Cynicism: An Anti-Christian and Blasphemous Cop-Out

To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbour's thoughts, words, and deeds in a favourable way. Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favourable interpretation to another's statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. And if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved.

Catechism of the Catholic Church, 478

Reflection – This little snippet from the CCC popped up somewhere on my Facebook news feed the other day, and I jumped on it immediately as blog fodder. I’ve been toying with the idea of periodically having some basic catechetical stuff on the blog from time to time—not as a regular feature, but once in a while.

This paragraph should be required reading for everyone before going on the Internet. One of the most harmful, toxic patterns of discourse I have seen on the ‘net over the years is the strong tendency to assume the worst of people, to interpret every thought, word, and deed of another, especially another that you do not like, in the most negative terms possible.

This is a sin against charity, it is widespread in our online discourse, and it is poisonous. It derails the most innocuous and positive discussions into cycles of random hostile accusations and counter-accusations and defenses, and renders it impossible to actually discuss an issue, because everyone gets worked up discussing the inner hearts and minds (about which we can know nothing) of the people putting the issue forward.

Cynicism, in other words, is deeply anti-Christian and deeply evil. It is destructive of community, of the search for truth and goodness, and undermines the hard work of forging a genuinely good and beautiful path of life in the world, of restoring the world to Christ, as we put it in Madonna House.

Cynicism is also a cheap cop-out. It is true that sometimes people have base motives for their words and deeds—of course! But the cynic who makes a blanket judgment that everyone has base motives for his or her words and deeds, or at least everyone that the cynic himself disagrees with or dislikes is taking the easy path indeed.

The truth is, people are complicated, and life is complicated, and there is such a tangled mess of good and evil, virtue and sin, honesty and hypocrisy in almost every human heart. But the goodness, the virtue, and the honesty are no less real than the evil, sin, and hypocrisy. And that is the fundamental mistake of the cynic—an unwarranted and illogical assumption that the good in a person is just window dressing, just exterior practice, and that the ‘real person’ is only shown when their moral failures and perfidy is exposed.

I think cynicism, while it is among the basic stances of the human person, is exacerbated by certain forms of Calvinist theology. The doctrine of total corruption of the human person, the idea that it is our sins that name us, define us, and that only God’s grace is any good whatsoever, and his grace is merely an external application of forgiveness on (essentially) a rotten putrid corpse of sinful corruption—all of this will of course engender a deeply jaundiced and cynical view of reality.

This is not Catholic theology. We never have believed in total corruption, but have always held that there was some capacity for natural goodness in the human person. And we believe that God’s grace is actually transformative, working on the interior of the person to actually make them good and loving. And so in our dealings with one another we must be charitable, not because it is ‘nice’, but because otherwise we may inadvertently but very seriously sin against the Holy Spirit and commit a most profound act of blasphemy—that of denying the possibility of grace acting in a person to truly make this person good.

Cynicism is, as I have said is a cheap cop-out, a childish refusal to engage in the real complexity of life and its nuances. And so, as we engage with one another on-line and off-line, let us try to remember:

“Everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbour's thoughts, words, and deeds in a favourable way. Every good Christian ought to be more ready to give a favourable interpretation to another's statement than to condemn it. But if he cannot do so, let him ask how the other understands it. And if the latter understands it badly, let the former correct him with love. If that does not suffice, let the Christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved.”

This Week in Madonna House - October 19-25

This week in Madonna House was characterized by piles of earth heaped high, various heavy machinery driving in and out, and general mess. The long awaited new septic tank arrived for the main house on Monday, and so the great upheaval occurred at last.

The job went remarkably smoothly (for those reading this who know MH well, the area involved was St. Joseph’s garden on the side of the building, next to St. Clare’s), thanks in no small part to our own men working in close conjunction with the contractors. It did mean that there was no functional plumbing for the day in the main house, so we all trooped down to St. Mary’s, our community down the road, for lunch, Mass, and supper.

All is done now and in good order, although of course there will be quite a bit of landscaping yet to do to restore that area of our gardens to order and beauty.

Besides that, it was kind of an ordinary week. The farm is really moving into its winter work now, as the food processors finished up their last jobs—making sauerkraut, reducing bones to soup stock—and the woman who oversees that operation is now doing her records and paperwork before going on a much deserved holiday. The garden harvest has finally come to an end—quite late this year—and the man upon whose shoulders that big job rests will also be taking a break soon.

I noticed this week—teaching them a class as I do—that our guests right now are quite an international crowd. In fact, at the moment we only have one Canadian with us—the rest are Americans, with individuals here from South Korea, Brazil, Trinidad, Australia, and New Zealand. It’s not unusual to have people from all around the world, really, but the scarcity of Canadians is rather odd. O Canada, where art thou?

Mind you this all changed briefly on Thursday when we were invaded by nearly the entire population of  Holy Spirit seminary in Ottawa. This is the Ukrainian Catholic seminary, with whom we have extremely friendly relations. Their rector is particularly close to us. This is the second year in a row (“That makes it a tradition!”, I told him) that they have come for a weekend immersion experience in MH life, living in the guest dorms, working (yay, we got the carrots harvested!), and praying with us.

The relationship of MH to Eastern Christianity goes deep, having its most profound root in our foundress’ own Russian heritage and Orthodox childhood, but also the presence in our community for many years of Archbishop Joseph Raya of Lebanon. We believe that MH spirituality is essentially an Eastern Christian spirituality being lived by a bunch of mostly Western Roman Catholics, which is no small thing to say, I realize. Catherine brought us, and taught us, so much along these lines, more than I can go into right now.

So we are always glad to strengthen our bonds with the Eastern churches in Canada and elsewhere. The same day the Ukrainians arrived we also had the blessing of four Jesuit scholastics from Toronto stopping in for Mass and supper. They were on their way to a retreat in Ottawa, one of them has family in the area, and wanted his brother SJs to see MH on their way.

The connection of our apostolate to the Jesuits is one of the more hidden ones, but it is very real. Catherine had Jesuit spiritual directors at various points in her earlier life, and the discipline and order of the Ignatian spiritual tradition formed her well in her youth. So it is always nice to have a little Jesuit connection.

Outside of that, it has been a week of cooler weather (some bad colds going around in the community, including me) and a quieter spirit to things. And, of course, in all this we carried deeply in our prayers the events in Canada this week, the attack on our Parliament buildings and the death of the two soldiers at the hands of unbalanced extremists.

We join you all for praying for peace in our world at this time, and for the healing of the wounds and spiritual sicknesses that are at the root of the violence of our times. May God show us the way to a more loving and merciful world.

Instructing the Ignorant Doctors

To instruct the ignorant... Cardinal Spellman once asked me what is wrong with the Catholic education? I said, "Your Excellency, frankly I don't want to answer that question. I know too much. Put me under obedience and I will answer it." So he did, and I said this sentence:

"Give me a grade school Catholic, a girl or boy who has just gone to grade school, and I will make a Catholic out of them in about three months. Give me a girl or boy who went through Catholic high school and it will take me, by the grace of God, six to eight months. Give me a B.A. who went through Catholic grade school, Catholic high school, Catholic college and it will take me a year to 18 months. Give me an M.A. and it will take me somewhere, with the grace, between 18 months and three years."

I have never succeeded to make a Ph.D. a Catholic.... one who has never been to a public school or anyplace else... just straight Catholic education from beginning to end! "Well, Catherine," he said, "this is a heavy indictment." I said, "It is, Your Excellency. It is that and more." "Well, what do you attribute it to?" I said, "The higher the education, the less the implementation."

A Ph.D. came to Friendship House--Mary was her name. Being that she has brilliant ideas I asked her to write for us a paper that we had to give to our Apologetics class - Sheed & Ward, about 300 people there - on the Mystical Body. Well, there was hushed silence when she finished. Tears were going down my face, and I don't cry over papers easily. A priest was sniffing through his handkerchief and blowing his nose. Sheed was looking at her and saying, "My God! What a brain!" That sort of reaction!

So Katie says to herself, "I have an idea. Tomorrow she goes to the clothing room," and in Harlem the clothing room was something! They were lined up a block and a half waiting for clothing. With that gift of understanding of the Mystical Body of Christ she would be ideal in the clothing room! I told that to the Cardinal.

So the dame lasted exactly three days and she comes to me and says, "B, I can't take it. They stink. They are dirty!" Now what is there after ten years of education or more? "They stink!" That gets to the very essence of working in the Mystical Body! When I go as a nurse into the carcinoma ward, which is the cancer ward, they all stink! You get that smell of cancer in the morning that just knocks you over. But love overcomes that. St. Francis kissed the leper. 

That is my brother in Christ! That is a member of my body! This is my finger! Sure it stinks, but let's wash it off and let's serve it. Why write beautiful articles on the Mystical Body and not be able to do that simple thing?

Catherine Doherty, Talk on the Spiritual Works of Mercy

Reflection – Catherine had her own take on things, and that’s for sure. I’m hoping to go through a few of these presentations on the spiritual works of mercy, from a little course she taught to the MH staff in 1957. I am finding her way of presentation here to not lend itself to short excerpts, so this blog may be a whole lotta Catherine, a little bit of Fr. Denis for these next days.

The Church is abuzz with talks of ‘mercy’ vs. ‘justice’ these days. I think we need to go seriously into the doctrine of mercy and what it means. It is not sentimentality and laxity—it is a serious, searching, self-sacrificing, and total concern for the good of the other person, no matter what the cost is to us, and a boundless compassion for the other person in his or her real circumstances and pain.

Ignorance is a terrible pain, a terrible poverty. In Catherine’s era, and especially in the 1950s when she gave this talk, people would be essentially catechized; what she saw was the calamitous failure to apply the faith to life, to implement it. And indeed, I don’t think the Church and the world would have blown up into such intellectual and moral chaos in the 1960s and 1970s if things had been all that hot in the 40s and 50s. And indeed, it was the intellectual class who had heads full of theory and data but little practical charity who led the charge into that chaos and confusion.

For sure, Catherine would have seen the need for basic catechesis in our day, and indeed she goes on in this talk to present her delicate and careful way of sharing knowledge of the faith with people who lack it. The two go together: knowledge of the doctrine and how it is to be implemented; creed and commandments united with charity and compassion; dogma and decree with delicacy and discretion.

But let us not forget: to instruct the ignorant is a work of mercy. My experience, growing up as I did in the 1970s and 80s, that it is the one work of mercy that has been neglected above all others, to disastrous effect. And in the ongoing work of evangelization and outreach to the ‘margins’, we must include if not emphasize, with great tact and discernment, this long-neglected work.

How To Convert Sinners

I’m a bit under the weather today—nothing serious, just a bad cold—but it has pretty well scuppered my writing ability. I’ve thought of doing a series on the works of mercy, since this is a hot topic in the Church these days, and remembered that Catherine Doherty did a whole series of talks on them years ago.

So, since I don’t seem to have any words for the moment, here is the lady herself, giving her perspective on how to do the spiritual works of mercy that so often go forgotten these days in all the verbiage about the subject It’s a bit lengthy (but quite delightful), so it’s ‘beneath the fold’, so to speak:

The Place of Silence, and the Tragedy of Its Loss

In the modern world language is far from the world of silence. It springs from noise and vanishes in noise. Silence is today no longer an autonomous world of its own; it is simply the place into which noise has not yet penetrated. It is a mere interruption of the continuity of noise, like a technical hitch in the noise-machine—that is what silence is today: the momentary breakdown of noise. 

We no longer have definite silence and definite language, but simply words that are being spoken and words that have not yet been spoken—but these are present, too, standing around like tools that are not being used; they stand waiting there menacingly or boringly.

Max Picard, The World of Silence

Reflection – I’ve been periodically including bits and pieces of this luminous book on the blog lately. There is something deeply apt about reflecting on the need for silence and the poverty of language that does not come from silence, while writing on the noisy, clamorous, and garrulous world of social media.

More and more in my own life, I see what a prophetic woman Catherine Doherty was when she opened the first poustinia at Madonna House. Poustinia, for those unfamiliar with our MH ways, is a Russian word meaning ‘desert’, but which in the Russian spiritual tradition is a place—a room or a small cabin—where someone goes to be silent, to pray, to read the Scriptures and nothing else, to fast. In the life of the MH community, many of us go to poustinia one day a week, or every other week, or less frequently. A few of our members live in poustinia several days each week--a contemplative presence in the midst of this very active community.

In the 1960s, when the Second Vatican Council was opening, Catherine sensed that the greatest need for the Church and the world in years ahead would be silent, listening hearts, that in these years of revolutionary change in society and in the Church we would need to go into deep silence and allow God to shape our words and our hearts there.

Poustinia is precisely this place where silence becomes not a mere break in noise, not a mere pause for breath between our words, but a Place unto itself, a reality in itself filled with meaning and import.

I believe firmly that there is a greater need for poustinia in the world in 2014 than there ever has been. The technological revolution has created a world that is literally filled with noise, with words. Children today can grow up, if there parents choose to allow them, without virtually no silence, no empty space in their lives, as the constant hum and beep and swirl of electronic devices fills up every solitary second of our time.

The loss in this is calamitious. Interiority, depth of reflection, capacity to know and hear God, ability to create a unique word of one’s own—all washed away in the constant stream of information and entertainment coming to us through incessant social media and games.

Essentially what is lost is our humanity and its deepest expressions. We are reduced to the level of the animal, constantly responding to stimuli, driven by raw desires and instinct. Worse yet is our reduction to consumers, where everything and everyone is made into an object for our use, stripped of any transcendent personal value in the process. This is worse than animalistic; it is in truth demonic.

Meanwhile, silence beckons us. Poustinia, however we may find our way of expressing that, beckons us. A place, a way of being, that is so utterly simple: simply me, simply God, simply nothing else. And yet in that simplicity a whole world is restored to us—the world of real values and real personal engagement. The world where, in the words of W.H Auden, “Everything is a Thou and nothing is an It.” 

Technology tends to invert that so that everyone is an ‘it’ and never a ‘thou.’ The conversion to silence is one that I believe we all need to make, and the need for it may only grow more and more urgent in the years to come. May we all find our way to the world of silence and let it teach us what it has to teach.