n-play, and we padded upstairs to the breakfast room, situated on the enclosed rooftop of the 7-story apartment building-turned-boutique hotel 5 blocks from St. Peter’s Square. We blinked in wonder at our birdseye view of the cupola while wrestling Zelie into a comically oversized Italian highchair, un seggiolone, threading a swaddle blanket around her waist and securing her to the chair with a sloppy, oversized knot. That blanket would become at turns a changing table, sun cover, sweat towel, handkerchief, and soothing object in addition to a lap restraint. I’m always amazed by how little baby gear we can get by with while traveling.

As we munched on prosciutto and powdered scrambled eggs, we discussed plans for our first full day in the city. The flight over was arduous but manageable (unlike the flight home. Ahem. #foreshadowing) and we’d taken only a modest nap the day before to ensure a quick adjustment to local time. The whole day stretched before us with possibility, already shimmering with the late-summer heat of the city. I wanted to hit a few churches – one, St. Mary Major, I couldn’t remember having been inside at all. Also on the list: The Gesu. Sant’ignacio. Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Sant’agostino. I was hoping to find Ignatius, Catherine of Siena, Francis Xavier. I had some specific prayers in my heart to entrust to the earliest Jesuits, those spiritual and missionary giants. We made it to every church on the list, but mistimed our visits to Santa Maria Sopra Minerva and the Gesu to coincide unfortunately with siesta.

Santa Maria Maggiore was a wonder. It is deceptively nondescript from the outside, rendering the breathtaking vaulted, gold coffered ceilings all the more striking. We wandered around the perimeter, pushing Zelie in her $14 umbrella stroller with the squeaking, battle weary wheels tested by cobbled streets. We’ve learned our lesson never to travel with the “good” stroller. Zelie’s legs dangled from the fraying hammock of the seat, kicking like plump sausages and delighting the crowds of tourists we threaded through.

The basilica houses a relic of the creche – of the manger itself, where Mary swaddled Jesus and laid him to rest on a pillow of straw. It was hot and crowded in the crypt beneath the altar, different languages flowing past my ears like water while I struggled to focus my mind and heart in prayer. I don’t pray well when we make these trips, battling the temporal elements of travel: the sleep disruption, the weather, the crying baby. I’m a comfortable American, safely ensconced in a suburban neighborhood marked by convenience and privacy. I’m never more aware of my personal shortcomings and my impoverished capacity for suffering than when I’m in a foreign country.

Rome is neither comfortable nor private. It is gaudy, glittering, dirty, ancient, intimate, and overflowing with humanity. There are architectural masterpieces on every corner and there is graffiti on most surfaces. Pigeons and garbage, relics and riches. It is a study in contradiction, a layer-cake of human history piled one era atop another, the ancient crumbling in the midst of the modern. Workers erect scaffolding to update and reinforce, polishing away layers of pollution and grime while dropping pieces of trash and debris around their workspace. Ducking into a shabby, off color apartment building on a nondescript sidestreet can yield a magnificent grotto carved from plaster and beams, a 5-star culinary mecca hiding behind the peeling stucco facade.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed in Rome. Spiritually, emotionally, certainly physically. The soundtrack of wailing sirens whose cadence is off just enough to remind you how far you are from home, bells tolling joyfully or solemnly at turns from the thousands of bell towers dotting the skyline. The steady, constant thrum of traffic, of motorbikes weaving through throngs of pedestrians and taxis scraping down streets that seem too narrow for golf carts.

I stood in St. Mary Major with all the feelings of the past summer swirling in my head and my heart, willing myself to connect emotionally with what I saw before me: a piece of the cradle that held our Savior. I was tired, sweaty, and heavy with the grief of being Catholic. As we’d walked out of our neighborhood and past St. Peter’s that morning, we heard the Pope’s voice ringing out from the loudspeakers, drifting down Via della conciliazione during his regular Wednesday Audience, causing my heart to constrict painfully in my chest. We didn’t attend the audience, didn’t even linger at the perimeter of the undersized crowd.

I was too angry.

Ascending the steps from below the splendid altar in St. Mary Major, I made my way back to Dave and the stroller. We spotted a traditional confessional where a white robed Dominican priest was seated, administering the Sacrament of Reconciliation to an Italian woman standing as if at a drive through window at a bank. The sign affixed to his booth read “Polish/Italiano/English” so we took our places in line.

When it was my turn to confess, I lowered my head and laid bare my anger, my hurt, and my rage at the seeming impotence of the episcopacy, the sorrow at being in Rome and feeling estranged from my own faith. The confession was brief and, I hoped, thorough. Father cocked his head to the side and looked at me thoughtfully, speaking perfect English in a thick Polish accent,

“It is okay to be angry. It might even be good to be angry. We are all angry. This is a difficult moment for the Church. Particularly the Church in America.” He smiled sadly, “but the Church is hurting everywhere at this time. And if God is giving you anger that will not leave, He may want you to do something with it.”

I searched his face while searching my own conscience, probing to see whether the anger I harbored was righteous and rightly-ordered, or whether it was shot through with self interest and pride.

I think it was both, to be honest. Anger over the profound injuries caused, and the egregious sin. Anger for the victims’ suffering. Anger for the hypocrisy of churchmen who lived double lives as predators.

But also anger at being humiliated by my own Church. And this may be the selfish, pride-filled anger that had no useful function. The anger at being exposed for being a fool for taking seriously the moral teachings of the faith while men in positions of power and influence laughed and derided our sacrifices. Was I living my faith for the approval of some bishop or cardinal, then, or even the Pope? If all of these apostized and rejected the faith wholesale, would I also leave, citing the evolution of eternal truths into something more relevant to modernity?

I saw immediately the distinction between the anger that father spoke of as being righteous, and the anger that was rooted in self interest. The first kind of anger, Father explained, was given as a kind of energy by God, it was a right response from a properly formed conscience.

“Righteous anger,” he explained, was “applying your energy to make right the wrongs.” He encouraged me as a parent to embrace this righteous anger, pointing out that if I had no immediate capacity for righting the wrongs which I encountered but still harbored this anger, that perhaps God was giving it as a gift, designed to be transformed into fuel for the engines of prayer and sacrifice.

“Anger has a purpose.” He concluded. “Anger that is free from sin and persistent is God offering you an opportunity. Do something with the anger. Ask Him what he wants from you.”

I left that Confession feeling 20 pounds lighter. I’m still angry, sitting at home a week later, nursing a slight headache from the jet lag while I pound the keyboard. But the anger no longer feels suffocating. I can pray and be angry. I can be faithful to my vocation and be angry. I can go to Mass, frequent the Sacraments, pray for the Church, and be angry.

That Confession in the heart of Rome left me with a new understanding of what St. Paul means when he says: “be angry, but do not sin.”

Of all the beautiful sights and sounds from our trip, the sacramental conversation I had with a stranger from Poland is the one that stands apart from all the rest.

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

Flipping tables in the temple

August 22, 2018

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

We’re finding out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Will you overturn some tables with us, now?

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

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

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

penance and purification that we can all emulate?

Will you wage war with us?

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

And we won’t accept “no”.

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

Catholics Do What?, Evangelization, JPII, Pope Francis

Why World Youth Day still matters

July 21, 2016

The Pope is on Instagram, and the world is flat. Flatter far than it was back in the 1980s when Pope St. John Paul II first conceived of an international gathering of Catholic youth to come together to meet Christ, along with the Holy Father, for a powerful encounter of truly catholic communion with one another and with the Church.

Spain, Germany, America, Australia…there have been 13 international world youth days to date, and the crowds – multitudes, as John Paul the Great preferred to call them – keep growing.

But why does it matter in 2016? Can’t the average high school junior with a smartphone pull up the Pope’s Twitter feed and see what’s on his mind? Hasn’t Snapchat made the ability to physically gather in person an obsolete relic of the past?

Not so fast.

There is something almost incommunicable about the catholicity of Catholicism if you’ve never experienced the Faith outside of your own culture. And there is something critically important about having a personal encounter with the Faith. Something that no amount of virtual connectivity can ever hope to replicate.

I remember the first time I heard Mass in another language. I was young – too young to remember the specifics – but it was in a California Mission church, and the Mass was in Spanish. While the unfamiliar words washed over me I remember the little jolt of familiarity and joy when the consecration still happened after the Our Father, when hands reached across pews to shake and to hug during the Sign of Peace.

Several years older and several thousand miles away, I heard the Mass in Latin for the first time, in a grand medieval cathedral in Ireland, and I experienced once again that joyful recognition of sameness in the liturgy.

We’re all one. The Church really is universal! I remember marveling, even as a sullen 17 year old who was more interested in the lack of a legal drinking age than in the culture and history of that beautiful country.

I’ve heard other people’s stories about their own “aha, we’re huge” moments: Steubenville conferences, international trips, pilgrimages to Rome. Walking through the doors of St. Peter’s Basilica for the first time, completely overwhelmed by the sheer size of it, and secondarily by the sights and sounds of a hundred other cultures funneling into one grand sanctuary.

And the big one, for young people, is World Youth Day. There is an unspeakable power to seeing the Holy Father in the flesh, the charism of the papacy made incarnate in a joyful overwhelm of familiarity and relationship. He really is our father. And the grace of office is palpable.

Our young people need to be transformed by an encounter with the living Christ. In the worlds of my favorite saint,

“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.

It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”

This is a living faith. A faith worth fighting for. A faith worth committing to and sacrificing out of love for, in spite of the demands and denials of the world.

And the millennial generation were a source of great hope for JPII. He didn’t see slackers and gamers, a generation destined to live in basements and occupy parental couches. He saw hope. He saw the future of the Church. He saw world-changers and hope-bringers. And above and before all that, he saw future saints.

And now World Youth Day, in it’s 14th iteration, comes home to it’s founder’s roots: Krakow, Poland. From July 26-31.

St. John Paul II could never have imagined how the world would flatten and transform in the 31 years since he first called together 300,000 youthful pilgrims in Rome, but surely he will be watching from his heavenly vantage point as his beloved Poland hosts more than a million young Catholics from around the globe, spilling into the very streets he walked, come to encounter the person of Jesus Christ and His present day vicar on earth, Pope Francis.

So in the lead up to WYD, we pray for protection and for a profound outpouring of the Holy Spirit on these young pilgrims. St. John Paul II, pray for us. Pray for the youth from the nations around this weary world who have been called to Poland, answering a pilgrim’s invitation to experience the universal church in a literal, tangible way. Pray that they would find Jesus whom they seek, who alone can satisfy.”

(And hey Papa, it looks like some of your opening acts are already getting warmed up.)

birth story, Catholic Spirituality, Culture of Death, euthanasia, Pope Francis, Pro Life

Is having kids “sustainable?”

May 10, 2016

(Perhaps I could have called this one “does green sex = green babies?” but older, wiser Jenny is actually a little embarrassed to have gotten that term rolling.)

A couple months back a reader messaged me with a good – and weird – question. Like the great blogger and expert time juggler that I am, I promptly never answered her message and lost it in the bowels of Facebook. But! I remembered the inquiry all these months, and I wanted to take a stab at it today.

Her trouble was with a friend of a more progressive stripe who’d been bending her ear on how profoundly “unsustainable” children are, and for this reason, that no one could possibly justify having more than 1 of them.

My reader, troubled though she was by her acquaintance’s apparent disdain for the continuation of the human race, was hard pressed for an appropriate response.

My initial response was to snort laugh through my nose. But then I sobered up, because hadn’t I just driven my gas guzzling mini van to Whole Foods just that past week in search of the cheapest organic formula this side of the internet?

Granted, I had the vehicle filled nearly to capacity and was therefore a candidate for the HOV lane. But I did see her point.

From a purely secular and ecological perspective, things have gotten so crazily out of focus that I suppose it is possible to make the case that HUMAN LIFE ITSELF IS NOT SUSTAINABLE OR RESPONSIBLE.

But what does that mean? Have we come to such a profound depth of self-loathing as a species that we’ve begun to philosophically self destruct over the very meaning and purpose of existence?

Is this the inheritance of relativism and materialistic humanism?

I think (for now) no, to the first, but yes to the second.

I don’t believe that most people are hellbent on human destruction in the name of good stewardship of creation. That rather flies in the face of the essence of creation, at any rate, does it not?

Can’t have a creation without creatures, and creatures gonna imitate their Creator.

But therein lies the bigger problem, a very real fruit of the harvest of a relativistic and materialistic worldview: people are no longer uniquely paramount in the created order, and people are no longer valued based on who they are, but instead are measured increasingly by what they do.

In plainer terms, people only have as much worth as what they can offer back to the world.

Which is why we abort babies with Down Syndrome.

Which is why elderly Canadians are waitlisted for basic medical services in the name of “conservation of resources.”

Which is why babies born out of wedlock to poor, single, black women are targeted more ruthlessly by Planned Parenthood than any other subset of humanity.

If you don’t have something readily apparent to offer in the marketplace, you may excuse yourself from society.

Babies, of course, are about the most useless of all humans. They consume endlessly. Milk, diapers, energy, affection. They produce nothing but waste, quite literally. And so, by the standards outlined above, they are in no way “sustainable.”

Crazy thing is, they’re also who every one of us once was.

It is a foolish bias for the here and now that drives an adult population to utterly devalue the past and the future for the sake of the almighty present.

If there’s one way to easily sum up most of our cultural woes in the year 2016, selfishness might be it.

My body, my free time, my best life now; my convenience and my prosperity and my mental health and my infinite disposable income and leisure.

Children threaten all of those, sometimes terminally. And so children have become one of the enemies of the hip new economy of self realization and fun.

For fear of missing out, we’ve traded away the one thing that really matters: relationship with the other, and that uniquely human capacity to love exponentially into the future, willing the good for a society that does not yet exist, but which will one day utterly replace your own.

(Presumably, that society will still be comprised of people, not just dogs and iPhones.)

Relationships are tricky, though. And they’re often costly. They’re unpredictable and the benefits do not, emphatically, always outweigh the costs.

But if new life coming into this sad, old world isn’t the very essence of what we’re doing here…then what else matters?

Yolo, indeed. Emphasis on the “you.”

But if it does matter? If the future is not some faceless wasteland of McDonald’s wrappers and water bottles and overcrowded parking lots with double parked hovercrafts, but a continuation of the human story? Then it matters very much indeed what we’re spending our time and money and yes, our non-renewable resources into.

Investments wisely made yield dividends into the future.

I could go into the myriad ways that children can be “sustainable” and “green” because hand me downs, carpools, shared toy economies and limited carbon footprints from expensive air travel. But those essays already exist, and the more fundamental problem in my mind isn’t demonstrating whether having a small or medium or large family can be super socially conscious, but rather the fact that the question itself is being raised: are human beings themselves, sustainable?

Without an eternal worldview and an end game sunk deep into immortality, I don’t know how one answers that question.

Which is perhaps precisely why we’re asking it in the first place.

Lose sight of the Creator, lose sight of the dignity of the creature. And the rest of creation, along with it. Which is what Pope Francis has been telling us all along.

Culture of Death, Evangelization, Family Life, Marriage, Pope Francis, Pornography, sin, Suffering

Lord, we need you

May 2, 2016

There are two women sitting to my right, and I’ve been trying – unsuccessfully – not to overhear them for the past half hour, sitting and working in a coffee shop.

They’ve been chatting therapy and personal growth and dating after divorce and escaping abusive marriages and widowhood and loss and…life. As we share the common space in this coffee shop, I’m failing to totally tune out the ebb and flow of their conversation, because we’re inches apart and I forgot my earbuds.

Somewhere between the story of one of their young sons’ walking upstairs and encountering daddy watching hardcore pornography on the 50-inch during his custody weekend and recognizing the “12 characteristics of an abuser,” it became suddenly and sickeningly clear to my interloping ear: they’re talking about the same man.

The divorcee and the new girlfriend are sitting at a table to my right, discussing the man they mutually loved, at different times, and the children she fled the marriage with, which the new girlfriend wonders why she never sees.

The new girlfriend is despondent because she lost her own husband to cancer at a young age and has only dated one man since – the abusive ex-husband, it turns out, of the battered former wife sharing a cappuccino with her.

This is why Amoris Laetitia is relevant, I suppose. These are the irregular situations in which people find themselves in this brave new world, unable to walk away from the mess of tangled relationships and responsibilities and brokenness.

It’s the saddest conversation I’ve ever been party to. And I’m so sorry to be hearing it. But I’m also oddly thankful to be allowed this opportunity.

The insanely composed ex-wife is walking the new girlfriend through the signs of neurotic narcissism, pointing out things to recognize when considering whether the guy in question is attempting to take control of her in an inappropriate way.

And I marvel at the courage it must require of her, of them both, really, to have this conversation, to have agreed to this meeting in the first place.

I can’t know their whole story, but the snapshot I’ve gathered in this coffee shop tells a redemption story of one woman trying to help another, and not out of malice for her abusive ex. (And I could be wrong. She could be operating out of pure vengeance, hoping to prevent him from a second – third, actually, turns out – shot at happiness. But it doesn’t strike me as the case.)

This is the strange and broken world we’ve inherited, east of Eden and post sexual revolution. Death. Divorce. Abuse. Pornography. Broken families. Broken bones. Broken hearts.

Is there any hope for any of us, truly? Can we honestly propose Christ as the tidy answer to problems which are this messy, to situations this heartbreaking?

Yes and no.

Yes, Christ is the answer. Today, yesterday, and forever.

But no, it doesn’t tidy up the tangled ends. It doesn’t wave a magic wand over the pain and the regret and unravel the snarled threads of lives converged in pain and brokenness and sin.

That’s the damnedest thing about sin, isn’t it? He forgives and makes new, but He does not undo what choices our free will have wrought.

Redeems them, yes. But He doesn’t grant amnesia to the victims of violence, doesn’t repair the shattered window with a divine wand wave, doesn’t refill the bank account depleted by deceit.

Those pieces He leaves to us, allowing us to participate as His hands and His feet. And not so much allowing as demanding, because if not us, who? If not now, when?

I’m overhearing a corporal work of mercy in action. And I’m weeping silently and stoically on the inside at the pain both women are wrapped up in.

God, this world is a mess. And You’ve left it to us – to me and to you – to tend it.

I have no trite answer, no tidy conclusion. Just an awareness of how deep our brokenness is, and how desperately we still need a Savior, even now, in the West, with our astonishing wealth and technology.

We still need Jesus.

We can’t save ourselves.

Catholics Do What?, motherhood, Pope Francis, Women's Health

Mamas who {literally} need coffee

January 25, 2016

Sometimes – not as often as I’d like to admit, but sometimes – I think about where my food came from. About the people who raised it, about that hands that prepared it and packaged it. About the places it comes from. (Except meat. I can’t even. For which my husband will mercilessly tease me until my dying day. But I like to think that my chicken was born and raised in a sun-dappled meadow and then transfigured into a neatly vacuum sealed plastic package. Without feathers.)

When I was offered the opportunity to interview one of the American media personalities making the trek with Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Rice Bowl trip, I was intrigued because they were going to Columbia, which is coffee land. And they were going to interview and meet with coffee farmers. And Lisa Hendey – aka CatholicMom.com – was one of my interview options. I believe they call this phenomenon natural fit, no?

Lisa was gracious enough to answer a few questions for me, and her last answer in particular has lodged itself in my heart and in my brain. I think you’ll see why. Welcome, Lisa, and thank you for the beautiful and sobering glimpse into the world that produces my beloved morning cup.

Jenny: Did you feel a connection with these women in spite of you different lifestyles? Was there a natural bond between you as mothers, and did you see aspects of your own daily routine/family life reflected in what you observed?

Lisa: One of our very first meetings in Colombia was to visit a center which serves families who are essentially refugees in their own country, after having been forcibly removed from their homes and land due to the internal conflicts in that beautiful country. I sat and wept silently as I listened to a young single mother of four describe fleeing her home in the middle of the night with nothing but the clothes on her back. While I could absolutely never understand what that must feel like, I could absolutely relate to the sense that she, as a mother, would do absolutely anything to protect and provide for her precious children.

On many of our site visits, we met women who were so kind to prepare meals for us. With my limited Spanish, I loved popping into their kitchens, thanking them, and checking out their homes. I’m not a good cook, but there is something so universal about welcoming someone into your home and feeding them–both physically and spiritually. Their kitchens were extremely simple: a hotplate at most, and often they were actually cooking over an open flame! But the results were always delicious. I wanted to pitch in several times and help serve or do dishes, but was always hospitably denied the chores. I had to laugh, because I would have done the same in my home if I were entertaining visitors!

One day, we visited a beautiful Catholic school high in the Andes Mountains. The students there gave a presentation for us and used Powerpoint to share the work in their school which is being supported by CRS and Rice Bowl. I smiled, because there in the “audience” with us were Catholic school moms who had come (on their children’s summer vacation!) to listen to their children give their presentations. Those moments at St. Francis of Assisi school took me right back to my days as a Catholic school mom at St. Anthony’s School in Fresno! And it was such a joy to meet and chat with the moms, who had such beautiful love for their children. Their hope is for the safety, well being, bright future and spiritual development of their precious sons and daughters.

So yes, I absolutely bonded in many ways! Meeting families and being welcomed into their homes was an amazing way to get to know the country of Colombia and her people.

J: How important is it to be conscientious consumers, particularly of goods – like coffee – that are largely produced in the developing world? Did you see room for American moms in particular to partner spiritually with the women who are raising their beloved morning coffee beans, and an opportunity to live in greater solidarity by: buying fair trade/ encouraging others to do the same/ giving up a day or two of coffee a week to offset the higher cost/ praying for the woman on the other side of the cup while you’re brewing and drinking it?

L: We visited with three separate coffee producers and learned the challenges but also the joy that goes into their production of coffee. After this trip, I will never again guzzle down my beloved morning beverage without thinking of those families. Many of them have made a conscious choice NOT to grow illicit (but lucrative) coca. Instead, they make the important decision to grow coffee. But the producers we met go far beyond just growing coffee. The crops they grow are actually such high quality that they are being sold as specialty coffee around the world and earning high rankings.

We learned a great deal both about the importance of fair trade and also of the role of sustainable coffee production. Being in the Andes and walking around coffee fields, it was immensely gratifying to see the concepts that Pope Francis had so eloquently written about in Laudato Si’ being lived out before my very eyes.

I urge moms who love coffee as much as I do to visit CRS’s “Coffeelands” website (http://coffeelands.crs.org/) to learn more about the work being done in Colombia. To purchase coffee from the farms we visited, check out http://coffeelands.crs.org/buy-coffee-from-the-borderlands/.

J: What was the most surprising moment for you of the trip?

L: The most surprising moment of the trip was also the most poignant. I’ve written about it in detail at http://catholicmom.com/2016/01/15/giving-of-our-poverty-crsmedia-colombia-journal/. We went to Colombia to learn about and share the impact of CRS’s Rice Bowl program for families living in that country. Our family has loved using the Rice Bowl in our home as an important part of our Lenten prayer, fasting and almsgiving. One of our outings in Colombia was a visit to the home of Maria, a beautiful young woman whose family has been served and supported by Rice Bowl donations. (see http://www.crsricebowl.org/stories-of-hope/week-1) – Maria and her parents and siblings welcomed us with open arms into their simple home–a shelter with dirt floors and tarp walls, but warm with love. Over a breakfast they prepared for us, our colleague Susan taught them about the Rice Bowl and actually gave them a Rice Bowl. I had to laugh when Maria put it together right then, at the breakfast table!

What surprised me was the story my fellow traveler Fr. Rafael Capo told me a few moments after we finished breakfast and said our goodbyes. Maria had quietly filled out the Rice Bowl and she and her family inserted their gifts and handed it to Father Rafael, asking him to carry it back to the US and donate it for them. Knowing the love and support her family had received through Rice Bowl, they too wanted to make a gift to other families being served around the world. Fr. Capo told me this story with great emotion… and I understand why. This family might be considered disadvantaged economically, but they are rich in love!

I could go on and on with more stories! Readers who are interested can follow my Colombia Journal entries at www.CatholicMom.com/colombia.

About Me, Catholic Spirituality, Evangelization, Family Life, motherhood, Parenting, Pope Francis

Pope bait: a Philadelphia story

September 28, 2015

When we did the math on the World Meeting of Families and Luke’s due date, it didn’t seem likely that I’d be joining Dave for the event. All throughout his pregnancy I thought to myself, “if he comes 2 weeks early, maybe I’ll feel good enough to go. 8 weeks is a decent amount of time to recover before traveling.”

Well, as these things go, early he was not. Not by much, anyhow. But the recovery and reentry period into our new normal has been so good that about 2 weeks ago we looked at each other, Luke and I, and we said hey, let’s book that flight. It’ll be great.

And you know what? It was great. Luke’s a great flyer, I had the kindest seat mates, and there was a beer festival in the terminal just before security. I mean, come on. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Or maybe it does.

Maybe, after a morning of inspiring talks (Rick Warren, Cardinal O’Malley, Simcha Fisher), an encounter with the first class relics of Bl. (soon to be saints!) Zelie and Louis Martin, an evening of dinner and drinks with great friends, and a minimal amount of sleep, you awaken the next morning to the opportunity to join an old friend and a new friend with generous hearts and brave, barricade-guarding elbows and 2 extra tickets to a papal event.

And then maybe you spend the next 7 hours camped out on the concrete alongside your strong and uncomplaining husband in the hot autumn sun, a sweating and sometimes bodily-fluid-emitting newborn (still a newborn if 12 pounds? pls advise) strapped to your chest and you wait in joyful and occasionally bored and jostled hope for a glimpse of him.

Of Peter. Of Christ’s Vicar on Earth, a tangible witness to God’s fatherly love.

If you’ve ever been remotely close to the pope – to any pope – you’ve felt it. You know what I’m talking about; it’s the grace of office. It’s the undeniable transformative action of the Holy Spirit on a humble, ordinary human being, a sinner like all the rest of us and “a son of the Church,” by his own admission.

And it’s awesome.

It’s a soul-level gut punch of love and joy and unbelievable conviction of the love God has for us.

And if you’re a mom, and this happens? Well, it’s less of a gut punch and more of a head on collision:

That’s my baby.

And that’s a blurry, imperfect picture of a priceless moment because I was crying and shaking and couldn’t fumble my phone up to take the shot, so my slightly-less-emotional friend caught this one. And I thank God that I couldn’t muster ye olde iPhone into firing position, because you know what? He looked right at me.

And while I locked eyes with Papa Francesco and yelled to him in broken Italian and English and snotty mom-tears my love and gratitude, I felt quite clearly that he was looking at me, too. That we were two people in a crowd of tens of thousands, but for a second we encountered one another.

I don’t mean that he was as excited to see me as I was to see him (though if you’re reading Papa? big fan.) but that for the moment he took to look into the eyes of the hysterical mother of the balding baby he’d just kissed, he allowed himself to be fully present. To me. And then to Dave. And then to every other countless other persons among the millions and millions in the crowds all week.

It was such a gift.

And while the ultimate souvenir of a papal smooch and photo op has now been bestowed upon our little family not once but twice, by two different popes on two different continents, the real treasure remains for me that moment of encounter.

I actually feel a deeper sense of appreciation for his pastoral approach now. I think I “get” Francis a little more than I did 30 hours ago.

(And, happily, I’ve gotten a few more pictures, too. So it’s a double edged sword, this technology of ours, because while I was free to soak up that moment of encounter, it was the generous efforts of fellow pilgrims in the crowd surrounding us who sacrificed something of their own encounters to capture the moment. And I’m so glad they did.)

Thank you, Papa Francesco. For coming to our country, for speaking your heart, and for kissing my baby. Check the roster at the NAC for Luke Uebbing in about 22 years. I have a feeling this encounter will leave its mark on him, too.

Catholics Do What?, Pope Francis

Why We Don’t Let the Neighbors Tell Us How to Raise The Kids

January 21, 2015

My dear fellow Catholics. My brothers and sisters.

We are, in fact, in a rather unique family, are we not?

Huge. Dysfunctional. Multitalented. Holy. Scandalous. Disappointing. Inspiring.

It’s much like any other family, plus or minus about a billion members.

We have our quirks and our shortcomings, our saints and our sinners. We are imperfect and wonderfully weird and, first and foremost, we are universal.

That’s unbelievably ambitious, by the way, for God to cobble something together from so many disparate and diverse members and call it holy and apostolic. If nothing else convinces you of the divinity behind the longevity of Catholicism, let it be this: that we haven’t all killed each other yet.

And so now we have the internet. The 24/7 news cycle. The entire world up in each other’s business in a way previously unfathomable to mankind. And there are pros and cons to this never-ending glut of information to process. I would offer as a giant con the seemingly global disability to process well, at least for 99% of the literate populace. We’re very good at emoting and reacting. We’re less adept at reasoning and reflecting.

Each era has its own challenges and triumphs. We live in the Information Age, for better or worse, and so we must learn what (and whether) to do with the information that is assaulting our eyeballs and our eardrums at literally every waking moment. Do we process it all? Filter it out? React to everything that moves us?

Social media complicates this further, because everyone has a platform and, therefore, the right to exercise it. It’s the great equalizer, making would-be journalists and talking heads of us all.

But remember, not all sources of information are created equal. And not everyone with a loud microphone and a robust Twitter following has the capacity to speak thoughtfully and thoroughly on a given issue.

My biggest complaint with the Francis papacy, 2 years in, is the reaction of seemingly well-formed and practicing Catholics to the Things He Says Which Are Outrageous.

Let me back up and preface what is about to be said; it is true that this Holy Father of ours is not the most eloquent speaker. It is true that he speaks his heart readily, and that he uses culturally-hamstrung idioms and analogies. He is not an intellectual (and I don’t think he would take offense at my saying so) and he is not a philosopher. His mind has not been sharpened by 40 years of rigorous theological study and debate, and his worldview was most decidedly not formed by the Western/European experience.

But he is the Pope. He is the Successor of Peter, chosen by his brother cardinals under the guidance of the Holy Spirit to lead the Church now, today, in the year 2015. Not in the year 2012 or 1987 or 1334. He’s here for us, right now. Just as each of us were handpicked to live in such a time as this.

And if I don’t agree with everything that comes out of his mouth (and I don’t) and if some of what I read in his writings makes me squirm (and it does), there’s one thing for certain: I’m sure as hell not going to let someone from outside the family tell me what I should think about it.

Now, there’s nothing stopping my next door neighbor, my barista, or the lady at our local grocery store from commenting on how I’m raising my kids, how closely spaced they are, or what kinds of trash I’m serving up at the dinner table, but freedom of speech is not the same thing as rightful authority.

See what I’m saying?

Yes, the guy at Starbucks can comment on my mewling pack of toddlers and advise me to put a stranglehold on the flow of progeny issuing forth from our marital union, but I’m not about to invite him into our bedroom to pour over my NFP charts and help us decide if and when the time is right for another kid.

He can comment away all he likes, but I don’t have to (and sure as hell shouldn’t, in fact) listen.

Similarly, CNN, MSNBC, the AP, America magazine, your token crackpot SSPX blogger, and all the rest are very, very free to comment on every thing the Pope says and does, what it means, what it doesn’t mean, and what you, as a Catholic, SIMPLY MUST DO ABOUT IT.

But you know better than to be getting your family business from the guy at the post office, don’t you?

You’re not really going to let someone outside the family – and as is often the case, utterly opposed to the very existence of the family – tell you your family business, are you?

Misquotable or not, Pope Francis is our Pope. He’s our father. He’s also a figure of contradiction and amusement and confusion and excitement and all the other adjectives for the rest of the world, looking on in wonder/disgust/mild curiosity. So yes, he will be in the news. And yes, all the things he says will be analyzed and dissected and translated and represented to you, the consumer, to ingest.

But it’s your responsibility to monitor the quality.

I can’t expect to have a well-formed opinion of or appreciation for the Pope if all I read about him comes through the secular media who simultaneously reviles the Catholic Church and desperately wants to see her fall into ruin. I can’t seriously hope to allow the Holy Spirit to work through him on my little old heart if, instead of reading his encyclicals and his homilies, all I know of him is filtered through a Buzzfeed article or Rachel Maddow’s stimulating commentary.

Come on.

Would you let someone talk about your biological father that way? Would you give them that same authority over your opinion of him?

I thought not.

It’s an imperfect analogy, because yes, the Pope is a very public figure. But remember this: we have a responsibility before God to answer for the information we take in, be it in the form of entertainment or “news.” We’re not just open trash receptacles, and words and ideas have consequences. So don’t let someone who doesn’t have your – or your family’s – best interests at heart be the one to tell you your family business.

Your mama raised you better than that.

(Some resources I do heartily endorse for your Papal reading pleasure:)

Catholic News Agency

Vatican Information Service

Vatican Radio

Aci Prensa (Espanol)

Eye of the Tiber