Sunday Reflection: In sickness and in sin

We're a little behind the times due to family commitments. This reflection is for Sunday, Feb 19, 2006.

Today's gospel reading concerns the paralytic who "dropped in" on Jesus.

More interesting than the details of how four men can tear open a roof in a few minutes, is the seeming equation of sin and sickness throughout this reading.

I'm a man of the modern age, and I don't much like it when people see sickness as a result of sinfulness. For one non-trivial example, the crowing by certain "religious" people about AIDS being God's punishment for the "sin" of homosexuality is a little more than uncharitable. It's positively ghoulish, since AIDS also hits African families Haitians and hemophiliacs. So, times when the gospels link the sin and sickness make we rationalists a little edgy.

To the story...

Jesus, at home in Capernaum is mobbed inside a house. Four men carrying a paralytic on a litter break through the roof and lower the sick man before Jesus.

“Child, your sins are forgiven,” he says.

The scribes get their noses out of joint: "Who but God alone can forgive sins?” they think.

Interestingly, Jesus did not say, "I forgive your sins," but "Your sins are forgiven." An ambiguous statement. Kind of like the difference between "I threw a ball" and “A ball was thrown." The latter does not exclude the possibility that the speaker threw the ball. But the scribes in this case did equate the two statements, and perhaps for good reason, as we shall see.

Jesus is described as understanding what the scribes were thinking and challenges them: "Which is easier, to say ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, pick up your mat and walk?’"

It's almost as though he is saying, "Listen. I have two ways to say the same thing. But one has 6 syllables and one has 7." In any event, the focus is on the seeming fact that Jesus equates the two sentences -- that the man's sins are forgiven and that he is healed.

Then, Jesus seals the deal, showing that scribes were right on the money all the time. "But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth, I say to you, 'Rise, pick up your mat, and go home.'”

Jesus gives the crowd a three-fer: he heals the man, (cool enough all by itself) he forgives his sins, (whoa!) and he demonstrates his authority as Son of Man.

But what of this equation of sin and sickness? It's hard to know where to go with this. In other places in the gospels, Jesus makes it clear that a man's sinfulness is not the cause of his sickness. In Luke 13:4, he discusses a local tragedy in which a group was killed by falling stonework: "Or do you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were worse culprits than all the men who live in Jerusalem?" In John 9, on the other hand, Jesus
shows that sickness sometimes has no connection with sin, but is imposed by God for his own good purpose. In the story of the man born blind, told in John 9, the disciples ask Jesus whether the man's sightlessness is due to his sins or to his parents'. "Neither he ," Jesus replies, "nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him. "

So, there seems to be three ways sins and sickness are related: sickness can be caused by sin, by accident and by the will of God.

We moderns have little trouble understanding that social sin can cause death and disease. Pollution can cause cancer; lack of charity toward the poor can cause malnutrition and death; theft can rob victims of the fruits of their labors and set themselves up for poverty and illness.

But can my sin make me sick? And if so, is it just a psychosomatic illness caused by guilt? Hard to say, I have no answer. There are some who are so self-centered and selfish that they drive away their friends. Stress caused by guilt over sin can lower one's immune response, but this is something different.

I confess that I have no easy answer and I will allow God to work an answer in his own time.
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Let us pray.

Lord, your Word sometimes throws us a curveball that baffles us and leaves us spinning at the plate. May we not pretend that because we didn't see the ball that we hit it over the fence.

Leaving baseball metaphors...

What is the value of showing us that our sin can make us sick? May it be that like an unpurged poison, our sins never leave us, slowly strangling the life within us until we become paralyzed and a burden on our friends and families? Does sin deaden us to our own capacities, becoming an obstacle to carrying our own weight and making our own way?

Open our minds and hearts to hear your words, and refuse to have them explained away by those with facile answers. Let us live honestly in our own ignorance until we are enlightened with the true dawn of understanding that is yours alone to give.

Amen.
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art: "Winter" by Pat Apt.

The Da Vinci Load: Holy Blood! Holy Grail! Holy Plagiarism!

Dan Brown was so busy making the green, that you didn't notice the people who saw red as his bank account soared into the black!

Enough.

Dan Brown, punk author of "The Da Vinci Code" is finally getting nailed for his crimes. No, he's not being hauled before the Spanish Inquisition for heresy, but before the British bar for plagiarism.

Anyone who has read Brown's book as well as "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" will notice more than a few similarities between the two books. HBHG, written by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, Henry Lincoln, tells a fascinating (though ludicrous) story of the search for the Holy Grail. HLL’s sleuthing uncovered that the grail was not the cup that Christ drank from at the Last Supper -- but a living bloodline. Baigent, et al, claim that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had at least one child. Following the trail of a number of medieval legends, they claim that the pregnant MM landed in France (of all places) and was the progenitor of the Merovingian dynasty, and then the Carolingians. The "secret" of the bloodline was passed from one genius to another, including Leonardo da Vinci and Isaac Newton. It and is now being slowly dribbled out by the latest in the supposed line of Christ. Spun out over several hundred pages, the tale was fascinating, and touched on the fields of art, history and religion.

I read HBHG years ago, and loved it. It was spooky and sinister and fed into my feeling that history is full of conspiracies and secrets.

Then I grew up. A little late, maybe, but that's another story.

Dan Brown picked up the main line of HBHG, mixed in liberally from other books on the medieval mysteries and wrapped them in a tight little action plot. He even named his all-knowing professor "Leigh Teabing," an evident homage to two of HBHG’s authors.

But now, Brown's creation is turning on him. Leigh and Baigent are suing Random House for stealing "the whole architecture" of their HBHG research. I'm no copyright lawyer, but I suspect they have a case.

I also suspect that plain old greed may have a more than a little to do with the litigation, what with book sales, movie profits and DVD sales being up for grabs.

Oh, that there was a way for both sides to lose !

Baigent received a BA in Psychology from Canterbury University, Christchurch, and is currently pursuing an MA in Mysticism and Religious Experience at the University of Kent.

By the way, when the media speak of Baigent and Leigh as "historians," get out your big grain of salt. According to Wikipedia, Baigent has a BA in Psychology is currently pursuing a masters in "Mysticism and Religious Experience." Random House's own site describes Leigh as "a novelist and short-story writer with postgraduate degrees in comparative literature and a thorough knowledge of history, philosophy, psychology, and esoterica."

"Thorough," it seems, is in the eye of the beholder and need not be tested by any system so disregardlable as a university. By standarsd like those, I should call myself a doctor becuase I can remove splinters, and a naturalist because I have visited the zoo.

Favorite blogs, podcasts and sites

It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to find Catholic and Christian sites on the web. But it does take a sleuth to dig up the interesting and/or valuable ones. Here's a list:

Stupid Church People (www.stupidchurchpeople.com) is a decent site that hosts blogs and a very funny podcast by 26-year-old Joshua M. Sager and his 42-year-old friend, Stephen E. Chastain. These guys are based in California and their Christian experience is centered on mega-churches and small, non-affiliated, conservative Christian churches in California and Texas. They have both been pastors, but got sick of the politics and phoniness they felt went along with the role. They drink, they swear and they talk smut, but they are very funny, and very much in search of genuine religiosity.

The Catholic Insider (www.thecatholicinsider.com) is hosted by Father Roderick Vonhögen, an English-speaking priest from Holland. He's a young techno-geek who seems to spend more time with electronic gadgets than with the flock. But whatever. He is also a Harry Potter head and a Star Wars fanatic, and has interesting and positive views on both. When the previous pope was sick last April, his podcasts from St. Peter's had a moving, man-in-the-street immediacy. Fr. Broderick also gives "sound tours," but since he is pretty much stuck in Holland, they tend to be rather Dutch-oriented. I got tired of listening to The Catholic Insider a couple of months ago; it was getting precious and a little too self-involved. Still, it is one of the best-produced podcasts around, which reflects Fr. V's professional-level competence in the field of radio.

Infidel Guy (www.infidelguy.com) is actually a site and podcast hosted by an avowed atheist, making it an odd choice for this list. However, IG interviews very interesting guests, including people involved in the recent creationist/ID debates. He also brings on people like Dr. Kenneth Miller (a Catholic scientist and defender of evolutionary theory) and Dr. Robert Price, who, as "The Bible Geek," skeptically attacks biblical literalists. I find IG to be rather ignorant about religion personally. He's credulous and prone to amazement at anything that his anti-religion guests say. But you don't have to agree with the guests to get something out of the shows. In fact, if you plan to do any Christian or Catholic apologetics, you'd better learn the arguments used by the opposition!
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Art: unknown artist; from "The Chronicles of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (www.siracd.com)

DC's JP2 Cultural Center a boffo hit!

We were college-shopping in DC earlier this week and decided to pop into the John Paul II Cultural Center on the way out of town.

It was really a coin flip, really. Mom wanted to go, but was fading and headachy; Dad didn’t want to go but wanted Mom to be happy on the long trip home. The boys were tired and pretty pliable (yar!). So we went.

I was expecting a crappy little shack in the backstreets of Washington. But the JP2CC is actually quite a place. It’s a modern 3-floor concrete building with a reflecting pool, lots of glass and oversized statues of JP2 out front, and a parking lot for about 100 cars. Not the Kennedy Center, mind you, but not shabby.

We only had about an hour to visit, so we didn’t see everything. What we did see was impressive enough:

1) Excellent biblical sculpture by Scott Sullivan and Phillip Ratner.



2) An exhibit called “A Blessing to One Another” which highlighted the recent pope’s relationship with the Jewish community. Especially moving was his visit to the Synagogue of Rome (see picture left), and a video of the Pope’s visit to Yad Vashad, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. There the pope met Jerzy Kluger -– his lifelong friend -- and Edit Cerar, then a young Jewish girl who, after the war, was literally carried on the future pontiff’s back to a train and safety. The exhibit also houses a replica of the Western Wall and an area showing versions of the Golden Rule (“Do unto others…”) taken from faiths around the world.

3) On the second floor, we examined models of the various worship spaces of the ancient Israelites, including a cutaway of the original tabernacle tent used by Moses in the desert, through Solomon’s temple and Herod's second temple. Great learning tools!

4) Also on the second floor is a temporary exhibit of paintings and sculpture called “Papi in Posa,“ which shows paintings of 500 years of popes. The first 2/3 of the exhibit shows one pope after another in velvet and ermine, but starting with John XXIII, there are some impressionistic pieces that are quite interesting. The portrait of John XXIII by Umberto Romano, bedabbled in corpulent, blazing reds and oranges is quite a contrast to the sparrowlike likeness of his successor Paul VI, rendered in cool, muted blues, greens and violets. The exhibit ends with several chalk studies of John Paul II in repose at St. Peter’s last April.

The rest of the center has interactive exhibits and a gift shop, but we didn’t see much of these. All told, though, it was a pleasantly surprising stop. I even deigned to have my picture taken hand in hand with the pope’s statue. Not bad for a guy who doesn't always see eye to eye with the papacy!

The Da Vinci Load: Dial "H" for Heresy!

Roman Catholic Canon Law defines heresy as "the pertinacious denial or doubt, by a baptized Catholic, of a truth of Divine and Catholic Faith proposed as such by the Supreme Magisterium of the Church." (Canon 750 § 1 Code of Canon Law).

So, technically, any non-Catholics who have swallowed the wagonload of manure that Dan Brown (yuk!) serves up in "The Da Vinci Code" is not a heretic.

Still...

I'm not a big name-caller when it comes to other people's beliefs. Some folks are simply misinformed. Some are not too bright. Some don't have the benefit of education. Some grew up in other traditions or migrated to them. Whatever. I don't use fighting words like "heretic" or "schismatic" lightly.

But TDVC is in a class almost by itself. Purportedly accurate about documents, organizations and art, it is absurdly wrong on history; hilariously misinformed about painting; screwed up on theology and bamboozled about secret organizations. About the only thing right about the book are the page numbers, and I'm suspicious about those too.

The book has sold 65 million copies worldwide. That's one big load of cow flop! And countless millions have swallowed the whole load:
- Jesus married to Mary Magdalene
- Sunday Christian worship invented in the 4th century
- Jesus worshipped as a mortal prophet for the first 300 years of Christianity
- Secrets suppressed by the Vatican with great success for 2000 years -- until Dan Brown, that is!

And now, the film. Come May 19, Brown's nonsense will be accessible to the impressionable minds of millions of moviegoers in one of the most culturally illiterate nations on the planet. Nearly all of these will not have the historical, artistic, scriptural or theological sophistication to know they are watching a fictional story based on untruths and unsupported speculation. Over popcorn, they will ingest lies that they have no power or interest to unmask.

Here at The Cranky Catholic, we will be holding TDVC—book and movie–up to scrutiny. You don't have to love every word that issues from the Vatican to realize that what is under attack here is not just a few Catholic and Christian teachings, but truth itself. The work that thousands of scholars have toiled centuries to piece together will be equated (in the minds of many) with a preposterous load of rubbish expertly rendered on film.

The Cranky Catholic plans to stand up and be heard on this issue. Plan for frequent updates on the movie, descriptions of TDVC howlers and just carping in general. Should be a fun ride!

Sunday Reflection: Leapin' Lepers!

We're a little late this week, having taken time off from our hectic schedule to bury a family member. It was a temporal work of mercy, emphasis on the work.

Welcome to Leper Sunday.

The first reading gives us a bit of Leviticus dealing with dealing with lepers. Basically, leprosy is bad news. You get it, and you're outta here. The ancient Hebrews lived 3000 years before Louis Pasteur and the germ theory, but you didn’t have to be a biologist to know that disease spreads. Getting lepers out of town was one of those cruelties that was a kindness to the non-infected. I would have wanted them out, and you would have too.

And we would not have been kind with the ones that wanted to dally. "He shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp,” says the levitical code. And don't let the tent flap hit you on the butt on the way out.

Then, of course, Jesus comes along to wreck the whole system.

Here's the play by play:

A leper came to Jesus (Yoikes! Back away, Jesus!)and kneeling down (Good. He's not coming any closer. Move! Move! Move!) begged him and said,
“If you wish, you can make me clean.” (Fat chance, L-man! Take a powder!) Moved with pity, (What? Not disgust or fear?) he stretched out his hand, (You mean on purpose?) touched him, (Yewwwww!!!) and said to him, I do will it. Be made clean.”

What's interesting is that the leper gets healed, and heads into town -- where he hasn't been welcome in who knows how long. Meanwhile, Jesus gets so popular that he "remained outside in deserted places."

It's hard to miss the irony of the two men -- healer and healed -- changing places, isn't it? But rather than suffering the loneliness of the leper, he turns the desert into an attraction: "and people kept coming to him from everywhere."
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Let us pray.

Poor pathetic us. We are such losers, so disliked, so misused and abandoned. But you feel pity for us and stretch yourself to meet us where we lie, squalid and covered with sores, abandoned by those who have every reason to shun us. Your touch makes whole what our families, friends and communities cannot. Even when we are turned out for the good of everyone, you are our friend. You take every risk to show us kindness.

May we show even a little of that kindness and pity to those we keep at arm's length (or worse) for whom there is no healing: the crazy and the dependent; the soul-suckers and the narcissists; the manipulators and the cowards; the bullies and the betrayers. We can’t save them, and we can’t change them and we can’t abide them.

Those we cannot heal: may we touch them
Those we cannot touch: may we reach out to them;
Those we cannot reach out to: may we pity them;
That all may feel some small measure of your love.

Amen.

Holy Cranks: John the Baptist

John T. Baptist strikes a classic pose on an Italian holy card. (But what's with the snake on the pole! Yoikes!)


David Morris (www.historycomesalive.ca) gives us a more historically accurate depiction, but I want a brave man, not a cave man!!


“J the B”; John the Baptist. John the Baptizer.

One of the most terrifying voices of the New Testament, a wild man straight out of Central Casting – or the loony bin.

John the Baptist came to kick butt and take names. The scene by the Jordan is usually rendered in slow motion, with sad, sinful people lining the banks and John gently dipping folks in the river. But John was a whirlwind of a man, blowing in on a desert wind and scouring the hearts of all who heard.

And that makes the forerunner of the Messiah a gangly weirdo; a raving psych case; a drooling, snarling, spitting crank blazing a path for the chosen one of God.

Don’t believe me? Some quotes:

MATTHEW 7-11, 13):

When [John] saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?
Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance.
And do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones.
Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.
His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

Pardon me as I wipe the spittle from my sweater!

Let’s summarize:
• Leaders are a brood of vipers!
• Don’t count on your religious affiliation to save you!
• God’s a-fixin' to start chopping!
• God’s gonna clear out what is useless and burn it with fire!

All three synoptics (Matthew, Mark and Luke) relate the story of John getting in Herod’s grill about the tetrarch’s unlawful marriage to his brother’s wife, not to mention all the other unnamed evil things Herod had done.

LUKE lays out the basic story…

Now Herod the tetrarch, who had been censured by him because of Herodias, his brother's wife, and because of all the evil deeds Herod had committed, added still another to these by (also) putting John in prison.

…which tones down Mark’s “up close and personal” presentation:

John had said to Herod, "It is not lawful for you to have your brother's wife." Mark 6 (17-19)

Herod, that’s putting it in your face !!

So I add Baptizing John as one of our greatest Holy Cranks. He did not shy away from taking on The Man and speaking truth to power, come what may.

His feast is June 24, and aside from being an unofficial patron of cranks, he is the patron saint of the province of Québec. Also (with my guess for the connection) he is patron of:

Bird dealers (the dove that settled on Jesus at his baptism)
Converts (“Repent!”)
Cutters (that nasty business with his head)
Hail and hailstorms (“The heavens opened…”)
Lambs (”Behold the Lamb of God!”)
Motorways (“Make straight his paths!”)
Diocese of Paterson, New Jersey (unknown – are Dove Bars made there?)
Tailors (his leather garments were getting tatty!)

Buddy Christ to the rescue!

As a fan of the quirky and irreverent Kevin Smith movie, "Dogma," there's a warm place in my heart for the "Buddy Christ" statue that Cardinal Glick, played by George Carlin, used to try to make Catholicism seem more fun. Buddy Christ is a bizarre cross between the Sacred Heart and Jeff Spicoli, the stone-out slacker from "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." Winking and giving the thumbs up, he is supposed to be a better alternative to the crucifix, which gives Cardinal Glick "the willies."

"Dogma" is the kind of film that would have made it to the infamous "Index of Forbidden Films" of yesteryear. But it is a movie that takes religion seriously, at least to the degree of wanting faith to be relevant.

So guess what I saw on the dashboard of a car parked outside Church at morning Mass yesterday?

Was it St. Christopher? No, no, no, no!

Was it a pink plastic rosary? No, no, no, no!

Was it Bobble-head Buddy Christ? Yea, O yea!

I was so excited that I thought I'd go out and get one myself. It's the perfect dashboard gift for someone who loves Christ, digs religious "gear," and has a sense of fun.

Why not? Better "Buddy Christ" than no Christ at all!

To be or not to be Jesus

Yesterday, I ran across this AP news item from Italy:

ROME - An Italian judge has dismissed an atheist's petition that a small-town priest should stand trial for asserting that Jesus Christ existed, both sides said yesterday.

Luigi Cascioli, a 72-year-old retired agronomist, had accused the Rev. Enrico Righi of violating two laws with the assertion, which he called a deceptive fable propagated by the Roman Catholic Church.

Turns out that the two men were former schoolmates, never something to stop a dedicated litigant, I guess. Cascioli didn't expect to win in Italy, but plans to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

The scheme was to get a court to rule that Jesus did not exist. What standing a court has to determine a historical and theological truth is beyond me. In a fraud case, you must prove that a claim is not true. But how can you prove, to a court's satisfaction, that Jesus did exist -- because you don't believe he did?

Bizarre as it seems, Cascioli's case poses a problem: how would one prove the existence of Christ? For that matter, how would one prove the existence of Aristotle, or Pythagoras, or Genghis Khan? All we have left are writings, art and legends. Maybe other people wrote these things and claimed that fictitious A, P and GK wrote them! But if we can't make reasonable conjectures based on remaining evidence, it would hard to prove much of anything we had not seen with our own eyes.

And with that, we would be left with little indeed.

If we can't use our reason to make informed conjectures about seemly-disconnected facts, then the entire basis for science collapses. It was after all, Newton's insight that the same force was behind the fall of the apple toward the ground and the pull of the Earth on the Moon. Without our ability to see pattermns in Nature, we would not know that the sparrow and the chicken are related or that water and ice are two forms of the same material.

Mr. Cascioli is not nearly as clever as he thinks.

Barbie(R), Ken(R) and their Super Fun Remarriage(R)!

Will these two dolls...



...soon be beating a path...



... to this one's platic rectory playhouse?

Just when I thought things couldn't get any more inane, comes the tale of grown-up people at Mattel releasing a new version of Ken. And the big questions is, does Ken still have the hots or Barb or what??

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Asks Mattel, "Two years after their headline-making break-up,...is a reunion in store in time for Valentine's Day?"

As if!!

Here are some actual quotes from Mattel's press release:

[Ken(R)] is more than arm candy - he's spent time exploring the world and himself, so his look reflects that time spent on his own."

The "new" Ken(R) doll is more versatile and has a new look that incorporates today's hottest trends.... His hair is now longer, with a naturally wavy, yet polished look. (yeah, polished...that happens when you're MADE OF PLASTIC!!!!)

"Ken(R) has revamped his life - mind, body and soul" (Good Lord, now Ken(R) is a sentient being! Will he seek salvation from Plastic Dashboard Jesus?)

Mattel goes on and on, discusing B(R) and K(R) as a "former couple" and speculating about "whether there will be love in the air for Barbie(R) and Ken(R)."

Lucky little girls! Now their playtime can filled with the same vacuous relationship-shopping that fills the evening celebrity shows and the magazine aisles at CVS adn WalMart!

Marriage is now an accessory, like a Prada bag or Armani sunshades.

Sunday Reflection: A whole lot of 'crazy' goin' on

You gotta hand it to Job. He really knows how to lighten up your day:

Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery?...
If in bed I say, “When shall I arise?” then the night drags on…
Remember that my life is like the wind; I shall not see happiness again.

Alright!! The Word of the Lord!!! My man!!

The gospel too is filled with sickness and despair. This is the story of Jesus healing Simon’s mother-in-law. I’ll leave aside the obvious cracks about Peter (hello! The “first Pope”!) having a wife to better focus on the mess in Capernaum.

Jesus has just left the synagogue where last week he healed a man with an unclean spirit. His fame is starting to spread – through all of Galilee. That’s kind of bad news because evidently, Caper-town is a hotbed of the sick, the seriously warped and the demon-infested.

Especially at night…

“When it was evening, after sunset, they brought to him all who were ill or possessed by demons.

It must have been like Halloween out there – a fire or some torches to see by. Shadows dancing on walls and out into courtyards. Waves splashing on the beachfront. The creaking of boats rocking on the water. The smell of dead fish and sick people who could not clean themselves. Hooting and hollering and carrying on, as “the whole town” gather at Simon’s house, desperate to get relief from whatever ailed them. Pushing, straining, crushed together, hoping, doubting.

It’s kind of hard to appreciate in our day of antibiotics and morphine, but even an abscessed tooth or an infected splinter could kill a strong man in no time flat. And for the chronically ill, there was nothing but the love of their frazzled family and hope for quick release from agony.

It’s the ancient tale of Job all over. The human condition. Misery. Lunacy. Undeserved suffering. Inescapable pain and all the other benefits of being a species that is just fit enough to reproduce before dying in torments.

Into this mess comes Jesus, setting right what the world and blind, heedless Nature have decreed as the way things must be. Jesus, who reshapes humanity to show off the image of God hidden within. Jesus, who draws in flesh God’s intention for his Creation, and sets himself against a world skewed into death, disease and struggle by the forces of chaotic Nature.

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Let us pray.

Jesus, you healed “many” in Capernaum who were sick, crazy and entangled in evil. That was terrific. We have many like that today. We heal their bodies, sometimes. We band-aid their minds, sometimes. But many more don’t even know they are sick and damage their families and communities with the craziness. And those we do heal are sometimes abandoned, lonely and sad.

Your healing ministry showed us the destiny of Creation: whole, healthy, free – a community restored to the throb and bustle of life. Help us bring those who are sick back into our lives and out of the shadows. Let us join your ministry of healing bodies, minds and spirits, doing what we can, as you did, for those in desperate need of love, pity and the touch of a human hand.

Amen.

New format. You like?

OK. Two readers complained (nicely) that they had a hard time reading the blog because of its light-on-dark template. Hence the change to dark-on-light. I'm not sold on this sea green motif, so there may be more changes in the near future.

See? It pays to respond to The Cranky Catholic!


Note from 2/8: Sea green has given way to "Dead Sea Franciscan" -- this delightful palette of browns reminiscent of the deep brown robes of the saint of Assisi and the sand tones of the scrolls of Qumran!

The "Saint" and the "Slut"

Dear Abby hit a home run this week. A Catholic man wrote her in despair about his "slut" of a wife, who (he discovered after 15 years of faithful, fruitful marriage and 2 children) had slept with a married man when she was single.

Our poor saint is distraught about this! Here's a quote: "I feel I'm not making love to a "clean" woman, that she is used and dirty laundry." He then goes on to compare her to a used car that was sold to him as new.

He then goes on to whine about how he still loves her, and that he'll stay for the sake of the kids. O, most noble saint! The most telling line is that though she claims to be a good Catholic, he told her she had ignored the faith's teachings that she be a virgin "for your husband." It's all about you, isn't it, Charlie?

Abby tears him apart, rightly, as a pious hypocrite, having avoided the claim that he was a virgin (as the Church also teaches) before marriage. Not to mention his inability to forgive her, after 15 years of exemplary life. Not to mention his lack of charity and humility. Not to mention the Church's teaching that Original Sin trips us all up. Not to mention that he has objectified his wife, denying her dignity, treating her not as a person made in God's image but as a commodity for his own enjoyment. Abby then goes on to advise both religious and psycholigical counseling for him, saying, "You need more help than anyone can give you in a letter."

Ouch.

To which I might add the need for serious marriage counseling. Our saint has done incalculable damage to his relationship. If you love your wife, it's time to get working, son!

Phariseeism is neither dead nor an affliction only of the Jews of gospel time. It is a disease that consumes all, especially those who consider themselves holy. It's to us all that Christ directs his admonishment to remove the plank from our own eye before seeing the speck in the eye of the other. (Matthew 7:3).

You go, Abby!