#faithandreason – Intentional Catholic

April 3, 2023

Guns. Again.

When the school shooting happened last week, I was on a much needed, long-delayed 36-hour overnight away with my husband.

One of the ways I’ve been trying to deal with the question of anger versus seeking Godly justice is simply to cool down my emotional temperature by insulating myself from the news. It’s hard to keep the temperature down when you’re constantly being triggered.

These days, most of my car time is devoted to my chromosomally-gifted daughter’s love for pop music, so I don’t really have time to listen to much news. When I do turn on the news, I often feel my heart crunching, my chest compressing my breath, and I recognize that stillness is what I actually need. So I often turn off the radio altogether and drive in silence.

Thus, I didn’t actually know there was a shooting until pretty late, and it wasn’t until Friday that I realized it happened at a private Christian school.

My first reaction, before I knew it was a Christian school, was that it wasn’t worth getting angry, because I know perfectly well nothing is going to change. A horrible, jaded reaction, but one I’ve been conditioned to by the incredibly dysfunctional relationship between American politics and the idolatry that is gun culture.

My second reaction happened the following morning, when a neighbor flagged me down, near-hysterical, to tell me that while she’d been out walking with her twin two-year-old grandchildren, she’d found a loaded gun lying on the sidewalk. (Well, anyway, it had a clip in it.) Less than two blocks from my house. “It’s spring break!” she cried. “Any kid could have found that and killed themselves!”

That was when I got angry. Because she is right, and the idolatry surrounding gun ownership—yes, I just said it again—insists that “freedom” (which is not the Catholic definition of freedom, but some twisted secular one—ironic, given that gun advocates are nearly universally Christian) is more important than protecting life. I spent a lot of time that day reminding myself that the world to come is the point, not how close—or not close—we come to mirroring the Kingdom in this one.

My third reaction happened when I realized this time, a Christian school had been targeted. I thought, I wonder if NOW it will make a difference. Because the people who have made guns an idol to worship almost universally profess Christian faith AND already believe themselves to be a persecuted minority.

Rather than attempt to reflect myself, since I’m clearly not the right person to do so, here are two extremely level-headed, not-polemical, Christianity-centered responses to the shooting, and by extension, to the political movement that has enshrined rigid resistance to any gun reform above life, human dignity, and Gospel values.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/podcasts/bulletin/nashville-school-shooting-covenant-presbyterian.html

https://haleystewart.substack.com/p/homeschooling-is-not-the-answer-to

February 20, 2023February 17, 2023

Truth Over Tribe talks extremism

Turning my little corner of the web over to the Truth Over Tribe podcast today, because I thought this was so valuable.

Their most recent guest is a Christian woman who worked counterterrorism under George W. Bush and came back to work under Trump, so she has seen the shift from worrying about Islamic extremists to home-grown extremists. Her perspective on what has happened politically in our country was really interesting, but most interesting was the nuance on what constitutes extremism and how there is a “funnel” effect that takes people who aren’t extremists and can radicalize them. There were good messages for me as well, as a person who is alarmed by this trend and doesn’t always handle communications around it in a healthy, holy way. Really good listening.

https://podcast.choosetruthovertribe.com/episodes/extremism-elizabeth-neumann?hsLang=en

February 6, 2023February 5, 2023

For Love of a Good Challenge

It is a quiet Sunday morning as I sit here writing. Practicing NFP means that because I must take my temperature even when I don’t have to get up early, I am often up for the day long before the rest of the house. I do my neck and back and shoulder and leg stretches—targeting all the various parts of my body that could render me nonfunctional if I do not—and listen to Scripture or podcast.

Intentional Catholic has been on my mind a lot lately, but the questions I need to grapple with are all still too unformed.

I’ve always valued a good, challenging homily or reflection. One that calls me to look honestly at myself and my weaknesses. It’s not a threat because I am a type A person who wants to be better today than yesterday, and better tomorrow than today. I genuinely want to follow God above all else. I am okay with being challenged to face my failures. How else can I be better tomorrow than today?

I suppose this is a natural outgrowth of being a musician and writer. Critique is baked into the formation of both those professions. First my band directors, then my private flute teachers, looked for what was holding me back and taught me how to climb over the obstacles to the next plateau. In the writing world, I’ve worked with editors and critique partners for sixteen years. Before my novel caught the eye of my literary agents, I collected something like four hundred rejection letters, of all lengths and varieties, from the one-line generic to the “I want this to look thought out but it’s really a form rejection” to the heartbreaking near misses. One music rejection, out of all others, still gives me the heebiejeebies, because what they pointed out was right and I should have seen it myself.

All this to say, I value being challenged. Good challenge. Not nonsense, conspiracy-theory, poor information, one-set-of-rules-for-The-Other-Guys-and-a-totally-different-one-for-mine challenges. Those just enrage me. And I would say I suspect they enrage God too, except I suspect God has a teeny bit broader perspective on the universe than I do, and probably finds it grieving rather than enraging.

As I approach the news these days, I’m constantly filtering my immediate, knee-jerk reaction through the knowledge of my biases. That is a relatively new manifestation of my spiritual journey. I am a little slower to get angry now because I can see the inconsistencies inherent in my knee-jerk reactions. It doesn’t remove the inconsistencies, but just being conscious of them helps put things in perspective.

What that doesn’t help with is the deep, existential, Godly-justice-centered outrage inspired by the failure of so many others to recognize THEIR inconsistencies.

And so I struggle on.

November 28, 2022November 27, 2022

Poison Oak, Celiac Disease, and Miraculous Healing

A year ago, my daughter was diagnosed with celiac disease. This is relatively common in people with a bonus 21st chromosome, which is the only reason we found out about it in the first place—initially she appeared asymptomatic, but it showed up in routine bloodwork that had been delayed for years.

As I began to process the new world God had, yet again, thrust us into without our consent, two reactions from people of faith made me want to pull my hair out. The first was that she should take regular Communion and not worry about cross-contamination and all that jazz, because God would never allow the Eucharist to harm his faithful. Which is the same logic behind drinking poison and snake handling, I might add, and none of us believe any of THAT is a valid expression of faith.

The other was that we should take her to a healing prayer service so she would be cured.

Now, on the one hand this was a pretty attractive idea, b/c we’re foodies and I didn’t want to sacrifice anything we love. (Selfishness alert!) At the same time, I was painfully aware that I DID NOT BELIEVE she would be healed. And I knew that without belief, there wasn’t much point in going.

Part of me excoriated myself for my lack of faith.

The other part of me is a firm believer that every suffering I have been given has burned away parts of me that are not Godly. We’re supposed to take up our cross and follow, not go around demanding God remove it.

But then, why EVER pray for healing?

And I totally do pray for healing. In fact, here’s a memorable story. In 2019, my husband and I went to Napa Valley for a long weekend to celebrate our anniversary. On Day 2, I got into poison oak. Bad. To make matters worse, we were hiking and I was sweating. Badly. Which means the sweat spread it EVERYWHERE.

When I woke up in the middle of the night, I knew that sensation. I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. In the morning I asked him to look. My entire back was a sheet of red. So were my legs. And arms.

Now, we went and did the things. The Tecnu, the Zanfel, washing all the sheets and clothes at the bed & breakfast.

But I know how poison ivy goes. This is a two-week course that gets worse before it gets better. And this was our TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY TRIP.

So yes, I prayed. I sat on the edge of the bed, quivering and desperate, and said, “God, I know how poison ivy goes and I know what I’m about to ask is counter to all the things you put into place in the universe. But please, please, PLEASE let this go away overnight.”

Well, it wasn’t totally gone. But it WAS about 75% gone! And our trip was not ruined.

So I know, from my own experience, that God CAN perform miraculous healing.

But when the suggestion to go to a healing service for my daughter’s celiac disease came up, it felt all wrong. It hearkened back to a prayer offered when she was born, asking God to “heal” her of her Down syndrome—as if that extra chromosome were God’s mistake that he was just waiting for us to pray and he’d rectify it, instead of part of the rich tapestry of EXACTLY WHO HE INTENDED HER TO BE ALL ALONG. Because GOD DOESN’T MAKE MISTAKES.

This year, which I have spent trying to reconcile the irrenconcilable—the balance of detachment and Godly anger at injustice in the world—has taught me one thing, which is that two contradictory truths can both be true, at the same time, and in the same heart. We need detachment. AND we need Godly anger at injustice. There is an irreconcilable tension there that is part of the mystery of Christian living.

I think this business of healing is the same.

I have no pithy wise saying to end this reflection, unless it is that the tension between irreconcileable truths is part of the mystery of God, and that we have to learn how to grapple with that tension.

November 14, 2022November 15, 2022

The Unevenness of the Sin of Scandal

A few days ago, the Bible in a Year highlighted Eleazar’s martyrdom in 2 Maccabees. Eleazar was unwilling even to pretend to eat pork because what kind of message would that send to the next generation about God’s law?

This is the “sin of scandal”— something I’ve heard about my whole life, but in that moment, in the midst of the election cycle where a whole bunch of politicians were courting Christian voters by telling flat out lies about stolen elections, I realized: We, as a Christian community, have a pretty big double standard about what constitutes the sin of scandal.

We’re very cognizant of it where the sin of scandal involves sex.

But there are a lot of other areas where it doesn’t even register, and if I name them, hackles will be raised. As I am sure they were in that second paragraph.

There are other issues, too. Environment, gluttony, and greed, to name a few. The issues I talked about last week.

And as for elections, after January 6, 2021, I wrote to my Senator who claims to be Catholic while loudly and stubbornly proclaiming clear falsehoods about stolen elections.

That is a sin of scandal, too. (And I told him so. Though I doubt his handlers even let him see the note. At least I tried.)

I hadn’t considered the sin of scandal for years, but having it highlighted resonated—and annoyed. Resonated because of course! I know for certain that there are people being driven away from God at this very moment by the sin of scandal in the political realm.

And annoyed, because when people talk about the sin of scandal, I suspect—in fact, in my jadedness I am certain (though I’d love to be humbled and proven wrong, truly)—that they are only thinking about sexual issues, while giving greed and dishonesty and selfishness at the expense of the future of humanity a total pass.

The call here is for us all to better examine our lives and recognize the disconnect between what we BELIEVE (in God terms) and what we believe (in world view terms). We’d all like to think those two are in lock step, but they aren’t. For any of us.

I have thoughts about that, too. I’m sure you’re shocked to hear. 🙂 But I’ll save that for next week.

October 31, 2022October 31, 2022

Should We Quit Having Kids Because Of Climate Change?

Recently I learned that there are people who are struggling with the decision to have children, because of climate change. They’re questioning if the morality of bringing children into what is virtually certain to be a hellscape in the not-too-distant future.

Now, I can hear hackles rising and derisive snorts being uttered all over the place right now, but I would ask you to take a deep breath, say a prayer for discernment, and actually take a moment to consider this. And remember that the person speaking here is a mother of 4 who’s been using NFP for nearly a quarter century.

Consider this:

We in the west are fundamentally and unshakably committed to our own convenience and comfort at the expense of everything else.

In the summertime we make our churches, schools, and hotels so cold, we have to wear coats inside. People write Facebook posts telling us we’re psychotic if we set our thermostat anywhere above 72 in the summer.

Our culture glorifies gluttony—how else can you interpret the clear parallel between “bigger portion size = better” at restaurants?—and then throw away shameful amounts of food while huge swaths of the world are starving.

People leave cars running while they stand at the door talking, or while kids are at soccer, or while waiting for half an hour in school pickup line, or while scrolling phones. (That one baffles me. You’re literally burning money!)

These and a thousand other things we do thoughtlessly, habitually, without intention and without examination. Even after it’s pointed out that our habits of consumption and comfort are damaging God’s creation. Even when we see daily the proof of climate change, and that it’s the poor who suffer first and most. Even when the scientific community is begging us to fix it, and telling us how. Even when the world is literally burning around us—even in places where fires aren’t supposed to be a part of our climate.

As Catholics, we believe children are always and unequivocally a blessing, the crowning of marriage.

But honestly, when I heard that some are choosing not to have children because of the world they will have to survive, I thought, “There’s some sound moral reasoning going on there.” I can’t embrace it, but I understand it.

As Catholics, we can and should advocate for the goodness and dignity of human life, and the worth of having children, even though they will suffer in this world. Because of course, life will always involve suffering.

But if we are flippant, derisive, or dismissive about climate change—if we, collectively, act as if our selfish commitment to comfort and convenience has no long-term ramifications—then we have no business judging people who discern against having children. We’ve created the situation they’re responding to. And God will call us on our sins as much as he will call them on theirs.

Background Image by Kevin Ellis from Pixabay

October 10, 2022October 10, 2022

A little less talk, a little more action

You know that saying: whenever you point a finger at someone else, four fingers are pointing back at you? (Well, it’s really three, as you can see, but…)

I think about that a lot in the context of Intentional Catholic. Anything I write, integrity forces me to turn back on myself, mirror-like.

I’ve been struggling through the Bible in a Year podcast… valuing it for the sake of hearing Scripture in a way that helps me grasp the historical context, but struggling because sometimes the commentaries really set me off. The one on Matthew 25—which is sort of the whole foundation of Intentional Catholic–pretty much gave permission for people to say “I’m clothing my naked children and feeding my hungry family. I’m covered.” In fairness, I do not believe that’s what he intended to convey, but it certainly does give tacit permission to ignore the plight of ACTUAL poverty and suffering.

Which is not to belittle feeding and clothing a family. I am up to the tips of my frizzy curls in caring for kids. It’s a real thing.

But it doesn’t negate our responsibility to the poor, marginalized, and vulnerable. First of all because keeping our kids fed and clothed is only a sliver of what keeps us so busy. The vast majority of what keeps us hopping is not essential. We could ALL cut back on some of our luxury and busy-ness and refocus some of that energy on the poor, marginalized, and vulnerable.

But as I sat there stewing and fuming over this, it occurred to me that me sitting in my house writing blogs and social media posts is not clothing the naked and feeding the hungry, either.

Here’s the thing. The conventional wisdom is that not everyone is called to everything. We are supposed to find what we, individually, are called to.

But I am an Enneagram 1, which means I’m very concerned with Getting It Right. For myself AND for the larger world. Enneagram 1s are deeply susceptible to scrupulousness. (Scrupulosity?)

The trouble is, when I, as an Enneagram 1, try to parse out what I feel most passionate about, I can’t do it. It all matters!

I have a child with a disability. Our health care system of access & payment is deeply dysfunctional and a burden on families.

My conscience stings every time I see a homeless person at an exit ramp. How dare we drive by, avoiding eye contact to preserve our own comfort? How dare people on my “Nextdoor” app call them “zombies,” as if these are not human beings with the same innate dignity as themselves?

I see the chaos and suffering that causes people in Central America to flee for the U.S.—and the way some people here villainize those who are desperate for the same security we treat as a divine right. How can I not be passionate about refugee and immigration?

I have godchildren and family members whose skin color will make them a target when they grow up. How can I not rail against those who deny systemic racism?

I had infertility that the medical community wanted to treat by slapping bandaids on it (birth control, artificial procedures) while ignoring the problems that caused it. We have a family because an NFP doctor took the time to find the root cause (PCO + agricultural chemicals in the water—how can I not be passionate about the environment?). So when I see how abortion is the symptom of a host of other problems that are systemic in our culture, how can I fail to rage at those who want to address the symptom while ignoring the causes?

I don’t know what my “one” issue is, because dang it, they’re all equally important. Thank you very much, Enneagram 1. But I can’t do everything. For years, I’ve been trying to learn to respect my limits, to create healthy boundaries.

But sooner or later you have to say “yes,” too.

So for now, I am working a shift at the Food Bank into my schedule, and exploring volunteer possibilities with Refugee and Immigration Services. Because at least there’s a known entry point there.

I am not going to stop talking. But I’m going to start mixing more action in with it.

October 3, 2022

What Dorothy Day’s views on Communism teach us about today’s conflicts

I want to talk about Dorothy Day and Communism. This was the original post I wanted to write about her, but I felt it needed to be prepared by the two I’ve already shared.

Dorothy Day’s stalwart both/and-ness—and the fact that she WAS a Communist before her conversion to Catholicism–gave her a unique perspective on communism, which of course was THE issue that shaped the world during much of her ministry.

And with all the talk of “socialism” today, it’s still relevant.

As I shared before, Dorothy Day believed in personal responsibility. She had no faith in changing things through the political process–she thought transformation could only come by changing hearts and minds. And she was worried about regulation because of the danger of fascism (she wrote strong words about it in the 1930s, in the era of Hitler, Mussolini, and FDR). Yet despite her antipathy, she DID speak up on political issues, and those words have deep resonance still today:

“I do not think, however, that we are guilty of envy or begrudging a rich man his wealth if we point out the abuses of the capitalist system which allows one man to accumulate the most of the world’s goods while other families suffer year after year, the aching pinch of poverty if not of actual destitution.” (All The Way To Heaven, Kindle edition, 86).

Stop and read that quote again. Let it sink in. Not a whole lot has changed since then, has it? In the past 40 years, since Reagan redefined for the entire country (left AND right) our fundamental approach to taxes and government, total wealth in the U.S. has grown by $77 trillion, but almost all of that went to the richest 10% and especially the richest 1%, while the poorest families among us are all but flat.

Source: Congressional Budget Office report: “Trends in the Distribution of Family Wealth, 1989-2019,” published Sept. 2022

How can anyone deny that capitalism serves the rich, not the poor?

Here’s another quote.

“The Bishops of the Catholic Church have stated that many of the social aims of the Communists are Christian aims and should be worked for by Christians. We feel that Communism is gaining in this country, because Christian people do not protest against injustice as they do.” (Ibid., 95).

Communism gained BECAUSE Christians didn’t stand up against injustice. There’s a lesson in that for us in 2022, too.

One of the major messaging points of today’s conservative movement is that America needs to “return to its traditional Judeo-Christian values.” Or, “the Judeo-Christian values on which this nation was founded.”

I see the connection between modern conservatism and traditional Christian values on sexuality. But outside of that I don’t see much connection at all. In preparation for my letter to the bishops on the Eucharist, I read the entire Pentateuch. One of the things that struck me most profoundly was how the early nation of Israel dealt with issues of social security.

Israel was, in fact, a religious nation… unlike the U.S., which was explicitly founded on freedom of religion—James Madison viewed it as THE fundamental liberty, without which the others meant nothing.

And unless I’ve profoundly misinterpreted, in proto-Israel, religion WAS government—until they rebelled against God and demanded a king. But in those early generations, there was a tithe whose express purpose was to support the livelihood of the priests and provide for the “widow and the orphan and the resident alien.” A nationwide tax, in other words, that everyone paid in order to take care of the most vulnerable among them.

Fast forward to early Christianity. In Acts of the Apostles, no one held any property in common; they all laid it at the feet of the Apostles and it was distributed according to need.

Was it really that easy? I have my doubts. People are people, after all. Still, that was the intended foundation of Christian society.

And, um… pretty sure we can all see that that’s the literal definition of communism.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. It is eminently clear that communism, and all its lingering forms of government (cough-cough-Putin-cough-cough), are unequivocally Bad News.

But anyone who legitimately wants to claim a desire to return to Judeo Christian principles is being intellectually and morally dishonest if they ignore the parts of Judeo-Christian history that don’t line up with their worldly values. Because values of low taxes and small government are not, in fact, Judeo Christian at all, but secular ones.

In her lifetime, Dorothy Day called out capitalism AND communism, because they’re both fundamentally in conflict with Christian world view.

June 6, 2022

Reflecting on Dorothy Day (part 1)

This weekend, I finally finished reading Dorothy Day’s letters. My overarching takeaway is: This woman is not who you think she was. She defies categorization.

I highlighted so many passages in my e-book. So many things to reflect upon. There’s one particular facet I want to reflect upon in depth, but I think I need to address the big picture first, and give that one particular aspect its own post.

My whole life, I have assumed that Dorothy Day would take a certain approach to everything. I believed this in the years when I was a staunch political conservative and thought she represented everything that was wrong with the world. And I still believed this when I began reading this book as a person who has embraced as Godly many things I once thought misguided.

But she is way, way more complex than the general narrative about her allows her to be.

In many ways, she was shockingly conservative. In her younger years it wasn’t so obvious, because the world was still conservative surrounding matters of sexuality. In those years, her conservatism manifested as repeated acknowledgment of the Church’s (and specifically Church leadership’s) authority over her, and a repeated commitment to cease her work if she was ever told to do so. Of course, that never happened. There were many, many priests and bishops supporting her work… because it was CATHOLIC.

But as soon as the sexual revolution started, she started railing against it all. She was not a happy camper in the last couple decades of her life. She was kind of a grumpy old lady, in fact, often unhappy about the depravity of the young and the sorry state of the future. (And she didn’t like the post-V2 Mass. Although in her defense, she was complaining about it in the time just after the change, when everyone was still figuring it out and a lot of things were done badly.) She talks about how the government is not the ideal provider of services to the poor—that it’s necessary at times, but that ideally this work would be done by the Church. (Not individual Christians. The CHURCH.)

On the other hand, she had a moral code that demanded social justice, and she was absolutely, 100% rigid in following it. She participated in protests for peace, spent time in jail, stood with workers against corporations, and lived in abject poverty her whole life—never kept any of her earnings.

A big part of her code was pacifism. She opposed Vietnam, of course (rightly so). But she also opposed World War 2. I found that shocking—downright disturbing, actually. If ever there were a just war, that was it.

Her commitment to pacifism was so unshakable, she wouldn’t take honorary degrees from Catholic universities because they had ROTC programs and took government grants that largely benefited the military industrial complex.

She also raised holy hell when she found out her publisher was going to take funds from Rockefeller and Ford foundations to help archive her stuff. She flatly refused permission as long as they were involved. In part that was b/c she believed in personal responsibility (a tick in the conservative chart), but in part it was also that the Rockefellers, in her words, had a lot to answer for (a jab at corporate abuse of workers, a tick in the progressive chart).

What I hope I’m laying out here clearly is that she was CATHOLIC. Not progressive Catholic, not conservative Catholic, just CATHOLIC. Because sometimes Catholic IS progressive. And sometimes it’s conservative. And virtually all of us try to separate those two, and in so doing, do violence to the Gospel.

I begin to suspect that I have more than one more post to write about Dorothy Day… but I’ll stop there for right now.

May 25, 2022May 25, 2022

Ho Hum, Another School Shooting

Image by Ray Shrewsberry • *** from Pixabay

I know this post will make no difference. Some people will react with cheers and the rest will rear up in defense of guns. They’ll use every worldly argument and not one Godly one, because there is no Godly argument for placing guns above human life.

In the larger world someone, probably multiple someones, will say we shouldn’t politicize this tragedy, therefore neatly sidestepping the glaring call to examine our collective conscience… yet again.

Many Christians will insist, again, that the gun isn’t the problem, it’s mental health—but won’t support public funds to address that problem, either. They’ll change the subject using whatever excuse they can find to bury the fact that the only places in the world with more gun violence than us are places riddled with gangs. To bury the fact that no one else in the developed world has as many guns in people’s hands as we do, or as many people dying from guns.

And nothing will change.

And yet, I will say it anyway, because it needs to be said:

Guns are an idol.

I’m not even angry. Just disgusted that Catholics who fight so hard for the innocent unborn, who believe themselves to be pro-life, can act as if guns are more important than the lives of innocent school children. Can go to bat looking for reasons to oppose the legislation that the U.S. bishops have been urging for years.

That’s all I have to say.