Mary DeTurris Poust's Blog, page 51

Some say the anti-Catholicism in S&H wasn’t so bad. My response.

Yesterday, when I posted my Letter to the Editor canceling my subscription to Spirituality & Health magazine over its anti-Catholic agenda, a few folks on Facebook declared one particular piece I mentioned “not that bad.” Another said how it was “stereotypical” and what did I expect from a spiritual-but-not-religious publication. Well, I expect not to have my faith insulted via lies and some of the most bizarre stories I’ve ever heard. And the fact that any Catholic could read all of those stories — taken as a whole, not dissected piece by piece — and shrug his or her shoulders and say it’s not that bad, or it’s what we should expect, is exactly the point of my outrage and disappointment.

Any magazine that bills itself as a bastion of peace and tolerance and love — and that’s what S&H does through its “coexist” mentality — shouldn’t get to have it both ways. You can’t pretend to be about inclusiveness if you are going to actively work against one (or several) religions, which is what S&H does on a regular basis.

So let’s look at this a little more closely…

Some folks didn’t have a problem with the rabbi Q&A section I mentioned, and maybe if you took a few lines or a single question here and there, you’d agree. But if you take the whole and you read it from where I’m standing, the anti-Catholic/anti-Christian attitude is beyond undeniable. And, if you’re honest with yourself, you have to admit that the whole thing is likely a fabrication. Those “questions” aren’t questions; they’re plants. No one reading S&H would think the way those alleged readers do. The two things simply don’t go together, especially when you put them all together and ask yourself, “Really? Did this many totally insane Christians happen to write to S&H this month?” Not likely.

For example:

“I raised my daughter to be a Christian, but she married a Jew and won’t baptize my newborn granddaughter and save her soul from God’s eternal hellfire. I’ve made arrangements to secretly baptize her at my church. I know you’re a Jew, but is this wrong?”

Really? We are to believe that someone who would use the term “God’s eternal hellfire” is actually reading S&H and writing letters to a rabbi. Those very things would qualify her for “God’s eternal hellfire” in her world, so we’ve got a bogus question designed to let the rabbi wax poetic about people who “believe in a God who burns the unbaptized.” See how they did that? Managed to tar and feather a faith over a teaching that doesn’t exist without mentioning the actual teaching or the actual faith. But that’s just the opening salvo.

Or how about this:

“Male Gods are bullies. Even if they don’t start out that way (Jesus of Nazareth) they become that way (Christ of the Church). I believe God is a loving mother rather than a sadistic father. Is this OK?”

Right. Some guy felt the need to write to the rabbi to get his approval for his belief in something other than the “Christ of the Church”  and his sadistic father. Yeah, they didn’t use the word “Catholic,” but, uh, we kind of get the hint.

And then this one:

“Last Christmas, I fell off a ladder and broke my foot while hanging Christmas tree ornaments. My husband said God is punishing me. He insists he was joking, but I can’t shake the idea. Could I have offended God?” And the rabbi’s response: “Pedophiles offend God…” Wait. What? How did we start talking about pedophiles. Oh…right…we’re trying to subtly and not-so-subtly attack the Catholic Church and what better way than by mentioning our greatest modern sin and scandal rather than our belief in a loving and merciful God who does not punish people by knocking them off ladders.

And it goes on and on, like the alleged reader who writes about how if we don’t say “Jesus” when we pray, God doesn’t hear us, but Krishna says he answers all prayers and what, oh, what should he do? To which the rabbi responds that “belief in a God manipulated by a special name isn’t faith — it’s a form of magic.” Subtle, very subtle.

I really can’t write everything that annoys me, but I must also come to the defense of the Muslims, who are described by the rabbi as “fetishizing” women in a way that’s no different than the sexualized images we see in magazines through their insistence on women in traditional dress. Wait. Women in Muslim dress and women in sexualized magazine images are being equated here? Yeah, are you starting to see my point? If we pull one question out, we might say, “Oh well, what did you expect?” But if you put it all together, you have to start looking a little deeper.

But none of this was the worst of it. As I said in my letter, I read the stuff above, got annoyed, thought about canceling my subscription, but decided to let it go and give it another month. What arrived in my mailbox a few days ago was so offensive I could do nothing but cancel the subscription. This issue specifically targets Catholics in multiple stories. The first story (“In Good Faith”) has no byline and is another one of these stories — like the questions posted to the rabbi — that really make you wonder who’s creating this stuff and where they’re getting their information on Catholicism.

In this story, a teenager decides to become Catholic, according to his alleged aunt, who is Episcopal. Here’s what she “writes”:

“And disagree we did. For he hadn’t chosen just Catholicism but the most conservative, ritualistic elements of the One True Church, as he called it. He hung crucifixes on his bedroom wall and word clerical vestments to chant Latin in his bedroom. He quoted canon law to defend his views against the ordination of women (‘priestesses’) and liberation theology (‘not a real theology’). Shortly before he left for college, when I suggested that he keep condoms on hand, just in case, his nostrils flared. Did I really think he’d go against the teachers of his church? I reasoned, bristled, and more than once — usually after he defended the Inquisition — lost my temper. He baited me, yes, and the more opposition I showed, the farther to the extreme he ran. He’ll grow out of it, I told myself. Please.”

Where, oh, where to begin? By a show of hands how many Catholics know any lay person out there — liberal, conservation, or the most traditional you’ve ever met — who wore “clerical vestments” while chanting Latin anywhere? Or how many people have struck up a defense of the Inquisition during casual conversation. I mean, this stuff is so crazy, it’s hard not to think it’s an Onion story. All of this, of course, was to make a point about how lovely Zen Buddhism is (and I myself think Zen Buddhism is lovely, but, come on) and, in case you were worried, her nephew was saved from the horrors of the Roman Catholic faith when he found his true home in Russian Orthodoxy, which I guess in this non-existent writer’s mind is acceptable because it sounds so cool, doesn’t it? Because, as she said, it offers a “more ornate, traditional liturgy than do our local guitar-strumming Catholic parishes.”

Wait, wait, wait. No way was the vestment-wearing, Latin-chanting, Inquisition-defending convert going to a guitar-strumming parish anywhere in the Catholic universe. And I thought the “ornate, traditional” stuff was her problem, or is it just the Catholic Church that’s her problem? Ah, now we’re getting somewhere.

So let’s turn to page 54 for the story entitled “In Pursuit of Sacred Sex,” in which our Mormon hero John goes off without his wife to learn about tantric sex, has a sexual encounter and discovers his “sexual-spiritual bliss.” We then hear about all the bad things theology and religion do to people when it comes to sex, like making them think perhaps they should honor their marital vows and not have tantric sex with a total stranger, but I digress. Then we get to the jackpot: an entire page devoted to the nastiness of the Roman Catholic Church. They cover everything from the Church’s antiquated views of sex as being something that should happen only between a married man and woman, its position on birth control, its views on homosexuality, and quote a Catholic professor who describes the Scriptural scene of the penitent woman washing Jesus’ feet as a “tremendously sensual image.” She goes on to say that Jesus “celebrates that.” Oh, that Scripture scene was about sensuality. Wow, I SO missed that in my reading of that passage all these years.

The final tirade focuses on a gay sex columnist who was raised Catholic and talks about the Big Bad Church and how it has “pathologized (sex) and have been reaping the rewards ever since. It’s a scam, and it goes all the way back to the roots of the Church.”

Well, yes, but look at all the rewards we’ve been reaping because of the Church’s position on sex: Catholics are super popular, everyone wants to join the club, it’s the in place to be…Oh, wait. What were those rewards again?

Okay, I’m kind of worn out from all this. It really took way more of my energy than it deserved, but since people raised questions yesterday about whether this was really all that bad, I felt I had to do this. And again, you also have to remember, that these aren’t isolated incidents. This is an accumulation that makes my Catholic head spin. I really wanted to like this magazine, and I don’t buy the idea that because they’re spiritual-but-not-religious they are exempt from showing respect and tolerance if that is what they say they do (and it is). This is a magazine that promotes shamanism and paganism and Buddhism and every other “ism” you can imagine and probably a few you can’t. But you don’t get to say you’re tolerant and open and loving and looking for a peaceful coexistence if you are filled with hatred and venom toward a specific people or faith.

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Why I’m canceling my subscription to Spirituality & Health magazine. I hope you will too.

Here’s the Letter to the Editor I fired off to Spirituality & Health this morning. I think it pretty much says it all. (A special thank you to my friend Jeanne G. for inspiring me to speak up on this.) 

To the editors,

I recently subscribed to Spirituality & Health. I was so excited to get my first issue (May/June 2013) — until I opened it up to the Rabbi Shapiro piece and was stunned to see wildly inaccurate and incredibly offensive statements regarding my Catholic Christian faith. I was so upset I almost called immediately to cancel my subscription, but I tried to let it go, assuming (hoping) it was an isolated incident. I have to admit, however, that I could not read the rest of the issue because I was so turned off by what I’d seen up to that point.

Then the July/August issue arrived. Well, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to know that I was beyond stunned this time. The anti-Catholic bias wasn’t even hidden, just right out there again and again. (Too many places to list individually, but we can start with “In Good Faith” and “Sacred Sex.”) I would like a refund of my remaining subscription since I purchased this product under false advertising. I thought it was a magazine open to all spirituality and health, intent on bringing people of all faiths — or no faith — together in a positive way. I didn’t realize there was an agenda at work here, one that is actively trying to turn people against the Catholic faith.

I find it so sad and frustrating that a magazine that purports to be all about peace and love and tolerance is so filled with divisiveness and hatred and outright lies. I wear a cross around my neck and mala beads around the wrist. I sit in church on Sundays and do downward dog in yoga class three mornings a week. I love and respect my atheist friends and my Jewish friends and my Muslim friends and my Buddhist friends (you get the idea) just as much as I love and respect my Christian and/or Catholic friends. But that is the heart of Christianity — to love my neighbors as myself and to treat others as I would want to be treated. The editors and writers at your magazine would do well to take a few lessons from the Catholic Christians you denigrate with such regularity.

Please cancel my subscription immediately and refund my money. I would like to put it toward a subscription for a Catholic publication or charity. And I will be asking my family members and friends — and the readers of my blog — who might subscribe to your magazine to cancel their subscriptions as well.

Mary DeTurris Poust

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Getting past the Church’s gatekeepers. Who’s minding the store?

My June Life Lines column. It must have struck a chord because I am receiving tons of private emails from total strangers who all have experienced this in one way or another. A rare time when I wish people couldn’t relate to my column. Here you go:

Almost 25 years ago, a woman in my family—lifelong Catholic, former folk group singer, fixture at her home parish—walked into a new church in her new town with her boyfriend. They wanted to get married and, although he wasn’t Catholic, her boyfriend had been married before. So they were interested in seeking information about annulment. Simple enough, right? At least at that early stage.

The parish secretary informed them curtly that they could enroll in the parish and give to the envelope system for three months. Then someone would be willing to talk to them about annulment. My relative walked out of that local church, out of the universal Church, and never looked back. And, quite frankly, I can’t blame her.

Back then I had hoped this was an isolated incident, a bad day in the life of a parish secretary, but since then I have heard from many people who have experienced similar variations on the same theme. I think of the friend whose infant son needed private baptism immediately because of a life-threatening condition and was told—by the parish secretary, not a priest— that baptisms are done only on the first and third Sundays of each month at regular Mass, no exceptions. She had to find another church, and fast.

Again and again adult Catholics—some on the verge of leaving the faith, others on the verge of returning—gingerly try to put their toes over the threshold of a parish, only to get a door slammed in their face. I had assumed this was an American phenomenon, a factor of our over-stressed lives, but just recently Pope Francis used his daily homily to address exactly this issue. Apparently it’s a worldwide problem.

Here’s what the pope said:

 “Think of the good Christians, with good will, we think about the parish secretary… ‘Good evening, good morning, the two of us—boyfriend and girlfriend—we want to get married.’ And instead of saying, ‘That’s great!’ They say, ‘Oh, well, have a seat. If you want the Mass, it costs a lot…’ This, instead of receiving a good welcome –‘It is a good thing to get married!’ But instead they get this response: ‘Do you have the certificate of baptism, all right…’ And they find a closed door. When this Christian and that Christian has the ability to open a door, thanking God for this fact of a new marriage…We are many times controllers of faith, instead of becoming facilitators of the faith of the people.”

This pope knows exactly what we need to hear. I only hope everyone is listening. And by “everyone” I don’t mean just the people in the pews. I mean the people who have the power to make decisions that will change stories like this one from the pope’s homily:

“Think about a single mother who goes to church, in the parish and to the secretary she says: ‘I want my child baptized.’ And then this Christian says: ‘No, you cannot because you’re not married!’ But look, this girl who had the courage to carry her pregnancy and not to return her son to the sender, what is it? A closed door! This is not zeal! It is far from the Lord!”

Experiences like these—all too frequent and all too real—drive a wedge between the People of God and the Church, all on the whim of the person at the front desk, all in the name of the letter of the law over the heart of the law.

“Knock, and the door will be opened to you,” Jesus said. I think he meant any time, not “when your papers are in order” or “on the first Sunday of the month.”

The people are hungry for God. Pope Francis knows this. The people know this. Not sure how so many others in between missed the memo.

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Foodie Friday: Warm farro salad is a hit at our house

It’s always a banner day when I make a new dish and five out of five family members give it a double thumbs up. This is one of those dishes. Who’d have thought farro would make the cut? But it did. The first time I made it, everyone whined because I didn’t make enough, so the next time I doubled the recipe and we still finished it. Here you go. This is the doubled version of the recipe from Bob Greene’s Best Life Diet. Super easy and super delicious.

Ingredients

2 cups farro (or barley, but we like farro)

2 tablespoons EVOO

1 onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 cups cherry tomatoes (In a pinch I have also used small regular tomatoes quartered. Worked fine.)

12 ounces baby spinach, washed well

Salt and freshly ground pepper

3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

Preparation

Cook farro in salted boiling water until tender, about 10 to 12 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat EVOO in larges skillet over medium heat. Add onion and cook, stirring often, until onions begin to soften, about five minutes. Add garlic and cherry tomatoes and saute just until tomato skins start to burst, about three minutes.

When farro is cooked, drain and stir into tomato mixture along with the spinach. Stir to combine. Remove from heat, cover, and let stand for about one minute, or until spinach is wilted. Season with salt and pepper. Serve sprinkled with Parmesan cheese.

Serves five really hungry Pousts as a side dish, or eight normal people.

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A little rainy day Rumi: Plant only love…

When you plant a tree

every leaf that grows will tell you,

what you sow will bear fruit.

So if you have any sense, my friend

don’t plant anything but love,

you show your worth by what you seek.

–Rumi

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PBS features a real doctor of the Church, one with the bedside manner of a saint

“From a spiritual standpoint what I try and do as a physician is that even if I can’t cure the situation, even if I can’t cure the condition, if even I can’t make it all go away, if they’re being overburdened with that cross, if I can just hold up a corner sometimes, it might make it light enough for them to be able to carry it and move on.” Those are the beautiful and somewhat unexpected words of Dr. Joseph Dutkowsky, an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in caring for people with disabilities.

I say “unexpected” because we often don’t hear doctors talking so openly about the role of faith in their daily practice and because seeing a feature like this on PBS is especially unexpected, so very welcome but unexpected for sure. Watch this beautiful love story — the love of an upstate N.Y. doctor for the people he cares for each day, the love of a doctor for the God who informs everything he does, the love of the patients who are so grateful to the man who treats them with such dignity in a world that often can’t see beyond their disabilities.

Here’s a small snippet from the interview, but please be sure to click the link below and watch the full interview:

FAW: Treating so many young disabled patients might shake a person’s faith in a merciful God. (To Dr. Dutkowsky): Do ever ask yourself why did God let that happen?

DUTKOWSKY: No, I don’t, because what I see when I see Omer, I go in that room and I feel love. It’s an energy from outside that draws me in.

FAW: There are bodies that are, forgive me, misshapen, malformed, twisted, crippled, and you see in that the likeness of God?

DUTKOWSKY: Yes, I do. I see the image and likeness of God in every one of those individuals.

FAW: For Dr. Dutkowsky then, faith and medicine intersect, complement one another. Seeing affliction, he also finds something meaningful.

DUTKOWSKY: There are days I go home with tears in my eyes because suffering is real. But sharing suffering is a gift. The depth of that love, the depth of that commitment, the depth of working with individuals like that, that’s the privilege.

Watch Medical Ministry on PBS. See more from Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.

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Are you brave enough to take off your cape?

“It’s braver to be Clark Kent than it is to be Superman.” That’s the heart of this amazing talk by Glennon Doyle Melton, author of Carry on Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed and my new hero. In fact, she is a superhero in my book. Please watch this clip, “Lessons From the Mental Hospital.” Yes, it’s 17 minutes long and worth every minute of your time. She is amazing. Because she speaks the truth, a truth we all need to hear, even if we are not quite ready to acknowledge it yet.

 

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Channeling my inner Georgia O’Keeffe

I would love to be able to paint a flower in the manner of Georgia O’Keeffe. Actually I’d be happy to paint anything in any manner at all, but that’s a blog post for another day. So I have to settle for trying to take photos of flowers with my macro setting, although I do not have an official macro lens. Here’s what I got this week: lilies from a bouquet in the kitchen; irises from along our back property line, near the pet graves.

 

 

 

 

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The yin and yang of me

I was walking through my kitchen at one point and saw the two items below sitting there on the table, one on top of the other, and I realized that this brief snapshot of one tiny aspect of my life really says so much about me. I dare you to figure me out.

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Yogis in the mist

Today was a classic case of turning lemons into lemonade. What had at first seemed like a potential inconvenience became a blessing.

Because our local YMCA is refinishing the wood floors in the various studios, including our early morning yoga studio, our teacher decided to hold class outside in a pavilion back near the woods. I trudged off to class this morning at 5:20 a.m. and arrived as my teacher was pulling a wagon full of mats through the parking lot to the pavilion, which could not be seen at that point because of heavy mist and fog. If I hadn’t checked to see where the pavilion was beforehand, I never would have found. Yeah, that foggy.

I settled my mats (I always use two for extra cushioning) down on the concrete slab and sat down to face a stand of enormous pine trees, rising majestically through the misty morning air. Breathtaking. So breathtaking, in fact, that I have now vowed (Finally!) to get an iPhone because I really would have liked to capture a “View from My Yoga Mat” photo for you today. (Instead I’m using that beautiful photo above from Now & Zen. I’m linking to them here, so I hope they don’t mind.)

As class began, the sound of birds chirping, an occasional woodpecker, and a distant train whistle turned that little concrete slab into an outdoor monastery. It was beautiful in every way — the sounds, the smell of wood chips, the dampness on my yoga mat from the mist, the sun gray of dawn giving way to the light of morning.

We did several Sun Salutations just as the sun was coming up. I felt like I was lifting the sun with my arms, and all the while I was thanking God for his beautiful creation, for the glorious morning, for the people around me on their mats, for my teacher. I found myself smiling through the poses because at almost every turn I was surprised again by the beauty around me, right there in the back of the Y parking lot.

When I returned to the Y later that day for a Zumba class (I’m a woman of many talents), I told the manager how much I liked the outdoor yoga class and asked if they would please let that happen again, even after the floors are all dry. I hope they go for it because it really shook things up in the gentlest, most beautiful way.

If you have a patch of grass or a patio or a balcony, take your mat outside one morning and see how it feels. Even if you don’t have space, just go out there and do a few still poses — Tree, for example, which we did this morning, reaching our arms toward the sky like all the other trees around us. Spectacular. Even in the tiniest space you could do Tree or Mountain or Chair or Eagle or whatever strikes your fancy.

Change your view and you just might change your day.

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