The Terrible Problem with Laudato Si’

Last updated on: June 19, 2015 at 12:46 pm By Jennifer Fitz

“Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to the life of virtue; it is not an optional or secondary aspect of our Christian experience.”

Laudato Si’ 217

The difficulty, the dreadful, unspeakable, shield-your-eyes difficulty with the Pope’s new encyclical on the environment comes down to one nasty problem: The man is right.

For the popular press, hoping all this time that Pope Francis would be something new and different, created in the image of The Today Show, there’s an unavoidable reckoning. Dammit, Jim, the Pope really is Catholic. See if you can book Honey Boo Boo or something.

For Catholics it’s even worse. The man has gone and summed up the entirety of Catholic social teaching, folding in Rerum Novarum and Humanae Vitae and the Church Fathers and everything, and then done the unthinkable and pointed out that this actually requires us to change the way we live. Christianity is something more than a Jesus-flavored quest for the American Dream.

It’s love your neighbor as yourself, in 246 paragraphs of shoulder-shaking and slaps on the cheek. Wake up you indolent slobs! Do you not notice the people you’re crushing? The people who are dying to support your coddled bubble-world?

Here are some things to know before you get started:

1. It’s written for the whole world. So when there are paragraphs that you can honestly say, “This does not apply to me,” that might be because those paragraphs don’t apply to you. Don’t get your pants in a bunch because not all the paragraphs are your personal paragraphs.

2. It’s not an apologetic. The Holy Father doesn’t set out to prove his points, he states his points. That’s a distinction you absolutely must understand or you’ll go mad. If you need proof that environmental degradation causes immense suffering, book a spot on a mission trip. Pope Francis has already been on the mission trip, and he’s telling you what he’s seen.

3. It takes the Catholic faith for granted. It is important to understand this going in, because over the last fifty years or so, many of things the Pope talks about in this encyclical have been borrowed by dissenters to create a para-faith that’s basically a waxy shield of spiritual-sounding words around a ball of nothingness.

Laudato Si’ is not Sister Patricia at the helm. But this encyclical is about something other than carefully laying down thousands of caveats to demonstrate orthodox bona fides. The proof of orthodoxy is in there, to the chagrin of many; but don’t expect every other sentence to be a defense before the Inquisition.

4. The complexity of the Pope’s analysis unfolds over the course of the entire document, so you have to read the whole thing. This is not a simple issue. Indeed a measure of the man’s orthodoxy and the soundness of his thinking is precisely in the fact that he spent 200-some paragraphs laying everything out, rather than whipping off a few quick notes.

As a result, as you read, if you are knowledgeable of the issues at hand, you may find yourself saying, “Well, this situation A is perhaps a concern, but we must also remember situation B that has a significant impact as well.” Keep reading. He takes up situation B deeper in. By the end he’s thrown a rock at everyone, no worries there.

5. If you don’t know the Catholic faith, and economics, and history, and environmental issues, and international politics, and conditions on the ground in chronically-disastrous parts of the world . . . you might get lost. There’s a mountain of backstory behind this encyclical, and if you walk in cold, good luck. It’s readable. It’s well-written. There’s nothing obscure or esoteric about it. And you can certainly use this as an outline of topics to study, so it’s not useless to the neophyte. But if you haven’t already given serious, serious thought to these topics, every single paragraph is going to give you questions, not answers.

But if you have given serious thought to these topics, if you’ve genuinely done the school of classical economics and stacked it up against the reality of the human condition and studied the failed and not-failed efforts of businesses and aid workers and environmentalists to figure out how things really happen? Every single paragraph is going to have you nodding your head.

The man is right.

And this stinks, because on the one hand, yay, he mentions the virtues of going hunting (THANK YOU!), but on the other hand he points out maybe we rely on our air-conditioners a little too much?

***

This is the terrible problem. When a pope writes about the Trinity, we can nod and smile and adjust our prayers to make sure we’ve got three Persons with one Divine Nature and our work is done. But when he says, rightly, that actually we need to change the way we live all the other hours of the week, that gets uncomfortable. Because either we have to change the way live, or we have to decide we’re not going to do the Catholic thing after all.

How to Idiot Proof Your Parish and Diocese Against the Sexual Abuse Crisis

Last updated on: June 15, 2015 at 6:30 pm By Jennifer Fitz

The idiots in question are ordinary people like yourself, busy, overwhelmed with responsibilities, always trying to figure out which situations are the most desperate and which are okay enough to leave be for the moment. Elizabeth Scalia and others report on the latest round of resigning bishops, and here’s the thing you need to understand: That diocese is just like yours, and by that I mean it is filled with people like you.

–> In the unlikely event that you’re one of those people who has it completely together, and never ever makes a bad judgment call, never ever drops the ball, never ever says, “But I didn’t think that would happen!” believe you me, the rest of the slouches in your parish, ministry, or organization are complete idiots. That’s just how it is. What this means is that in order to keep our children safe from sexual abuse, we have to idiot-proof our work.

Fortunately, it’s doable. Here are the basics:

1. Learn to dial 911.

In reading the harrowing account of how a serial abuser was left in office for years, one fact stands out: Bunches of people knew the abuse was going on, and not a single one called the police. Not one.

You don’t need permission to pick up the telephone.

It doesn’t matter what your boss says. It doesn’t matter what your job description is, or that you haven’t got one. The police are so easy to contact even a kindergartner can do it, and that means you can, too. If you suspect a crime is taking place, pick up the phone and call the police. You can talk to the competent church authorities after.

To put your mind at ease:

You can talk to an officer at your local police station and describe the situation first before naming the perpetrator, if you are unsure whether a crime is actually taking place.
The police have the job of conducting investigations and sorting out guilt from innocence, not you. Your parish priest knows an awful lot of stuff, but he’s probably not a cop specializing in investigating this type of crime. Pull in the pro’s ASAP, and let them help your parish figure out if there’s really a problem or not.
It does no one any favors to “keep things quiet.” Once the possibility of abuse has reared its head, the most healing thing to do is confront the problem head-on, charitably but thoroughly.

I’ve seen lots of cases in the news where people suspected abuse was taking place and wrung their hands and said, “Oh me oh my, what shall we DO??” I can assure you, the police were on this job, investigating sexual abusers and bringing them to trial back in the ’80’s when everyone says people “just didn’t know,” and they still keep their hand practiced at it. If you know about a possible crime in your parish and it doesn’t get reported, it’s because you did not report it.

2. Be a Pest About Following Policy

Sometimes you’re the pest, sometimes you’re the one being pestered. That’s how it works when we mere mortals help each other. Your parish or diocese has policies in place to help prevent child abuse, but they only work if people follow them.

I’ve heard harrowing tales of places where people simply don’t follow the basic precautions set in place by their diocese. When that happens, those who witness the violations must stand up and refuse to let the negligence continue.

I’ve known cases where people follow a policy in a dubious just-meeting-the-letter-of-the-law way, and in that case you have to apply a bit of moral force. Don’t expect it to be pleasant. Are you really going to explain to a child who’s been abused, “Well, I knew that Mrs. Johnson wasn’t really creating a safe environment, but I didn’t want to upset anybody.” No.

And I’ve also seen what I hope is the most common case, which is that we humans sometimes overlook the obvious. We misread a policy, we don’t realize that we’ve got the conditions that we do, we think we’ve got everything in order, but really we don’t. So when your realize an oversight is taking place, just say, “Hey, aren’t we supposed to be doing _____?” Or “Doesn’t _______ policy apply in this situation?” Any honest administrator (and I’ve been this administrator) would much rather rectify a situation before it causes a problem.

When I’m in charge, I want to know about a policy-compliance problem the minute it happens, not three months from now when you get around to mentioning it. I also need to know if my attempted fix has failed: Just because I think I’ve addressed a safety concern doesn’t mean what I tried really worked. Like all the other humans I work with, I’m not omniscient.

–> It is normal for humans to make honest mistakes. Therefore it needs to be normal to identify and correct them without throwing around blame or casting aspersions. Just get the situation corrected.

The reality is that your parish is far safer if it is run by goofballs who are grateful when you speak up about potential problems than if it’s run by someone who does everything “perfectly” all the time, and therefore refuses to admit that there could ever be the slightest improvement.

3. Use Your Head for Something Other Than a Decoration

You have to think through conditions on the ground. No policy or procedure can be written in enough detail to answer every scenario. A room full of high school students is different than a room full of two-year-olds. A parish nursery in a separate building is different than a parish nursery with glass windows and doors looking out on a constantly-trafficked hallway. A single-person bathroom is different from a multi-user bathroom is different from a bathroom used by the general public and not just the kids in your program.

Is it a pain the butt trying to run a preschool program when you have to have two background-checked adults take any child down the hall to the bathroom? Yeah it is. But it’s a pain in the butt doesn’t trump “adults don’t get to be alone in a bathroom with other people’s kids.”

Anytime you try something new, you have to deal with a fresh set of conditions. Sometimes it’s obvious how to make changes, other times it’s not. Sometimes problems crop up that you weren’t expecting. Sometimes it takes a while to train parishioners (or yourself) out of habits that might be fine in one situation, but aren’t in another. Sometimes you think everything’s running smoothly, and then someone comes up with a fresh new way to make you want to pound your head against a brick wall.

You have to keep at it. You keep assessing, you keep listening to your advisers (collect as many as you can), you keep looking for solutions.

***

Evil’s around, and fighting it gets tiring. When we look at the egregious cases in the news, it’s tempting to say, “What idiot let this happen?” But the reality is that it takes a lot of idiots working together to prevent problems and rectify them when they occur.

“Safety” isn’t the perfect document, nor is it one person doing everything right. We create a safe environment when everyone is committed to a no-nonsense stance against child abuse, and all of us are willing to use our heads and our mouths to keep each other on the right path.

Photo: Lewis Hine [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

What Not to Read When You’ve Got a Rash

Last updated on: June 14, 2015 at 5:36 pm By Jennifer Fitz

I don’t have a rash, so I can read this book:

Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Guwande.

What it is: Published in 2003, so technically it’s sort of old, in medical-technology years, but no, not really I don’t think so, the book is a discussion of the imprecisions and hazards of practicing medicine, told from the point of view of a freshly-minted surgeon.

You get a combination of riveting stories (including a time Dr. Guwande really screwed up), statistics, and a pile of frank discussion about just how freaky it is to be a doctor. Includes a tour of what hospitals do to try to prevent errors, what seems to work best, what doesn’t, and why you don’t always get the best but sometimes you do.

The writing is superb – vivid, fast-paced, and transparent, so if you’re a writer it’s worth reading just for that, and if this is your topic, it’s a page-turner. (It is not “literary.” When I say superb what I mean is that the man can tell a story. If you like strained, opaque analogies to impress your friends at the poetry reading, look elsewhere.)

Why it’s worth reading: It won’t make you a more patient patient, but it will make you a better one.

Reading Level: Educated layman. If you have a working knowledge of medical things as gleaned from the newspaper and Google MD and cable TV and sometimes maybe arguing with your doctor about stuff, you’re good.

Because there are stories about so many different types of surgeries and health problems and administrative decisions, I think this is probably a stretch for someone like my 13-year-old, who reads family medical guides for fun, but doesn’t yet have the breadth of knowledge needed to easily follow the narrative. Guwande honed his craft writing for The New Yorker, so that gives you an idea of the target audience.

Ethics Level: Not bad for a heretic. Other than a passing anecdote referencing his father’s urology practice (see: vasectomies) everything else was, to my eye, 100% consistent with Catholic moral teaching.

To review on vasectomies and the like, we can summarize the moral life this way: When it comes to that part of your body designed for the procreation of human beings with eternal souls, if it ain’t broke, don’t break it. Just post-it note that little correction in your copy of the book, and consider the thing edited.

In contrast, there were some great stories touching on end-of-life issues and treatment decisions that could have been straight from a Catholic moral theology textbook, except of course then it would have been boring and used long words.

Why you shouldn’t read this book when you have a rash: Necrotizing fascitis. Okay, so maybe you should read the book if you have a rash. Just don’t read those last chapters late at night.

Photo by Tim Llewellyn, courtesy of http://atulgawande.com/media/images/

Transvestites and Conservative Christians Meet Minds at the Cult of Prettiness

Last updated on: June 13, 2015 at 1:09 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Being pretty has never come naturally to me. I like the concept in theory, but I don’t have the patience for it.

I grew up immersed in that world where gender-equality was translated as prove you can do everything a boy can. The going entertainment-industry trope was the odd-couple pairing of the pretty girl who was beautiful but whiny and useless with the tomboy who got things done and then got a makeover at the end of the movie.

That culture breeds misogyny. Given my natural spread of strengths and weaknesses, I found myself rewarded, socially, for going tomboy, and most rewarded for sexy tomboy. It sort of worked, except that it didn’t.

***

The best thing that ever happened to my husband and me (for he, too, grew up in that misogynistic culture) was having a daughter whose femininity fully integrates her whole person in a package that defies our childhood false dichotomies. Those are big words to say I’ve got a girl who’s catalog-model beautiful and who loves fashion, make-up, arts and crafts, classical music, sports, rescue stories, adventure novels, high-stakes medicine, camping and hiking, gardening, babysitting, playing with dolls, and filling out paperwork.

She can shoot pretty well and she sings soprano. Her first word was “shoes” (she is still obsessed) and she completed her first major mountaineering milestone at the age of four. But I knew we’d hit the mark in raising a girl who was fully at ease with her femininity when it came to volleyball: She doesn’t give a rip that boys can, on average, serve harder and jump higher. She wants to play against the best girls at her level, work hard and try to win. She’s not in a contest against anyone; she’s on a quest to be herself to her fullest, however many inches of vertical that happens to entail.

My girls (I have a couple more along the same lines) do what they can to encourage me to let my inner pretty-person out, and we have fun at it. There are skirts and dresses involved. On the feast of Corpus Christi, after Mass the lady in the pew in front of me let me know that her four-year-old granddaughter just loved my skirt. Of course she did: It had sequins on it.

***

My during-the-week uniform is a black t-shirt and jeans or canvas shorts. Real jeans with no Lycra added, thank you.

I have two classes of friends who dress skirts-only: Transvestites and ultra-conservative Christians. (Medieval reenactors of both genders could make a third group, but they tend to ditch the tunics and pull on jeans when it’s time to strike camp.)

And here’s a funny story, and I’ll disguise some details to respect privacy. I’m chatting with a transvestite friend over drinks, and she’s glommed on to me because I’m the girl in a group of men, and if you’re a male-to-female transvestite, being perceived as female is the number one priority, so you need to be one of the girls. Her problem, of course, is that the only girl around at this particular event is me, and I’m not girly-girl material.

And she’s talking shoes and clothes and things like that, and of course I’m out in public as frumpy as they come — my latest fashion dilemma is whether it’s time to order new black t-shirts, or just get through the summer on the existing stock. (Big question: Is Duluth Trading Company having a sale on long-tails? Cause that’s my brand, and they aren’t cheap if you pay full retail.)

But here’s the reality, the thing that makes me different from her, and don’t read more into this than I mean: I’ve borne four children. I’ve spent five and a half years of my life breastfeeding, or seven child-years if I get credit for the eighteen months when I breastfed two at the same time. I am secure in my identity as a woman, no lip gloss required.

***

The hardest thing about motherhood and my self-image, as an athlete who did bicycling well and pregnancy poorly, was seeing my non-gestating friends reach new athletic milestones while I was barely holding it together physically, thank you hyperemesis. I had to remind myself that I had in fact, through hard work and self-discipline, put on twenty pounds of lean body mass recently — it’s just that I’d put it on someone else’s body.

***

Since you might be reading more into this than I mean, let’s clarify: A woman’s femininity isn’t measured in babies-carried-to-term. Neither virginity nor infertility nor bereavement nor any other situation causes a woman to be less of a woman.

I am only saying that for me, given the bizarre culture from which I came, it has been a helpful thing to have tangible reminders that you can be fully feminine even if your nails won’t grow long and anyway nail polish feels icky.

But I will say something that irritates people: When I look at women who have no children, sometimes despite wanting them, sometimes because of not wanting them, I see, all the same, this motherliness in them.

I’ve heard ladies deny they have this motherly-thing going on (crucial evidence: they aren’t mothers), and I know I make people mad saying I see something they don’t. But being a non-traditional mother in the sense of lousy housekeeping, inability to come up with a suitable casserole for the potluck, and a tendency to forget my children’s birthdays . . . I think maybe my mom-dar is operating on a different frequency. Because yeah, I pick up that motherly feminine genius in my most butch or tomboyish spinster friends in a way that the transvestites just don’t have it.

Sorry transvestites. Your shoes look good and I’m secretly jealous of your nails, but let’s talk about how you’d make a great father, okay?

***

So I have these Christian friends, some Catholic, some not, who do the skirts-only thing. (It’s always the ladies who do it, never the men. I think I need to meet more Presbyterians.) I don’t object to this. Not one bit. I know all these holier-than-thou Catholics who look down on the skirts-only crowd, and cast aspersions on the authenticity of their spirituality, as if Truly True Catholics all sport blue jeans nowadays.

[Just thinking about this makes me gasp and realize I forgot to put on my scapulars. Be right back. . . . Okay, back. Let’s be clear: I don’t wear two scapulars for the express purpose of driving self-righteous modern Catholics into a foaming rage. I just happen to enjoy ticking people off as a side-benefit. If I really wanted to give someone apoplexy, I’d pull out one of my mom’s old mantillas.]

Since I can’t win any holiness contests, I need all the piety rubbing off on me that I can get. If there are people who dress nicely out of a love of God, these are people I need in my life.

***

I’ve read too much history to equate pants with masculinity or skirts with femininity in any universal way, but that doesn’t make me mind the skirt-movement.

I could happily go skirts-only myself, if the current trend among transvestites and conservative Christians didn’t have such classist overtones. I love skirts, I just need ones (and happen to own and love ones) that work well for climbing in and out of the back of my work truck. I admire pretty shoes, but my feet require sensible ones.

The thing is this: I’m not dainty. I don’t do well in the drawing room. Small talk and polite conversation fascinate me; I’m entranced by the masters of that art when I get to listen in — but I can’t make it myself. The biggest cross in my decrepitude isn’t missing out on cocktail parties, it’s being forbidden to mow my own lawn. Yeah, sure, you can mow lawns in a skirt. No problem. Just not one of those pretty little numbers with the coordinating heels.

***

Prettiness is a good thing. To value it and cultivate it is good, when kept in its proper place. I think my transvestite friends have it wrong, and I think the way they have it wrong is a cautionary tale for the Christian friends. Prettiness is the handmaid of beauty — one of her servants. But beauty is the real mistress, and she reigns only as much as she’s oriented towards the ultimate Beauty that is God Himself.

Beauty puts prettiness to work, but beauty can dispense with her, too. Beauty is pretty when she throws a cocktail party or a garden party, but she’s all rock and leather and beef jerky when you’re searching for her at the top of a long hard hike. And when you are kneeling before the toilet, giving up another bottle of Gatorade to the work of bringing a new human being into this world, beauty looks like vomit. Week after week of vomit, vomit, vomit.

She isn’t pretty then. Pretty is about beauty, but beauty isn’t about pretty. Beauty is about the creation of new eternal souls, the care and keeping of them, and the safe delivering of those souls to their eternal destiny.

***

My neighbor’s grandmother died at home after a long illness. Her daughter and granddaughter washed and dressed the body, brushed her hair. The grandmother was going to be cremated, but still this body required the loving respect of being made fit for its journey back to dust. This is beauty: That sacrifice of caring for an aging, dying loved one. That sacrifice of preparing a corpse for the undertaker.

My friend stepped back and admired her work. Something was missing. Grandma looked almost, but not quite, the way she would have wanted.

Pretty is the servant of beauty. That missing thing? The one final thing that made Grandmother’s body ready for its final rest? Lipstick.

Photo: © CEphoto, Uwe Aranas CC-BY-SA-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Learn more by following the link.

The Perverse Pleasures of Chronic Illness: Ordinary Colds

Last updated on: May 23, 2015 at 6:51 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Late this afternoon I gave up all pretense that my runny nose might be allergies and conceded the ugly truth. It’s a cold. Minor disappointments follow: Missing the Pentecost sequence again (I hate that), missing the chance to go to Mass on Memorial Day again (double hate).

Now what usually happens when you are a sickly person who comes down with some kind of common complaint is that people who love you immediately inform you of all the reasons you are responsible for your fate:

You’ve been doing too much.
You haven’t been active enough.
You sleep in too much.
You aren’t resting.
Your diet could be healthier.
You are too preoccupied with your diet, you need to relax.
You really should get in to see a doctor.
You probably caught something at the doctor’s office.

Thank you, helpers!

And this is why being me is so much fun: Because it’s just a cold. An ordinary cold. My robust 11-year-old had it, and now my robust 8-year-old has it. They, too, have been stricken by this thing that makes them loll around the house, complaining and wondering if there isn’t something they can take to make it all better.

I wasn’t really looking for something to offer up this weekend, but if I’ve got it, I’m going to enjoy the fact that it’s something utterly normal for a change.

I pray for the intentions of my readers, and this weekend is particularly devoted to remembering the bereaved and the fallen. With that in mind, I’ll ask that you please keep another newly-widowed friend in your prayers. Thanks.

Artwork: [CC BY 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons Click through to enjoy the caption.

What Teens (and Everyone Else) Want: Serious Discipleship Time

Last updated on: May 21, 2015 at 10:53 am By Jennifer Fitz

In conversation with Devra Torres, she commented:

I’m starting to think that the habit of EVER addressing persons in clumps is a terrible idea, even though it seems so efficient and realistic. In fact, that’s one of the main points of personalism, but one that’s taking a while to sink in for me.

Her remark couldn’t have been better timed. One of my challenges lately has been explaining to bystanders that what often looks like a “club” or a “clique” in a parish may in fact be a very effective discipleship group. I think, for example, of the work of the Legion of Mary. It’s not a lay association that is going to be a fit for everyone, but the group is supremely oriented towards a life of prayer, service, and discipleship. An essential part of that discipleship is meeting in a small group week after week after week after week. Faith-building relationships grow over years and years of practicing the faith side by side with others who love the Lord.

By dint of owning a real soccer ball, I had a chance last night to chat with the leaders of a parish youth group that happened to be in the same place I was. Something I learned: The kids are begging for more adults to help with their youth group. Why? Because what they want is small group discussion. You simply can’t get into a deep conversation about your faith with forty other people. It doesn’t work.

Why adults? Because teens want serious discussion, and for that you need leaders who are knowledgeable enough of the faith, and of life, to be able to keep the conversation from diverging off onto shallow tangents. Some teen leaders are able to fill that role, but not all.

In my short time working with Family Honor, I’ve been blown away by how intensely parents care about passing on the faith, including the message of chastity, to their children. In catechetical circles you tend to hear a lot of complaining about parents — that they are apathetic, that they don’t take the Catholic faith seriously, that they just want to get their sacraments and run. I haven’t met these parents yet*. In all my years teaching the faith, chatting with parents on the playground after Mass, or talking even with parents who are inactive in their faith, I’ve yet to meet the one who really doesn’t care.

I meet plenty of parents who are overwhelmed, who don’t know where to begin, or who find parish life daunting and the catechetical offerings uninspiring. But the moment you get onto a topic that matters, and give the parent a chance to ask questions, share experiences, consider challenges, everything changes. Parents care. They care so deeply that when we break into small group discussions at Family Honor, it’s almost impossible to get parents to stop talking.

So how do you know whether your parish is serious about discipleship, or just a well-ordered golf club eighteen holes short? It’s the attitude and the focus.

If newcomers show up and are given the cold shoulder, you’ve got a clique or a club. If newcomers are welcomed and encouraged to participate to the fullest of their ability, you’ve moved beyond the golf club into a functioning small group where strong relationships can form.
If the focus is on something other than Jesus, you’ve got a social club. If it’s all about being a follower of Christ, you’ve got discipleship.

The Church makes a very bad social club — as anyone who is repulsed by the Church can tell you. It’s hard to convince people to put a lot of energy into mere social encounters, because there’s always a better club to be found elsewhere. But give people the chance to take their faith seriously, and they’re all over it. Can’t shut them up.

Related: Here’s Christian LeBlanc’s very well-received adult catechetical series. Videos are being added to the playist as he teaches. People love this stuff, because it’s Jesus, not fluff.

Artwork: Henry Ossawa Tanner [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The Shame that Breeds Helplessness is Destroying Our Parishes

Last updated on: May 13, 2015 at 1:15 pm By Jennifer Fitz

There was some debate among internet-Catholics about the recent findings by the Pew Research Center concerning the growing departure of young people from the faith – any faith. Some were asking whether the statistics were accurate.

I had an impulse: How about an informal poll? My parish youth program has a private Facebook group, and I figured we had a good pile of parents of older children — kids in that target 18-30 age range. Maybe our youth director keeps tabs on what becomes of the program’s graduates.

So I almost asked this question of the other group members: How many of your 18+ children still go to Mass every Sunday?

Just to see. Just to have an idea of how our parish is doing in comparison to the wider world. The group members are all active, keen-on-the-faith parents, so we’re ground zero. If our kids aren’t staying Catholic, that’s a red flag. If our kids are staying Catholic, everyone needs to know what we’re doing right.

I decided not to ask, and here’s why: I knew parents would be embarrassed. This is a taboo topic.

***

I did a crude calculation of the faith-retention rate in my own family over the last four generations, using the highly scientific method of “trying to remember where my various relatives go to church, if anywhere, and whether they identify as Catholic.” I estimate that, extremely approximately, about 50% of each generation has failed to stay Catholic.

***

We Catholics have a taboo about discussing specific families, or even our specific parish program, because we don’t want people to feel bad. All parents know that you can do everything right and still end up with children who use their free will all wrong. It’s hard enough being a parent (or parish staff member) already, we don’t need more guilt piled on the fire.

The trouble with the taboo, though, is that statistics don’t have eternal souls. Statistics don’t leave the Church. It’s not a percentage that fails to know, love, and serve Jesus Christ, it’s a person. A person with a name, a person known by God and by us, a person with a story. A person with reasons.

***

Every person in my family who isn’t Catholic has a good reason for it. If I’d experienced this or that situation, I’d probably not be Catholic either. Something different happened to those of us who are still Catholic, who are Catholic again after a time away, or who converted to Catholicism later in life (as has also happened in my family). What is that something different? The Pew study can’t tell us.

***

Sometimes when I write about the importance of parents as the people charged with transmitting the faith to the next generation, I get these responses along the lines of, “But the parents! How do we deal with the parents! The parents are awful! The parents are intractable! The parents are indifferent! The parents are ignorant! The parents are . . .”

“The parents” don’t exist. There are no “the parents” out there. Your parish isn’t full of “the parents” any more than “percentages” leave the Church.

There are only persons. Children are not begotten and borne by some vague generic entity; each one arrives in this world by the cooperation of a specific man and woman. Priestly vocations don’t spring out of the earth when we create the right conditions, anymore than mice spontaneously generate from piles of hay. Individual men, each one the child of a man and a woman with a story of their own, answer God’s calling one at a time.

There is a reason Aunt Mildred quit going to Mass back in 1957. There is reason Mrs. Gonzalez is late again picking up her kids from CCD. There is a reason Kaylee never went to the women’s discernment weekend even though she sort of thought about it, and there’s a reason Jordan’s living with his girlfriend and he’s not in a big hurry to get married, but we don’t talk about that at Thanksgiving.

***

It seems like Catholics are, almost to a man, terrified of real human beings. We lump people into broad categories and talk about problems that way, as if you ever met a category who was pressured into an abortion, or saw a category turn out at the confessional after thirty years away. “Just the other day I was at the grocery store, and I met the nicest category in the check-out line,” said no one ever.

We never, ever, talk about specific persons. We treat specific people as aberrations. “Well, yes, my daughter Madison isn’t going to church right now, but that’s because . . .” and we wave it away. Madison’s the exception. She’s been excused from the category, on account of how we actually know her.

There’s some vague lump called “Women ages 18-24” out there somewhere we’re sure we could help, if only we created the right program to attract that category, but Madison doesn’t really exist to us.

But Madison is the only girl who can ever come to church. She’s the only girl we can ever call up and ask her how things are going, and whether we can pray for her. No amount of working the auto-dialer will cause “36% of Millennials” to answer the phone.

No quantify of beer, even very good beer, will make “34% of Older Millenials” show up at the bar and ask theology questions. But Jordan might turn out. If you weren’t afraid to admit he’d quit going to Mass, and that maybe you should call him up and let him know you’d love it if he’d meet you for a drink this week.

Artwork: Paolo Veronese Conversion of St Pantaleon (detail) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons