As the Cock Crows

I remember not the exact date, but the timeframe and the person who introduced to me the phrase “as the crow flies”: on the Year of Spirituality at Mary Immaculate Center in Northampton, PA, somewhere between the fall of 1998 and the spring of 1999. Two reflections occur to me: 

1. While flight is generally measured in terms of distance, it is also measured in time, and is modified by such factors as resistance, etc. But today I realized that the phrase “as the crow flies“ applies equally well to time: for example, the estimated assembly time for a particular item is 15 minutes, but that’s “as the crow flies.“ 

This particular crow considers himself less skilled in the art of assembly, though occasionally eager to ply himself to the endeavor. My current flight, the assembly of a corner shelf, is modified by such factors as preparedness (low), kinesthetic intelligence (moderate?), and distraction (high, by nature; I interrupted the assembly to write this).

2. Curious indeed can be our memories surrounding particular events, including the subjects of interest (words and phrases), the persons involved (Fr. Shane Lynch, now a priest of the Diocese of Ogdensburg, New York), and even the clothes we were wearing (it’s a safe bet was in black).

Since these days could apply for many of us (ready, willing, and able or not) as a sort of retreat, consider this exercise. 

As you engage in various conversations and activities—some of which might be unusual because the times are—think back to early instances of them and everyone/everything involved, and offer gratitude for who was involved (including yourself at the time, mindful of any changes that have taken place since then), and any other noteworthy details of time or place, sensory aspects included, if you are so inclined.  

Think of the constants, leading up to the occasion, all the way to the present moment. Offer to God, *the* Constant Ever-Changing-and-New, praise and thanksgiving for everyone and everything involved, contrition for defective modes of response, voluntary and involuntary, and petition for whatever seems needful for the future—which might include renewed appreciation for what’s going on right now.

Scrupulosity in Anxious Times

Dominican Father Patrick Hyde (Twitter: @frpatrickop) recently tweeted:

For those desiring the Sacrament of Confession: Perfect contrition, flowing from love of God, expressed by a sincere request for forgiveness (like praying the act of contrition) & with the intention to go to sacramental confession as soon as possible, obtains forgiveness of sins.
“Upon the Sacrament being made available to you again, you should get to Confession as soon as possible and confess these sins. But, in this time of crisis and chaos, God’s mercy remains readily available. 

Father Hyde meant, and did, very well here. The drama of life, however, includes human anxiety, suspiciousness,  implications and inferences everywhere.

Cue the genuine concern of, or on behalf of, the scrupulous person, who questions whether his or her contrition is ever perfect.

Scrupulosity is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder directed toward moral matters. It is fueled by anxiety, which I term “the allergies of mental illness” (along the same lines that depression is its common cold).

It’s fair enough to say that there is a truth to be known and a goodness to be done. But with scrupulosity, the feverish drive for exactness is operative. ”Did I just sin here? Did I confess this sin properly? Did I perform my penance precisely as given?” 

The fear of eternal damnation registers highly, as well as the oppressive sense of quotidian sinfulness that prior generations termed “Catholic guilt” and used sometimes as a red herring to justify their abandonment of the Catholic faith. 

Detractors suggest that their teachers, especially women religious, were encouraging scrupulosity—not intentionally, I’d hope. I trust they wanted their charges to be faithful Catholics and no more/less; why wouldn’t they? But be an impressionable child, be a hormonally-laden teenager, and your impression might be otherwise.

(Be a wounded and sinful adult, and the impression you give might be corrupt. I’d be foolish to exclude that likelihood in many cases; hence our current scandals.)

Faithful Catholicism, faithful discipleship, includes detesting sin and seeking virtue. Lacking the tools and relationship to cultivate the latter in many cases, it becomes easier to foster the former and hope for the best.

Somewhere in my diagnostic history I was told I had a mild OCD along with a mild to moderate depression. I think that still is the case. I have an addictive personality, by which I mean not that people easily become addicted to me, but I to whatever item, practice or person interests me. Since those earlier assessments I think I’ve qualified for ADHD. I don’t want to levy these terms indiscriminately.

To return to the original Tweetroversy (it wasn’t really an argument, thank God, it was more of a dialogue, though the original poster—wisely?—added nothing further; maybe he muted the conversation):

When someone mentioned the scrupulous person’s doubts regarding “perfection” in contrition, I returned to Father Hyde’s tweet: the act of perfect contrition “flow[s] from love of God.” The traditional Act of Contrition speaks to God as “All-Good, and deserving of all my love.” 

It does not, incidentally, affirm the praying person’s love for God, only God’s worthiness of it and my offense of God by sin. Love has its own “Act” prayer, worth investigating and offering.

After reading this conversation, I entered the Divine Conversation of the Liturgy, where I heard Jesus’ scathing rebuke of those Jews opposed to Him (typically referred to as “the Jews”). It included, “...I know that you do not have the love of God in you” (Jn 5:42). If that doesn’t turn one into a pillar of salt, what would?

Elsewhere Saint John declared, “Perfect love casts out all fear” (1 Jn 4:18). That takes us back to *perfect* contrition, and for that matter, the dominical command to be “perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). Here perfect is not “flawless,” but rather “as intended, following form and intention” (Gk teleios).

The scrupulous person can affirm, even if shakingly and wobblily as human lovers do, that he or she loves God. “Well, I fear God more than I love Him,” one might retort. 

Pare it down: Do you love Him at all? Do you want to be His friend and not His slave (cf. Jn 15:15)? Do you love Him more than “these,” as Jesus asks Peter, where “these” usually is thought of as the apostles gathered with them both, but we can extrapolate it into earthly relationships and attachments. 

Do you love Me more than the thrill of alcohol, lust, drugs, gambling, acquiring and spending, oversatiety, trying to control others, you name it (and claim it!)

—The addict, deep down, especially the “recovering” one (the one wanting to change and grow), may say, “I love You, Lord; help me love You more than *these*!”

—The scrupulous, deep down, may say, “I love You, Lord; help me love You more than I fear the effects of turning away from You, or the uncertainties I have about my distance from You or Your love for me.”

If you can say you love God, that is, as one poster acknowledged, “a concrete first step.”

Maybe the first first step is as the addicts in recovery might frame it for the scrupulous: “I am powerless over my thoughts and feelings concerning sin and perfection; my life is unmanageable.” The second step: “I came to believe that a Power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.”

Then: I made a decision to turn my will and my life [thoughts and actions] over to the care of God as I understood Him.” Trust motivates that turning-over (surrender) of will and life. Trust is a ray from the sun of love.

* * *

Another tweeter returned the conversation in the direction intended by the OP (get it? Original Poster/Ordo Praedicatorum? I’ll show myself out, but not before finishing this thought):

Viz: The reaffirmation of the forgiveness God gives in response to the Act of Perfect Contrition (sorry because I love God, Whom my sins offend), coupled with the intention to confess appropriately at the first available opportunity.

These anxious times have everyone by the tissues, not just the diagnosed. Anxious because many parishes now offer Confession even less than they had before COVID-19. Anxious because here is a life-threat that discriminates not. Faithful and seasonal Catholics won’t likely participate in Easter Mass because this virus shows no signs of abatement, neither will the in-place restrictions (at least I hope not, @RealDonald...)

“I may not get to make my Easter Duty [Communion at least once from the start of Lent to Trinity Sunday, and Confession of serious sins before Easter if possible]!” If it doesn’t happen because of the in-place restrictions and the limits of local pastoral offering, it’s not your fault that you didn’t make it unless you never intended to. And even there, if God spares, there’s still a chance to go, and at least this priest happily would facilitate that.

* * *

Obiter dictum: I am not a mental health practitioner or theoretician. I do not possess a  degree in Moral Theology. I am a parish priest working with the best available knowledge that I have accessed. I dare not give specific advice online regarding “internal forum” (confessional-worthy or confessed) matters. Please refer to your regular/local for such.

For more information and support (again, not as a substitute for one’s Confessor and Spiritual Director, as it will insist): https://scrupulousanonymous.org/

Containment Considerations, Part the Third

“Come, let us return to the LORD,

For it is he who has torn, but he will heal us;

he has struck down, but he will bind our wounds.

2

He will revive us after two days;

on the third day he will raise us up,

to live in his presence.

3

Let us know, let us strive to know the LORD;

as certain as the dawn is his coming.

He will come to us like the rain,

like spring rain that waters the earth.”

4

What can I do with you, Ephraim?

What can I do with you, Judah?

Your loyalty is like morning mist,

like the dew that disappears early.

5

For this reason I struck them down through the prophets,

I killed them by the words of my mouth;

my judgment shines forth like the light.

6

For it is loyalty that I desire, not sacrifice,

and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” (Hosea 6)

I’m definitely not of the chastisement camp made famous by the televangelists, but I do want to heed the famous remarks of Our Lord concerning the citizens whose blood Pilate had mingled with sacrifices and others upon whom fell the tower of Siloam: “Were they greater sinners than anyone else? By no means! But I tell you, unless you repent, you will all perish as they did!” (Lk 13:3)

“As they did” means more the fact of perdition common to all sinners than the manner, which varies in terms of its causes. Otherwise it still suggests exact correlation of the manner of one’s living with the conditions of one’s dying, which is not true—and would not be just if it were true. We all are going to perish; the when and how aren’t certain, that’s all.

There’s nothing wrong with us taking these days as a warning. For what? Repentance, reform of life along basic discipleship lines: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. We can never go wrong this way.

The same God who permits chastisement (from the Latin castus, “pure”), found in the opening from Hosea, also gives consolation. Meanwhile He does not retract the call to repentance, which is a cherished path of purification.

To make a sandwich of these: repentance is the meat, chastisement is the mustard, and consolation is the condiment. The roll? Knowledge of the Lord.

“On the third day he will raise us up”: Hints of the resurrection of Jesus appear in the Hebrew Scriptures. As the suffering servant of the Lord in Deutero-Isaiah has been identified with the people alternately with a particular unnamed individual, there’s also a communal dimension to resurrection and vindication for that chastised people/individual.

I love how the prophet openly acknowledges the evanescence of Ephraim’s piety. He knows it won’t last long. Remember 9/11. Remember human nature, remember the passage of time, the absence that makes the heart grow fatter.

God “slew them by the words of his mouth.” That’s exactly what Jesus does many times over, taking for an example His tag line in the Gospel from the Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Lent: “Look, you are well; do not sin any more, so that nothing worse may happen to you.”

The “both/and” nature of Catholicism builds upon the Semitic device where “this, not that” means “that, not without this.” Therefore Hosea’s famous “I desire loyalty, not sacrifice” means “I desire sacrifice but not without loyalty”; “Without loyalty, what good is sacrifice?”

Containment Considerations, Part Deux

A faithful interlocutor of mine reached out this morning to ask:

“Two questions.

“One, are you well? I can no longer offer Holy Communion for my priests and am feeling a little worthless.

Two, how am I to stay close to Christ if I cannot be with Him via the Eucharist? I am afraid the connection will be lost or at least weakened.”

The writer didn’t mind waiting for an answer in text or publicly posted, but I described my alacrity below.

You don’t often wait for an answer from me very long. I don’t tend to wait. My mind is a triage center whose supervisor is out back having a smoke during structure fires and vehicle accidents with multiple injuries. I’ve been up for several hours, though I’ve been making good use of the time, the fruits of which I will share at a later date. 

I can take a break from that effort to answer your question. The public posting of such an answer is a good idea, since as you suggest many people are wondering, worrying, downright frustrated about it. Perhaps you read my recent blog post on the subject. I didn’t express my fear of some people’s eventual dereliction of Mass attendance, but it’s present and persistent.

Methods of Natural Family Planning take for granted that couples will not want to or will not be able to achieve fertility at every point in their marriage, even though they are – or marriage and its sexual expressions are, by its very nature – open to it.

We are so to speak in a period of infertility, and certainly not an intentional one. To think that those who habitually or intentionally absent themselves from the sacred assembly for ignoble reasons are also in an infertile period, though theirs happens to their own undoing, perhaps the highest self-abuse or self-neglect.

How do faithful couples achieve intimacy when they are not intending fertile intercourse? They have recourse to many non-genital actions. One priest of my youth preached on romantic/sexual talk as a kind of foreplay to the consummation of the (chiefly-) marital act. It’s a curious but not-for-children appropriate way to consider the Liturgy of the Word.

The weakening of people’s connection has been a concern of mine since the dispensation of the Lord’s Day obligation that preceded the recent ban of public Masses. If so for the first, how much more so for the second!

How are we, then, to stay close? Come to the church if and when it is open (you said yours is not); watch Mass on Internet/television; keep talking to God, voicing every frustration and fear you can think of, whether of your own or others. But don’t let monologue become outright harangue: let supplication be joined by contrition, for whatever deserves it, on your own and others’ behalf; by thanksgiving for what you do have and enjoy, not nearly as it deserves; by adoration of God in Himself and in every tabernacle. 

The Church as such is not neglecting Him by forbidding Mass; we are in some sense, I speculate, experiencing the external ratification of a popular internal disposition. The rain that falls on the just and unjust, the rain that falls on everyone for cleansing.

Containment Considerations

On Monday I was participating in the funeral of a priest’s mother for the first time since my own Mom’s funeral last July. When I got into the car to drive down to the cemetery, I checked my email. The Diocese comes up as a VIP sender, and this message was VI.

The public celebration of Mass is canceled until further notice on account of COVID-19. Priests are allowed to keep the church open for periods of private prayer and to hear confessions (though even this the government would not recommend in the normal close quarters).

The range of feelings that accompany the reception of such news is understandable. At first I suspect very few would have been relieved, but even the earlier notice that had dispensed all Catholics in our diocese from the obligation could have relieved those who were genuinely afraid to go but were also afraid not to.

I suspect the majority feel disappointed, and a substantial minority angered by the decision. They think it betrays a lack of trust on the part of our bishops. “Wouldn’t God preserve from harm those who dared to assemble on the Lord’s Day, as is

our custom (cf. Heb 10:25)? And wouldn’t someone who got sick and died as a result of going be an instant martyr?

“The Eucharist is our food and drink, per the Lord’s own directive. Certain saints like Catharine of Siena lived on Him alone for periods of time.  Now we are being starved to death, as if some corrupt government were inducing famine.”

As a priest, I feel saddened for those who have contracted COVID-19, for the increasing number of fatalities. In the daily Mass I now live-stream from my chapel, I pray for those who suffer and those who care for them. Tomorrow, on the solemnity of the Guardian of the Redeemer, I will pray for his protection on us all. I can’t imagine that the God-Man did not get colds, and that His mother or foster father didn’t dote on Him in those sad days.

God knows, whenever we are sick, we feel some measure of isolation, of not wanting to be touched or cared for. In such moments we are particularly united with our Lord upon the Cross. His sense of abandonment was infinitely greater than our own (it was more than a “sense”), even though our own is a small but meaningful share of it.

My honest feelings also include dereliction and guilt. Somebody online quoted Mary Magdalene: “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they laid Him“ (Jn 20:13). Someone else recalled a line from the Song of Songs: “At night I sought him on my heart loves; I sought him but I did not find him” (3:1).

But here’s the thing: I know where He is – He’s in our Tabernacles, and we are not openly encouraged to open them up for public consumption. More often than not, that “public” includes groups of 10 or more! Just now I’m reminded that our Lord had the apostles seat people in groups of fifty upon the miraculous mountain (cf. Lk 9:14).

This city will be consigned to flames because fewer than ten won’t be found (cf. Gen 18:16-33).

Yes, I know where Jesus is. It feels like I’m playing a game of keepaway. Of course I would not refuse giving Holy Communion to someone in dire need, or even someone who asked. But right now we are heading for the times of tumbleweeds gracing our streets.

People have appreciated the service of live-streaming or otherwise recording Masses we say privately, "we" meaning my own bishop and many priests and bishops around the globe. Brother priests: does it feel like exhibitionism to you? Of course we have been doing this for years, because of the many shut-ins in our parishes, but now everybody is a shut-in with respect to the Sacred Synaxis! "You can look but you can’t touch."

Someone said very quickly into our quarantine that this Lent is unique.  We are not just in Lent: we are in Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Tomb time.

The reports suggest this could go on for a long while, and get worse before it gets better, as things usually do. With reports of mobile confessionals, speculation about the validity of telephone confession, and who knows what about the Eucharist Himself, it may be the time for creativity. Our parishes shouldn’t become catacombs just yet. Or should they?

My reading today revealed that the appropriate measure for “social distancing” is 6 feet. Incidentally, that’s how far we’ll be from the nearest human being when we’re buried: 6 feet from their feet. Social distancing is acceptable as a health precaution, but not as a way of life.

I just saw a tweeted opinion that these weeks without widespread access to, and indiscriminate reception of, the Eucharist might increase appreciation for it. We all need to start discerning the Body better (cf. 1 Cor 11:29).

Application of Ash, Implication in Sin

In recent weeks I have requested that parishioners bring in the blessed palms they took home last year.

You might have put those palms behind a holy picture that you gazed upon with mingled devotion, worry, and hopefulness. Or they might have gone into your wallet or purse, where, with similar feelings, you so often reached down to conduct commerce.

Having gathered those palms—with all your hopes and fears and dreams and concerns throughout the year—we now subject the collection to a communal incineration. All that, up in smoke!

If that weren’t enough, having reduced the palms to ashes, we shall further pulverize them and put them on future foreheads next Ash Wednesday as signs and motivators of repentance. Foreheads that renew themselves, on the cellular level, every moment.

The ash administrator immerses his thumb into the mess, smushes it around to get a good coat, and crosses the spot with the reminder of dust-ness and its causes, conditions, and conquests.

Perhaps these virulent times suggest we impose ashes with a device, but we prefer flesh (oh, don’t we?). The sudden inconvenience of contact wouldn’t daunt us from fortifying people with a micro-dose of mortality. The Coronavirus does a good job of that on its own!

The touch is two-way: you get something of my thumb, I of your forehead. Something of you returns on me to the ash-heap. As I press in for another application, your prayers, works, joys, sufferings, and sins mix with the ashes that others will receive.

More concretely, my thumb takes your makeup, dirt, and sweat: all the concealer, the concealed, and the energy channeled toward concealment. Each fingerprinting identifies each recipient as “sinner,” and the sin-ink implicates the persons behind and ahead.

Afterwards I have a hard time getting the ashes off my fingers. Following a bishop’s post-Confirmation custom, I squeeze lemon quarters before washing. How they sting this chronic nail-biter! How others’ faults often exacerbate my own!

Speaking of faults, I might exclaim, “What I go through for you!” until I hear it from the Lord’s lips, or rather see it in His paschal sacrifice.