Growing Up With Two Moms: The Untold Children’s View

The following article is brought to you courtesy of Public Discourse: Ethics, Law, and the Common Good. Caution: Some explicit language used. Robert Oscar Lopez has a bisexual orientation but, as he professes, does not act on his same-sex attractions.

Growing Up With Two Moms: The Untold Children’s View
by Robert Oscar Lopez
August 6, 2012

The children of same-sex couples have a tough road ahead of them—I know, because I have been there. The last thing we should do is make them feel guilty if the strain gets to them and they feel strange.

Between 1973 and 1990, when my beloved mother passed away, she and her female romantic partner raised me. They had separate houses but spent nearly all their weekends together, with me, in a trailer tucked discreetly in an RV park 50 minutes away from the town where we lived. As the youngest of my mother’s biological children, I was the only child who experienced childhood without my father being around.

After my mother’s partner’s children had left for college, she moved into our house in town. I lived with both of them for the brief time before my mother died at the age of 53. I was 19. In other words, I was the only child who experienced life under “gay parenting” as that term is understood today.

Quite simply, growing up with gay parents was very difficult, and not because of prejudice from neighbors. People in our community didn’t really know what was going on in the house. To most outside observers, I was a well-raised, high-achieving child, finishing high school with straight A’s.

Inside, however, I was confused. When your home life is so drastically different from everyone around you, in a fundamental way striking at basic physical relations, you grow up weird. I have no mental health disorders or biological conditions. I just grew up in a house so unusual that I was destined to exist as a social outcast.

My peers learned all the unwritten rules of decorum and body language in their homes; they understood what was appropriate to say in certain settings and what wasn’t; they learned both traditionally masculine and traditionally feminine social mechanisms.

Even if my peers’ parents were divorced, and many of them were, they still grew up seeing male and female social models. They learned, typically, how to be bold and unflinching from male figures and how to write thank-you cards and be sensitive from female figures. These are stereotypes, of course, but stereotypes come in handy when you inevitably leave the safety of your lesbian mom’s trailer and have to work and survive in a world where everybody thinks in stereotypical terms, even gays.

I had no male figure at all to follow, and my mother and her partner were both unlike traditional fathers or traditional mothers. As a result, I had very few recognizable social cues to offer potential male or female friends, since I was neither confident nor sensitive to others. Thus I befriended people rarely and alienated others easily. Gay people who grew up in straight parents’ households may have struggled with their sexual orientation; but when it came to the vast social universe of adaptations not dealing with sexuality—how to act, how to speak, how to behave—they had the advantage of learning at home. Many gays don’t realize what a blessing it was to be reared in a traditional home.

My home life was not traditional nor conventional. I suffered because of it, in ways that are difficult for sociologists to index. Both nervous and yet blunt, I would later seem strange even in the eyes of gay and bisexual adults who had little patience for someone like me. I was just as odd to them as I was to straight people.

Life is hard when you are strange. Even now, I have very few friends and often feel as though I do not understand people because of the unspoken gender cues that everyone around me, even gays raised in traditional homes, takes for granted. Though I am hard-working and a quick learner, I have trouble in professional settings because co-workers find me bizarre.

In terms of sexuality, gays who grew up in traditional households benefited from at least seeing some kind of functional courtship rituals around them. I had no clue how to make myself attractive to girls. When I stepped outside of my mothers’ trailer, I was immediately tagged as an outcast because of my girlish mannerisms, funny clothes, lisp, and outlandishness. Not surprisingly, I left high school as a virgin, never having had a girlfriend, instead having gone to four proms as a wisecracking sidekick to girls who just wanted someone to chip in for a limousine.

When I got to college, I set off everyone’s “gaydar” and the campus LGBT group quickly descended upon me to tell me it was 100-percent certain I must be a homosexual. When I came out as bisexual, they told everyone I was lying and just wasn’t ready to come out of the closet as gay yet. Frightened and traumatized by my mother’s death, I dropped out of college in 1990 and fell in with what can only be called the gay underworld. Terrible things happened to me there.

It was not until I was twenty-eight that I suddenly found myself in a relationship with a woman, through coincidences that shocked everyone who knew me and surprised even myself. I call myself bisexual because it would take several novels to explain how I ended up “straight” after almost thirty years as a gay man. I don’t feel like dealing with gay activists skewering me the way they go on search-and-destroy missions against ex-gays, “closet cases,” or “homocons.”

Though I have a biography particularly relevant to gay issues, the first person who contacted me to thank me for sharing my perspective on LGBT issues was Mark Regnerus, in an email dated July 17, 2012. I was not part of his massive survey, but he noticed a comment I’d left on a website about it and took the initiative to begin an email correspondence.

Forty-one years I’d lived, and nobody—least of all gay activists—had wanted me to speak honestly about the complicated gay threads of my life. If for no other reason than this, Mark Regnerus deserves tremendous credit—and the gay community ought to be crediting him rather than trying to silence him.

Regnerus’s study identified 248 adult children of parents who had same-sex romantic relationships. Offered a chance to provide frank responses with the hindsight of adulthood, they gave reports unfavorable to the gay marriage equality agenda. Yet the results are backed up by an important thing in life called common sense: Growing up different from other people is difficult and the difficulties raise the risk that children will develop maladjustments or self-medicate with alcohol and other dangerous behaviors. Each of those 248 is a human story, no doubt with many complexities.

Like my story, these 248 people’s stories deserve to be told. The gay movement is doing everything it can to make sure that nobody hears them. But I care more about the stories than the numbers (especially as an English professor), and Regnerus stumbled unwittingly on a narrative treasure chest.

So why the code of silence from LGBT leaders? I can only speculate from where I’m sitting. I cherish my mother’s memory, but I don’t mince words when talking about how hard it was to grow up in a gay household. Earlier studies examined children still living with their gay parents, so the kids were not at liberty to speak, governed as all children are by filial piety, guilt, and fear of losing their allowances. For trying to speak honestly, I’ve been squelched, literally, for decades.

The latest attempt at trying to silence stories (and data) such as mine comes from Darren E. Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, who gave an interview to Tom Bartlett of the Chronicle of Higher Education, in which he said—and I quote—that Mark Regnerus’s study was “bullshit.” Bartlett’s article continues:

Among the problems Sherkat identified is the paper’s definition of “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers”—an aspect that has been the focus of much of the public criticism. A woman could be identified as a “lesbian mother” in the study if she had had a relationship with another woman at any point after having a child, regardless of the brevity of that relationship and whether or not the two women raised the child as a couple.

Sherkat said that fact alone in the paper should have “disqualified it immediately” from being considered for publication.

The problem with Sherkat’s disqualification of Regnerus’s work is a manifold chicken-and-egg conundrum. Though Sherkat uses the term “LGBT” in the same interview with Bartlett, he privileges that L and G and discriminates severely against the B, bisexuals.

Where do children of LGBT parents come from? If the parents are 100-percent gay or lesbian, then the chances are that the children were conceived through surrogacy or insemination, or else adopted. Those cases are such a tiny percentage of LGBT parents, however, that it would be virtually impossible to find more than a half-dozen in a random sampling of tens of thousands of adults.

Most LGBT parents are, like me, and technically like my mother, “bisexual”—the forgotten B. We conceived our children because we engaged in heterosexual intercourse. Social complications naturally arise if you conceive a child with the opposite sex but still have attractions to the same sex. Sherkat calls these complications disqualifiable, as they are corrupting the purity of a homosexual model of parenting.

I would posit that children raised by same-sex couples are naturally going to be more curious about and experimental with homosexuality without necessarily being pure of any attraction to the opposite sex. Hence they will more likely fall into the bisexual category, as did I—meaning that the children of LGBT parents, once they are young adults, are likely to be the first ones disqualified by the social scientists who now claim to advocate for their parents.

Those who are 100-percent gay may view bisexuals with a mix of disgust and envy. Bisexual parents threaten the core of the LGBT parenting narrative—we do have a choice to live as gay or straight, and we do have to decide the gender configuration of the household in which our children will grow up. While some gays see bisexuality as an easier position, the fact is that bisexual parents bear a more painful weight on their shoulders. Unlike homosexuals, we cannot write off our decisions as things forced on us by nature. We have no choice but to take responsibility for what we do as parents, and live with the guilt, regret, and self-criticism forever.

Our children do not arrive with clean legal immunity. As a man, though I am bisexual, I do not get to throw away the mother of my child as if she is a used incubator. I had to help my wife through the difficulties of pregnancy and postpartum depression. When she is struggling with discrimination against mothers or women at a sexist workplace, I have to be patient and listen. I must attend to her sexual needs. Once I was a father, I put aside my own homosexual past and vowed never to divorce my wife or take up with another person, male or female, before I died. I chose that commitment in order to protect my children from dealing with harmful drama, even as they grow up to be adults. When you are a parent, ethical questions revolve around your children and you put away your self-interest . . . forever.

Sherkat’s assessment of Regnerus’s work shows a total disregard for the emotional and sexual labor that bisexual parents contribute to their children. Bisexual parents must wrestle with their duties as parents while still contending with the temptations to enter into same-sex relationships. The turbulence documented in Mark Regnerus’s study is a testament to how hard that is. Rather than threatening, it is a reminder of the burden I carry and a goad to concern myself first and foremost with my children’s needs, not my sexual desires.

The other chicken-and-egg problem of Sherkat’s dismissal deals with conservative ideology. Many have dismissed my story with four simple words: “But you are conservative.” Yes, I am. How did I get that way? I moved to the right wing because I lived in precisely the kind of anti-normative, marginalized, and oppressed identity environment that the left celebrates: I am a bisexual Latino intellectual, raised by a lesbian, who experienced poverty in the Bronx as a young adult. I’m perceptive enough to notice that liberal social policies don’t actually help people in those conditions. Especially damning is the liberal attitude that we shouldn’t be judgmental about sex. In the Bronx gay world, I cleaned out enough apartments of men who’d died of AIDS to understand that resistance to sexual temptation is central to any kind of humane society. Sex can be hurtful not only because of infectious diseases but also because it leaves us vulnerable and more likely to cling to people who don’t love us, mourn those who leave us, and not know how to escape those who need us but whom we don’t love. The left understands none of that. That’s why I am conservative.

So yes, I am conservative and support Regnerus’s findings. Or is it that Regnerus’s findings revisit the things that made me conservative in the first place? Sherkat must figure that one out.

Having lived for forty-one years as a strange man, I see it as tragically fitting that the first instinct of experts and gay activists is to exclude my life profile as unfit for any “data sample,” or as Dr. Sherkat calls it, “bullshit.” So the game has gone for at least twenty-five years. For all the talk about LGBT alliances, bisexuality falls by the wayside, thanks to scholars such as Sherkat. For all the chatter about a “queer” movement, queer activists are just as likely to restrict their social circles to professionalized, normal people who know how to throw charming parties, make small talk, and blend in with the Art Deco furniture.

I thank Mark Regnerus. Far from being “bullshit,” his work is affirming to me, because it acknowledges what the gay activist movement has sought laboriously to erase, or at least ignore. Whether homosexuality is chosen or inbred, whether gay marriage gets legalized or not, being strange is hard; it takes a mental toll, makes it harder to find friends, interferes with professional growth, and sometimes leads one down a sodden path to self-medication in the form of alcoholism, drugs, gambling, antisocial behavior, and irresponsible sex. The children of same-sex couples have a tough road ahead of them—I know, because I have been there. The last thing we should do is make them feel guilty if the strain gets to them and they feel strange. We owe them, at the least, a dose of honesty. Thank you, Mark Regnerus, for taking the time to listen.

Robert Lopez is assistant professor of English at California State University-Northridge. He is the author of Colorful Conservative: American Conversations with the Ancients from Wheatley to Whitman. This year he will be publishing novels he wrote in the 1990s and 2000s.

Lawrence, the poor and the grill

St. Lawrence was one deacon out of seven Pope St. Sixtus II in the 3rd century. During times of persecution the early Church would often celebrate Mass in either the catacombs underground or inconspicuously at the local cemeteries.

On one particular occasion, Pope St. Sixtus II had celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in a cemetery. St. Lawrence, his deacon, was there to assist the pope. During the Mass, however, Roman soldiers, while besieging those in attendance and disrupting the service, arrested Pope St. Sixtus II. Immediately, the Roman officials decided to execute the twenty-fourth pope. As they were taking him away St. Lawrence said to him weeping, "Father, where are you going without your deacon?" The pope replied, "I am not leaving you, my son, in three days you will follow me."

With great confidence and joy, St. Lawrence wasted no time giving his money away to the poor. And as for those expensive vessels he possessed, he sold them so he could give away even more money. Then the Prefect of Rome, a pagan who despised Christians, assumed that the Church had a many treasures hidden away somewhere. With this assumption, he ordered the saintly deacon to turn in all of the Church’s treasures. Instead of gathering all of the expensive items the Prefect thought he had, St. Lawrence summoned all of the poor and sick people to him. He then presented these people to the Prefect and said, “This is the Church’s treasures!”

Well, you can imagine how this angered the Roman government. The deacon’s punishment for being a wise guy was a slow and barbaric death. As one source states:

“The Saint was tied on top of an iron grill over a slow fire that roasted his flesh little by little, but Lawrence was burning with so much love of God that he almost did not feel the flames. In fact, God gave him so much strength and joy that he even joked. ‘Turn me over,’ he said to the judge. ‘I'm done on this side!’”

St. Lawrence’s last words may seem unrealistically comical, but the fact is that many Saints approached their death with a great sense of levity at times. They really did have heaven on the forefront of their minds.

Another thing they had on their minds was the poor. Like St. Lawrence, every single canonized Saint loved the poor, associated with the poor and made the poor and the needy a very high priority in their day to day ministries. Unfortunately, the love of the poor in the twenty-first century has taken on political and “social justice-like” connotations. Under this shadow, causes are advanced in the name of the poor but without any consideration for their moral and spiritual needs. For instance, I have seen Stations of the Cross in some Catholic institutions with pictures of poor for each station. The traditional pictures of Christ were, sadly, missing. It was if the religion of philanthropy was being celebrated and not authentic Christianity. Furthermore, under this same shadow principles of socialism are often advanced when there is an exclusive emphasis on humanitarian needs.

As the deacon St. Lawrence demonstrates, when Christ is loved above all, the human person is rightly loved. But the needs of the spirit always take precedence over that of the body. On the other hand, serving people’s spiritual and moral needs can never be an excuse not to serve the poor, the mentally ill, the elderly and even those men and women who are incarcerated. In fact, it is often said that the presence of Christ in the poor is the “eighth sacrament.” If our Lord’s presence in the poor was familiar to all Christians, it would certainly interfere with the political demagogues who exploit them.

Inviting Obama to the Al Smith Dinner

“As the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Dolan has said the White House policy is ‘strangling’ the church...Despite his differences with Obama, Dolan held to the tradition of inviting the president because ‘this is not a partisan event,’ Zwilling said. ‘It is an evening to put politics aside and come together in a spirit of civility.’”

-Rachel Zoll, Huffington Post


"When this story of the Al Smith Catholic charities dinner first came to light my first thought was that the reporter had his facts messed up. I thought, 'There's no way Cardinal Dolan invited him!' Then came some disbelief, then an out loud, "What?!?" when I learned it was true."

-Excerpt from Hartline's letter to Cardinal Dolan



A letter to Cardinal Dolan by Jennifer Hartline

Jennifer ia a Catholic, a proud Army wife and homeschooling mother of three children. She is a contributing writer for Catholic Online. This letter is brought to you courtesy of Catholic Online.



Dear Cardinal Dolan,

Well, you've had an interesting week, haven't you? I thought rather than talking about you I'd talk to you. Who am I? Nobody special, just a daughter of the Church. Just an Army wife, a homeschooling mom raising three kids, and an American citizen who's very worried about her country.

You, on the other hand, are a breath of fresh air for the Church in America. You are the embodiment of the courage, enthusiasm, joy, and faith we need now more than ever. Your election to the head of the Bishop's conference was music to my ears. It gave me great hope in many ways. God has not forsaken us here in the U.S.A., even though we've forsaken Him. He has given us you in this critical hour. I know I'm not alone here -- any Catholic who's paying any attention at all is grateful for all you've done.

I want to thank you for the leadership you've provided. I want to thank you for having a spine. Thank you for your forthrightness and fidelity. Thank you for fighting and defending and teaching and admonishing and for doing it all with your unbeatable smile. You're a big bear -- part teddy and part grizzly. It's exactly what we need, so don't ever change.

When this story of the Al Smith Catholic charities dinner first came to light my first thought was that the reporter had his facts messed up. I thought, "There's no way Cardinal Dolan invited him!" Then came some disbelief, then an out loud, "What?!?" when I learned it was true.

The firing squad quickly took aim at you, and the Catholic blogosphere was soon crackling with a lot of angry Catholics who could not fathom why our Church leaders were inviting the worst President in history to dinner.

In my own small circle, I tried to encourage folks to take a deep breath and not rush to join in the condemnation. Cardinal Dolan, I said, has never given us a reason to doubt his strength or his loyalty. Let's give this a chance and see what comes of it.

But I have to admit, I don't like it any more than they do. I think the whole thing kinda stinks.

The man sitting in the White House does not behave like a President, so I won't call him that. He wants to be king, and he acts like a tyrant, so from now on, I will refer to him as the tyrantking. He is the enemy of life and freedom in America. I don't think anyone can dispute that assessment. I think he is a wolf who barely bothers to put his wool on anymore.


He is the enemy of Catholicism, as far as I'm concerned. He uses the Church to cover his behind and give his evil policies some sort of legitimacy, thanks to apostates like Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, Kathleen Sebelius, and thanks to the inexplicable Fr. John Jenkins. (Why is he still the president of a Catholic university, by the way??)

After this last year and the all-out assault he has waged on religious freedom and the child in the womb; after his pathetic and manufactured "war on women" that revolves around contraception; and after all you have said and done to stand up to him and lead the Church in the battle to defend what is right, why why why do we have to invite the guy to dinner for drinks and a few laughs??

As of this moment, Catholics in America must decide whether to violate Church teaching and their own conscience, or whether to disobey the HHS mandate and risk their business and livelihood. The war is ON, and we're gonna tell jokes and have a good time with the tyrant behind the oppression? Seriously?

Your Eminence, please tell me you have an ace up your sleeve. Please tell me there's more to this that the rest of us just don't know about yet. Please tell me you haven't taken leave of your good senses.

In my head, the conversation is going something like this:

Cardinal Dolan is no idiot. True. This ain't his first rodeo. True again. He's certainly no Obama sycophant. Very true. He must have a good reason for doing this. I sure hope so. But c'mon, really? Are we suddenly no longer fighting for our lives against this guy and his evil policies? Exactly... This will end badly with one opportune photo, and Obama will milk it for all it's worth right through the election. Yep. Okay Jesus, I trust in You. Please prove me wrong about this.

I'm waiting anxiously to hear what your thoughts are about this whole mess. Please reassure your worried sheep that you've looked at this from all sides and all is well.


I beg you, please promise me that you won't gift the tyrantking two weeks before the election with a snazzy picture of you with your gregarious smile and him with his cocky grin. You know that's what he wants -- a snapshot to tell the country, "See? I love the Church and they love me! There's no problem here! Vote for me!"

Your Eminence, we all know the stakes could not be higher this November. The last thing we need is to allow any confusion at all about the reality of what the tyrantking is doing to annihilate religious freedom in America. Now is definitely not the time to muddy the message about the Church's opposition and resistance to his mandates and his abortion-obsessed agenda.

The hidden blessing in all that Obama has done so far is that is has ignited Catholics and other people of faith and brought a unity that wasn't there before. We can't afford to squander that now. But surely no one knows that better than you.

You are the Cardinal, not me (obviously). You're not where you are by accident or stroke of luck, but by the design of our mighty and loving God. I respect your authority, and even though I don't see how this will end well, I choose to believe the best of you and your decision.

I humbly ask you to reconsider. I will be praying that God gives you keen insight and wisdom, as well as courage to fight the good fight. Don't be afraid to change your mind. But if you believe strongly it's the right course of action, I know you'll stand your ground, even if sheep like me bleat on and on about what a colossal mistake it could be. I'll be delighted to eat my words.

I'm sure that's the big difference between you and me. You're a shepherd. Your job is to seek lost sheep and lead them home. Maybe your heart's desire in all of this is a chance to try once more to get a certain very lost sheep to follow a different road. Most days it's all I can do to just wish him well and want him gone from the White House. This "love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you" stuff is crazy, you know?

Maybe you are, too. Crazy like a fox. I guess we'll find out.

In the meantime, lead the way, Smiling Cardinal. I'm still with you. With respect and gratitude.

____________________________________________________________________

Sky View comments:

ArchBishop William Lori addressed the General Assembly of Bishops on November 16th, 2011. The topic was religious liberty. By recalling the words from Ezekiel, he called upon his brother bishops to be watchmen: “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel.” (Ezekiel 33:7) A watchman, as Pope St. Gregory the Great said, is a preacher who always stands on a height so that he can see from afar what is coming. In ages past, wolves were chased away from the pasture by the Church's watchmen. But it "appears" that in 2012- when the nation's future is at stake, as well as the Church's religious liberty -that the wolves are being invited into the pasture in the name of diplomacy.

The Fathers of the Church are held up to us as model shepherds. If this is the case, then those who are no friends of religious liberty ought not be allowed to step foot in a church or cathedral or any event hosted by the Catholic Church.

Let us learn from St. Ambrose of Milan, a Church Father and bishop in the fourth century, who publicly withstood Roman emperor Theodosius II at the cathedral door. It just so happened that the emperor had not yet repented from a serious sin. But after the saintly bishop pushed him away…away from the entrance, the Roman emperor yielded and did public penance.

Number 44074

Preface: Edith Stein’s life is wonderfully captured in a book called, Edith Stein: A Biography by Waltraud Herbstrith. Publisher: Ignatius Press. It is from this book and other sources that informed this post on St. Edith’s heroic witness.

Number 44074:

Bishop Fulton Sheen, in his series of talks entitled, What Now America? said that Americans should be thankful that they do not have to worry about that "knock on the door." That "knock on the door," of course, is a reference to the S.S. soldiers of Germany's Third Reich (1933-1945) searching for Jews who might have been hiding in people’s houses. This search was conducted for the purposes of detaining Jews and then deporting them to the nearest concentration camp.

On August 2, 1942 this ominous knock came to St. Edith Stein’s door. Actually, it was a door to a Carmelite convent in Holland. At the time, Edith was known as Sister Teresa Benedict of the Cross. It just so happen that she was a Jewish convert to Catholicism who had been baptized some twenty years prior on January 1, 1922. Eventually, Edith joined the Carmelite Convent of Cologne, Germany in 1934. But due to the heightened persecution of the Jews in 1938, Edith transferred to a Carmelite convent in Holland.

Unfortunately, her conversion and status as a Carmelite sister did not exempt her from the hatred and persecution unleashed by the Third Reich. On August 2, 1942 the prioress of the convent, Sister Antonia, unwittingly answered the door thinking that the S.S. soldiers had arrived to ask a question about immigration. As such, she sent for Sister Theresa Benedict of the Cross (i.e. Edith Stein) and her sister, Rosa Stein, both of whom had been praying in the chapel. Immediately, the Stein sisters were informed that they had five minutes to pack their belongings and then they were go with the S.S. soldiers. The thing is, everyone knew where they were going! With this, the convent was thrown into a state of utter shock and confusion. However, Edith Stein was calm and never lost her peace. She gently told Rosa, who was already racked with anxiety, "Come, we are going for our people.” And off to Auschwitz they went.

As indicated, the “people” Edith Stein referred to were the Jewish people. Although Edith was of Jewish decent in the flesh, she was not always a child of God in grace. In fact, at the age of 14, she lost her faith in God and was, for some years, an atheist. But in her early adulthood years, she gradually came to believe in a Supreme Being. As God’s existence was making a deeper impression upon her mind, her intellectual gifts were becoming more apparent in the academic world as a young adult. Indeed, she possessed great intellectual ability.

Edith was an intellectual by nature and an advocate for women’s issues both before and after her conversion. In 1911 she became a member of Prussian Society for Women’s Franchise. And in 1913 she transferred to Gottingen University. It was there that she became a pupil and teaching assistant to Edmund Husserl, a founder of a philosophical school of phenomenology. Husserl was born a Jew but converted to Lutheranism. After meeting another philosopher by the name of Max Scheler, it was then that she began to be intrigued with Roman Catholicism. However, what really made a deep impression on Edith Stein was a lady who had stopped by a cathedral in Frankfurt. She recounted the incident: "This was something totally new to me. In the synagogues and Protestant churches I had visited people simply went to the services. Here, however, I saw someone coming straight from the busy marketplace into this empty church, as if she was going to have an intimate conversation. It was something I never forgot. "


After having met converts from Judaism to Christianity, Edith found herself reading the New Testament and other Christian literature. One night in 1921 she picked up an autobiography of St. Theresa of Avila. She spent the whole night reading it. Later, she would say, "When I had finished the book, I said to myself: This is the truth." So drawn to the spirituality of St. Theresa she went further to study the Mass and various articles of the Catholic Faith. One day she decided to attend Mass. It happened that she was able to follow it without difficulty. After the dismissal, she approached the pastor and asked if she could enter into the Catholic Church. Then the pastor explained to her that there is a process and that it takes some time. In so many words Edith asked the priest to test her. That he did. To his pleasant surprise, she answered all of his questions. Having realized that she was gifted intellectually, the pastor put her under the care of another priest who could properly guide her both intellectually and spiritually. Instead of having to wait to until the Triduum to enter into the Church, she was baptized, as indicated, on New Year’s Day the following year.

To make a long story short, after becoming a disciple of Christ, the Catholic community in Germany put her talents to use. Edith taught at a Dominican sister’s school in Speyer. She was responsible for many philosophical writings and translation of St. Thomas Aquinas’ work at the Association of Catholic Women Teachers and the Association of Catholic University Graduates. From there, her reputation began to grow. As a result, she went on lecture tours speaking on issues such as “The Ethos of Woman’s Vocation,” “The Vocation of Man and Woman in the Order of Nature and Grace,” “The Life of the Christian Woman,” and the “Foundation of Women’s Education.” But because of her Jewish descent, she was unsuccessful in applying for teaching opportunities at the local universities. In fact, the prejudice against Jews became so intense that Edith had to discontinue her lectures.

Nevertheless, she accepted all of these setbacks as God’s will. She once said, “There is nothing to regret about the fact that I can’t continue to lecture. To me a great and merciful Providence seems to be standing behind it all.” Then she added, “I have not regretted it for an instant: I am convinced that everything is exactly as it should be.” Then it dawned on her: "I had heard of severe measures against Jews before. But now it dawned on me that God had laid his hand heavily on His people, and that the destiny of these people would also be mine.”

In 1933, Edith Stein decided to give her life totally to God. Having been attracted to the spirituality of St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, she entered the Carmelite convent in Cologne, Germany; taking the name of Sister Theresa Benedict of the Cross. And in 1938, she made her profession.

As stated, at the end of the same year, Edith and her sister Rosa transferred to a convent in Holland for safety reasons. This saintly woman then had an encounter with God very similar to that of Blessed Miguel Pro just ten to twelve years earlier when the Communists in Mexico persecuted the Church. If you recall, when Father Miguel Pro was celebrating Mass, he offered his life for his people. It was during that same Mass that God made it clear to him that his prayer was accepted. And it was during a holy hour at the Carmelite convent in Cologne that Edith made a similar offering:


“I spoke with the Savior to tell him that I realized it was his Cross that was now being laid upon the Jewish people, that the few who understood this had the responsibility of carrying it in the name of all, and that I myself was willing to do this, if he would only show me how. I left the service with the inner conviction that I had been heard, but uncertain as ever as what ‘carrying the Cross’ would mean for me.” This was a calling not only for her but for all of God’s friends who understood the Mystery of the Cross. She continues, “I understood the Cross as the destiny of God’s people, which was beginning to be apparent at the time (1933). I felt that those who understood the Cross of Christ should take it upon themselves on everybody’s behalf…Beneath the Cross I understood the destiny of God’s people.”

Edith's intuition could not have been more accurate. It happened that she applied for a Swiss visa. It was accepted but her sister Rosa’s visa was denied. Instead of taking the opportunity to save her own life by escaping the dangers of the persecution, she refused to abandon her sister. In Echt, Holland she remained. Finally, on August 2, 1940 her prayer was realized when the Carmelite convent got that “knock on the door.” “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.” (John 15:13)

Edith and Rosa were first transported to a transit camp in Amersfoort, Netherlands.
Many eye witnesses said that on August 3 the deportees were overwhelmed with extreme depression. They were also paralyzed with fear; and with good reason. However, there was one lady who stood out above the rest. Two eye witnesses said that Edith appeared “unworried” and even “cheerful.” Among several hundred Jews, there were some who were of a religious order. Led by Edith (or Sister Theresa), the religious prayed the Divine Office and recited the Rosary. Another witness said, “The influence she exerted by her tranquil bearing and manner was undeniable.”

Holocaust survivor, Julian Marcan of Cologne, said when the wives were separated from their husbands many of them were on the brink of insanity. They sat moaning for days leaving their children unattended. It was then that the complete calm and self-possession of Edith Stein became manifest. Wasting no time, she began taking care of the little ones. She fed them, clothed them and loved them. And then it was off to another transit camp in Westerbork (Netherlands) before they reached their final destination.

August 6, 1942 was the last of Edith Stein’s letters. Remarkably, in this letter to the Carmelite convent in Echt, Holland she used phrases like: “A thousand thanks.” “Greetings to all.” “Your Reverence’s grateful child. B.” Also, at the transit camp she happened to see men from Echt. They recounted how, given the hellhole that the prisoners were in, Edith was surprisingly in a relaxed and lighthearted mood. One of the men offered her a cigarette. She laughed and said that it was a habit she had once taken up in her university days. When talking to her, these same men said that there was a heavenly atmosphere about her…a glow of a saint. One official said that talking to her was taking a journey into another world.

These accounts about her supernatural-like demeanor do not tell the whole story, however. Edith was human. She did feel oppressed over the suffering of others; especially her sister Rosa. Some could see it on her face. She even said to one Dutch official, “I never knew people could actually be like this…But God is listening to their pleading I have no doubt of that.” Ruth Kantorowicz, a woman on the other side of the barbwire fence, was expressing her sympathy to the Stein sisters. Edith interrupted her and said, “I am prepared for whatever happens.” The Carmelite sister then shook Ruth’s hand firmly and wished God’s blessing for her and her family.

It was then on August 7 that the prisoners were awakened to hear their names read out loud. And as for those who heard their names, they were to be deported to their final destination; namely, Auschwitz, Poland. One can only imagine the insufferable conditions in the train. Edith even made mention that there were no toilets or anything of that nature for the crammed people to relieve themselves. The stench coming out of the train cars was reminiscent of hell. At one brief stop along the way, Edith asked a stationmaster to send greetings to a friend who happened to live nearby. She said to the stationmaster that they, the Jews, were headed East (i.e. Auschwitz). This was the last anyone had reported speaking to Edith Stein.

Finally, it was reported that two days later, on August 9, 1942 Edith Stein and her sister Rosa died in the gas chambers at the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. In 1950 a Dutch gazette published the names of all of the Jews who were deported from Holland August 7, 1942. One excerpt of that report read:

Number 44074: Edith Theresia Hedwig Stein, Echt
Born- October 12, 1891, Breslau
Died- August 9, 1942

To the Catholic Church, Edith Stein was a Saint and a heroic witness in deeply troubled times. To the world, she was a victim of the holocaust. But to an ungodly totalitarian regime, she was only a number. Number: 44074.

________________________________________________________________________________

Epilogue:

Many ask: How is it that the death of a Saint glorifies God? Yet, despite the fact that this is a stumbling block to the world, Scripture bids us to believe in the Mystery of the Cross: “Precious in the sight of the Lord Is the death of his saints.” (Psalm 116:15) Christ confirmed this truth in the Gospel of John. Following His resurrection he said to Peter: “Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go." He said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. (John 21:18-19)

Now, if you really think about it, it is an odd thing that the kind of death St. Peter had to endure would “glorify God.” To most normal spectators, an elderly man being crucified upside- thus dying a slow agonizing death –would be a horrifying experience. It would shock our modern sensibilities, to be sure. Furthermore, it might even cause a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Yet, the early Church held the martyrdom of St. Peter the Apostle- as well as so many other martyrs –as a trophy to behold! Something to inspire and to be proud of!

So how could a human tragedy like this glorify God? When I started to read the biography of St. Edith Stein, the answer became a little bit clearer to me. I marveled at her God-given (and it was truly “God-given’) ability to rise above the tragic circumstances she was surrounded by. Embracing the Cross in her religious life, meditating on the Passion of Christ in her spiritual exercises and daily encountering her Savior at the altar aroused a the kind of love that prepared and enabled her to lay down her life for “her people” and for her sister Rosa when she was called upon to do so.

This extraordinary grace is given by God to his friends just when they need it. Fr. Walter Ciszek, for instance, during his imprisonment at a Siberian labor camp in the Soviet Union, was abruptly summoned before a firing squad. Just before the shots had been fired, a guard intervened and put a stop to it. The labor camp officials had mistakenly thought that Fr. Walter Ciszek was guilty of some misdeed. In any case, as the guns were pointed at Fr. Walter, he recounted how scared he was. His mind was disoriented and his knees were banging against one another. But he then added, God did grant me the grace of a peaceful resolve because it was not needed at the time.

But for St. Edith Stein, the extraordinary grace was needed. And it manifested itself through her to such an extent that it literally inspired others amid such human misery. We can even go so far as to say that, as one eye witness reported, her witness took souls to “another world.” This, in part, is how God is glorified through the death of His Saints!

Grief is a journey

This article is brought to through Sky View courtesy of Catholic Online. The following reflection on grief is in light of the OKC bombing.

By John Mallon

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing."

"At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me." — C.S. Lewis, opening paragraphs of A Grief Observed

I read an article recently which reported that some people are growing tired of the pain of those who lost loved ones in the OKC bombing and think those suffering bereavement ought to “get on with life.” Such an attitude shows the still widespread ignorance in society about the nature of emotional pain, grief, depression and other related conditions. The terrors of post-traumatic stress disorder haunting actual survivors are only beginning to come to light. Bereavement and grief are natural processes which must run their course. This is a natural healing process and as a natural process the time it will take to run its course varies from person to person. One year is by no means “long enough” for everybody.

Grieving people need understanding, need to be listened to — not talked at — they need patience. While it is true that some people can become obsessed with grief in an unhealthy way, the determination of the length of grief’s course is best left to the bereaved and those providing appropriate and competent, preferably professional, care for them. For some people that may be a lifetime. And if it is, it is not their fault. Grieving people have enough to cope with just getting out of bed each day without the added burden of guilt because they sense someone else is “inconvenienced” or impatient with their suffering. It is not easy to live or work with a depressed or grieving person, but it is a lot easier than being a depressed or grieving person. If they could stop the horror in their abdomen or the ringing in their brains, believe me they would.

Telling the bereaved to “snap out of it” is like telling someone with a broken leg to go ice skating. If they could, they would. Yes, they will skate again, in time, but attempting to do so prematurely only risks reinjury and prolongs the healing process. Dr. John Andrus, chief of psychiatry at St. Anthony’s Hospital told Newsweek magazine at the time of the bombing — and me in a later conversation — that some people may require years and years of therapy to cope with what happened.

Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist who survived Auschwitz, and later became a convert to Catholicism, said in his classic book Man’s Search for Meaning, that we could survive any “how” as long as we knew the “why”. That is, if we could somehow find meaning in our suffering we could draw strength from it to continue on and survive. The “whys” of the OKC bombing, or the horrors of the Nazis, come under the great mystery of evil. But as his book shows, after the initial shocks, Frankl, coped, and ultimately survived the death camp by observing day to day life there as the clinician that he was, gathering research in his mind on how people cope with and endure such extreme evils, planning a book based on the experience that would help people. He certainly knew people would need help when it was all over. He had every intention of surviving and helping the other survivors when the time came. Living through it with purpose got him through. Man’s Search for Meaning is the book.

For the Christian the ultimate meaning of our suffering is found in the Cross of Christ — where the greatest evil that ever happened—the murder of God — Deicide — resulted in the greatest good that ever happened: Redemption. Philosopher Peter Kreeft calls this “God’s jujitsu.” God used the force of the devil’s own evil to defeat him. We can endure evil and suffering. We can, with great suffering, adjust to evil’s results (although perhaps we should never adjust to evil itself).

In a recent editorial (SC 3/24/96) I criticized that form of (false) compassion as defined by the “culture of death” which seeks to sweep all suffering under the rug, or at least “out of the way” and seeks to “put people out of their misery” which really means “put them out of my misery.” An attitude which permits evil, while saying “I shouldn’t have to look at that.”

Real compassion means, literally, “to suffer with.” Suffering people are inconvenient. They remind us of our own brokenness which, however unpleasant, in Christ, is our greatest resource for offering hope and consolation to the world.

The bereaved of the OKC bombing do not need to hear that they “should be over it by now,” but reminded they have every reason and right to feel as bad as they need to for as long as they need to in God’s own good healing time. We are assured, in Christ, that someday our suffering will come to an end and we will be reunited with our beloved who died in His Grace. But in the meantime if we are not to deny Christ we cannot deny Him in the suffering of others.

It is my hope that one day we will stop seeing emotional suffering, bereavement, depression, etc. in terms of being “weak” or “strong” and use more realistic terms of what is healthy or unhealthy and thus we will stop waving a clock at these afflictions. To cry and grieve over terrible loss is healthy. To seek professional help with the extreme stress it brings on is healthy. To see a doctor about the illness (it is not a weakness) of depression is healthy.

For someone in the state of bereavement or depression it couldn’t end soon enough to suit them, but sometimes it just doesn’t and all too often they wince each morning should they discover it hasn’t lifted, yet, but that they still must face their daily routines despite it. All too often such people experience themselves as a burden and dread hearing that judgment confirmed by another.

Such people in their dread begin sentences with apologies and say “I know I shouldn’t feel this way ...” when yes, they should feel that way and have every reason and right to be affirmed in what they are feeling. They do not need to apologize to the world for hurting, the world needs to apologize to them for insensitivity to their pain.

Grief is a journey with a beginning, a middle and an end. It is not for the faint-hearted. It takes tremendous courage and is extremely draining. It takes great strength and when it is over, leaves us with tremendous strength and even joy. But until then, it is a full time job.

If grief were a sacrament (and you could make a good argument that in Christ it is sacramental) sorrow would be the form while tears and the absence of the beloved would be the matter. Crying is essential. I am of the opinion that it takes a real man to cry. (Most women don’t need such permission). The grief process takes guts because it is gut-wrenching.

Grief is a very solitary experience. Others may sympathize, but are ultimately helpless to be much more than on-lookers, hopefully offering much love, support, care and respectful patience. Other bereaved people can empathize, but ultimately our grief is uniquely our own and, interiorly at least, it is a road we must walk alone — with one exception — we may invite Our Lord whose guts were wrenched in Gethsemani to accompany and guide us. Our Lord who is the Man of Sorrows knows the way for He is also the destination.

Grief is also a frightening experience — our identities may feel misplaced as we grope between who we were before our loss, and who we will be once we get out of the no-man’s land.

God may seem maddeningly absent in grief, but He is not. We may well be furious with Him. He can handle it. The bereaved of the bombing have lost so much and have come so far, each nobly struggling in his or her own way. Some choose to plunge into activism, others prefer to avoid all that. Everyone copes differently. But let us not deny them now what they need most: prayers, patience, love, understanding, support, presence when required and respect when they need to be alone, while letting them know we are available. And then, still more patience.

Survivors, bereaved friends and families, you are not a burden, you are precious, you are needed, your pain is sacred, and where you stand is holy ground. May God continue to bless and heal you, and may He grant us all the gift to be for you what you need.

____________________________________________________________________

Recommended Reading:

The following books are highly recommended for those working through the experience of grief. They are deeply personal first-person accounts from very wise people who have made the journey of suffering themselves.

A Grief Observed; by C.S. Lewis; Bantam Books. Lewis, one of the great Christian writers of the twentieth century, wrote this in a notebook as a sort of diary while grieving the death of his wife, Joy. Their story was recently the subject of the Major motion picture, The Shadowlands, starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.

Man’s Search for Meaning; by Viktor E. Frankl; Washington Square Press; Everyone in the world should read this book. Right now. Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist, describes his experiences in Nazi concentration camps, and offers insights of breathtaking beauty and extraordinary wisdom into the meaning of human suffering.

The Most Important Non-governmental Agency

Excerpts of an article written by non-Catholic Sam Miller - a prominent Cleveland Jewish businessman:

"Why would newspapers carry on a vendetta on one of the most important institutions that we have today in the United States , namely the Catholic Church?

Do you know - the Catholic Church educates 2.6 million students every day at the cost to that Church of 10 billion dollars, and a savings on the other hand to the American taxpayer of 18 billion dollars. The graduates go on to graduate studies at the rate of 92%.

The Church has 230 colleges and universities in the U.S. with an enrollment of 700,000 students.

The Catholic Church has a non-profit hospital system of 637 hospitals, which account for hospital treatment of 1 out of every 5 people - not just Catholics - in the United States today.

But the press is vindictive and trying to totally denigrate in every way the Catholic Church in this country. They have blamed the disease of pedophilia on the Catholic Church, which is as irresponsible as blaming adultery on the institution of marriage.

Let me give you some figures that Catholics should know and remember. For example, 12% of the 300 Protestant clergy surveyed admitted to sexual intercourse with a parishioner; 38% acknowledged other inappropriate sexual contact in a study by the United Methodist Church , 41.8% of clergy women reported unwanted sexual behavior; 17% of laywomen have been sexually harassed.

Meanwhile, 1.7% of the Catholic clergy has been found guilty of pedophilia. 10% of the Protestant ministers have been found guilty of pedophilia. This is not a Catholic Problem.

A study of American priests showed that most are happy in the priesthood and find it even better than they had expected, and that most, if given the choice, would choose to be priests again in face of all this obnoxious PR the church has been receiving.

The Catholic Church is bleeding from self-inflicted wounds. The agony that Catholics have felt and suffered is not necessarily the fault of the Church. You have been hurt by a small number of wayward priests that have probably been totally weeded out by now.

Walk with your shoulders high and you head higher. Be a proud member of the most important non-governmental agency in the United States.

Then remember what Jeremiah said: 'Stand by the roads, and look and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is and walk in it, and find rest for your souls'. Be proud to speak up for your faith with pride and reverence and learn what your Church does for all other religions.

Be proud that you're a Catholic."

Civilization: Like a 9-mile turnaround

It is said that it takes nine miles for a battleship to make a 180 degree turn in the ocean. Such a big ship- with hundreds of naval personnel and tons of metal -is simply not capable of making a quick turnaround. Imagine the inconvenience of having to make a nine mile turnaround in a car. As such, we might begin to appreciate the commitment it takes to change course on such a large marine vessel.

Yet, as difficult as it is to turn a battleship around and reverse direction, it is even more difficult for a civilization to reverse course; that is, to back out of a decline. Historian Will Durant once said that civilization has to be learned and earned by each generation anew. If the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilization (at least as we know it) would die, and we should be savages again. And if it should be lost, T.S. Eliot maintained that it would take five hundred years to restore it.

Eliot went on to caution his readers about the secular experiment that was being tried by Western Civilization in the early 20th century. He said, “The World is trying to experiment with attempting to form a civilized but non-Christian mentality. The experiment will fail; but we must be very patient in awaiting its collapse; meanwhile redeeming the time: so that the Faith may be preserved alive through the dark ages before us; to renew and rebuild civilization, and save the World from suicide.”

Just as individuals, civilizations can be a victim of their own success. So few people realize that to achieve greatness is one thing; to sustain it, is another. With the realization of success or greatness, there are a new set of challenges to meet; ones that did not exist before. Yet, once the luxuries and perks of success are there for the taking, there is a tendency to relax those virtues and skimp on the sacrifices that got you there to begin with.

In any case, the point that Durant and Eliot made was this: Christian civilization took centuries to build. For decades we have enjoyed its fruits and have, as a result, put our feet up on the table. Naturally, the spirit of sacrifice that the Gospel inspired has grown faint. And although it may only take one generation or one century for civilization to fall or to seriously falter, it takes 4-5 times longer to restore it. This is why institutions such as the Christian religion, the family and education are so vitally important. If these pillar-institutions are weak, invariably civilization will be weak and subject to decay.

Christian civilization, the legal recognition of human rights, civic liberties, representative government and scientific progress didn’t just happen! The world was a savage place before the Catholic Church preached the Gospel far and wide. But what occasioned these hallmarks of civilization were a set of religious beliefs that gave meaning and intelligibility to the virtue of self-denial and the spirit of sacrifice. The Church provided incentives for virtuous living that the State was incapable of providing.

For instance, when Caesar Augustus realized that the Roman Empire was suffering from a shortage of people (i.e. fields uncultivated, empty buildings, and in some cases, jobs but no one to fill them), he provided incentives for couples to have more children. But as history bears witness, by the time the State intervenes and tries to remedy a deep seated crisis like depopulation, it is almost always the case that it is too late. If truth be told, it was the early Church that inspired incentives for having children.

As for American couples in the 21st century, they are not only having one or two children, but they are in the habit thinking it is a civic duty to have no more than one or two children. However, this sense of duty runs counter to demographic reality. It just so happens that Western Civilization is headed for a demographic crisis not unlike the Roman Empire in her later years.

The point here is simply to say that to reverse these attitudes, thus inspiring couples to be generous with God in having more children, is very difficult. Tax credits or other incentives that governments typically give are inadequate. The openness to having more children, like so many other virtues needed for a prosperous civilization, is deeply personal and is outside of the State’s competence. But Christ, through the Church, appeals to the human conscience and the soul’s desire to be good. His voice, as echoed through the Church, reaches that interior chamber and bids it to go beyond the minimum; this, when human nature is naturally bent on taking the easier course. That’s right! The Church not only proposes the remedy in terms of truth, but she applies it in terms of grace and strength!

I use the example of having children because many people have come to view children as a liability; a mouth to feed, if you will. Previous generations, however, were in a better position to see a new member of the family as a person with hands; hands to work. More importantly, as Scripture characterizes them, children were seen as a blessing from God. In fact, it was an opportunity to love just one more soul that the Lord has given us. And as far as our nation’s future was concerned, neighborhoods and playgrounds filled with children were signs of life and longevity.

Changing attitudes on procreation and the value of children is just one of many examples why it can take so long to turn a civilization around. We have come to the point in our nation’s history that the immediate gratification of sex has virtually eclipsed the long term benefit of living virtuously and having more children. Indeed, sensuality and materialism causes a tragic shortsightedness among people. With this, there can be an inability to see long term gains through short term sacrifices. Yet, virtue and civilized behavior require such sacrifices.

The State has a role to play in sustaining national prosperity to be sure; but it is a limited one. After all, politics is but the reflection of the values people hold. If truth be told, it is Church’s work of sanctification (not State-run institutions such as the public schools) that can turnaround those values needed for a stable and enduring nation. This is why the freedom is to do her work unhindered is paramount. Then, and only then, can America (and Western Civilization at large) make that 9-mile turnaround.

Too dumb to be a priest

Revised and reposted for the Feast of St. John Vianney: August 4th

Imagine a long haired priest, having just barely made it through the academic rigors of a seminary training, being subject to a recall. Scandalized that such a simpleton squeaked through the seminary, some priests were determined to have St. John Vianney cast out from the priesthood. A petition was even circulated in parts of France to this effect. Lo and behold, the petition came to Ars, the parish of the small town where St. John was assigned to. To add insult to injury, the priest behind this effort showed St. John Vianney just how many signatories there were on the petition to have him ousted. What was his response? “Oh!” he exclaimed, “do you mind if I sign it?” That’s right. Laughing at yourself or at least not taking yourself too seriously can be a mark of holiness.

Needless to say this nineteenth century priest, also known as the Cure of Ars, went on to become one of the greatest priests the Catholic Church has ever known. As a matter of fact, on June 19th, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI declared St. John Vianney the Universal Patron of Priests. Who says that a long haired seminarian whose report card resembled that of a dropout can’t make it to the priesthood? This priest demonstrated that what booksmarts can't provide, holiness can. Indeed, what St. Paul said regarding the "foolish" and the "weak" can also be said of St. John Vianney: "God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong..." He was regarded by his brethren as being too dumb to be a priest.

To be sure, the Catholic Church is not exempt from ironies. Another great irony is that St. John Vianney, who is now the Patron Saint of priests, would not be qualified to teach at a seminary or Catholic university. He simply didn’t have the academic credentials. Blessed John XXIII, who wrote an encyclical on this saintly priest in 1959, even said the following: “For he began his course of studies when he was already along in years, and he had great difficulty with it; and his first sermons to the people kept him up for whole nights on end.” Indeed, he barely made it through his seminary training and his first years as priest did not come any easier. But what he lacked in academics he made up for in his holiness. The same pontiff went on to say that for the Cure of Ars the Cross of the Lord was the greatest of all books. Perhaps this is why the Bishop of Ars made the following reply to St. John’s critics: "I do not know whether he is learned; but a heavenly light shines in him."

This is instructive for the Catholic professional world. If holiness would be regarded as the best and surest means through which we know God and his Word, perhaps more priests and teachers of the Faith would enjoy the same results as St. John Vianney. Book knowledge and theological learning is a must, no doubt, but the leaders of today’s Catholic institutions should take a page from this Patron of Priests by making holiness the highest of priorities. With that said, I think we can take comfort in that there are some trends to this effect within the Church. Still, it is unclear just how important holiness is as a qualification for being a priest, professor or a leader.

At any rate, the holiness of St. John Vianney was the reason why thousands upon thousands would flock to his parish. He would often hear confession for eighteen hours at a time. "In the middle stands the temple,” he would say, “in the middle of the temple the Sacred Tabernacle, and on either side the confessionals where supernatural life and health are restored to the Christian people." The willingness to endure these long hours of leading souls to Christ was fostered by prayer before the tabernacle in all night vigils and spiritual sacrifices. As Pope John XXIII recounted, he denied himself with great strength of soul. The pope went on to say that he was “rich in his generosity toward others but the poorest of men in dealing with himself.” Indeed, he was a victim priest in much the same way Jesus was the Lamb of God.

Mother Theresa once told a friend of mine that for those who are mired in serious sin, such as prostitution or homosexuality, there is a price to be paid. That is, our Lord asks of us to join our sufferings with his as a prayer of expiation. He died for us not so that our suffering would be useless, but rather, that by being baptized into his death and resurrection our suffering would take on redemptive value; something that is useful to others. Can it be this is why St. Paul said to the Romans, “I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.” Or can it be this is why he said to Corinthians that “death is at work in us, but life in you.”

When sinners would come to St. John seeking God, he was well aware of this prayer of sacrifice and the price that needed to be paid. He said, "I impose only a small penance on those who confess their sins properly; the rest I perform in their place." And to unrepentant sinner who would ask him, “Why the tears, Father?” He would then reply, "My friend, I am weeping because you are not."

And for those priests who presumed they did all they could to win souls to Christ but with not even half of the success of the Cure of Ars, he would tell them the following: "You have offered humble prayers to God, you have wept, you have groaned, you have sighed. Have you added fasts, vigils, sleeping on the floor...Until you have done all of these, do not think that you have tried everything."

I love St. John Vianney because he went out of his way to bring the consolation of Christ to lost souls- and was willing to pay the price; but yet he cared enough for them to administer the shock of a reprimand if they did not repent.

He was unconventional in his pastoral methods but not so much so that he was disobedient to his Bishop. He would be the first to apologize for his mistakes and the first to laugh at himself when his critics assailed him.

He was no theological expert but through his faith and holiness God taught him everything he needed to know. And as I already mentioned, that although St. John Vianney would not be qualified to teach in today's seminaries, he was, nevertheless, declared by one of the most intellectual popes to date, Benedict XVI, as the Universal Patron of Priests.

How do you like that? And just think, at one time he was rumored to be too dumb for the priesthood!

Good to Great: Leadership skills in two worlds

Introduction:

Catholics, and Christians at large, can learn a great deal from the success of the private sector. Invariably, “good honest” success in the market place is but the result of the sustained practice of Christian virtues and the implementation of sound work ethics. All that is good in the success of one’s career comes from God; and of any given company for that matter. As such, it can be traced- directly or indirectly –to his work of sanctification which is found in the life of the Church.

Still, it sometimes happens that even those who participate in the life of the Church are slower to catch on to the principles that the Church herself inspires. Indeed, it can take an “outsider” (i.e. workers in the temporal world) to teach an “insider” (i.e. Catholics) about those very principles which originally came from the inside (i.e. the Church). The book, Good to Great, by Jim Collins is a study of several companies and their successes over a 15 year period. What I discovered as I read the book is that the principles and virtues that made great CEOs and great companies are very consistent with what made for successful missions and apostolates in Church history. In other words, Good to Great principles are Christian in essence. They are a subtle reflection of those principles and virtues that made the Apostles, the Church Fathers, martyrs, confessors, and Saints great. Although Collins does not intentionally correlate business success with ministerial or missionary success, the correlation is there nevertheless.

The value of Good to Great can serve a purpose for all Catholics who aspire to lead, not just a small business, but any mission that advances the kingdom of God. No doubt, we can learn from what Collins discovered.

Below is a brief summary of the book and quotes from Jim Collins.


Summary of Good to Great (2001) book by Jim Collins:
“[Good to Great] looks at companies from 1965 to 1995, looking for those that, for 15 years, either tracked or underperformed the stock market, followed by a transition, and subsequently returning at least 3 times the stock market for at least 15 years. The goal was to eliminate ‘flash in the pan’ success from the results. Further filtering was performed in order to ensure that companies also outperformed their industries, so as not to include spurious results showing entire industries that grew by leaps and bounds in a given period. Eleven companies were located that matched these criteria, and were studied in depth, and compared to competitors in their fields”



JIM COLLINS QUOTES, AUTHOR OF GOOD TO GREAT:
Good is the Enemy of Great:

“Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don't have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don't have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life. The vast majority of organizations never become great, precisely because the vast majority become quite good-and that is the main problem.

Those who built the good-to-great companies, however, made as much use of ‘stop doing’ lists as ‘to do’ lists. They displayed a remarkable discipline to unplug all sorts of extraneous junk.”


Great Leaders: It’s not About You

“Level 5 leaders are differentiated from other levels of leaders in that they have a wonderful blend of personal humility combined with extraordinary professional will. Understand that they are very ambitious; but their ambition, first and foremost, is for the company's success. They realize that the most important step they must make to become a Level 5 leader is to subjugate their ego to the company's performance. When asked for interviews, these leaders will agree only if it's about the company and not about them.”


Get the Right People on the Bus:

“Get the right people on the bus - that has to happen before the ‘what’ decisions are taken. That can change if you have the right people, but the wrong people will certainly make the enterprise fail…If I were running a company today, I would have one priority above all others: to acquire as many of the best people as I could. I'd put off everything else to fill my bus. Because things are going to come back. My flywheel is going to start to turn. And the single biggest constraint on the success of my organization is the ability to get and to hang on to enough of the right people.”


Great Celebrity Status: A Negative

“There is a direct relationship between the absence of celebrity and the presence of good-to-great results. Why? First, when you have a celebrity, the company turns into 'the one genius with 1,000 helpers.' It creates a sense that the whole thing is really about the CEO. At a deeper level, we found that for leaders to make something great, their ambition has to be for the greatness of the work and the company, rather than for themselves. That doesn't mean that they don't have an ego. It means that at each decision point -- at each of the critical junctures when Choice A would favor their ego and Choice B would favor the company and the work -- time and again the good-to-great leaders pick Choice B. Celebrity CEOs, at those same decision points, are more likely to favor self and ego over company and work…Level 5 Leaders -leaders who have both personal humility and professional will. These are not rock-star leaders whose companies go into decline when they move on. They are diligent and hard working - more bite than bark. Celebrity leaders often work for a time, but appear to be damaging in the long run, because they don’t create sustained results.”


Great Humility:

“The best CEOs in our research display tremendous ambition for their company combined with the stoic will to do whatever it takes, no matter how brutal (within the bounds of the company's core values), to make the company great. Yet at the same time they display a remarkable humility about themselves, ascribing much of their own success to luck, discipline and preparation rather than personal genius.”

Summary:

Saving souls cannot be reduced to a business enterprise, to be sure. There are spiritual laws and dynamics that go beyond business protocol and conventional wisdom. The Saints give us numerous examples to this effect. In fact, I get a little nervous when I see white collar business men leading missions and apostolates because there is something to be said for those Catholics who are trained in monastic spirituality; that is, they who renounce wealth and even marriage for the kingdom. It is still true that to save the world, we have to be set apart from the world. Not always, but too often, businessmen bring too much of the world into their mission. As a result, they do little to save it.

Yet, the business world can teach a thing or two leaders of missions and apostolates. When good and honest work is rewarded with success, Catholics can learn from this. What they will find is that the virtues and principles that inspired great companies have something in common with that which made for great missions.

Attractive Soul

Reposting for new Sky View readers:

Interior joy and liberty of spirit are not only the two fruits of the Holy Spirit but they are the result of spiritual discipline. The reason why people wanted to be around the Saints while they were on this earth was due to the joy they exuded. It made for an attractive soul. Their friends and acquaintances often inquired about the origin of such joy. And if they were to trace the effects back to its cause, they would discover that the Saints spent time with the Lord, thanking him on a daily basis in prayer and adoration. They were always grateful because their debt to God was always impressed upon their minds.

But another attractive feature of the Saints was that they did not take themselves too seriously nor were they preoccupied with what others thought of them. They were truly detached from human respect. As such, they were at liberty to follow the Spirit where he led them. Sometimes God had them do that which was foolish in the eyes of the world. And yet, other times, these holy men and women of God were called upon to see and accept God’s wisdom in the most difficult of circumstances. In any event, neither the desire to court human favor or the fear of losing it held them back from doing great things for the Lord.

As Pope Benedict XVI said, great missions begin in the tranquility of spiritual solitude. To be sure, one of the most fruitful of spiritual exercises is spiritual reading before the Blessed Sacrament. From the wealth of spiritual literature- which must include Scripture, first and foremost, and then the writings of the Saints -two spiritual exercises come to the fore: Daily thanksgiving in prayer and the daily act of judging ourselves of the sins we committed. The latter is considered to be synonymous doing an examination of conscience.


Daily thanksgiving in prayer:

Francisco de Osuna, in his book, The Third Spiritual Alphabet- an influential spiritual masterpiece of the 1500’s -said this: “People who regard themselves as very devout usually thank God after they have been freed from danger...but the apostle teaches that the greatest virtue is to thank Our Lord God in the midst of dangers and miseries and always say: ‘Blessed be the Lord; I know I deserve worse suffering, for these misfortunes are minor compared to my sins and no hardship can match my guilt.’”

Thanking and praising God during times of danger and even after having endured a painful loss is a great grace. Like Francisco de Osuna indicated, it is all but natural to thank the Lord when we can clearly see that circumstances are unfolding to our liking. But it is when our expectations are not met or when our will is contradicted that we are tempted the most to see life’s circumstances as having no meaning. Indeed, when adversity looms large we are apt to imagine that God’s providence is retreating. Suddenly, the daily occurrences seem to be at random; outside of God’s control. Yet, the bad times are every bit as meaningful and useful for us as the good times. This is where faith must prevail over our senses. This is how we keep our peace.

Another way in which we can keep our peace and our humility is to daily remind ourselves in prayer that every gift, talent or skill we possess comes from the hand of God. St. Paul told the Philippians the following: “For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work.” So many blessings are lost because the Christian forgets that his gifts are really on loan from God. In his pride, he takes them as his own. To meditate, therefore, on the gifts the Lord has given us is a praiseworthy spiritual exercise. Again, to quote from the book, The Third Spiritual Alphabet, it says: “Saint Chrysostom says that we protect our blessings by meditating on them and remembering them, and this advice is for the recipient because the one who receives a gift must always remember in his heart what he has been entrusted with, whereas the donor should forget immediately what he had done.” Indeed, when we receive, we never forget that we are in debt to the Lord; but when we give to those in need we should count it as God's generosity and not our own.


Daily judging ourselves:

Twenty-first century people suffer greatly from hypersensitivity. Some people are just waiting to be offended for things said that have little to do with them, while others, when criticized for some fault, can't seem to get over the fact that they are burdened with imperfections just like everyone else. The problem with this growing epidemic of hypersensitivity is that very few people are willing to confront others when others are in desperate need of confrontation. As Our Lord demonstrated several times, to candidly but lovingly point out a fault to a friend or co-worker can be a great service and act of charity. But few want to do it because they themselves do not like to be criticized.

One way to avoid this phenomenon of hypersensitivity and to retain your interior peace when family members, friends or colleagues criticize you is to beat them to the punch! That is, in your daily prayers, judge and criticize yourself. Lament your sins before God and know that without him you are nothing. All of the Saints, without exception, encouraged this practice. For example, St Paul said, “If we discerned ourselves, we would not be under judgment; but since we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.” (I Corinthians 11:31-32) This spiritual exercise is not only a preparation for our death when the Lord will judge us, but it builds up an immune system to hypersensitivity.

But for those who rarely mull over their sins in prayer, they are more apt to lose their peace (if they had any to begin with) when their neighbor finds fault with them. The spirit of amendment is faint in such people. As such, the judgment that awaits them will be that much more painful because they failed to take the plank out of their own eye. Pope St. Gregory the Great, in his commentary on the book of Job, said: “For, he that spares himself now in sin, is not spared hereafter in punishment…” But on the other hand, “For as righteous men, when they fix their eyes on the severity of the Judge that shall come, recall their sins to remembrance, weep for the things they have done, judge themselves severely that they be not judged…” Repentance comes with tears and those who shed tears over their own sins are hardly bothered by the unfavorable judgment of others.


The Purity Motives:

These spiritual exercises of thanking the Lord and judging ourselves yields favorable results which, in the long term, will produce the two fruits of the Holy Spirit; namely, interior joy and liberty of spirit. It will also lead us to do good deeds and to carry out our responsibilities for the right reasons, that is, with pure motives. And those pure motives are, of course, to do everything that we undertake for God’s sake.

St. Alphonsus Liguori gave us four signs we can go by in order to determine if we are doing the Lord’s work for the Lord's sake. After all, it is all too easy to love the work of God or his gifts above God himself. This is what the Saint said:

"The following are the signs which indicate whether we work solely for God in any spiritual understanding.

1. If we are not disturbed at the failure of our plans, because when we see that it is not God’s will, neither is it any longer our will.

2. If we rejoice at the good done by others, as heartily as we ourselves have done it.

3. If we have no preference for one charge over another, but willing accept that which obedience to Superiors [or for laity: spouse or employer] us.

4. If after our actions we do not seek the thanks or approbation of others, nor are we in any way affected if we be found fault with or scolded, being satisfied for having pleased God."

This is what makes the soul attractive. These interior-spiritual qualities of joy, liberty and purity of motive will go a long way in getting us to heaven and bringing others with us. And to be sure, that journey begins in quiet solitude of our prayer life where we contemplate God's greatness and our weakness.

Tocqueville's Optimism for Catholicism

Alexis de Tocqueville, a Frenchman and a Catholic, visited the United States of America in 1831 for approximately eleven months. During his visit, he went to the first Catholic basilica, The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in the autumn of the same year. When he returned to France, his native land, he wrote a book entitled: Democracy in America.

Being well versed in history and in the Catholic Faith, Tocqueville accurately foresaw the challenges American democracy would face. He even predicted that Christianity in America would tend towards one of two destinies. "Our posterity," he said, "will tend more and more to a single division in two parts- some relinquishing Christianity entirely, and others returning to the bosom of the Catholic Church."

Indeed, he seemed to think that Catholicism was not only the most compatible with democracy, out of all the Christian churches, but it would be the last viable option for Christians in an unchristian America.


An excerpt from Democracy in America, 1831-32:

"Amongst the various sects of Christianity, Catholicism seems to me to be one of those which are most favorable to the equality of conditions. In the Catholic Church, the religious community is composed of only two elements, the priests and the people. The priest alone rises above the rank of his flock, all below him are equal. On doctrinal points the Catholic faith places all human capacities upon the same level; it subjects the wise and the ignorant, the man of genius and the vulgar crowd, to the details of the same creed; it imposes the same observances upon the rich and needy, it inflicts the same austerities upon the strong and the weak, it listens to no compromise with mortal man, but, reducing all the human race to one standard, it confounds all the distinctions of society at the foot of the same altar, even as they are confounded in the sight of God. If Catholicism predisposes the faithful to obedience, it certainly does not prepare them for inequality; but the contrary may be said of Protestantism, which generally tends to make men independent, more than to render them equal.

America is the most democratic country in the world and at the same time it is the country in which the Roman Catholic religion makes the most progress. Men living in democratic ages are very prone to shake off all religious authority; but if they consent to subject to themselves to any authority of this kind, they choose that it should be single and uniform. Religious powers not radiating from a common center are naturally repugnant to their minds…The men of our day are naturally disposed to believe; but as soon as they any religion, they immediately find in themselves a latent desire which urges them unconsciously towards Catholicism. Many of the doctrines and the practices of the Roman Catholic Church astonish them; but they feel a secret admiration for its discipline, its great unity attracts them…our posterity will tend more and more to a single division in two parts- some relinquishing Christianity entirely, and others returning to the bosom of the Catholic Church."

Scoreless Games and Social Promotion

Underneath most trends and customs you will find the germ of some philosophy, ideology or creed. One such trend today seeks to downplay differences between people by eliminating consequences. And through the elimination of consequences, all the emphasis is put on process or experience. Some people say, “It doesn’t matter where you’re going; the point is that you’re going...going somewhere.” That's right. As long as you are a bird in flight, destination and results are irrelevant.

The advantage to be had by doing this is to avoid being judged or feeling bad. This non-judgmental philosophy has long influenced public education policies and is just now beginning to find its way into the sports world. If you are a parent, you may have noticed the sport games children participate in are becoming “scoreless.” That is to say the score (or the results) to games are not being recorded or displayed. Although the practice of not keeping score at sporting events is not yet universal, it certainly is gaining currency.

With scoreless games, children are not only being spared the possibility of losing, but they are equally being deprived of the reward of winning. “It’s how you play the game,” some say. “It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose.” To be sure, there is some merit to this claim. The manner in which a child plays the game does count. And as for youngsters, such as five year olds, winning is not all important.

But the push for not keeping score is going beyond little league sports. It is making its way into an older demographic of players. And no doubt it derives from a philosophy of life. The main drive behind this “everybody wins” philosophy is to minimize, as much as possible, the bad feelings that come with losing; to eequalize the results. This is outcome-based sports at its finest.

Locally, in my neck of the woods, the little league baseball teams do not even have their own names or identity such as the Cubs or the Reds. The teams are given different color jerseys. As for the baseball caps, there are all the same. Although I do not claim to know the ulterior motives for this approach, I suspect there is an aversion for the “us versus them” dynamic.

When all is said and done, differences among teams and the unequal results that naturally issue from their athletic performances are quietly being discouraged. What is now beginning to be felt in the sports world has already been institutionalized in our nation's public education system.

For years, public schools have been practicing what is known as social promotion. Education Week defines it this way: "Social promotion is the practice of passing students along from grade to grade with their peers even if the students have not satisfied academic requirements or met performance standards at key grades. It is called "social" promotion because it is often carried out in the perceived interest of a student's social and psychological well-being" The same source goes on to report, “According to the American Federation of Teachers (1997), a majority of teachers reported that they had promoted unprepared students in the past year.”

It is interesting to note that if certain students were held back based on their performance, it would reflect poorly on public schools. As such, there is considerable pressure to pass on failing students to the next grade level. In some cases, it is an attempt to spare the child from experiencing a kind of "defeat." At the very least, social promotion seeks to avoid unfavorable judgments from outsiders.

For instance, in Spokane Public Schools, "Procedure 4425, written in 1988, says, 'No student shall be retained more than once during K-8 grades except in special cases' ('Policies,' 1988). The Procedure says it's because 'research demonstrates that retention does not help students who do not succeed because they have low potential; have social, emotional, or behavioral problems; or lack motivation.'" But with this kind of accommodation, it is very difficult to incentivize academic achievement. Furthermore, it is almost impossible to uphold standards of academic excellence. In no small measure has this contributed to the malaise of our public school system.

The point here is that social promotion in schools is reminiscent of that same aversion to winning and losing in sports. This egalitarian philosophy in which differences between people are eclipsed and the distinction between achievement and failure are blurred, has entrenched itself in our public institutions. This ought to concern Americans for the simple reason that a similar set of beliefs hastened the decline of the Roman Empire and other civilizations.

Scoreless games and social promotion are a kind of offshoot of secular-liberalism (and/or egalitarianism). It makes a god out of process and equality; so much so, that it reduces everything to one dead level. Indeed, as long as the emphasis is on the process, experience or the journey, we need not bother with results. And in the absence of results, there is no judgment, no failing, no losing. Only beginnings. T.S. Eliot put it this way: “That liberalism may be a tendency toward something very different from itself, is a possibility in its nature. For it is something which tends to release energy rather than accumulate it, to relax, rather than to fortify. It is a movement not so much defined by its end, as by its starting point; away from, rather than towards something definite.”

All of what has been said about scoreless games and social promotion speaks to a deeper, more hidden spiritual reality. Our Lord said, “For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.” (John 3:20-21)
This is not to say that everyone who endorses scoreless games and social promotion is guilty of some wicked deed. But collectively, when a people drift away from the Light of Christ, there is a strong tendency to avoid moral absolutes and the feelings of guilt that result from a failure to observe them. From this social drift, if you will, the human conscience then becomes oversensitive at the slightest hint of guilt or the prospect of being reproved. The suggestion that an examination of conscience is in order is aggressively shunned. As the book of Wisdom testifies, “For wickedness, of its nature cowardly, testifies in its own condemnation, and because of a distressed conscience, always magnifies misfortunes.” (17:11)

Could it be that losing a game or failing academically is but a faint reminder of the spiritual and moral misfortunes of life.? Unconfessed sin has far reaching effects. And in a society that denies the reality of sin, a distressed conscience can overreact to even the mere appearance of misfortune.

In any event, winning and losing as well as passing and failing prepares children for the ups and downs of life. More importantly, it prepares every one of us for eternity. After all, if going to heaven is ultimate success and going to hell is ultimate failure, it is good that we have a few illustrations and rehearsals on this side of eternity.
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*Certainly not unrelated to scoreless games and social promotion is the utter intolerance demonstrated against those who oppose same-sex marriage. To stand for the Christian definition of marriage- a union between a man and a woman -is to merit both social and political retribution from those who subscribe to secular-liberal principles. The bottom line: It is an attempt to prevent the judgment or moral reproval of others.