Premise: I hope to live a good life, but have so malleable a conscience that I frequently fail to interpret God’s will — erring day after day.
The Christmas holiday is behind us. Its bills lie ahead. The new year of 2018 is on the horizon as are our resolutions.
Here’s mine in a nutshell: A wish and a prayer that our loving family, near and far, survive and prosper in a Trump-world gone mad. Looking back, I cannot help making observations. Developer Donald’s political progress has been a relentless series of insults, lies and stupidities unseen in my lifetime, or maybe anyone else’s.
This week between Christmas and the New Year is reflection time.
Have you, like me, noticed in shallow TV interviews that actors or show-biz types seem almost anxious to admit, “I’m a lapsed Catholic?”
Why should I care? It’s no skin off me as the saying goes. Yet, I do. It may be because I’m long retired with more time to consider my mistakes. Thanks to Medicare I’ve survived into my mid-80s. I could be wrong, but I believe, more than I did years ago, that putting aside one hour a week in church has had a lot do with my being around this long. In his new book, “The Meaning of Belief,” even atheist Tim Crane argues that identifying as Catholic but skipping its regular practice makes no sense.
I still miss a number of deceased male friends who lived their faith without apology. That they’re gone pains we who are left behind without their good example nearby. At any rate, I try to measure myself against those stand-up guys who never forgot right from wrong. Today’s anything-goes America is finally waking up to old truths.
Women everywhere deserve respect, for one.
Celebrity former churchgoers easily make jokes about being brought up with Catholic guilt, and living with it long afterward. Hosting his CBS “Late Show,” comedian Stephen Colbert jokingly claims to be America’s most famous Catholic — despite his regrettable fondness for below-the-belt humor. His guest interviews often touch on the size of families, (Colbert is one of 11), and shared faith experiences. Colbert uses reverse psychology in his weekly skit, “Midnight Confessions,” which he’s made into a book.
Colbert enters a mock confessional to “confess” to his audience. Colbert’s inquiry, “You won’t tell anyone, will you?” gets a prompted response “of course not.” In that exchange Colbert is teaching “the seal of the confession,” in which the priest is bound under pain of sin not to divulge what he hears. Colbert then says that these may not technically be sins, but “I feel bad about them.” A church tenet requires penitents to show contrition.
The joke is on his audience in that he brings them into a confessional, where, statistics say, fewer practicing Catholics venture these days. In recent years Catholics young and old are encouraged to skip the confessional box and tell their sins to God face-to-face via a priest confessor.
I’ve grown to like that more mature option, once I get past false pride. Kings and cardinals, popes and saints have chosen to retreat from daily life to confess faults. These exemplars provide a model for us everyday sinners. Facing our faults is not about yesterday, but tomorrow.
No longer Earthbound, we crave a purpose.
We’re all born with a conscience that cartoonists will illustrate as a little devil talking into one ear, with an angel speaking into the other one. “The Screwtape Letters” by C. S. Lewis humorously recounts humans being swayed by a trainee devil using written instructions from a senior one: Ex.
“The best thing, where it is possible, is to keep the patient from the serious intention of praying altogether.”
It’s a must-read tract listing the temptations you and I encounter.
My weaknesses need constant support, which I usually find in an hour of meditation or by freely joining my faith community in a weekly service. God, it’s said, speaks in whispers. Based on long experience, if we turn up the music of daily life, we can miss hearing valuable counsel.
I’ve long admired “The Light of the World,” William Holman Hunt’s famous allegorical painting in St. Paul’s Cathedral. It portrays Christ holding the “lamp of conscience” standing at a garden door. The handle-free portal represents an “obstinately shut mind.” It must be opened from the other side.
The simple majesty of the Mass was inspiration for Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper.” Christ, through the celebrant, first blesses, and then offers his guests’ bread and wine —a meal for the ages. Humbly opening a church door, looking to shed our sorrows, can uplift the spirit.
Why so many fellow Catholics and Christians choose to take a pass on this eternal meal is beyond my understanding. Why study every subject on Earth to earn a living, but refuse to feed out souls?
The cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance are reprised in the “Golden Rule” and the 10 commandments.
In Charleston, South Carolina, a white racist murdered nine African-American churchgoers. President Barak Obama spoke words of comfort. Then, surprising all present, he sang consolation to a city and a nation:
“Amazing grace! How sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.”
Robert Frost compared writing free verse to playing tennis without a net. He might well have said that a life without rules is the road to anarchy.
To daily hear the description of the White House and by extension, America, as being in chaos pretty much says all any of us need to know about our confused leader. If Republicans, who hold all three branches of government, believe their protestations of adherence to the Constitution —they had best put them into practice and replace this president. For not to do so is abandonment of their oath of office: “so help me God.”
Introspection may be the most difficult thing we do. I’m tempted to say that just knowing right from wrong guarantees we’re human.
Merry Christmas. Happy New Year and peace!
Jim Cahillane lives in Williamsburg. His local parish is Our Lady of The Hills in Haydenville. Next year, its hundreds of parishioners will celebrate the 150th anniversary of their historic St. Mary of the Assumption church building.