Sometimes mothers are bad mothers, so bad there’s nothing good you can see of them. The Church as she is for eternity, the Church as God sees her, is not, but the earthly mother of our experience can be. I’ve had a pretty hard time in the Catholic Church, in a variety of settings, and I know people whose journey has been much worse. Some of my friends have been abused so terribly, I don’t even know how they’re still alive– let alone Catholic, and attending church.
What do you do, when the mother– not the Mother of your spirit but the mother of your experience– is a bad mother?
What do you do if the mother that you experience in church is manic and paranoid, and fills you with fear of the devil around every corner instead of the love of God? What if the mother of your experience is neglectful and abandons you, currying favor with politicians and wealthy men instead of tending her children? What if that mother hurts you in ways that don’t easily heal?
There are those who get angry when you bring this up– as if all Catholic writers are allowed to do is advertise the Church and show off how pretty she is. And she is; the Mother of my spirit is beautiful beyond all telling. But there is another mother, and that mother can kill you. There was a time when I was so traumatized by what I went through, that I couldn’t go to liturgy except by sitting in the foyer of the Church and peeking through the door, or hiding on the choir loft steps. And I’m far from the worst case. People have been abused by Catholics, Catholic churches and in Catholic settings, until they can’t stand to be in a church ever again. Others have seen such a terrible witness that they feel ashamed to be a part of the Church at all. This does happen.
What do you do about this other mother?
Sometimes you have to run away, and some people have– stop going to the parish you grew up in, stop going to the Extraordinary Form Mass and find a groovy parish with felt banners, stop going to the Latin Rite and go to Eastern liturgies. Stay in the foyer and peek through the door. Sit on the choir loft steps where no one can see you and cry. Some people can’t bring themselves to go into a church at all, and I don’t know what to do about that, except to say I’m sorry, you’re not crazy, I understand some of what you’re suffering and sometimes I feel the same. What happened to you is real. Please don’t separate yourself from that Mother who loves you, even though she’s been so horribly represented by the one you see on earth. I hope you find a way.
Maybe there are other things you can do– and here I’m not speaking to those with actual post-traumatic stress disorder or anything like that, only to those who are frustrated and fed up. You have every right to be fed up, but what do you do? If the mother of your experience is just impossible and cold, perhaps all you can do is practice that “docility to Mother Church” that sounds so pretentious and strange– come to Mass anyway, smile and nod at parishioners on the way out, keep up your prayers even though they don’t console you, keep going through the motions while the true Mother nourishes you deep inside, unseen and unfelt. Be cordial to the lady with the bizarre mission statement for her homeschool group; it could be that she needs a friend. Maybe something else is required of you. If you were walking from Jerusalem to Jericho and found your mother on the side of the road, naked, drunken into a stupor after a night consorting with politicians who only wanted to use her– and I have to stress, this is how many people have experienced Catholicism throughout its history and for good reason, and many do today– what would you do? Carry her home, get some coffee into her, run her a bath and lay out clean pajamas? If you saw your mother badly wounded, even if it was because of her foolish choices, wouldn’t you try to help? At least call an ambulance? You wouldn’t leave her there, would you?
Maybe there’s something Christ would like you to do, to heal your mother. I can’t tell you what, but perhaps there is.
Perhaps there’s something for each of us to do for this other mother.
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