Letters From The Abyss-Adjacent

I opened the mailbag for the first time in a couple of days, and boy oh boy. I received this extraordinary letter from a Catholic woman in her twenties. I share it with you with her permission. She is responding to my earlier blog post, “Custodians Of The Abyss,” in which I reflected on the pain of realizing that the only thing keeping you from falling into the abyss is an institution run by cretins. The reader writes:

I’ve sat down to write this letter a few times now. Each time, running over things in my mind, I find myself at a loss for exactly what to say, and how to say it. I think the problem with writing this out is that it isn’t in response to something definite. There are a lot of things that have happened recently to make me feel the effects more sharply, but there’s nothing I can quite pinpoint as that one final straw. It’s just a sinking feeling, and a heavy one at that.

In short, I feel that I am caught at a crossroads. I don’t want to say I feel that I am losing my faith. I don’t feel that way- in fact, at times I feel it is stronger than ever- but I think you put it quite aptly when you spoke about the lure of the Abyss. I feel that lure constantly, and the feeling is overwhelming at times. There’s a sensation something like hanging over the edge dangling from a rope, and sometimes you are strapped in with a climber’s harness, perfectly safe, and sometimes you have a few threads wrapped around one hand, cutting in and hurting you as they try to keep you from falling.

The struggles with the Catholic Church are immense, to be sure. To go from Pope Francis’s ill-timed and uncharitable targeting of the Latin Mass to Monseigneur Burrill’s scandal-ridden resignation in the course of a week leaves a person feeling bruised at the very least. It’s almost laughable, in retrospect, that the news broke in this way. That our leaders feel more concerned about minor divisions among the faithful (divisions which are, for record, a problem, and which did need solving- but not like this) and less concerned about the plague of virtue-less clerics that continues to drive hundreds away from the Church every day is among the more especially ironic realities we who call ourselves Catholic live with, and that is no joking matter. It is this kind of absolute hypocrisy that has led so many to reject the faith as so much show and circumstance, and to seek out some other religion of niceness elsewhere.

Those of us that are left are left with a particular kind of internal division. The problem of feeling the lure of the world while having to constantly reject hypocrisy. I do not excuse the behavior of the Church officiates. I reject it wholeheartedly. But this leaves me feeling spiritually homeless while in my own places of worship. And it is then that the call from the shadows grows strongest- saying to me “if you can’t fix them, then you may as well leave.”

You asked, in one of your recent posts, how anyone could honestly believe in the legitimacy of the Catholic hierarchy while watching everything they do. [Note From Rod: I meant not the “legitimacy” in the literal sense, but in their competence and moral uprightness. One can affirm the legitimacy of the hierarchy as valid holders of office, without having any confidence in particular bishops’ leadership. — RD]. The reality is, I don’t. Or at least, I believe they are legitimately in office, but I don’t hold that I am obligated to support them, and I reserve the right to question their decisions that are not made in the name of the authority of the Holy Spirit (infallibility, etc.) What one man sets in place and another man reverses has no impact on my mental state. I am neither obligated to laud one decision or boo the other, and I will be obstinate in remaining an independent figure. I think a lot of people forget that Church officials are like politicians in many respects. I may hold, for example, that the President of the U.S. holds legitimate authority over me in certain situations and under certain practices, wielding the power vested in him by the state, but I am not obligated to applaud his decisions nor am I obligated to question them, whatever the tide of public opinion.

Similarly I may believe the Pope is the successor to St. Peter and that he wields legitimate authority over the Church, both spiritual and temporal, but I am not obligated to think everything he does is great. The only nuance is that when he is, in fact, in a situation where he speaks authoritatively about a serious spiritual matter (I cannot dive into the explanation of papal infallibility here-it suffices to say that it is rare and specific) I am asked to believe that he speaks with the voice of One who is not he, but Who, by speaking, speaks for the whole Church. It is worth noting, I think, that this sort of situation and the conditions it occurs in occurs so seldom that I can rarely be expected to have to even witness it, let alone argue about it. But this has nothing to do with the legitimacy of much of the upper ranks of the clergy.

So then, my belief in the Church’s legitimate authority can be said to be solid. What separates me, and those like me, from others is how we interpret that legitimate authority. Many Catholics of a particular type argue that if you believe in and respect the authority of the Church you should never question any decisions handed down by officials, no matter how trivial. Nor should you question their personal lives, or expose their scandals. All of this leads to harmful division, and is so much bickering amongst ourselves. These Catholics are wrong in a very specific area: they assume that all of this means they are somehow being disloyal to the Church. However, as Christ intended it, (as Catholics believe) The Church is not the sum of so many individuals sitting behind desks at the Vatican. The Church is as much a spiritual household as it is a collection of multitudes, and we are not being disloyal to the Church by arguing for our rights in the faith or by exposing corruption. We would be being disloyal to the Church if we ignored these things, because to truly be disloyal to Christ’s Church is to turn our backs on Her teachings, the most fundamental of which is to love the Lord our God with all our strength, and to put no-one, (and nothing) above Him.

This applies also to the popes and the bishops and so on. When we fear more for the scandal of revealing the sins of one of those who holds power than we fear the impact of his sins on the vulnerable, we hold him in higher respect than we do God, and we turn our backs on the Church. When we fear more that we shall spread division by arguing against a move on the part of a member of the clergy that we know to be unjust than we fear how our silence will drive our children away from the faith, we hold union with our fellow Catholics in higher respect than we do God, and we turn our backs on the Church. When we fear more that we shall be seen as sinners for not receiving our Lord in the Eucharist when we are not in a state of grace than we fear the consequences of mortal sin on our immortal souls, we hold the opinions of our fellow Catholics above those of the Lord, and we turn our backs on the Church.

I speak of all of this in connection to myself, because frequently of late I have asked myself what should I do- what can I do about all of this chaos in my spiritual life? I have spent hours upon hours reading and immersing myself in arguments and debates (including on your own blog) trying to sort out what it is I should be doing to fix all of these things. It occurred to me, a few days ago, when the news about the Latin Mass hit and I was struck once again with a sense of “what now?” that I have barely prayed in the last 6 months. I have been so wrapped up in trying to figure out how I, a young person, can solve the problems of the Church and give myself and my future children something to hold onto that I let my grip on the rope slide further, and nearly gave in to despair. I have been letting myself be consumed by fear. I have been more afraid of what will happen if I lose my connection to the physical ‘sense’ I have of being Catholic than I have been about what will happen if I lose my spiritual connection to my faith, and in doing so, I have turned my back on God.

It is hard not to be consumed by fear. Every day I wake and the world seems more difficult, more strange and more harsh. Every day I forget a little of what made me hold on to my faith as a child and begin to question, again and again, why I am doing these things. But the darkness isn’t comforting, it’s terrifying and filled with anguish, and I hope I never leap into it. I don’t have a lot of hope for my future as a Catholic in the world right now. I believe, for example, that my vocation calls me to married life- but I have begun to despair of ever finding a person who is close enough to me in spirit that I would be able to share that vocation with them. I believe that I would like to be more involved in my faith, but I can find hardly anything beyond the wall of meaningless fundraisers at my parish that I could do to have that involvement. And I believe I would like to do my part to make things better for other Catholics, but I have neither the means nor the opportunity to do those things right now.

But it strikes me that all of these things are still part of the world, not part of heaven. And like most things that are of the world, I cannot let myself be so consumed by them that I lose sight of my real purpose. To Love God, and To Know Him above all others. I think this is what a lot of Catholics struggle with- our faith is so massive and full of traditions and filled with people and buildings and places that have all sorts of meaning to us. It’s wonderful to have a culture behind your faith, but this is all still of the world, not of God. The most beautiful cathedral in Rome cannot compare to the wonders of heaven. The most beautiful singing cannot compare to choirs of angels. The most reverent of liturgy cannot impose in our hearts the awe we should feel in God’s presence. That does not mean we should not try, but if we are caught up thinking about how good or bad our efforts are, we have failed to be “in the world but not of it.” Because we are thinking, like Peter on the mountain, with our human minds, building tents for deities who do not need them, and questioning their motives for our own gratification.

Likewise, I spend so much time thinking about what I can or cannot do for my life in the Church on earth that I fail often to remember that when I say I am Catholic, I am saying I am part of a universal faith that extends outside of the boundaries of the here and now. That my connections with my peers who are alive with me is no less important than my connection with those that have already gone, and that I should worry less about physical things and more about spiritual ones. That I should pray more, and fear less.

Doing this isn’t easy. Saying it, reaching this point, is easy. Doing it is harder. It is hard to drown out the loudness of all the problems to focus on God. But I must, or the darkness will continue to be the loudest voice in my head, asking why I don’t just let go and let all these things fade away. I need to believe that as long as I focus on Him, He will provide me with the answers I need to solve the things I can solve, and the patience and fortitude to weather the things I cannot. And I need to remember that I am not turning my back on the Church by questioning things of earth. I am only turning my back if I question things of heaven.

To that end, I’d like to leave off with the first verse of a hymn that is particularly special to me. It is the favorite hymn of a very holy priest who was a family friend when I was young, and it has become a constant prayer in my life as its words are about the Eucharist, and ask an important question:

Jesus, My Lord, My God, My All,

How Can I Love Thee As I Ought?

And How Revere This Wondrous Gift,

So Far Surpassing Hope Or Thought?

Sweet Sacrament, We Thee Adore,

Oh, Make Us Love Thee, More and More.

(Oh, Make Us Love Thee, More and More)

All the best, and feel free to share my letter with others if you think this might help someone else.

That’s very powerful. My best advice would be to withdraw from thinking about the goings-on in the institutional Church. Pray, pray, pray. Live a Catholic life. Refuse to let your thoughts be dominated by this darkness. It’s hard to do without turning into one of those See-No-Evil types who is afraid to look at the truth. You don’t sound like one of those people at all. But trust me, from personal experience, your faith will not survive if you keep going like this. Go find a soup kitchen to volunteer in, or do some other work of mercy. That will steady you. After my Catholic experience, I came into the Orthodox Church determined not to involve myself at all in the goings-on of the institutional church, because for me, that was was spiritual death. I backslid on that personal vow, and got into spiritual trouble at one point. I learned my lesson. I never, ever think about the bishops or the institutional Orthodox Church (which, fortunately, makes that easy). My own spiritual challenges regarding my own repentance, and my own struggles, are sufficient. I had trusting institutional religion burned out of my from 2001-2006. If one of you readers has better advice for her, please put it in the comments. I feel so inadequate to help this young lady.

Then there’s this:

I have no sympathy at all to Mgr Burrill and his ilk who won’t live out their celibacy vow. I am an incel, which is an involuntary celibate. Nobody knows this but God and my wife, but I am a married man whose wife abandoned him within the marriage years ago. No sex, no intimacy, no nothing from her. I don’t know why, though I would say that she had some kind of nervous breakdown, because she changed a lot about her life and the way she relates to others. I would bet my life there has been no infidelity. Maybe a therapist would figure it out, but my wife won’t co-operate. After over a decade of a happy marriage, I have been living in a kind of hell for coming up on 10 years. We stood there before our priest and our families and made our vows of till death do you part. I’m living the death part out now, inside of me. Every damn day.

I’m not gay obviously, but what if I put a straight hook-up app on my phone, and started screwing around? It would be mortal sin, and I would be in danger of Hell. Unlike many of the clergy, it seems like, I believe that with all my heart. Though my wife has frozen me out, I do not have permission from God to seek out sexual and emotional comfort anywhere else. If I did, I would betray my wife and our kids, my vows, and my God. You wrote about the “abyss,” and it feels like I am hanging over it every day. I could probably get an annulment, but I don’t want to drag my family through that, and I can’t swear to tell the truth and at the same time try to prove that the marriage never took place. I don’t know what happened to my wife, but I think it’s mental illness. We were happy once. I have been over this in my mind a million times, and I can’t figure it out. Sometimes things just happen. I can’t get a divorce either, because what about our kids? What kind of dad would I be if I walked out because I am lonely and without hope, and have been this way for years and years?

I have to man up every day and carry this Cross. Don’t anybody tell me that poor old Burrill deserves pity because he got outed as a gay pick-up artist. He doesn’t have kids. If he can’t stand the loneliness and isolation of the priesthood, he can leave anytime. If he were any kind of man, he would either clean up his life or leave the priesthood. He has a way out, maybe not a really honorable way out, but more honorable than living like he does. I am dying here in this loveless marriage, but I can’t see any way out, though maybe when the kids are grown, I will revisit the question. My curse, I guess, is that I really believe that marriage is what the Church says it is. I believe that sin is real, and that there will be consequences for sin in this world and the next. What I really need is a Church that will help me carry this Cross faithfully. When I see fakes like Burrill, and hear Catholics defending him, it discourages me even more … and I don’t have that much courage left.

I don’t want to hear anybody telling me that a priest or pastor committing sexual sin with consenting adults is a victimless crime. Think of these two souls.

The post Letters From The Abyss-Adjacent appeared first on The American Conservative.