Fr. Williams and the Grind of Celibacy

May 19, 2012 By Max Lindenman 7 Comments

They say you know you’re getting old when cops start looking like kids. I say you catch your first whiff of your own grave-dirt when priests start looking like kids.

This first occurred to me two years ago, when I attended an ordination ceremony for three new priests of the Diocese of Phoenix. One, whom I’ll call Fr. D, I knew slightly though Communion and Liberation. (Since CL doesn’t ask its members to whistle, or screech, or boil over, or whatever adorable term Opus Dei uses for a formal declaration of commitment, I suppose I’m still a member, even if my last meeting was over a year ago.) Fr. D was about ten years younger than me, and it showed. He smiled constantly, and bounced through his duties with shining eyes, like a sacerdotal Tigger. He revered our bishop — whose head was then being sought by a large section of the public, including many Catholics — as a son reveres his father, and not the father in Sling Blade, either.

One night, I thought I saw Fr. D.’s laddish high spirits assert themselves in an unexpected way. He and I were having drinks with another CL member, a young Italian woman I’ll call Bettina. Bettina was a memora domini, and I rate her decision to consecrate her virginity a sadistic prank on my entire gender. In her person, she combined the fawnlike grace of Audrey Hepburn with the dark smolder of Irene Pappas, and — oh, never mind. You get the idea. Anyway, emboldened by the beer, Father and I started practicing our Italian. Both of us, it quickly emerged, would have had to spend a year under the Tuscan sun before we could speak the language like Tonto spoke English. I myself have exactly 50 phrases to my name, every one of them incorporating some dysphemism for “penis” or “testicles.” Given the nature of the company, that left me all but mute.

But on at least one point of usage, I was ahead of Father. He addressed Bettina as Doña. “That’s Spanish,” I told him, taking no pain to sound like anything but a big, pedantic jerk. Just then, for the briefest of moments, Fr. D shot me a look of profound irritation and profound contempt. “What a weenie you are,” it said. As it disappeared, it took with it one of my childish illusions. Just because a man has formally sworn off sex, doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy basking in the good opinion of women. Even if Father barred the vestibule of his mind to the slightest thought of jumping Bettina’s lovely bones, being corrected in front of her could still bruise his masculine amour-propre.

This week, the world got a much more compelling reminder of just how unnatural it is for a fully-equipped man to make himself into a eunuch for the Kingdom of Heaven. Scholar, TV commentator and Legionary of Christ Fr. Thomas Williams confessed to fathering a love-child, and announced he is leaving public ministry for a year. Though Williams says the child’s mother was neither a student of his nor under his spiritual direction, a report made to the Vatican by a former Legion priest alleges Williams did carry on affairs with students at Rome’s Regina Apostolorum University, where Williams served as an instructor.

Though Williams has comported himself as a model of contrition — no histrionics, no conspiracy theorizing or cries of “Help, help! I’m being repressed!” — it’s still stomach-turning news. Many among the faithful are embittered. After reading some of the posts in Deacon Greg Kandra’s combox, a priest felt moved to plead for understanding on Williams’ behalf. He writes: “[Williams] is human – weak – vulnerable – and I bet lonely; and to that, I can personally relate.” Without trivializing Williams’ offenses, or the pain and embarassment they’ve inflicted on countless people, this man can guess all too easily at some of the reasons he committed them.

“To the average person,” writes sociologist and former Benedictine priest A.W. Richard Sipe, the “perfect and perpetual continence” required of priests by Canon 277 “poses a seemingly impossible task.” He adds: “No researcher so far has assessed that more than 50 percent of Roman Catholic clergy at any one time are in fact practicing celibacy.” If these studies are accurate, and unless anyone wants do away with mandatory clerical celibacy, then the time seems ripe to accept a paradox. For many priests, the “daily dying to himself…for the love of Christ and His Kingdom” prescribed in Sacerdotalis Caelibatus is an on-again, off-again thing in practice. At some point since his ordination, the guy presiding over Mass in your parish may have slept with someone. He may even have fallen in love.

For some people the implications of such a thought are as stark as they are obvious: Father is nothing but a hypocrite and a son of a bitch. In some cases, this judgment could be fair enough. Even if Canon 277 didn’t exist, using priestly clout to talk someone into the sack would be as unethical as a doctor’s seduction of a patient. It might also signal a predatory turn of mind. But status within the Church doesn’t always translate to power within a relationship. When Milwaukee archbishop Rembert Weakland began an affair with theology student Paul Marcoux, he found his hierarch’s prestige no match for Marcoux’s ruthlessness. Very quickly, Marcoux began squeezing him for money; in writing to refuse, and to end the relationship, Weakland was reduced to pleading.

Weakland’s subsequent use of archdiocesan funds to pay off Marcoux when Marcoux threatened a a lawsuit was shameful. I am not among those who would dignify him as a tragic hero, especially not if he allowed his experience with Marcoux to prejudice him against minors who alleged sexual abuse on the part of Milwaukee priests. But in his sign-off letter to Marcoux, Weakland spoke of his celibate vocation as one who’d gained a deeper understanding of it:

During the last months I have come to know how strained I was … I just did not seem to be honest with God. I felt I was fleeing from Him, from facing Him. I know what the trouble was: I was letting your conscience take over for me and I couldn’t live with it. I felt like the world’s worst hypocrite. So gradually I came back to the importance of celibacy in my life … I knew I would have to face up to it and take seriously that commitment I first made thirty-four years ago.

It’s tempting to read this cynically — as the desperate words of a man trying to wiggle out of an uncomfortable situation. But in his renewed appreciation for the exclusivity God demands, Weakland sounds very much like the nun quoted by Sally Cline in Women, Passion and Celibacy. Referring to her “romantic” involvement with another nun, the woman said: that the worst thing “(though at times it seemed the best) [was] the intense focus on each other.” She sounds like she knows what it means to farm out the work of her conscience.

I found that quote from Cline’s book in another book, Kathleen Norris’ The Cloister Walk. Norris interviews Benedictine sisters extensively on celibacy, and most agree that falling in love represents an irreplacable part of their formation as celibates. “The worst sin against celibacy,” one prioress said, “is to pretend not to have any affections at all, To fall in love is celibacy at work.” She concludes, “Celibacy is a vow to put up all our feelings, acceptable or not, up to our hearts and put them into consciousness through prayer.”

She’s talking about love in general, not about sex specifically. It’s unclear just how many priests in that 50-plus percent actually love the people they’re breaking their vows with. Nevertheless, just as many nuns Norris interviewed learned the true meaning of celibacy only after they’d fallen in love (usually at a distance, and with a priest), it seems to have taken a sexual relationship to teach Weakland the same lesson. Or, to put it in more negative, AA-type terms, some may need to hit rock bottom before they can begin the climb up.

For Weakland, that lesson came at a very steep price to many people. If Williams decides to remain in the priesthood, the same will be said for him. Forgiving them may be possible only through gritted teeth. But while we’re gritting, let’s spare some sympathetic and admiring thoughts for all those priests whose falls have been less expensive (and, if it needs saying, with persons over the age of consent). According to the bulk of the evidence, answering the call to lifelong contienence is exhausting and enormously difficult — as difficult as Fr. D must have found resisting the call to deck me.

The Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington bears the inscription: “Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God.” Given the Church’s general preference for secrecy, I’d like to build a monument to the unknown, imperfect celibate. It would, of course, be an obelisk, and it would stand next to the entrance of some popular basilica. Incised in the base would be these words:

“AT SPOTS LIKE THESE HAVE STOOD IN TARNISHED GLORY MANY SINNERS, KNOWN BUT TO GOD, TO WHOMEVER THEY WERE CANOODLING, AND IN SOME CASES, TO WHOEVER HAS ACCESS TO THE FILES IN THE CHANCERY. THEY DID THEIR BEST.”

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A Confession About Confessions

May 1, 2012 By Max Lindenman 11 Comments

It’s a shame I wasn’t in a church with an open confessional last Saturday. I would very much like to have seen the look on the priest’s face when I told him, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been…oh, about 15 minutes since my last confession.”

It’s not that I’d committed any fresh outrages since being dismissed with the Lord’s pardon and peace. I just realized, as I stepped out of the church, into the courtyard with the statue of the Holy Family looking very nuclear and very functional, that I’d omitted something. False modesty aside, it was pretty serious, this thing I’d done. It was also pretty recent — just over three weeks old, by my calcuations. Getting it off my conscience, even at the expense of adding to the confessor’s workload (and making myself look like a scrupulous seven-year-old) just seemed like the right thing to do.

Sherlock Holmes conceived of the brain as “a little empty attic.” To fill it with important things or junk was every person’s decision to make. Ih this, Conan Doyle’s character was anticipating theories of working memory, the system by which new information is stored until it can be assimilated into long-term memory. Most researchers agree that working memory’s capacity is indeed limited — a good excuse for note pads and databases. It requires concsious volition. When I first began studying Russian, our professor told us, “Povtorenie — mat’ ucheniya,” or “repetition is the mother of learning.” Then he made us repeat it until we cursed our own mothers for bringing us into the world.

Mentally compiling a list of my sins for next confession, I make use of this system. The encoding process is pretty simple: I tell myself, “That was a sin, what you just did. A sin, get it? A sin! A mortal sin!” With few exceptions — that high crime I caught on one hop last week being one — it works just fine. Examining my conscience while waiting for the confessional light to change from red to green feels like flipping through a well-highlighted textbook in the minutes before an exam.

But now I find myself wondering: What kinds of sins I earmark? Do some offend me particularly? Do I let others slide? Sure enough, after some soul-searching, I’ve come to glimpse the faintest outlines of a pattern.

Sins I Always Confess

Anything to do with sex. This is a no-brainer. It’s in her teachings on what some archly call “pelvic issues” that the Catholic Church stands out most sharply against the backdrop of the world. Being a convert, the scope of my vision thoroughly conditioned by worldly values, I couldn’t ignore that contrast if I tried. Speaking of contrasts, for a person of my age, in my state of life, sexual sins represent a departure from routine too dramatic to forget. If any of my confessors thinks he heard a note of triumph in my voice when I finked on myself for breaking a rule covered under Question 154 (Articles 2-6) of Summa Theologica, he needn’t get his hearing checked.

Sins of the imagination. In contrast to — and in compensation for — my humdrum daily existence, I lead a fantasy life that would have given Walter Mitty a heart attack. Most of my daydreams are morally neutral, or even benevolent. In my own head, I ride bulls, publish in The New Yorker, meet famous people at cocktail parties and find they are shorter than I. Sometimes, when I have trouble falling asleep, I imagine the Mormons forming their own republic and conquering Arizona, which they rename South Deseret. The tone is by no means anti-Mormon: their side wins because of their troops’ superb discripline and high morale. Every once in a while, I’ll have Napoleon Dynamite distinguish himself in action and return to Preston a hero.

But whenever daydreaming serves as a sop for frustration or boredom, it’s inevitable that some of the scenes will turn out not to be so nice. I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong — my bad thoughts usually aren’t the sexy kind. I’m much more likely to imagine blowing some obnoxious jerk’s head off from a clock tower than I am being blown. Since my imagination is very vivid, this makes confession into an imperative. Once a fellow has heard the tinkling of brass shell casings on a concrete floor and seen the pink mist, he starts to feel kind of dirty inside.

Being mean to people. The bumper sticker’s right. Mean people do suck. That includes me.

Anything that makes a good story. Say what you like against newfangled verbs derived from newfangled nouns; “narrativize,” which Oxforddictionaries.com defines as “present or interpret…in the form of a narrative,” describes the way I prefer to indict myself. First comes the backstory — the reasons for the argument with so-and-so that led me to call her by a four-letter word. Then, in a neat, vivid mise en scène, comes the action. Chugging along behind, like a caboose, is a quick analysis. I won’t swear this approach makes the confessor’s job any easier, but I can’t remember the last time one has troubled me with any follow-up questions.

This impulse to narrativize has driven me to confess some things that, apparently, weren’t so bad after all. In the past, I spent Wednesday evenings serving dinner at a homeless shelter called Andre House. Most of the other volunteers, I’m sorry to say, I found insufferable. In one especially sticky summer gloaming, when we were crammed ass to navel in the kitchen and dining area, I decided I could stand it no longer, hung up my apron, and slunk out the exit. On my way down the outside steps, I turned and saw the homeless, waiting to be admitted for their meal. Despite the misters and the shade of the nylon canopy, none of them looked very comfy or happy.

When I confessed this failure of charity the following Saturday, my pastor shrugged and told me I’d done a better job than the rich man in Luke’s Gospel, who ignored Lazarus. At least I’d recognized Christ in the face of the poor, even if I didn’t do much about it. The token penance he gave me — offering up my next Mass or something like that — felt like a gold star.

What do I leave out? Well, everything else, I guess. If I were being really meticulous, I could probably confess to gluttony. I don’t eat that much — $75 can feed me for three weeks — but a lot of what I eat is crap. In fact, I buy crap precisely because it’s cheap. Besides, my best friend, Rick, is a born-again foodie who can’t shut the organic fudge up for five minutes about how 51% of his diet consists of raw vegetables, or how dried cranberries and cruelty-free oats make up the real breakfast of champions. If God is just, then listening to him is punishment enough.

Pride? I’d throw it in there, but even while feeling it, I recognize it as a very small fig leaf for a bulging package of self-loathing. Modesty demands I wear it. Envy? Good grief, if I couldn’t envy people, I’d have no way of relating to them at all. Really, God, no man is an island.

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Another Priest Weighs in Against Blessing Kids

April 12, 2012 By Max Lindenman 42 Comments

After reading Fr. Cory Sticha’s opinion piece on blessing kids in the Communion line, I wrote a priest friend to ask his own opinion. It turned out that the gentleman — who describes himself as a “fearless truth-teller, defender of orthodoxy, voice of decency in a decadent age and living, breathing affront to relativists everywhere” — has some very pronounced views on the sujbect:

Kids. Can’t stand ‘em. Monsters of ego, every one. You know how you can tell a kid from a leech? That’s a trick question: you can’t. Well, actually, you can. If a leech gets hold of you, you can burn it off with a Bic lighter. Try that with a kid, and sure as you’re born, the little bastard will scream and cry like a Templar at the stake. Then he’ll tell his parents and you’ll get a nasty letter from your vicar general.

Small wonder nobody wants to have ‘em anymore. They’re plumb useless. In the old days, you could put ‘em to work — small hands were made for cleaning out machinery. You could send one off to the army, to be a drummer, or to the navy, to be a powder monkey. If the kid was a girl, you could marry it off, although I’m sure those dowries tended to eat into the old retirement fund. I’m not sure I completely hold with that dothead practice of eighty-sixing girl children, but then, every man of affairs has to cut down on his overhead somehow. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

So, I take it upon myself, as a pastor and catechist, to strip these little maggots of any illusions about the world, specifically, about their own significance in it. Whenever one tells me, “Good morning, Father,” I’ll ask, “What have you done for me lately?” Or I’ll say, “You want it to be a good morning? Wash my car. That’d be good.” And then, to drive home the point — because, God knows, this is an ignorant generation — I’ll flip the bird.

I think it’s a shame that bullying’s gotten such a bad name lately. It’s a useful practice. First, it serves as a sop for kids’ ambient annoyingness; every hour that kids spend picking on each other is an hour they don’t spend bothering me. Second, it teaches kids deference to people bigger than themselves, which may be the only hedge against complete anarchy. Finally, it inculcates values. If there were no bullies, how would kids know that being ugly or fat or a homo is a bad thing? If you just said, “From their parents,” then by all means, let’s check your credit so we can get you into that beachfront condo in Yuma, Arizona with all deliberate speed.

Blessing kids in the Communion line? I found a way to put an end to that particular brand of post-Conciliar idiocy. My friend Dave, a Navigator in the K of C who sings tenor in the choir, picks off the grubs with a wrist rocket. Nothing makes for good catechesis like a stainless-steel ball-bearing in the face. How the Council Fathers at Trent failed to come up with that one I’ll never know — they must have been having an off day.

Every now and then, some hand-wringing liberal sob sister will try to argue that Jesus loved kids. I always tell ‘em the same thing: “Screw you, buddy, and the hybrid car you rode in on. Did Jesus pick any kids to be His Apostles? I don’t think so. When He raised that kid from the dead, did He mollycoddle her with a lot of baby talk? Hell, no; He told her, “GET UP!”, plain and ugly. I’m sure his next words were, “Make yourself useful — set the damn table, or I’ll take the skin off your ass.” If the Son of Man was Mr. Rogers, then how come you never see him in a cardigan sweater? Riddle me that, Batman.

Hey, I’m sold. I’ve decided, however, not to disclose Father’s full name or his whereabouts. He sounds awfully prophetic, and we all know what happens to prophets.

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