If We Really Want to Keep Calm and Carry On...

Turn off the internet.

Honestly.  

I know.  Irony alert, you're reading this in an article online. What prompted this?  The verbal exchange between Trump, the Pope and the explosion of despair, rage and dark glee at the idea the Church no longer teaches that using contraception is morally wrong all over the internet.

The plethora of social media has rendered all of us twitchy and itchy to take offense, and equally outraged at our team when the one representing our team doesn't do what we think they should have.   I liken it to when I watch Notre Dame Football.  I don't just want them to win.  I want them not to make stupid mistakes.  I yell at the coach when I think he's called a bad play.  I stomp around when we get a penalty that was so so so easily avoidable.  I snarl at the refs if I think they're giving too much credit to the other side.   Watching this Pope and those who struggle with him, and this President, and both those who fight, and those who defend, no one ever presumes good faith, no one has any forbearance for those of the opposite side. Yep.  It's exactly like when I watch Notre Dame Football.

The tyranny of relativism is when each of us declares ourselves the arbiter of truth, and that no one else has a claim on truth, then the only way you can assert your truth is truthier than anyone else's truth, is majority.   You have to have your truth trend.  We no longer try as  a society to keep up with the Jones, but rather to assert, we are the Jones. The rest of you...get with the program.

This pope, like this president, is the first to have everything he ever says and does, doesn't say and doesn't do, recorded, parsed and proclaimed and interpreted instantly.  

We're still talking about people, not yet saints. People, no matter how educated, no matter how cultured, no matter how powerful, no matter how well known, remain first and foremost, people. Pick any name, of any candidate, leader, celebrity, sports figure, teacher, talk show host, anyone, all of them, flesh and blood humans, no matter how powerful, rich, or influential.

Ergo, expect, presume, they will speak badly, they will stumble, they will fail, they will fall, they will err, they will disappoint. They will sin.  They will sin.  They will sin.

The only question is how?  The social media at our fingertips allows us to know or at least, think we know.

Now.  Imagine putting our own selves into that fishbowl.  Just take your yesterday, and imagine everything you did, said, wrote, didn't say, didn't do, and didn't write, went viral.

It's enough to make one crawl into the fetal position.

We no longer allow anyone who has garnered more than ten seconds of fame, to make an error, make a choice we disagree with, or speak over broadly.

An instant chorus on Twitter or Facebook or anywhere else begins to shout "They should know better..."  "They should have been handled...."

In this media age, we cannot afford to have anyone on OUR SIDE, ever make a mistake.   We've all become armchair quarterbacks for everyone else's game, it allows us not to have to really play.

No.

No.  No.  No.  No.  No.

This is the Jubilee Year of Mercy.  We need to have Merciful Hearts.

Some tips for how to cultivate one. 

First, some digging in the soul.

If your politics and your religion match up perfectly, politics is your religion.

If your religion precludes allowing even the Pope from irritating, sinning, failing as a person, then your religion is not one of mercy.

If you cannot see any of God in the face of someone with whom you hold a disagreement, this is the one for whom you pray.

If you cannot think that someone who disagrees can possibly be good, educated or a worth while person, this is the one for whom you pray.

To be Catholic, is to hold to it all, to hold both to all the catechism and all of its detail, and to throw out your arms around all of the world, to be both and.

To be Catholic in this mess of life, is to be obedient to the Church in all things, even in that which I do not fully understand because I trust the One who created it.

To remember that each of us, is a sinner, seeking to become a saint.

Next, the seed: 

What to do:  The Rosary, adoration, scripture. Any or all, for that person on the internet, or in real life, that drives you to rage.

Take a trip:  The Church has opened Holy Doors of Mercy all over the world.  Here's the Vatican list. Find one near you.  Go.  Make a pilgrimage, for your family, for your country, for the Pope, and for all those who hurt your heart or drive you nuts.  Catholic Pilgrimage.

Make this your Lenten gift:
We must practice the virtue of forbearance, and when people drive us crazy, be it a politician or the Pope or the news or a teacher, our neighbor's kids, the person on the radio, whoever it is, learn that this is a form of fasting, to not feed your soul on your own irritation.   You might not be eating meat, but feeding one's irritation (and the news and social media thrive on stroking this in the soul), you are consuming, you are tearing into yourself.

Seek and practice forgiveness.

Results?
Will vary based on the degree to which practiced, and are an ongoing process toward perfection. Repeat tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow after that until death.

However, there is one thing I can promise from implementation of these practices:  You'll be able to keep calm and Catholic on.

Peace.

For Larry D

Larry D runs a blog, Acts of the Apostasy.  He wrote about how he despised Patheos at one point, and now he's writing for them.

Now me, I've loved Patheos ever since I discovered it and now...I'm still here.

But I'm not envious or anything like that, no.  I'm grateful and filled with Catholic joy for my fellow Catholic blogger and his success at becoming part of the big league of Catholic bloggers over there hanging out with The Anchoress, Mark Shea and Simcha Fisher. 

While I'd love to be part of the cool kids who all seem to fit in, I'm here in blogville double A farm team. So in honor of all those who warm the bench of the Catholic blogosphere, I offer this tribute to Larry D.  

  

Want to be a Patheos Catholic blogger,

want to send links to my sister and my brothers...

want to have my smiling face...

in the listings at Catholic Patheos......

as a blogger for Catholic Patheos.......

but again, not jealous. I promise.  

Rabbit Questions

"God gives you means to be responsible. Some think that — excuse the language — that in order to be good Catholics, we have to be like rabbits. No. Responsible parenthood. This is clear and that is why in the Church there are marriage groups, there are experts in this matter, there are pastors, one can search; and I know so many ways that are licit and that have helped this."  --Pope Francis

Like Simcha Fisher, I don't tend to get worked up over the Pope's words off the cuff, I presume the Pope was trying to make a distinction; it didn't quite work as the Catholic internet exploded.  Rabbits, Rabbits,  Rabbits, Rabbits.   Most seemed to understand the Pope's comments to be about how we're not merely creatures, we're not merely breeders, we're supposed to be open to life, but the demand isn't for every family to be the same.  I thought I'd ignore the great lupine battle of our time, but it kept popping up in all the places I frequent.  

So I read the full text of the Pope's interview.

I paused when he talked about a woman expecting her eighth, and having had multiple c-sections "tempting" God.  My brain started churning on things, on questions I'd pose to Pope Francis, if I had the luxury of time to just talk with him about this sort of thing. 

Because these are the sorts of questions that don't come up in NFP classes or pretty much anywhere.  

People who follow the teaching of the church have limited licit options if they are married; abstinence, NFP, and other charting methods for monitoring fertility.  Even being open to life, those practicing NFP occasionally misread, misinterpret, or in the moment, ignore or forget when it is a fertile time in the cycle.  These misreads or missteps or errors in judgment about when it is a fertile or infertile time to engage in licit sex can lead to children. 

At that moment, the woman and man, if they follow the church, must accept the gift from God of the new person's existence.   It happens. It happens often.  It is part of why much of the world has rejected NFP, because they don't want to have to rely on their own wills to limit family size.  It's not fool proof, and love often makes us fools.   Having done NFP for now going on 18 years, I can say, it's 90% successful, but we still have ten kids from that 10%.  

It's not that we wanted to have a big family, we were simply welcoming when we received the gift of children, (sometimes more gracefully than other times), but they're all wonderful, they're all miracles.  They each teach us different lessons, and together, they keep driving us deeper into communion with God, and each other.  

If the family is the domestic church, then we simply have a bigger parish than most but each parish is designed to bring all of its members to Christ.  Were we tempting God by being open to life?  If we were, it was unintentional, in that neither my husband nor I thought, forget my health issues, let's have a van full of kids!  


Perhaps a better way of approaching this subject would have been to teach in the Marriage Preparation course and the Confirmation course about the discernment process itself.   Perhaps we should be reminded that as adult married Catholics that we're required to be fully integrated in our faith, to attempt to align our faith with reason and desire, and that it might require sacrifice.  Sometimes, even great sacrifice.   

But what is that sacrifice?  And how do we know if it is God's will?

The big question broke down into these smaller ones.

1)  Since all children are gifts from God, all souls are intended.  While that doesn't mean "breed like rabbits," it does mean, accept what you receive, cooperate with God's will (being open to life).  If we accept these two things as truth, isn't what your family size is as  result, theoretically whether you engaged in a rigorous cost/analysis of your family life or not, God's will?

2) How does one discern "tempting" versus "trusting?"  I say that not because I want to be a jerk.  Being open to life does not mean you must have children, only that you must be welcoming to children.  What circumstances or moral judgment makes the act of being willing to have children "tempting God?"   

3) The third question stems from some of the conversations spawned by discussion of the Pope's remarks.  Whenever the subject of big families come up, there are comments about the down side of having many children.  Stories of children in large families feeling neglected or of kids leaving the faith because the life of their parents seemed too hard, or tales of the children becoming estranged because they didn't get enough attention or discipline or love from Mom and Dad, make me worry.   

In fairness, I have diaries expressing these very fears dating back to 1997, when we were expecting our third.   One of the comforts or consolations I take in the process of parenting this large family, is the belief that God will make this possible even if I've mucked it up, because the only way it is possible, is with God.  I know I will muck it up but I also know, God's grace will make this possible despite me.  

Which brings me to my third question.  What would the Pope would have us do, if we have in the past "tested God" and thus failed, and therefore have more children than we would if we discerned, or what should be expected of those who for whatever reason, do not have discerning temperaments? 

One last thing, I love this pope and trust his deep love of this Church, of the whole flock he's been asked to shepherd.  I have no problem with him being the Pope, nor is my faith shaken.

 It doesn't mean I don't have questions.