Dear God, what do we do now?

As a practicing Catholic, it is difficult for me to articulate how the past few days since the report on sexual abuse by priests in Pennsylvania has been released. While we've known about this evil for over a decade, the fresh betrayal, renewed denial, and continued excuses have ripped open a wound in my heart that was really only beginning to heal. Perhaps this time around, hearing about the atrocities as an adult, it cuts even deeper.

If we are to take our faith seriously, times like these should shake us to the core. I've asked myself if I should stop going to Church. Does my very presence there in some way act as a "pass" for these violent men and the corrupt leaders that protect them? Should I find a different Church, one with less baggage and less greed, one less intent on protecting itself at the expense of innocents?

But on the other hand, I really don't want to give these men my faith. They've taken so much from all of us, from their victims especially. Do they really get to walk off with my relationship with God? Do I let them snatch the Eucharist from me, along with my safety and my trust?

For many of you, that last sentence may sound like nonsense. But it's everything. The truth is, if you believe in the Eucharist, than another Christian church simply can't provide the relationship with God that the Catholic Church does. Maybe that's how they take advantage and hold us in. Or maybe it's the intimate mystical connection that we hold it to be, in which case God damn every one of these people who has committed sacrilege against it. I mean that seriously.

So then what is the responsibility of those of us who who choose to stay? Father James Martin wrote a beautiful column for the New York Times where he argued that we as lay people have a responsibility to use our anger to activate change in the Church. That's all well and good. But the reality is that we as lay people don't have any formal power. Which is why this was allowed to continue in the first place. As Rabi Ruti Regan argued on Twitter, the Church is a patriarchy intent on protecting and promulgating its own self. In other words, as a lay person I have no power and as a woman I have even less. Which brings me back to the question of what I ought to do.

I am a playwright. That is what I do, and I've done it for a pretty long time. I don't hold any lofty ideas about art being superior to other forms of communication, or art being able to change the minds and hearts of large groups of people. I think at one point I thought that way, but now I just consider it one more form of communicating. It can reach some; others are basically indifferent. But God blessed me with this specific form of communication and I think we are supposed to use the talents we were given to serve God.

When this report came out, I was already in the process of producing two short plays about the Catholic Church. Each of them grapples with my struggles with the Church in different ways, but together they hold a great deal of what I've been feeling. It's strange that when this broke out I was already in the process of doing this work. It has been a rough process itself, as the festival I'm producing them in has had its own share of controversy. For a while, I considered not joining the festival. But now I'm very glad I stayed. I think God knew what He was doing asking me to put up these pieces. Catholics need to talk about their feelings on the Church. The need to wrestle with their grief. They need to confront their anger and demand change. We need to scream for change, even if the men up top aren't listening. I think eventually they will fall. Whether their fall equates to the Church falling depends on the laity. How strong is our faith? How much do we value our relationship with God over Earthly institutions. I hope the answer is that we value our relationship with God completely and the Earthly institutions only insofar as they serve to bridge the divide between us and the divine.

So I'm digging in. Hard. I'm going back to the page, ripping them back open and confronting the Church where we are now. I'm letting everyone in that 99-seat theater know how I feel. And that I'm still here. And that I'm still in Church. Listening. Holding them accountable. Because someone has to.

Please, Not This Pope: Defending the Faith when Leaders Err

Pope Francis has issued a public apology for comments made against sexual assault victims during his papal visit to Chile.  Former victims strongly assert that Chilean Bishop Juan Barros knew about sexual assault allegations against the infamous abuser Father Fernando Karadima and did nothing. Pope Francis originally called such accusations calumny, a spiritually charged term referring to the sin of spreading false and damning rumors.  He also said their accusations were without proof.

When I first read about the incident on Twitter, I felt the familiar, cold, pit in my stomach. Not again. I prayed. And, please not this pope. I, like many young Catholics, love Pope Francis.  I once waited nine hour for the opportunity to see him for thirteen seconds.  And it was worth it.  So you can imagine the crushing, sinking feeling when I read that the man who I’d pinned so many hopes on took such a massive step back on an essential, basic, moral issue.  (To be fair, Francis has been far from perfect on this issue in the past.  But this statement struck me as especially callous.)

Then, I read a headline that he had apologized.  Well, he sort of apologized.  He recognized that his wording was wrong.  Lack of “proof” was the excuse that Catholic bishops had given for decades for protecting serial abusers, despite the fact that proof is almost impossible to produce in cases such as this.  So Francis said that he shouldn’t have used proof, but rather evidence. Is that better? I’m not sure.  What did strike me as relevant was that he appeared sincere in his regret for hurting victims.  He regretted appearing to “slap them in the face.”  He knew he had erred and his sorrow seemed genuine. Nevertheless, he still believes Barros to be innocent.

This indicated two things to me.

1) Pope Francis is willing to listen and admit when he is wrong. 

This is the essential difference between the current pope and religious leaders of the past.  The willingness to apologize and the humility he has shown will set many Catholic hearts at ease.  No, he is not trying to silence victims.

       2 )He's still wrong. 

These people have been proven honest once before when all of their accusations turned out to be accurate. There is no reason to believe they are mistaken now.  Pope Francis’ apology does little to change the reality for them: they are bringing their needs to the Church and the Church isn’t listening. It’s the whole disgusting cycle replaying over again.  Publicly declaring a “zero-tolerance policy” isn’t enough.  Acknowledging victims as trustworthy- no, as worthy at all- this is what is needed.  Such a simple step, but somehow so hard.

As a practicing Catholic in a largely secular community, I know what comes next: the gauntlet.  How can your religion let this happen? Again. Why can’t the just do the right thing? What else are they hiding?  I can normally dodge theses type of questions with the simple assertion that Church leaders are people too and I don’t have to answer for their choices.

But this only leads to the harder questions. If Church leaders are just people, why do you follow the Pope?  Is he special or isn’t he?  What’s even the point of being Catholic?

At their root, the questions all boil down to a single argument: If your religion were true, the people most practiced in it wouldn’t lack basic morality. They do lack basic morality, so your religion is false.

To be clear, in no way do I wish to imply that the worst effects of the pope’s actions are my discomfort. The true fallout is the added pain, suffering, and humiliation experienced by countless victims who only want to be acknowledged and treated justly by the Church. But I can’t imagine that I am the only Catholic who feels a sense of mounting frustration when Church leaders commit these sins.  Because I wouldn’t do something like that, and I’m no moral hero.  And now they’re doing something publicly immoral and I’m going to have to answer for it.  This is the stuff that has made many Catholics simply give up and leave the Church and frankly, I don’t blame them.  There’s nothing like genuinely good people confronting you with spiritual questions to which you have no answer to turn you off to your own faith.  And it’s especially trying when the leaders of our faith are the ones putting you in that position.

How can you believe someone is an infallible holy man if he does something so obviously wrong?  And if he’s not infallible, doesn’t that take down your entire religion?  Do you have to support blatantly corrupt behavior in order to justify your faith?  And if you do, how do you do it?  More importantly, why do you do it?

These questions often feel discriminatory and its easy to be defensive and lash out in response.  But the truth is, they bring up feelings of anger and resentment not because they are essentially wrong to ask (although not always asked in the kindest manner) but because they are good questions. And we do have to answer to them.

Here are a few things I say in response to common criticisms of Church hierarchy.

1)      The pope is only infallible under very specific circumstances.

 The doctrine of infallibility is one of the worst understand of all Catholic doctrines, even amongst Catholics themselves.  The pope is only infallible when defining a doctrine concerning faith or morals, and then, only when he does so in a very specific way.  The last time a pope spoke with doctrinal infallibility was 1950 when Pope Pius XII declared that Mary was Assumed into Heaven.  In other words, Pope Francis can easily be wrong about his stance on Bishop Barros.  Popes can be wrong about most things, which is why the Church can and has reversed its teachings on several issues throughout history. 

2)      To be spiritually ordained and morally good are not the same thing. 

When a man becomes a priest, he undergoes the sacrament of Holy Orders, in which he is anointed by the Holy Spirit as a priest of the Church.  Christ then works through him to perform the sacraments that are the bedrock of our faith. Because it is Jesus who works these miracles, not the man, the moral state of the man has no bearing on their effectiveness.  This means that if I receive communion from a priest who protected a sexual abuser, or from an abuser himself, I am still receiving my sacrament. (Although his own spiritual state is in no way redeemed by this.)

This is the power of ritual.  This is the ancient pull that draws me to Catholicism and leaves more modern iterations of Christianity feeling empty.  What any human being says or does will never compare to sacramental grace. It’s best for all of us to just get out of the way and let that happen.

3)      The Church’s ability to endure despite humanity’s best efforts to destroy it is evidence of God ultimately being in charge.

Look, at the end of the day, the Catholic Church really shouldn’t still be around.  Human beings have done their best to run it into the ground for centuries to no avail.  I’d posit they’ve gotten a lot of help from the -um- other guy. And yet that Catholic Church continues to grow worldwide.  Perhaps it’s best to spend less time answering for the sins of other people and more time marveling at God’s infinite goodness.

I once met a young man who became a cloistered Catholic monk after the minister at his Evangelical church was arrested for some financial crime and the church closed after the scandal.  I had to laugh. “Your Church had a scandal so you became Catholic?”    He shrugged. “You guys never close.”

No.  We don’t.

So yes, I can be angry at the Church without having to leave it.  I can be outraged on behalf of victims and still defend the institution wholeheartedly.  And yes, I can still think the pope is fundamentally morally wrong while falling at his feet in spiritual awe as he passes. 

Because that’s how simply complicated genuine faith is.  It’s why Catholicism is so essentially… human.

A Catholic Feminist Grapples with Abortion Or: Why Isn’t Everyone Sad?

A few months ago I asked my tech-savy fiancé to create a Facebook filter that would eliminate all mentions of “abortion” from my Facebook newsfeed.  Just to clear a few things up, I am not squeamish about women’s issues, despite what this demeaning article would have you think: The One Thing Anti-Abortion Protesters Can't Handle Hearing.

 I know I have a vagina, and I take it with me wherever I go. 

I’m very comfortable with conversations about sex and sexuality and anatomy.  I know several Pro-Life doctors and nurses and I'm pretty sure they're comfortable with it too. Penis. Vagina. Condoms.  Okay, we cleared that up.  I also don’t believe that woman should simply “keep their legs shut.” (I will discuss my personal choices regarding sexual morality in another post.) So I didn’t block the abortion talk because I was afraid.  I did it because, as a practicing Catholic working in the New York arts scene, my Facebook feed was starting to seriously get me down.  By that I mean I was going through an existential crisis. Every day, I forced myself to read every article about the issue that some acquaintance of mine happened to post.  I did this because I wanted to be “informed.”  But, because of my unusual place smack in the middle of the Culture War, half of my friends are passionately Pro-Life and half are passionately Pro-Choice.  And they hate each other.  And they view each other as either stupid or evil or both.  And they bash each other on social media.  And they are all, without exception, desperately trying to avoid pain.   Finally, I woke up in the middle of the night unable to breathe.  When my fiancé asked what was wrong I said: “I’m sad about abortion.  I don’t understand why everyone else isn’t sad.”  So we cleansed my Facebook feed while I cleansed my mind.

With the recent Supreme Court decision, the posts are back.  They’re back because the word “abortion” has been replaced with the word victory. The Supreme Court has dealt a critical blow to state abortion regulations. The Pro-Choice groups are ecstatic.  The Pro-Life groups are aflame with righteous fury.  I still don’t understand why they’re not sad.  I’m not talking about the sadness that some religious people feel when they talk about the sheer numbers of unborn deaths.  I believe they are really sad about this, but what I’m talking about here is the sadness one feels when one realizes that one is human, and as part of being human, there is no option but to be in pain. 

The abortion debate essentially boils down to two incompatible conceptions of reality.

1)      Unborn children are human beings.  They are not partial, or almost, or potential human beings.  They are complete people worthy of respect and dignity.

2)      Women are human beings.  We are not vessels of childbirth.  Safe, legal abortion is the only thing that truly protects us from sexual slavery, the almost universal historical standard. Before legalized abortion, women were literally dying.

Actually, these statements are not incompatible at all.  If my undergraduate logic course is correct, the only way to prove a premise false is to find within it a direct contradiction.  Look closely, and it is obvious that there is no such contradiction.  So they could both be true.  I am not saying they are.  But they could be. And if they are both true, we as a society have to deal with that.

Most Pro-Choice activists solve this problem by simply denying the first concept.  I’ve never heard a convincing argument in their favor.  Many believe that a child becomes “alive” when it takes its first breath.  This implies that breathing is the essential quality of life, which is pretty poor science. The best arguments assert that we can’t know whether or not an unborn fetus is a person.  I say, when unsure if something is a person, one ought to err on the side of human being.  So as to avoid potentially killing a human being.  More often, though, these activists simply deny a fetus’ humanity because it is inconvenient.  It is horribly, painfully, and monumentally inconvenient for a fetus to be a person.  I agree.  But that doesn’t make it untrue.

In the Pro-Life camp, it is rare to meet someone who thinks women are just vessels for babies. (This despite the opposition’s characterization.) More likely, they will assert that unplanned pregnancy is hard, and rape is terrible, but murder is worst of all.  So we have to make murder illegal.  This stance is philosophically sound but leaves the bearer trapped in an armor of callousness.  What I’ve found to be the case, and was the case with me, is that the devotee will use the massiveness of the importance of saving lives as an excuse to patently ignore the feminine issues at hand.  We will deal with those issues, they say, once abortion is taken care of.  And that will be…. When exactly?  Never, it looks like.  Sorry women, for all practical purposes you don’t matter. 

(Sidenote: I admit that the Pro-Life movement is extremely disparate.  There are plenty of crazies, like the woman my friend stood by at March for Life carrying a sign that read “Women Wearing Pants Cause Abortion.”  I can’t speak for these people.  But there are plenty of Pro-Choice crazies too.  I met a girl last week who jokingly told me that she believes in “legal abortion up to three years.” I did not find that funny.  At all.)

So how does a Catholic feminist rectify this situation?  Pope Francis recently stated that Cafeteria Catholics, that is, Catholics that pick and choose which teachings they happen to like, aren’t real Catholics at all.  Pope Francis is right.  Christ didn’t say “Try really hard and I’ll cut you some slack.”  Christ said “Be perfect.” (Matt. 5:48) I fail at this command every day. And I wish with all my heart that I could return to my high school days when I was Pro-Life without qualms.  (Because killing is wrong no matter what, so no other arguments matter.)  But, short of surrendering my God-given conscious, I can’t allow myself to return to a world where, as bell hooks describes “men want sex and women fear it.”

So here’s what I do, and it may not work for anyone.  Probably, it doesn’t work for anyone but me, as I’ve come to learn about most of my opinions.  I consider myself Pro-Life without exception.  That means I believe that all children have a right to life regardless of projected disability, standard of living, or the circumstances of their conception, even violent conception. (Read: rape.)  Meanwhile, I oppose any and all legal restrictions on abortion.  Okay… I’m losing you.  Hear me out.  We cannot, from a truly life-affirming perspective, force women to have children.  I can’t imagine a scenario where such a practice would result in anything other than violence.  So what I do, to the best of my ability, is strive to create a society in which it is not only possible, but attractive for a woman to choose life.  This means a radical restructuring of our entire view of sexuality, pregnancy, and childrearing.  This means, if you’re really Pro-Life, create the support system which does not exist for women now.  This means get over your sexual rigidity and need to shame a woman for being a sexual being.  This means Pro-Life people should adopt.  They should adopt children who don’t look like them.  They should pay for the healthcare of pregnant women, even if they aren’t adopting their child.  Yes, I’m that serious.  Pro-Life people should be kind and empathetic.  And then, maybe, maybe we won’t need to be having this debate.  Maybe abortion will only be happening in the most extreme of circumstances.  (But it will still be tragic.  And Christ did say be perfect.) That’s really all I got. 

The specific legal ramifications of Whole Woman’s Health vs. Hellerstedt are actually not that compelling to me.  It’s a bit bizarre that they threw out the part about abortion clinics having to meet fire codes.  That seems legal, but I’m no judge.  I understand that these requirements mostly existed as an excuse to shut down abortion clinics, and that’s a bad look.  (Why are we trying to be shady about this?)  What is alarming to me is unabated celebration of the Pro-Choice movement.  Victory. There’s no victory in a scenario where we must choose between harming woman and harming the unborn. 

This is the fundamental problem with American politics: we see most issues as a matter of winning.  We’re happy because we beat those bad Republicans, so who cares about achieving moral Goodness?  We stop caring about the ethical consequences of our “victories.”  The #shoutyourabortion movement, a key factor in my decision to newsfeed cleanse, holds as its basic principle that there is literally no downside to abortion.  Women should shout their abortion, because they refuse to be shamed. Their slogan is “This is not a debate.” (Um, yes it is.) It’s true that we should all share our stories without shame, but when did recognition of sadness become a bad thing?  Once again, the denial, the callousness, was hard to bear.

 How revolutionary for our society if the feminist were to say, “I believe in abortion, and I know this might result in loss of life. This pains me.”  How earth shattering for the Christian to say “I oppose abortion in all cases, and I know this could harm women. This pains me.”  If we were to truly grapple with ourselves, I imagine I wouldn’t be the only one waking up unable to breathe.  And that would be a good thing.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that everyone take my admittedly convoluted stance on abortion. Clearly, it doesn’t help me sleep at night.  Rather, I am challenging each of us to avoid the comfortable pattern of denial that allows us to cope with our decisions.  I’m challenging us to own our consequences.  In other words, take your ethics seriously. 

For those of us who support legal abortion, we should still allow ourselves to mourn.  We mourn that this is necessary for society to function. This is a sign of just how bad things are on this Earth.  And I do believe this is an evil planet, reactionary as it may sound.  We ought to learn to mourn without shaming ourselves and others.  We ought to learn to live with a little bit of shame, because that’s part of being human. Imperfect.  And not okay with it.  

And let’s consider, for a moment, the possibility that our enemy is not evil or stupid.

Let’s consider, for a moment, that we are.