Christian Calamities: A Taste of the South to Help You Choke on America

Last updated on: October 26, 2016 at 12:29 pm By Jennifer Fitz

There’s been pearl-clutching in odd quarters ever since Pastor Mark Burns, a South Carolinian, delivered his benediction on the Republican party. I am not a Republican and I won’t be voting for Trump, and I don’t think you should either. I am dismayed by the weaselly justifications some of my fellow Christians are spouting these days in their support for the GOP candidate.

Still, it amuses me that the professionally-impious are suddenly offended on our Lord’s behalf for what is, as I will show below, a fairly run-of-the-mill genre of prayer here in the South. We’ll fisk the prayer, using the transcript from Think Progress, and chat about Southern culture and the state of the Union in the process.

First, let’s talk about the South.

***

The other week a homeschool mom asked in a discussion group for advice on which neighborhoods in her new city we other Catholic homeschoolers recommended. An animated discussion ensued. Residents each touted the benefits of their own part of the metro area. There was nothing we could do to help, really, until we knew the poor woman better: The various neighborhoods each represented some five or six completely distinct Southern sub-cultures, and that’s just among white people, and just in one particular city.

If you want a food metaphor, the South is a heaped up plate from the all-you-can-eat BBQ buffet, assorted cooking juices running together, and no we don’t want the sauce they use where you come from.

If you want a historical perspective, imagine for a moment the diversity of dialect and class and regional culture of the British Isles. Now imagine that the problem children of all those different places decided to strike camp and go open up their own country, only someplace where the soil is anemic and the mosquitoes are vigorous.

If the prospect of Downton Abbey meets Lord of the Flies appeals to you, you’ll fit in just fine.

***

I know nothing of Pastor Mark Burns, but I recognized his prayer. Southern Evangelical culture has its own prayer forms, and he was sticking to form. His critics, in letting themselves get distracted by what is essentially genre-poetry, have missed the message.

We’ll go line by line and parse out what’s there for the educated reader. Again, we’re working from the transcript at Think Progress:

Hello Republicans! I’m Pastor Mark Burns from the great state of South Carolina! I’m going to pray and I’m going to give the benediction.

If you want a group of Catholics to pray, the best thing to do is raise your hand to your forehead and loudly and forcibly intone In the name of the Father . . .. It’s pretty usual for Evangelicals to open with some front matter before they launch into the prayer itself.

And you know why? Because we are electing a man in Donald Trump who believes in the name of Jesus Christ.

I will err on the side of charity in not quibbling with that assertion (please vote third party this fall). The cultural point to note is that Southerners don’t feel obliged to shuffle their feet and mumble, “Aw, shucks,” about their faith. What seems like brazen self-promotion to an outsider is just a simple statement of fact. Because our faith is integral to who we are and everything we do, mentioning it at a major life moment is par for the course.

And Republicans, we got to be united because our enemy is not other Republicans — but is Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.

People are really upset that the pastor would say this. Well, it’s not something about the South, other than that the man is willing to say it openly and not feel the need to act all neutral and diplomatic. This is something about America, and also something about the people Pastor Burns represents, and it’s just a fact: What Hillary Clinton stands for is in opposition to nearly everything that the Trump-Burns people stand for (pork barreling and corporate favoritism aside).

Hillary Clinton’s policy goals are completely contrary to the social and political and philosophical priorities of, say, the average South Carolina voter who will almost certainly vote for Trump (though I wish they wouldn’t). So yes, she’s an enemy. She and her political fellows are quite open about their willingness to force their goals on the unwilling. If that’s not inimical, I’m not sure what is.

Now the prayer starts:

Let’s pray together. Father God, in the name of Jesus, Lord we’re so thankful for the life of Donald Trump.

This is formula. You open a prayer by giving thanks for the person, place, or thing that you are praying about. When I open a class in this genre of prayer, it almost always begins, “Thank you Lord for gathering us here today, for each and every one of us that you have brought together in the class . . .” or some similar thing. It’s the default opening in this literary form.

If your sanctity is up to it, you’d do the same if you were praying for Barack Obama, though probably with a pointed observation that what you’re truly thankful for is God’s Sovereign and Inscrutable Will. (Unless, of course, you could stand the man.)

We’re thankful that you are guiding him, the you are giving him the words to unite this party, this country,

This part upsets people. The false inference is that we’re setting up Trump as God’s Annointed in some particular, almost Christological way. There are two much more likely inferences to be made:

Trump’s leadership of the party is being recognized as something God has in fact allowed, per the Biblical injunction to pray for those whom God has set upon the throne.

Since Burns is a Trump-supporter, this might not be quite what he was going for. More likely:

He is holding to the opinion that everything a Christian does is part of answering our vocations. Whether it’s the time we wake up in the morning, or what we eat for dinner, or what job we do and how well we do it, it’s a commonplace of Christian spiritually that we ought to strive to do everything with God and for God.

The reference to uniting the party and the country is probably aspirational.

. . . that we together can defeat the liberal Democratic Party,

This is what the Republican Party is hoping to do this fall. In Evangelical culture, humility is not expressed by pretending at indifference. You just tell God what you want, done. That’s how you pray. It would be considered affected, in the worst kind of way, to fake like you really didn’t care what God did when in fact you were asking God to answer a specific request.

. . . to keep us divided and not united.

Evidence that the reference to Trump uniting the party was clearly a hope and not an established fact. Evangelicals aren’t afraid to boldly approach the Throne of Grace and ask for miracles.

Because we are the United States of America, and we are the conservative party under God.

Slight nuance here, in that, unlike above with respect to Trump’s leadership, here the prayer is talking more about how the petitioner sees himself and those he represents.

This is very typical in this genre of prayer. If you were praying for a job, you might include mention of how you are working hard to support your family. If you were praying for help on an exam, you might include mention of how you are striving to be a good student, or trying to improve your lot in life, or trying to get your parents off your back for once.

It’s not hubris in this genre, it’s childlike petition to the Heavenly Father, and picks up on the same things kids say when asking for things. (“We’ve been good all day long, and cleaned our room, can we please have ice cream . . ..”) In this literary form, the self-identification can be affirming or contrite. (“I know I don’t deserve it, but . . ..”)

It is unsurprising that men like Donald Trump and Mark Burns show a surfeit of confidence here. They didn’t get where they are now by wallowing in self-doubt.

To defeat every attack that comes against us, to protect the life of Donald Trump, give him the words, give him the space, give him the power and the authority to be the next President of the United States of America,

And again, we conclude by naming the specific requests. Outsiders can wrongly infer that Pastor Burns is committing the sin of pride in the worst kind of way. Quite the the contrary: This series of petitions is specifically acknowledging the need for, and thus requesting, divine assistance.

Burns and Trump might be the most conceited, pride-ridden men you ever met (or not), but the form of the prayer is just how you ask for things in this genre. If I ask Evangelical friends to pray for my health, or that I wouldn’t yell at my kids, or that the stupid fire ants would notice I put Amdro out and leave my house alone, they’ll likely include invocations of this sort.

[Pause now and try it, if you like. Thanks. I really want those ants gone before my kids’ birthday party on Saturday.]

in Jesus’ name

Evangelicals usually invoke just the name of Jesus rather than the Holy Trinity by title. There’s no particular theological implication in that difference, it’s mostly just customary.

Evangelicals place great importance (rightly) on a willingness to boldly proclaim the faith in all circumstances. Unlike more diplomatic-folk, Evangelicals generally won’t bat an eye at invoking the Holy Name in a mixed-faith audience. If you didn’t want a Christian prayer, why’d you ask a Christian to pray it? It’s not like it’s any mystery what the good pastor’s theological predilections are.

— if you believe it, shout Amen!

And finally, a boisterously-expressed faith is not considered (necessarily) showmanship. To understand this, imagine your utter confusion if you saw some ordinary Catholic genuflect upon entering the pew, then kneel to pray in silence, and a bystander accused that person of “showing off” or being “holier than thou” because of those actions.

It’s just what people in that Christian subculture do. Evangelicals consider the call for a rousing vocal assent to a prayer to be no more inherently prideful than Catholics closing a prayer with the Sign of the Cross.

What New Thing Can We Learn from This Prayer?

The chief lesson to be gleaned from this prayer is the one you’ve probably already learned on Facebook: Christians are throwing in their lot with Trump.

I wish they wouldn’t, but given the extent to which fidelity to the GOP has seeped into Christian culture over the past fifty years or so, it’s not a surprise so much as one more gut-wrenching disappointment. No matter how distinctive our way of expressing it, American Christians, whether Catholic or Evangelical, have pretty much sopped up the values of the wider culture.

We aren’t a people who stand apart in our city on a hill. We’re not just in the world, we’re very firmly of it.

Be mortified. Pray, fast, beg for mercy.

Artwork: Fresco of the north dome at the library of Altenburg Abbey (Lower Austria) by Paul Troger (1742): Theology and Jurisprudence, photo by Uoaei1 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Behind the Scenes in Catholic Blogging

Last updated on: July 18, 2016 at 1:38 pm By Jennifer Fitz

It is no surprise, given the violence and destruction the enemy is wreaking in the physical world, that the Church would likewise be under vicious attack. I’d like to address some questions readers have about professional Catholic blogging, and before I begin, here’s a passage of Scripture I think sets the right framework for us:

3 Whoever teaches something different and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the religious teaching 4 is conceited, understanding nothing, and has a morbid disposition for arguments and verbal disputes. From these come envy, rivalry, insults, evil suspicions, 5 and mutual friction among people with corrupted minds, who are deprived of the truth, supposing religion to be a means of gain.

1 Timothy 6:3-5

Some time ago I received an e-mail from the general editor of a reputable orthodox Catholic publisher, complimenting me on a piece I’d written here at Patheos and asking me if I had any doubts about or conflicts with the Catholic faith. He wrote:

Loved the article. I really appreciated the good humor coupled with catechesis.
I am curious about your general perspective on Church teaching – is there anything you disagree with or struggle with?

I replied:

I’m glad you enjoyed it!

I’ve got absolutely no disagreements or struggles with Church teaching, other than the usual problem of making myself live up to my ideals. I’m sympathetic to those who do have difficulty with the faith, though, and I certainly try to write knowing that I’ve got a secondary audience of non-Catholics and barely-Catholics eavesdropping on the blog.

I see my primary mission at Patheos as being the support team for the faithful-middle of Catholics who want to follow Church teaching, but who are constantly being pushed away from the faith by friends, family, and the pressure of the wider culture, and who don’t always have the words to explain why we believe as we do. I try to give people the words they need to make sense of their faith and share it with others.

I guess with the mixed readership, it’s really a twofold mission: Keeping people from veering to the edge of the narrow road, and offering a way out of the ditch for those who have fallen off of it.

That’s what I do here and elsewhere in my work as a writer and teacher, whether it be online, on paper, in the classroom, or in ordinary life. My absolute standard for evaluating my own writing and anyone else’s is: Is this work consistent with the Catholic faith?

I’m obviously not afraid to get all First Things on you and run a guest piece from a non-Catholic writer who has something relevant to say to my readers that is consistent with the big-C Catholic faith. My JenFitz_Reads twitter account includes Catholic and non-Catholic work, and often includes links I don’t agree with entirely, but which do contain ideas worth knowing about. But in all things, the goal is always and every time to point the reader towards a more Catholic understanding of the world.

That’s my background. I say that so you understand the standard I am setting as I answer other questions that have been posed lately about Catholic blogging.

Q: Why would a faithfully-Catholic writer publish with non-Catholic, inter-faith, or heterodox venues?

Some Catholic writers won’t do this, and those writers have no need to justify such a decision. It behooves those of who do publish on places like Patheos to justify our presence among the infidels, as it were.

The answer is simple: We’d like there to be a Catholic voice in the public forum.

This is why you’ll see faithful Catholics in the bylines of major secular newspapers and magazines, publishing with secular publishers, or appearing on popular mass-media radio or television shows.

The decision to accept a job for a non-Catholic or even a heterodox-catholic venue is not a blessing of every bit of content that venue produces, nor even a blessing of the overall tone and aim of the place. It’s not a suggestion that you, the faithfully-Catholic audience, would do well to watch or read at such places. Be selective in the media you consume and how much of it you consume.

One of the advantages of blogging, however, is that my readers can read my work here at Patheos without having to sift through or pay for any other content — in that way, it’s similar to writing books. If I publish in a traditional magazine or newspaper, or behind the firewall at a pay-to-read publication, you the reader have to buy in all-or-nothing. Here on Patheos, you’re free to be selective about which columns you read, and subscribe only to those you find most beneficial.

Your soul is invaluably precious. There’s no obligation in the Christian life to browse around unguided. It’s okay to err on the side of caution and read only those columnists that you learn about from links at 100% reliable sources. When you find a columnist you like, subscribe to their blog via e-mail or Feedly. Doing so lets you build a completely faith-friendly online magazine that builds up your spiritual life.

See below for my short list of good places to read that won’t steer you wrong.

Q: Is the Catholic Channel at Patheos 100% faithful to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church?

Good question. I don’t read everything that gets written on the channel, and I don’t personally know all the other Catholic bloggers here. I don’t even know who they all are (because I’ve never looked).

I do know that the Catholic Channel has always been home to certain writers who are both keen to be authentically Catholic and also fond of probing around the edges of the narrow road to see just how far it goes. That’s a practice that will sometimes land you in the ditch.

I also know that we have writers who tend to emphasize a certain contrarian response to popular orthodox-Catholic culture, and thus have a knack for making themselves sound like complete heretics when really no, they are not, that’s just their gift.

I furthermore know there are also writers like myself who will sometimes openly engage in theological speculation, and other times in our ignorance speculate without even knowing we’re speculating.

We likewise engage in rank punditry, in which we take a position on a question which Catholics of good will are free to disagree about. Patheos isn’t your catechism class.

All that said, I’m not above calling out so-called Catholic theologians, writers, and others who use their position to assert claims contrary to the Catholic faith. You should not be afraid of doing so either. When someone’s just plain wrong, prove them wrong. Please.

I’d suggest you do so with as much decorum and unassailable logic as you can manage, because otherwise you end up looking sorta dumb. I hate it when that happens.

Q: Why are Catholic bloggers such awful people?

Do you listen at Church on Sundays? We public Catholics are just as wretchedly in need of our Lord and Savior as anyone else. Some of us come across as very holy on the Internet, but really we aren’t, I promise you. Some of us splash our sins publicly, and in private are better people than you’d suspect. And there a few public Catholics who really are saints.

The willingness to speak about the faith in public is not a declaration that we are holy, it’s a declaration that God is holy.

I strongly encourage you to read only those sources which help you grow in the faith, and avoid those which either lead you astray or provoke your weaknesses. I encourage you, when you read someone whose work is particularly edifying, to resist the urge to assume you’re reading the writings of a saint. You might be or you might not be, you really don’t know.

Q: How do you get paid?

Different publications pay freelance writers in different ways. Books usually pay via royalties. The author gets a percentage of sales, so the more the book sells, the more the author earns. Magazines and newspapers usually pay a modest lump sum and that’s it, and then the publication keeps or eats the difference between what it cost to pay the writers and what came into the coffers via subscriptions and advertising revenue.

FYI: When I’ve written for an online magazine I’ve been paid as for a paper-magazine. So just because you read something for free online doesn’t mean it’s a blog. Some of what you read in the professional Catholic new media are true magazine-type arrangements, and some of them are blogging-type contracts.

Paid blogging is a bit of a hybrid between books and magazines. Like magazines and newspapers, the bulk of the revenue for the publication comes from the support of advertisers. Unlike paper-based magazines and newspapers, online sources are much less constrained in how many words they can afford to print. There’s thus an advantage in taking a risk on less-popular writers, so long as they generate at least enough traffic to pay for server space.

As a result, the typical arrangement is that the writer gets paid based on the page-views and/or advertising clicks on their own personal writing. There are different ways this gets structured, just as book or magazine contracts vary in their structures. You don’t need to worry, though, that The Vicious Heretic over on the Apostate Channel is getting a percentage of my page-views, and therefore you can’t click my article. You the reader only fund the writers whose work you read.

(Patheos Inc., just like every other publication in the whole world, only survives as a viable business because they are generating revenue from somewhere — so yes, clicking on me does pay the behind-the-scenes people who make it possible for me to write here. When you click on my personal site, you indirectly help to pay the people who keep that server running. When you join my blog discussion group on Facebook, you help support all the people who keep Facebook running. I don’t actually own my own servers anywhere, I’m not technical that way.)

Keep in mind, as I describe this, that a lot of Catholic writing gets done for free. Because we have other motivations than pure profit, many of us will contribute to a book, magazine, or blog at no charge, in those situations where our state in life allows (or even requires).

We public Catholics tend to keep quiet about it because we don’t want to undercut the necessarily-paid work that is needed to pay the mortgage and grocery and medical bills that keep Catholic speakers and writers alive, but many of us do have a multi-tiered salary rule. I have a personal rule that if your diocesan newspaper or parish bulletin wants to run a reprint off my blog, that’s a yes, no charge. I can’t afford to give away all my writing all the time, but I do some pro-bono writing and most other Catholic writers do as well.

This is the same as the way other professionals donate some portion of their services to good causes. Most Catholics serve their own parish by doing some work at no charge that they might also do for pay in other contexts.

–> Please do not pester Catholic writers for free work, just answering requests sucks up time they need to spend supporting their family or religious order. But don’t assume that everything you see in print is a pixel-colored goldmine. It just isn’t.

FYI, most Catholic blogging is done for free.

Q: Which are the very best Catholic blogs out there?

Of course humans are fallible, but of everything in my feed-reader, these below have proven consistently, solidly, faithfully Catholic over the years:

I’ve left off a lot of excellent sources but which tend to ignite sparks here and there, because I know that for many people, social media is a near occasion of the sins of anger and rash judgement. The short list is written with that particular concern in mind.

The shortlist isn’t a canonization or a fullproof guarantee. Julie Davis engages the wider culture extensively, and you probably shouldn’t watch every movie she watches. One of the great things about Julie’s blog is that she sifts through the noise to bring you the true, beautiful, and good so that you don’t have to.

I’ve also undoubtedly left off some must-reads in my haste to quick slap up a few names to get you started. Feel free to add your own recommendations over at the discussion group. But this shortlist are all writers who won’t steer you far wrong, even if you are the sort who needs to be very selective about what you read. Among the mega-players, Word on Fire would be my go-to.

I’m not saying don’t reading anything else. I read all kinds of other stuff, and recommend it generally.

Q: What’s today’s picture?

That’s St. Justin Martyr. The image is via Wikimedia, from the public domain.

Are You a Writer or a Content-Provider? There’s a Conference for That

Last updated on: May 28, 2016 at 11:31 am By Jennifer Fitz

Catholic Writers Conference Live Logo

So let me tell you a funny story about why you should consider going to this year’s Catholic Writers Conference Live.

Fellow Catholic Patheosi Kate O’Hare shared a link to an article about clickbait-mills over at Slate, “Dear Journalists: For the Love of God, Please Stop Calling Your Writing Content.”

The gist of the article is this: The label “content” is used as a catch-all for the loads of shoddy garbage that the internet spews out daily in the never-ending quest for ad revenue. Therefore, the essayist urges writers not to lump their own good work in with that drivel by accepting the term “content” to describe what they do.

Now here’s the funny story:

I’m an accountant, MBA, did great in b-school (awards from professors and stuff), came of age reading the Wall Street Journal. Thinking about business is one of my hobbies.

I’m also a writer. I’ve been writing since as long as I could write, both as a hobby and sometimes-profession. I was the person people tapped at work to do the writing things. I was also the girl filling notebook after notebook with personal writing in every spare moment, alternately amusing and mystifying the relatives.

So you would think that a person whose two interests are business and writing would be a natural at just instinctively understanding the business of writing.

Oh goodness you would be so wrong.

When I showed up at my first Catholic Writers Conference (online, in my case — it would be some years before I made it to a live conference), I had no clue. None. Patient instructors had to explain everything to me.

Once I was clued in, it all clicked. But someone had to tell me. The writing part of your brain — the part that just wants to tell stories and write poems and play with words — that part doesn’t necessarily connect with the making-a-living part of your brain. The Catholic Writers Guild is the place where I learned to put those two halves together and turn writing into something that’s more than just a hobby.

(It’s not my full-time profession right now, but that’s mostly because I have a different full-time vocation that takes precedence.)

So here’s the funny thing about the Slate article: I think of my work as very good content, but content it is. It’s my job to deliver what the reader hungers for — little meals of words.

Books don’t just pop out of the magic book machine. You have to write what people long to read, because the readers have to want it enough to be willing to pay for printing and layout and editing and the author’s time. None of that is cheap, because all the humans involved in producing a book have to drum up food and shelter and hopefully even clothing for themselves.

The internet isn’t free. Someone has to pay for the website and the tech support and in some cases even some editing. Blogging and other social media do fairly well as ad-sponsored venues (same as newspapers and magazines), but the advertisers aren’t philanthropists. They are people who partner with writers and editors in the hopes that by putting our respective products in front of the reader at the same time, the reader will both enjoy the writing and take a glance at the work of the sponsors who make that writing possible.

And thus my job: Deliver the content. Content is the stuff that people want to read. It’s the stuff that makes you come back for more. You don’t walk into a bookstore in order to pick up a wad of paper. You go looking for content: The ideas that the paper contains that are worth your time and money.

I agree with the author at Slate, good writing is in no way the same thing as that horrible clickbait certain sites churn out. But in a weird way, learning to think about my writing as content has made all of it more satisfying. Even when I’m tapping out some horribly written, plot-thin novel for my own entertainment, I can see it now for what it is, and appreciate it for what it is. Who is this for? What purpose does it serve? What value does it bring to the world?

All writing answers those questions.

I’m forever grateful to the Catholic Writers Guild for being the place where I learned to really think about my writing and learn to put it into the place in my vocation where I think it belongs. If you like to write, check out this summer’s conference and see if you think it’ll be helpful.

Related:

Here’s my article at Aleteia in advance of this spring’s Online Conference, “Online Catholic Writers Conference Seeks to Revive Catholic Arts and Letters: Guild helps put writers, agents and publishers together.”
Here’s me talking about everything the Catholic Writers Guild has done for me.

You can learn more about joining the Catholic Writers Guild here.

CWCL Logo courtesy of the Catholic Writers Conference Live.

Engraving: Young woman operating a Sholes and Glidden typewriter, from “The Type Writer” Scientific American 6 (27). August 1872, by Ten Eyck N.Y. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Trump vs. Clinton and the Triumph of Democracy

Last updated on: May 9, 2016 at 3:27 pm By Jennifer Fitz

The egregious slate of presidential candidates we’re being offered this year is an understandable cause for concern. A question worth considering is whether the two-party system, or some other aspect of American political structures, is to blame for this state of affairs.

Meanwhile, as he considers a separate but related question, Timothy Scott Reeves, who sometimes guest blogs here, writes:

For me, THE core value is the understanding of my neighbor as someone made in the image of God. Abortion and euthanasia deny this reality. They commodify people. Racism is of the same spirit…and so is misogyny. They devalue other persons by making them mere objects. That is Trump’s modus operandi, and Hillary’s too.

Connecting the two issues, and surveying the culture around us, I can only come to one conclusion: Democracy in America is working very, very well.

***

A fair number of readers here live in the steady company of faithful Catholics and other Christian disciples. The effort to surround ourselves with good influences and to occupy our time with worthwhile pursuits, combined perhaps with a disposition towards always assuming the best about our neighbor, can cause us to lose sight of what’s really going on in the wider world.

For others, the ignorance comes from too much knowledge: Immersed in the company of generally decent people who mean well and do their best, we aren’t so self-righteous as to fixate on the foibles and failings of our neighbors, but excuse them with the same charity we’d like extended to ourselves.

Understandably so in both cases, and many of us Catholics live with a hand in both of those worlds. This is our country, these are our people, what benefit to endless fault-finding?

So be it.

But I challenge you to examine the virtues of Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton, and show me in what way they are unrepresentative of American culture.

***

Is it that they place too high an importance on status and image and celebrity?

Is it that they don’t take marriage and family life seriously?

Perhaps it’s their relationship with abortion that seems out of step?

Did you imagine that Roe v. Wade causes people to have abortions who would otherwise never think of it? Gosh, I would have never, ever, disregarded the life of the least of these among us, but now that the Supreme court says it’s okay, I guess I’d better.

Were our rulers corrupt and our people virtuous, we’d live in a country where the law permitted transgressions none of us would dream of committing.

***

It isn’t so.

American democracy has its weaknesses, but if there is one thing it does well, it is that it represents us.

Not me individually, but us collectively.

Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton are not national enemies, they are national icons. They are the very image of our nation, personified.

If you want better candidates, you don’t need to change party politics. You need to change the people — we the people — who make the parties work.

That’s good news in its way, because that change is the mission of the Church. What needs to be done is the thing that we Christians do — or at least the thing we’ve been asked by God to do.

So: Who will we be four years from now?

File:FreedmenVotingInNewOrleans1867.jpeg

Artwork: “Freedmen Voting in New Orleans” 1867 engraving showing African Americans who were enslaved but a couple years earlier participating in an election. Via Wikimedia.

What’s Wrong with BDSM Anyway?

Last updated on: May 5, 2016 at 2:33 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Quick reminder: I write about adult topics. If your kid reads my blog, your kid is traveling in grown-up land.

Way back a year-and-some ago when I wrote a Christian primer on BDSM, a reader complained, and I paraphrase: She never explained why BDSM was wrong! She just assumed that it was!

Today is the day I fill in that blank. Before you begin reading, please refer to the original post for important background info on what BDSM is and how disorders of arousal fit into the moral life.

What is Sexual Intercourse About?

Sex does a couple things:

It unites a married couple in the most intimate possible union. This physical union is also a spiritual, emotional, and psychological union.
It is the means by which new human beings, made in the image of God and destined for eternal life, are created.

There is an alternate standard for sex proposed by our popular culture: Sex is the thing one does with one’s genitals or other body parts, with whomever and however one pleases, in order to experience erotic arousal and subsequent satisfaction of that arousal.

This alternate standard is wrong. This latter, wrong, standard is what justifies BDSM: If you find it arousing, and those involved find it arousing, then under the popular logic it must be just fine. It isn’t.

The reason it is not just fine, and in fact it’s bad for you, is precisely because of the real purpose of sex.

–> This is the moment when some readers will protest that they like the popular standard just fine. We could argue all afternoon about that, and I suppose we’d get just as far as if I tried to prove that the purpose of eating was to nourish your body, or the purpose of driving a car was transportation.

I can provide evidence for all these assertions, but if someone is determined to believe it isn’t so, we’re at an impasse (and my in-laws once used an old car as a tool shed, so there).

Therefore, what we’ll do instead is look at how BDSM is incompatible with the real purpose of sex, which is the union of man and wife and the procreation of new humans. You can indeed drive around with tools in the back of your truck, you can eat cherry pie both for nourishment and to win the pie-eating contest, but you can’t have marital union and BDSM at the same time.

What is BDSM About?

As you know from doing the required reading, BDSM refers to erotic practices revolving around dominance, submission, and humiliation.

What is Marriage About?

Marriage is about the lifelong, faithful, fruitful, loving union of a man and a woman who cherish each other, respect each other, help each other, and take care of each other.

Marriage is the joining of two equals, both made in the image of God, both possessing inherent dignity and worth.

What does this word “submission” mean?

It means sending in your manuscript to an editor and hoping it gets accepted.

Oh, okay, there are some other definitions.

We can use the word “submission” to refer to the acceptance of a legitimate authority. You submit to the authority of your employer when you show up for work at the agreed upon time and do the work that you and your boss agreed you would do. You submit to the authority of your hosts at the birthday party when you wait patiently to be served your slice of cake rather than digging through the fridge and helping yourself while everyone else is distracted by the opening of presents.

We can speak of spouses “submitting to one another” in the sense of a mutual respect for one another. Inasmuch as the Bible discusses authority structures within a marriage, the explicit message is one of mutual love. Marital love seeks to uphold the dignity of the spouse and help each other grow in perfect holiness, which is a source of joy.

In contrast, the word “submission” in the context of BDSM is about force, degradation, and humiliation. Same set of letters, same etymology, same sounds coming out of your mouth; radically different meaning.

BDSM vs. Marital Love: Underlying Meanings

Marital intercourse, properly ordered, has this meaning: I treasure you. I find you exquisitely beautiful. I want nothing more than to be close to you, and to cherish you, and to become perfectly united with you in every part of my life. Your body is precious to me. Your mind, and your soul, and everything about you is precious to me. Being with you is like a completion of myself, in a mysterious way I could hardly explain, but here we are, together, and I could not be happier as a result.

BDSM, in contrast, derives sexual arousal from acting out a relationship of master to slave. It is not a union at all, but the ultimate in “othering” the other person. The eroticism of BDSM hinges on a lack of unity: One is in power, the other must endure.

Rather than finding fulfillment in bringing out the best and most beautiful of all your spouse brings to the world, BDSM eroticizes degradation and humiliation.

What if it’s only a game?

Without wishing to err in an over-generalization, we can say that for many people, BDSM is strictly reserved for the fantasy life. This is the justification for allowing the practice: We aren’t really doing this, we’re just pretending for a while.

The eroticism of BDSM, for many participants, depends on the fact that it isn’t real.

We can further see that many other types of pretend are not just allowed but an essential part of the human experience. What makes BDSM different?

I’d propose two differences.

The first, which is about fiction and not sex, is that BDSM doesn’t serve the purpose of getting to a greater truth. Good stories and other games of pretend may take us through any number of trials, but they always end with truth, beauty, and goodness affirmed. The storyline of BDSM isn’t the triumph of mutual respect over humiliation, or equality over domination — quite the contrary. In acting out BDSM fantasies, one is acting out a lie about what it means to be human.

The second problem is that BDSM is a sexual practice, and sex is not for this. Sexual intercourse is not a video game or a movie or a rainy afternoon curled up with a book. Your sexual powers are not for your entertainment, they are for uniting yourself with your spouse. Good stories, good fiction, lead us towards the truth; good sex is the truth. It isn’t a game of pretend.

In the same way that playing firefighter or waitress isn’t the same as actually doing one of those jobs, playing at sex isn’t the same as having sex. You don’t pretend at the real fire; you don’t pretend in the real restaurant; you don’t pretend with real sex — and all sex is meant to be real sex.

But what if it’s erotic?

I refer you back again to my original post on this topic. Human emotions, including strong feelings like pain, pleasure, or sexual arousal, provide useful information — but not perfect information. It is quite possible to feel something that is not true. It is our job as humans to use discernment.

We can look at BDSM and see that it is not in keeping with what we know to be true, good, and beautiful about human life.

We can answer questions like, “Would I feel good knowing I was conceived because my one parent had my other parent chained to the bedpost?” and thus know intuitively that is not the relationship of love into which any person would wish to be born.

Therefore, we must use our power to freely choose our actions in order to decide that, regardless of what we do or don’t feel, we will henceforth act in accordance to what we know is real.

Photo by Uoaei1 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Sexual Bravado vs. Sexual Maturity

Last updated on: April 5, 2016 at 12:33 pm By Jennifer Fitz

My 8th grader was describing an acquaintance of the same age, and I paraphrase:

Her rallying cry is, “Let’s go f*** some sh** up!” She says never posts *full* nudes of herself, so it’s okay. She’s obsessed with having a boyfriend, and she keeps asking me what it’s like to actually talk to a boy.

This is the middle school narrative: If you sext, brandish vulgar language, and organize your life around the quest for a boyfriend, you’re the sophisticated one — even if you’ve never had a real conversation with a boy before.

An appropriately-mature thirteen-year-old girl is a person who has a wide variety of friendships with girls and boys her own age, as well as those younger and older than herself. She’s probably beginning to think about marriage. Combine those two facts with a half-decent childhood featuring a responsible, caring father who loves his wife and children, and she’ll quickly come to another conclusion: Young teenage boys are in no way marriage-material.

Why should they be? They’re kids. He may be a wonderful young man with all kinds of potential, but he’s not there yet. If you’d actually talk to him, you’d know that.

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In our popular culture, sex-status is the big thing. The kids have learned from their parents that the purpose of sex is to gratify one’s desires, and that a girl’s worth is measured in sexiness. The kids have adopted that philosophy wholesale.

The idea of a person simply not having sex is so foreign that even certain Catholic bishops can’t get their heads around it. Parents, meanwhile, delude themselves into thinking that their boys aren’t using porn:

A junior high school principal said to me recently that she invited a specialist in porn addiction to give a talk at her school about this, but parents balked, saying their kids didn’t even know what that was.

Fools.

This is not simply a matter of getting a smartphone out of your kid’s hands. Remember my telling you about the family I know who removed their kids from a school because fifth grade boys in her son’s class were watching hardcore porn on smartphones their parents gave them? The boys were building a pornified culture of boyhood. Fifth graders.

Given that the bulk of popular music revolves around the quest for sex, and has for at least a generation, it’s difficult to see how boys wouldn’t do the thing they keep hearing about on the radio when they ride in the car with mom and dad.

Girls end up not just harassed for sex by the classmates, but convinced that sexual favors are the path to a deeper relationship:

When asked, “How do you know a guy likes you?,” an 8th grade girl replied: “He still wants to talk to you after you [give him oral sex].” A male high school student said to a girl: “If you [give me oral sex] I’ll give you a kiss.” Girls are expected to provide sex acts for tokens of affection, and are coached through it by porn-taught boys. A 15-year-old girl said she didn’t enjoy sex at all, but that getting it out of the way quickly was the only way her boyfriend would stop pressuring her and watch a movie.

. . . As the Plan Australia/Our Watch report found, girls are tired of being pressured for images they don’t want to send, but they seem resigned to send them anyways because of how normal the practice has become. Boys then typically use the images as a form of currency, to swap and share with their friends. Often times boys will use the revealing pics to humiliate girls publicly if there is a bad break up.

This is dark enough, but it goes darker. This is from an e-mail I received from Kim Williams, a coach with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, who also works with Lighthouse for Life. She’s describing what’s happening in the sleepy suburbs of a boring mid-sized city:

True Story 1: A young teenage girl was befriended by a young man on Facebook. One day she expressed anger at her parents in her status and he said, “Let’s meet up and talk about it.” She went to meet him and he was NOT a teenager. It was three adult men who took this girl to a hotel and abused her endlessly for days. Fortunately – and against the odds – she was rescued.

True Story 2: A high school sophomore from the Blythewood area [growing suburb popular with corporate executives] was befriended by some older boys. They gained her trust and invited her to some parties. At one of these parties they drugged her drink. She didn’t know what happened that night but the next day she heard from the guys. They had video of her performing sexual acts and doing drugs. They blackmailed her with this video and trafficked her for MONTHS. She was physically free to come and go from her own home but she was a mental prisoner who snuck out each night to “work” all while going to school and doing her daily routines. Eventually she went out to “work” one night and did not return. Weeks later the police found her – again against the odds – being sold by the hour at a local hotel.

These accounts are horrific to hear but they happened to minors from upper middle class families right here in the Midlands. These girls are not what most would expect to be “typical” victims of sex trafficking. The reality is nobody is exempt from falling victim to this crime. Education and awareness are the keys to prevention. Please be willing to learn more about the realities of sex trafficking here in South Carolina and help keep our children safe from these predators.

Why is there such a market for teenage girls in a sleepy Bible Belt town, to the point that pimps are willing to risk kidnapping charges and worse in order to abduct upper class girls and sell them locally?

You can almost hear the eighth grade boys scoffing at those pathetic men who have to pay for what they can get the girls to give them for free.

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There is no magic remedy that will guarantee your teens will live chastely and stay out of harm’s way. But you can be certain that if your understanding of human sexuality is all about the quest for gratification and sexual status, your children are going to learn that from you.

Artwork: Brothel Scene, 1540, Brunswick Monogrammist (fl. between 1525 and 1545) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

One for the Watchlist: Mid-August Lunch

Last updated on: March 3, 2016 at 1:56 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Elizabeth Scalia’s essay on the Eternal City reminded me of a film I’ve been meaning to mention. Mid-August Lunch (Pranzo di Ferragosto) is a desultory Italian film in which the reluctant hero does the thing you probably don’t want to do either. It’s a lovely tribute to virtue and friendship, without even a wisp of Hallmark-y sugar anywhere in it.

Here’s the description from Wikimedia, which doesn’t include the worst of the spoilers:

Gianni (Gianni Di Gregorio), a broken man with mounting condo debts, is forced to entertain his 93-year-old mother and three other feisty women during Italy’s biggest summer holiday, Ferragosto.

I firmly disagree with the idea that Gianni is “broken,” though one concedes there was an awful lot of white wine and cigarettes going on. Also a brief shot of a gorgeous cake.

The humor is subtle, but if you’ve spent much time with 90-somethings it’s deliciously true to life. Definitely don’t watch it with interruptions, because the layers of character and meaning piled on in the macaroni and fish scenes are easily missed. If you want to understand what “show don’t tell” means, this is your film.

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Family-Friendliness: Your children are probably not going to sit through this one, but if they do, FYI there’s at least one cuss-word in the English subtitles (I have insufficient Italian to comment on the original) and a brief scene in which if you are paying attention you’ll probably infer a minor character is an adulterer. In a different scene, one of the elderly ladies may or may not have been trying to get up an indecent proposal.

–> There’s no nudity or violence or anything, if your children are old enough for the g-rated version of the Ten Commandments, you’re probably good.

At this writing, Mid-August Lunch is streaming free on Amazon Prime, in Italian with English subtitles.

File:Poster large1.jpg

Movie poster courtesy of Wikimedia.