Catholics and Yoga

The area immediately around my home has everything: shopping, restaurants, multiple choices of movie theatre... And no yoga studios. I've been looking for low-impact fitness classes, and yoga seems like a good place to start. But there's nowhere to do it, and in this famously traffic-clogged area of the country, even a studio that's "15 minutes away" is a time commitment because 15 minutes is never 15 minutes.

{via}

I mentioned to my sister that I was frustrated by my lack of access to yoga and she said that a priest at her parish gave a whole homily about how yoga is problematic and indeed prohibited for Catholics.

::Needle scratch::

Whaaaat.

I was familiar with a prohibition against Eastern mystic meditation, obviously. My sister clarified that her priest said that the motions themselves are dangerous because they pay homage to dieties in whom we do not believe.

Ehhhhnope.

There is no way -- no logical way -- to make the case that the position of your body, bending and stretching into child's pose or downward-facing dog, is anything but morally neutral (not that there's no way to put your body into a morally questionable position, but that's another conversation).

Chanting "om" and clearing your mind, or meditating on your oneness with the universe, on the other hand: not morally neutral. Seeking Hindu enlightenment is self-evidently not Catholic. Don't do those things.

Intention matters and as always, one must know oneself. Are you the type to get caught up and lose yourself, to the point where you might find yourself chanting in an unknown language and emptying your mind in a quest for enlightenment? Danger, Will Robinson. If you are sure that you can treat it as pure exercise, and ignore all the mysticism, then go for it. We are called to be good stewards of our bodies and our souls.

For myself, I expect to have no difficulty whatsoever ignoring any calls to engage in mysticism. I'm going to be too busy either berating myself for wasting my time or rueing the day I chose to exercise at all, depending on the difficulty level. But I will be on the lookout for danger signs, because I just found out that I can take yoga at the community center in our neighborhood.

"What punishments of God are not gifts?"

So I've been thinking about Stephen Colbert. He's often held up by Catholics as "our guy" in the world of political comedy because he's open -- and talks frequently -- about his Catholicism.

But I've always felt rather disappointed by him, personally. His tenure on The Colbert Report featured him, in character as an over-the-top right-wing blowhard; as a genuinely right-wing person myself, I found it annoying that I could nod along with his take on a situation until he took it a step too far. And he always took it at least one step too far.

In fact, that was the point: to discuss conservatism in a faux-approving way, but to reach the most obnoxious possible conclusion; to make conservatives into a caricature of a bigoted, selfish Scrooge McDuck. This formula was guaranteed to make the Comedy Central audience, still on a high from Jon Stewart's conservative bashing in the previous slot, sneer.

{I'm not sure it would be quite so harmful if an alarming proportion of my generation didn't get their news exclusively from Comedy Central. Get a grip, fellow millennials.}

Furthermore, he was known to espouse some pretty un-Catholic positions (ugh, I feel dirty even linking to The Huffington Post!). I just can't really get on board with Colbert as a Catholic we should be holding up as an example.

But then every once in a while he says something beautiful that makes me understand why Catholics do it. Consider this excerpt from an interview with GQ recently, talking about the loss of his father and brothers in a plane crash when he was young:

He was tracing an arc on the table with his fingers and speaking with such deliberation and care. “I was left alone a lot after Dad and the boys died.... And it was just me and Mom for a long time,” he said. “And by her example am I not bitter. By her example. She was not. Broken, yes. Bitter, no.” Maybe, he said, she had to be that for him. He has said this before—that even in those days of unremitting grief, she drew on her faith that the only way to not be swallowed by sorrow, to in fact recognize that our sorrow is inseparable from our joy, is to always understand our suffering, ourselves, in the light of eternity. What is this in the light of eternity? Imagine being a parent so filled with your own pain, and yet still being able to pass that on to your son.

“It was a very healthy reciprocal acceptance of suffering,” he said. “Which does not mean being defeated by suffering. Acceptance is not defeat. Acceptance is just awareness.” He smiled in anticipation of the callback: “ ‘You gotta learn to love the bomb,’ ” he said. “Boy, did I have a bomb when I was 10. That was quite an explosion. And I learned to love it. So that's why. Maybe, I don't know. That might be why you don't see me as someone angry and working out my demons onstage. It's that I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.”

I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.

I asked him if he could help me understand that better, and he described a letter from Tolkien in response to a priest who had questioned whether Tolkien's mythos was sufficiently doctrinaire, since it treated death not as a punishment for the sin of the fall but as a gift. “Tolkien says, in a letter back: ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” Colbert knocked his knuckles on the table. “ ‘What punishments of God are not gifts?’ ” he said again. His eyes were filled with tears. “So it would be ungrateful not to take everything with gratitude. It doesn't mean you want it. I can hold both of those ideas in my head.”

He was 35, he said, before he could really feel the truth of that. He was walking down the street, and it “stopped me dead. I went, ‘Oh, I'm grateful. Oh, I feel terrible.’ I felt so guilty to be grateful. But I knew it was true.

“It's not the same thing as wanting it to have happened,” he said. “But you can't change everything about the world. You certainly can't change things that have already happened.”

Gorgeous. Gorgeous. This is an absolutely breathtaking reflection on the nature of suffering. I could never have articulated that; I can appreciate it, I recognize the Truth of it, but it's beyond my ability to verbalize. He's clearly smarter and more articulate than I am.

And that, I think, is where my problem really lies:

He's smarter than I am. He's more articulate than I am. He certainly has a larger field of influence than I can ever expect to have. And he's using it to do more harm to the Church than he's doing her service. More people will have seen him bashing the Supreme Court judges who opposed the gay "marriage" ruling than will likely see him waxing poetic about God's gift of suffering in our lives. More people will remember him as a faux conservative bigot than as a Catholic.

I understand that not everyone has the courage to be counter-cultural. As a Comedy Central news-comedian, Stephen Colbert was expected to carry water for progressivism. It would have been an act of sheer foolhardiness to come out in opposition to the legalization of gay "marriage" if he wanted to keep his job at Comedy Central and his upcoming gig at CBS. And maybe it's not moral cowardice at all: maybe he genuinely thinks that the Church is wrong in her steadfast opposition to gay "marriage."

She is not, and that is why I find him to be disappointing and an unworthy role model overall. Even if his reflection on suffering and gratitude brought me to tears.

Infertility, and some further information

I just wanted to share this article on chastity.com, which is a great overview on the infertility struggles that many couples face, and which Catholic couples in particular face in view of the Church's total prohibition on assisted-reproductive technologies (ART).

Two things the article fails to mention, from my perspective as a Catholic who struggled with infertility and finally achieved pregnancy (and then a second!):

1. The Creighton Method (NaPRO Technology) was a godsend. My husband and I took private lessons with a pro-life doctor who specializes in reproductive issues, and it took weeks to learn how to properly chart using this method, but it was worth it. The article specifies the Creighton Method as useful for Catholic couples, but what the article never mentions is that this type of charting can reveal issues such as the wife being anovulatory, meaning she doesn't ovulate (or, in my case, didn't ovulate regularly). In this case, it is entirely permissible for a faithful Catholic to use drugs which induce ovulation, such as Clomid. 
2. The other thing is that the article discusses the necessity of masturbation as the only means of obtaining sperm for technologies such as intrauterine insemination or in vitro fertilization. This isn't strictly true (which still does not make these procedures permissible). Catholic ethicists have okayed the use of non-lubricated, non-spermicided, punctured condoms for use in diagnosing male fertility issues. Such a condom can assist in the collection of a sample for testing purposes by collecting a high-quality sample during an act of marital love without acting as a barrier to conception due to the puncture and lack of spermicide. 

If you're struggling with infertility, know that millions of women feel your pain. Our daughter's nightly prayers include a line just for you (and everyone knows that baby prayers count triple!), and I hope you find peace. 

God bless.

In which I ask for prayers for others.

Oh, so silent for so long. I've been treading water, trying to get through this pregnancy without swearing off another.

For now, I've come to ask for some prayers. Friends of mine are going through a hard time, and they could use some intercession, and certainly some divine intervention.

St. John Paul II, St. Joseph, St. Monica, St. Priscilla, St. Rita of Cascia, St. Thomas More, St. Valentine: Ora pro nobis.

Role models for Catholic children.

So this is making the rounds on my Facebook page: Catholic School Apologizes For Picture of "Poor Role Model" Ellen DeGeneres On Dance Invitation. It's been shared by several of my "friends," probably because Newtown, PA, is where I went to high school (I lived one town over). 

Some background: The school sent out invitations to the eighth grade dance with the tag like "Live from the Red Carpet" and a picture of Ellen holding an Oscar statue. When some parents complained, the principal apologized ("I was obviously NOT thinking.") and requested (or, according to BuzzFeed -- ugh -- "demanded") that the invitations be returned so that they could be destroyed, and new invitations sent out. The principal, without referring to Ellen's sexual orientation, said that Ellen is not a good role model because she doesn't live her life in alignment with the principles of the Catholic Church. 

Follow me so far? Good. Because the apology and the rescinding of the offending invitations are exactly right. It would have been better if the incident hadn't happened at all, but as that ship has sailed an apology was in order.

Now. If people I know were just posting this story, I wouldn't have much to say about it. But, naturally, they're posting with some of the most bigoted commentary I can imagine: 

"These bougie, over-privileged, low-life white moms and dads of Newtown don't have anything better to do than call the principal of their kid's Catholic school and say they don't like Ellen because she's gay?"

"Priest's [sic] are raping Children [sic] whom [sic] attend the Church." [The young lady who wrote this comment might have benefitted from some Catholic schooling, by the way, as her grammar is atrocious.]

... And more, but let's just deal with these two, shall we?

First: Those "bougie, over-privileged, low-life white moms and dads" -- because their race is relevant here, according to the over-privileged white guy I know who posted said comment -- are paying a premium for a Catholic education. Newtown, PA, is in one of the top school districts in the state of Pennsylvania. Unlike some places, a Catholic education is not the only alternative to failing schools, but a sacrifice that parents make so that their children can receive a Catholic education. A Catholic school has an obligation to present good role models to the children under their care. Ellen DeGeneres is an outspoken lesbian with a wife. She is not the person you put on your eighth grade dance invitation. I bet that some of the moms who complain watch and enjoy Ellen's talk show, but that doesn't make Ellen an appropriate role model for eighth graders. If I enjoy watching Modern Family, but I complain that my child's Catholic school showed it to my child, I am not hypocrite. I am a parent who recognizes that children and adults are not the same thing. I am unlikely to be influenced by the depiction of a gay couple in a way a prepubescent child might. We spend most of our time as parents deciding what is age appropriate for our children. 

I guess that makes me a bougie (ugh, that word appears here three times and it just makes me cringe!), over-privileged, low-life white mom. Because I would have called to complain.

Secondly: Can we cool it already "priests are raping children" meme? No priests were even mentioned in this story. I did a little Googling -- because for a hot second I entertained the notion of wading into the fray, only to decide not to argue with idiots, especially as it got uglier -- and in two seconds discovered that Catholic priests commit sexual abuse at a rate that is less than 100 times that of public school teachers. Furthermore, the Catholic Church did more to report and combat the abuse than did the school districts in question. The same 2004 Department of Education -- you know, that right-wing think tank -- report that is linked to above tells of 225 admitted cases of educator abuse in one year in New York. How many were reported to police? All of zero. ZERO. More facts about priest sexual abuse here.

To sum up: good for the parents who complained. Good for the principal for apologizing. And I should maybe think about pruning my Facebook friends list.

Empathy vs. Religion

One of my Facebook friends (actually a cousin of mine) shared this yesterday:

And while I'm obviously not about to comment on it, because when I saw it she had posted it about fifteen minutes ago and already had a dozen likes (and so that leads me to believe that the majority of her friends are in agreement and would respond to any comment of mine with a good, old-fashioned flame war), I have some thoughts.

Shall we?

First, I think this is true in a very limited way. I think the basics of right and wrong are easily assimilated from society. There's no one out there who doesn't know that murder is wrong, even if some people don't care. This extends to kindness to animals and babies, not taking things that don't belong to you, and not cheating on your spouse.

But empathy is not enough, not even close. In fact, empathy is a well-known signpost on the proverbial road to hell that's paved with good intentions.

Consider a high school girl who finds herself pregnant. She goes to a Catholic high school (which will not let her attend with a baby bump), she has conservative parents who she thinks will kick her out if they find out, and she wants to just undo the problem. Empathy might lead you to help her procure an abortion.

Empathy would have led you astray.

This girl does not need an abortion, she needs support. She needs counseling to help her deal with telling her parents, she needs a place to live if she's right about them kicking her out of the house, she needs help exploring adoption and parenting options. She needs love, not the false compassion that helps her murder the child growing within her because it's inconvenient.

Religion, on the other hand, has something to say about this. The One True Religion, Catholicism, is an especially good resource for answers. Present a moral dilemma to four anti-religionists and you will get four completely different answers provided by "empathy" or "ethics." Ask the Catechism, and you will get one clear answer. The right answer.

How arrogant to think that a single human mind is capable of correctly assessing every situation for its moral answer!

Thank God for His Holy Church here on Earth.

Thank God for the Magisterium, wrestling with issues and passing down what is good and right.

Thank God.

Good Friday 2014: Christianity is not meant to be easy.

They don't call it "the straight and narrow" for no reason. What they don't tell you is that it's straight up a mountain and so narrow that at times you have to put one foot right in front of the other. Sometimes the path widens and it's easy to do the right thing, but mostly it's a struggle against our base instincts (for me, anyway; maybe you're better than I am!). Not everyone sees the benefit of struggling to keep our feet on that path; the wide and winding path through the Valley of Self-Indulgence is more comfortable, more fun and much much easier -- in the short term.

The constant refrain from secular society is that we as Christians (and especially, I think, as Catholics) are not tolerant enough. Making it more intense is the fact that I'm a millennial and an engineer. My generation is less religious, and my scientific cohort are even less so. Almost everyone I know is a liberal, a proud Obama voter, and a vocal proponent of the idea that I should be more tolerant (but, conveniently, only of things they approve).

Charles Cardinal Chaput, Archbishop of Philadelphia (the archdiocese where I was born, baptized, received my sacraments and got married), said something a few years back that I found particularly resonant:

We need to remember that tolerance is not a Christian virtue. Charity, justice, mercy, prudence, honest -- these are Christian virtues. And obviously, in a diverse community, tolerance is an important working principle. But it's never an end itself. In fact, tolerating grave evil within a society is itself a form of serious evil. Likewise, democratic pluralism does not mean that Catholics should be quiet in public about serious moral issues because of some misguided sense of good manners. A healthy democracy requires vigorous moral debate to survive. Real pluralism demands that people of strong beliefs will advance their convictions in the public square -- peacefully, legally and respectfully, but energetically and without embarrassment. Anything less is bad citizenship and a form of theft from the public conversation. [emphasis added]

This is important to remember. When someone throws soundbites at us: "Judge not, lest ye be judged," or "Jesus loved everyone," we need to remember that these are just soundbites. They don't say enough.

Matthew 7:1 tells us to judge not, lest we be judged, but let's be serious: of course we should judge. We judge whether it's safe to eat that mildly moldy loaf of bread, whether the stove is too hot to touch, or whether our child is safe with a particular babysitter. Our whole days consist of judging one thing after another. When we see objective evil, we are required to judge it for what it is.

What we're not to judge is the state of another man's soul. You can't know what any other person knows of God's laws, or what they believe, or whether they're struggling or whether they've repented. I have no business deciding whether any single other person is going to Heaven or Hell, and I can't even be reliably counted on to judge myself in that respect. [I suspect that, at the very least, some time in Purgatory will be in order, because I know that I have knowingly and intentionally stepped off the path.]

We're also called to love, certainly. But loving someone does not mean endorsing everything they do and say. If my child hits another child in the face, do I love her more if I say, "Well, she was born that way"? Certainly not! I'm her mother. I love her even as I'm putting her in time out. In fact, it's because I love her that I put her in time out. As my mother always said, "Kids come crooked, and it's our job as parents to straighten them out."

Time out.

Jesus loved. Jesus forgave. But what everyone always conveniently leaves out when recounting Jesus' famed forgiveness is the crucial point: "Go and sin no more." Jesus never told an unrepentant sinner to go forth and keep it up. He acknowledged their sorrow and contrition, forgave them, and then told them to go forth and live better.

To wrap up with Cardinal Chaput:

Evil talks about tolerance only when it's weak. When it gains the upper hand, its vanity requires the destruction of the good and the innocent, because the example of good and innocent lives is an ongoing witness against it. So it always has been. So it always will be.