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Over at Pajamas Media<\/strong>, I have a piece that you might call an addendum<\/a> to my weekend article at First Things<\/a>.<\/p>\n \nIn 2009 an Arizona woman, pregnant with her fifth child and suffering from pulmonary hypertension (an often, but not always<\/a> fatal complication), consulted with her doctor and the ethics committee member on call \u2014 a Catholic Sister of Mercy \u2014 and obtained an abortion at the St. Joseph\u2019s Hospital and Medical Center.<\/p>\n As the story has gone public, the reactions have been predictable across religious and political lines. [\u2026]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Another outfit had asked me to contribute an op-ed on the story.<\/strong> I gathered that they wanted something reflecting the popular \u201cheroic-nun-oppressed-by-menacing-bishop\u201d narrative, or the provocative \u201cmenacing-bishop-personifies-everything-wrong-with-church,\u201d model, but I wasn\u2019t feeling either slant, because I understood\u2013as secularists really do not\u2013that there is nothing \u201cobvious\u201d in this story. When things become \u201cobvious\u201d we all stop thinking and move on auto-pilot. For political concerns autopilot may or may not be useful, but precisely because we humans are gifted with reason, these issues that touch the soul can never be cruised through.<\/p>\n Contemplating how confounding secularists find the church (when they and politicians are not grumbling that the Bishops should shut up about abortion or risk being taxed, they\u2019re telling them<\/a> \u201cI want you to instruct your, whatever the communication is \u2014 the people . . .sitting in those pews and you have to tell them that this is a \u2018manifestation of our living the gospels.\u201d<\/em>) it struck me that this whole story was a microcosm of what Catholicism is, and that the worldly world<\/em> cannot help but be dissatisfied, and always a little confused by it.<\/p>\n If Catholicism is anything,<\/strong> it is the constant struggle to commingle faith to reason, and to seek the boundless depths of a question, because God resides there, in the boundlessness. This struggle is common to all of us\u2013it is a small-c catholic tension\u2013but it exists only to those depths into which we are willing to entertain a question. How earthbound or heavenward we wish to train our focus depends on how far we are willing to step away from ego and comfort-zones and the \u201ccertain\u201d knowledge and judgments to which we cling. It all factors into our struggle, our personal, internal Isra-el<\/em>.<\/p>\n That is why two featured pieces<\/a> on the abortion story, run concurrently<\/a> at First Things<\/a> last weekend, kindled thoughtful debate in the comments threads, yet clearly left many participants unsettled and unsatisfied.<\/p>\n There is always this wish, with humans, to settle everything, to have certainties<\/em>, and so we are quick to claim them and apply them to everything, including our understanding of God. Our God of Love, after all, cannot possibly want anything for us but our good. And who should know better than us<\/em> what that good is? Anne LaMott likes to quote a priest-friend of hers: \u201cYou can safely assume that you\u2019ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.\u201d<\/p>\n Or, taken another way, \u201cyou can safely assume that you\u2019ve created God in your own image when it turns out that the plan God has for the world is, by happy coincidence, precisely aligned with your positions.\u201d<\/p>\n The saints, from the Acts of the Apostles and throughout history, tell us differently. So do Mary, and Joseph. And David. And Jacob. And Abraham. In his last homily as Cardinal Ratzinger<\/a>, Pope Benedict XVI\u2019s \u201cdictatorship of relativism,\u201d grabbed the worldly headlines; missed amid the resulting hoopla was this:<\/p>\n \u201d . . . the Lord calls us friends, he makes us his friends, he gives us his friendship. The Lord gives friendship a dual definition. There are no secrets between friends: Christ tells us all that he hears from the Father; he gives us his full trust and with trust, also knowledge. He reveals his face and his heart to us. He shows us the tenderness he feels for us, his passionate love that goes even as far as the folly of the Cross. He entrusts himself to us, he gives us the power to speak in his name: \u201cthis is my body\u2026\u201d, \u201cI forgive you\u2026\u201d. He entrusts his Body, the Church, to us.<\/p>\n To our weak minds, to our weak hands, he entrusts his truth \u2013 the mystery of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; the mystery of God who \u201cso loved the world that he gave his only Son\u201d (Jn 3: 16). He made us his friends \u2013 and how do we respond? <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Do we believe it? If we do, we\u2019re invited to pursue that promise. There are no limits to what God will teach us and tell us and give us, if only we do not limit his access.<\/p>\n We humans tend to try to put everything, including God, and love and life, into manageable compartments, and we hide in them. We hide inside our frameworks, our structures, our plans, our narratives, our willful and our unintentional bigotries.<\/p>\n But God -who created a world of order- points cannons at those tidy compartments and goes ba-boom! And when we ask, repeatedly, \u201cwhy did you do that, when I had it all so beautifully arranged,\u201d God says, \u201cit was blocking my love. My love couldn\u2019t fit with all that stuff in the way.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yes, moving past our illusion that things are cut-and-dry, and that we have it all figured out, is as I write in this piece at PJM<\/a>, a most catholic drama.<\/p>\n
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\nA paradox of faith is that only by giving away<\/strong> the judgments and notions can we attain anything like Godly wisdom. Only by saying, \u201cI surrender my notions of what would make me happy, to wholly accept yours,\u201d can we hope to find true happiness and that peace \u201cwhich defies all understanding.\u201d Jesus went through an awful lot to demonstrate the power (and value) of \u201cthy will be done,\u201d and yet, we still struggle with it; we still resist, and want our own way.<\/p>\n
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\nOur thorns in the flesh are not arbitrary miseries;<\/strong> they are personal, individual and valuable challenges. Our crowns are made from them.<\/p>\n
\nWell, usually, because we are both contumacious and<\/strong> beholden to our senses, we respond with a \u201cgive me,\u201d and not with a \u201cplease take.\u201d And yet, we are told in this very sermon that there are no limits, and Jesus said it himself, in the Gospel of John: \u201cIf you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n