nunblog: Time-Out for TOB (again?!)

I'm at the retreat house this week, not on retreat but for a “writer's retreat.” There actually is a spiritual retreat going on, so the atmosphere is quite recollected while I am working on a Theology of the Body project for our MYSISTERS community. (Hopefully that project will eventually reach a broader audience as well, in some form.)

During this time, I've been reviewing my old notes (and the half-written project that has been on hold for ages), as well as picking up the text of JP2's talks again and taking down pertinent passages in longhand. I have to confess that I was feeling a bit of scruples over this, knowing that my take on the Pope's talks is a step or two removed from the needs out there in the real world. And yet those realities kept coming at me this week from Catholic Twitter, as if to emphasize the need for all sorts of “takes” on the Theology of the Body (maybe even mine).

The first of those realities was an opinion piece by Fr. Peter Daly, “The priesthood is being crucified on the cross of celibacy”(@NCRonline, July 15). From the context, it is clear that this crucifixion is some kind of problem. The real problem is that being conformed to "Christ and him crucified" is the whole point of Christianity. (It was the focus of Paul's preaching, according to 1 Corinthians:1, and his life, according to Philippians 3.) So that would put clerical celibacy right at the center of … Gospel life. Especially since Jesus himself was the one to introduce celibacy as way of life in the first place. (As more than one respondent to the piece noted, complaints about and/or proposals to optionalize priestly celibacy almost always appeal to contemporary expectations and almost never to the prophetic words and example of Jesus.)

The comment stream went on, by the way, for days. Then toward the tail end of many responses to Fr Daly's piece, someone posted a challenge (it has since been deleted), asking for “full detail how celibate folk deal with natural sexual urges.” This was bolstered with the claim that “sexual release is healthy and a biological necessity.” Well, the “celibate folk” and quite a few supporters came out en masse, some of them taking the question seriously, but the majority (mostly guys) blowing off the question and laughing at the “scientific” datum. Among the more important responses was one woman's short thread, which I retweeted (see end). Unfortunately, I was among those who could not take the man's question too seriously, and for effect, I quoted his claim about sexual release in my retweet. How shocked I was to receive a message from him the next morning thanking me for agreeing with him, and asking me for a woman's perspective on the matter (hint: see end). I confess I did not respond well. I even said that I thought the idea was “preposterous.” What bothered (and continues to bother) me the most about it is the way this idea seems to make a kind of idol of the whole sexual aspect of the person, as if this one dimension was actually the core of human life: of an individual human life.

Now after prayer and reflection it has sunk in, ever so slowly and painfully, that this is where many people are really truly coming from; that this is the way people do think; that their understanding and experience of their own humanity is that limited, that un-free. The person who posted this was not some kid living in his parents' basement, but a professional man in the prime of life. This is probably what his father had taught him, and what he was teaching his own kids, and he could not even conceive of anything different, not even for the highest motivation. I completely missed that. And hours later, the man's entire Twitter account had been deleted. I couldn't even reach out to say “I'm sorry.”

Then I came across @TravelingNun (not a nun; not Catholic, either, as far as I know, but a chaste Christian intellectual). Her provocative question raised much the same issue, but from an LGBTQ perspective:

@TravelingNun has the most nuanced theological position of all. (I wouldn't be surprised if she has read all of TOB.)

Really, all three posts deal with the same subject Pope John Paul covers in the first 27 sessions of Theology of the Body (when he's only revving up the engines). It is what @TravelingNun is hinting at: We are not dealing with the situation that God created us to experience. We are facing something not of his making.

And Pope John Paul wants us to look at that situation squarely, acknowledge it honestly, and then listen as Christ makes his “appeal to the human heart.” It is an appeal to “historical man,” to man and woman as they find themselves—with hearts not always under their own control.

As I have been reading Pope John Paul's words today, I see the man from Twitter reading over my shoulder, shaking his head in a mixture of disbelief and irritation: “Where has this been all my life? Why have I been left on my own to deal with unwelcome and intrusive temptations with only the guidance of 'Thou shalt nots,' when there are whole traditions that could strengthen me from the inside and set me free? Why have I been cheated for so long?...

“Why didn't anyone tell me?”

Even the pagans of ancient Greece and Rome had more to work with than Catholic adults in America under age 65. At least the pagans knew about the “cardinal virtues” of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. For two generations now, though, Catholics, are deprived through no fault of their own of basic formation in those old virtues (the word itself connotes maturity, strength, and self-possession) and, like everybody else, are at the mercy of their passions, rather than in possession of themselves through self-mastery. How nearly unthinkable it must be to keep the letter of the law of the 6^th and 9^th Commandments (never mind the Sermon on the Mount!) without having first been trained and schooled in the cardinal virtues! Avoiding sin must be like life on a storm-rocked sea without navigation skills or tools that could tell you where and when the storms are likely to arise or who you could skirt them. Life at the mercy of the waves would be all you know.

I think of a man deleting his entire 9 year Twitter account over the fallout from one poorly expressed question. And it turns out he really meant it.

Yet there are skills (from nature itself) and tools (the helps we find in grace) targeting precisely these types of storms... I will only briefly mention them here; for an adult this is really the area for a spiritual director's expertise. (There are also books that help with the first steps: Planof Life: Habit to Make You Grow Closer to God is one of them.)

The skills are largely in the areas of self-knowledge and self-mastery: consistent, life-long practices, not emergency procedures (though it doesn't hurt to have a few personalized approaches for occasions when one is caught off-guard). These are what make a person interiorly free. This is why we teach little children to make small acts of self-discipline for Lent. For now it is the urge to grab that piece of chocolate or that cookie (still warm from the oven!), but later, the urges will be stronger, and with far more delectable objects—not that these inclinations are always to be suppressed, either!

Self-mastery is not self-denial of every good thing that comes our way, but part of plan of life, in view of being the kind of person who is free for the greatest of the good things that are meant to be ours. Fr Landry, echoing St Josemaria, says that the first and greatest act of self-mastery most of us can put into practice immediately and easily is simply getting up every morning at the appointed time. (Even on Saturday!). The kind of person who overcome the tendency to hit the snooze button is also the kind of person with the resources to more easily master other sorts of bodily indulgences.

“At the price of mastery over these impulses, man reaches that deeper and more mature spontaneity with which his 'heart,' by mastering these impulses, rediscovers the spiritual beauty of the sign constituted by the human body in its masculinity and femininity” [TOB 48:5].

The “tools” are supernatural: fasting, prayer (also good for emergencies!), sacramentals (Holy Water, the Sign of the Cross, etc.) and frequent celebration of the sacraments. The sacrament of Penance (confession) combines self-knowledge with sacramental grace as we bring to the Lord (in the person of the priest) the ways we recognize ourselves falling into sin: the tendencies, the habits, the little lies we tell ourselves that keep us trapped in sinful patterns. A certain self-mastery is also needed in order to establish a personal pattern of prayer. Making room for God in our daily schedule makes room for him in our mind. Giving space in our mind for God's Word (for example, the Mass readings of the day) lets the Holy Spirit purify and even sanctify our thoughts and attractions. Far from just avoiding sin or “dealing with urges,” the Holy Spirit gradually reshapes us into people who think, act, speak, and “gaze” the way Jesus did.

Christ's words, as Pope John Paul presents them in Theology of the Body, “indicate the road toward a mature spontaneity of the human 'heart' that does not suffocate its noble desires and aspirations, but on the contrary liberates and helps them” [TOB 48:5].

This is a lot, and it is characteristically cerebral, I know. I'm still processing. Now you can, too.

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