April 1, 2009
"In my distress I cried unto the Lord, and he heard me./Deliver my soul, O Lord, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue." Psalm 120, KJV
One reason for the infrequency of my postings has been that since September of 2008, I have been attending adult catechism classes at a nearby Roman Catholic parish.
The instructor is well educated and a lively speaker. He would have to be to keep me awake for two hours on a Sunday morning. My enthusiasm and even devotion to this parish grew. For the first time in a long time I was engaged in something beyond this blog and my other writings. Something outside of myself. A rare place for a babyboomer.
That enthusiasm was precipitate.
When I began attending mass at the parish some two years ago, I wrote to Fr. Neuhaus at First Things to express a new-found spirit of faith and possibility, but with reservations. It would still be a while before I took that step to enter the Church, but already I worried that men such as myself might not be welcome. Men who, as boys, had been swept up, or, rather drgged down, into the gay subculture that had taken root in the priesthood and whose members were sexually out of control. That scandal and moral abandon is now incontrovertible public knowledge. I have written about my personal experiences -- the one-time-only pathetic fumblings of a middle-aged priest -- and the psychological warfare he waged thereafter as punishment for an imaginary betrayal and my unwillingness. Or, let's call it what it was and is -- my disgust.
It has never been something I talked about and I had told no one at the time -- not family, not teachers, not friends. I was determined not to reveal ancient history to anyone at the parish that I hoped would be my religious home. I suspect many of us "boys" are wary; watch what we say; and do not react to the negligent consciences and prejudices of the laity. Part of the struggle to forgive. Or so I thought.
Keeping the secret was the plan and keep the secret I have. But, for the second time in my life, I have been subjected to an indecency made all the more so for being done in public. A disturbed and unhappy person? No doubt. Oblivious to the damage inflicted on me? Certainly. That indecency rationalized and my humiliation dismissed by authority? Instantaneously.
The pain has not been less because the person involved was not a priest or anyone in an official or ecclesiastical capacity. But someone not completely in control of impulses and actions in public.
I was stunned; too stunned to react at the time. The frustration and humiliation accumulated over the week. I slept for only three or four hours a night. Exhaustion finally overwhelmed feelings.
The instructor now looked at me as if I had invited this pathology.
My collegialty and my pity may have been misconstrued but it seemed to me a radical misconstruction. A casual observer would have seen this person's unhappiness -- little more than a servant to a self-absorbed spouse. Going for food and drinks and receiving nothing, not even a nod of thanks. If she amplified my kindness; I underestimated her misery.
This past Sunday required all catechists to come to the communion rail for a final blessing. I could not make myself do it. It has always seemed perverse to me that the innocent party often feels more uncomfortable, more restricted while the guilty strut about like the unthinking children they are. A perversion only a conscience could produce.
When I ran into this couple yesterday evening at the local Macdonalds, I grabbed my Wall Street Journal, my coke, my coat, and fled. Literally. I hope they got the message. But the defenses seem thick.
Psalm 120 epigrammed above is from Mass this evening. As I watched my instructor assisting a visiting Orthodox priest I wondered for a brief moment if conscience, or a momentary burst of imaginative sympathy produced the thought that, just possibly, I was the injured party.
But no, as I watched him... nothing. No recognition. Before mass, a member of the class turned away with a faint smile of knowledge that he could not possibly possess.
On Holy Saturday, ten days from today, I am scheduled to be confirmed and receive Holy Communion. In spite of financial worries and an employer lurching toward bankruptcy, I still believed that the Easter Vigil would be a moment of joy and hope and anticipation. Now the outrage, the burning humiliation, the depression, make that seem unlikely. And there is always the possibility that I will be denied the Sacrament. My need for the Sacrament fights with a desire to flee these people and this parish.
Since that morning of March 22nd, the temptation to despair has been more than I want to admit. That this incident has been, in all that really matters, history repeating itself as a painful farce, makes it no easier to bear.
Prescience beyond anything wanted. I had always expected the struggle to be inside; warring within to forgive the Church; instead the conflict is visible for everyone to see. At least everyone in that room. And once again, the Church attacks my reputation.
So, the prodigal son becomes what he feared most: the prodigal stranger. Unwelcome, unwanted, wary, suspicious, outcast -- again. This past Sunday, as I stopped myself from joining the other catechists at the rail, a woman in the next pew looked at me, recognizing me from blessings at the altar on previous Lenten Sundays. She said nothing, but the question was on her face. Why aren't you up there?
I have cycled through all the emotions and only one is left. A grieving loss. Loss not of personal faith, but of sacramental recognition of that faith by the Church.
My alternatives are not the lawyers and psychiatrists of the episcopacy. Nor the cynical exploitation of a crisis by SNAP and Voices of the Faithful. And I am not welcome in the communion of saints.
The words of William F. Buckley, Jr. come back again and again. The last words of his Playboy interview. "I know that my Redeemer liveth."
I know that my Redeemer liveth. I have no heart to speculate what the Church knows.
Sam Macomb
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