NO SHAVE NOVEMBER

It’s no shave November and a number of priests (I am among them) are letting our faces go a little rogue.  If you are a guy, I recommend it to you too.

Not everybody is happy about it.  Some are adamantly opposed to the idea.  My sister is among them.  We have reached an agreement not to harp on it too much.  (It will grow one inch longer than agreed for every comment.)

Growing a beard is one of the last socially acceptable purely masculine things that a man may do.  By and large, men’s private organizations & associations (except for sleazy ones - which by the way is NOT truly masculine) have been deemed inappropriate, often legally so.  The BOY scouts for goodness sake is now becoming gender neutral!  In some states (California, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington) even the distinctions between male and female restrooms are starting to become blurred (depending on your point of view.)  Increasingly the portrayed role of men in movies and shows portrays men’s roles as silly and useless.

There is a fundamental need for men in society - and more importantly a need for men to be men.  (Whatever is said here about men is echoed equally for women.)  Men need a time and a place to hang out with men.  In general, men have a role and way of being that, taken over a whole populace, tends to differ from women.  Except where it is dangerous or damaging (in which case it would not be truly masculine or Christian) men need the freedom to be who they are without being slapped on the knuckles with a ruler.

I know.  “Oh poor brave, strong men.”  But the male psyche is more fragile than one might initially imagine.  And it is in the suppression of the masculine that the very abuses some are trying to squash start appearing (like militant beard growth.)

Many police and firefighters are having facial growing contests during November to help raise funds for charities.  I HAVE NO DOUBT that sooner rather than later, somebody will sue to have this gender inequality practice brought to a halt.  I would not be terribly surprised that one day in the future this will be a matter of national concern.  If trends continue as they are today, it will not be the case that all women will have to have shots in order to have the ability to grow beards, it will be that all men will have to have shots to kill theirs off.

To be a balanced society, we need men to be men and women to be women.  That there is, and always has been, and always will be those who don’t fit well into those categories does not negate the need for them (and the need to accept those who don’t fit well into them.)  But the solution is not to suppress the sexes (when has it EVER solved a problem by forcing people to not be who they are) but to celebrate them and make them healthy expressions.

That’s why I grow my beard (plus it is less of a pain AND I have a sensitive chin) and recommend it to other men.  In a similar way, I tell a young that he needs to at least seriously consider once the possibility of the priesthood.  They don’t have to do it, but they have to ask the question once as a legitimate option.  It is the same with a beard.  All men should try it once to fully experience what they are capable of.

There is a person I know in New York.  They have a road on their property that people use as a public right of way but is really owned by that person.  The city recommends that they close down the street once a year in order that the locals know and remember that it is a privilege and not a right for them to use that road.  Likewise, No Shave November is that once a year time for us to remember that, no matter how much society may want to believe otherwise, there is a difference between the genders and a beard is just a friendly, though not always appreciated, reminder of that.

WHO GETS TO DECIDE WHO HAS TO BE TOLERANT AND WHY?

Cleveland is being asked to pass a law that would force everybody except churches to allow transgender persons to use whatever bathroom they wish.  Of course, in the age of Tolerance, those who think this might not be such a good idea are labeled Intolerant and even to debate the issue in the name of Tolerance is deemed Intolerable.

 

On the one hand I understand the concern.  (Deep in taking of breath from the collective audience reading this.)  I remember my first experience with a transgender person.  My Aunties would take me to the double header Indians games and Municipal stadium (gads I miss that place) when I was in grade school.  We generally got the mid range seats and so there were never many people around us – neither those going for the really cheap seats nor those who could afford really good ones.  So people around us stood out.  One day there was what appeared to be a woman in a lime green miniskirt.  I knew something was different here even as a kid.  I had no idea that there was such a thing as transgender people and so what I was seeing didn’t compute.

 

He was a slender African American person having some of the attributes of woman, (to my little boy’s brain: “Okay, there are those.  Check.  Makeup.  Check.  Long hair.  Check.”)  But other things that didn’t fit.  (Adam’s apple.  “?”  Big hands.  “?”  Deep voice.  “?”  Stubble.  “?”) 

 

Now, here is where my understanding would kick in.  What if this person suddenly realized that the need of bathroom was desperate?  How would I feel being this person going into the men’s room with a bunch of testosterone rich, drunk, men?  So we are asked to be compassionate and, by law, make this person feel comfortable with the bathroom he or she chooses to use except at a church.

 

POR OTRA PARTE:  Tolerance is a one way street here.  What about the people who would feel uncomfortable having a person who appears to be of the opposite sex in their bathroom?  How safe would a woman feel with a man, even if he is identifying himself as woman, in the bathroom with her at a downtown bar or any other number of scenarios?  What if of one hundred women, only 3 felt uncomfortable?  Are they Intolerable wretches that need to be sent to a counselor to get over their prejudice?  Why should they be sent to counseling and not the man who identifies himself as a woman?  He could dress like a man and go to the bathroom but women have no such option to end up in a place in which they feel comfortable carrying out their sensitive business. 

 

Anyway, the argument could go on and on about on whom the duty falls to be the one to have to be tolerant of the other.  They can’t both be accommodated without building owners constructing numerous bathrooms from which people could choose.  “Women’s bathroom for those born and who remain female.”  “Women’s bathroom for life long females and those born male but who identify as female but have not yet had an operation.”  “Women’s bathroom for those who identify as female but beyond that don’t really care who else is in here.”  THERE is true but very expensive tolerance.

 

What is happening here is a defining of what is “normal” beyond a setting on a dryer and exactly who must be tolerant of the sensitivities of whom.  Opening this door does not make Clevelanders more Tolerant, it only defines of what they will be Tolerant and of what they won’t be Tolerant.  At the core of all wars on Tolerance, there is the determination to eliminate the voice and rights of all who are not Tolerant of my Tolerance.   And in this and similar cases it will be enforced by law.

THE SLAP THAT COST $250,000

Bluecoats is an organization that strives to take care of our emergency first responders who are injured in the line of duty.  I am lucky enough to be one of their chaplains.  Last night they had their annual banquet and yearly meeting.  They always have a great speaker and last night was no exception.

 

The speaker Mr. Joseph D. Pistone who served in the FBI for 27 years, 6 of which were spent undercover as a member of the Mafia.  His work led to hundreds of convictions the story of which is told in the critically acclaimed major motion picture, "Donnie Brasco" featuring Al Pacino and Johnny Depp.  Below is some outtakes from that movie.  You need not watch it but I wanted to make a comment about something that happens about 28 seconds into the clip.  He is shown slapping his wife.

 

During his talk last night he called special attention to this moment in the movie.  He desired to make absolutely clear that at no time in his life did he ever lay a hand on his wife.  The slap was completely fictional.  This was stressed in the most earnest of ways.

 

A little later someone asked how much of the movie did he have control over.  He responded that he was pretty lucky and that he had a bit of say so over the movie.  Joe was gone, however, the day that they shot the slap.  Becoming rather upset he shut down production for half a day.  "Eventually the director won out.  He was the "captain" of the ship as it were.  But I cost them about a quarter of a million shutting down the film for half a day."

 

Now as you can imagine, spending six years with the Mafia, Mr. Pistone probably did not lead a saintly life.  But what is it that led him to say, "This far and no further."  The attack on marriage, on his manhood, on his role as husband was more than he was willing to let go without challenge.  There is a lesson in there somewhere for all of our men.  How far are we willing to go.  I would personally be very flattered if anyone would want to make a movie of my life, pay me lots of money, and have Johnny Depp play me.  Would that trump my beliefs enough that I would bow easily to something that went against my core beliefs?  I desperately hope not.

SCOURGE OF THE NATIONS

“Nobody should have anything to say about what I do in the privacy of my home. If I choose to watch porn who am I harming? Keep your morality to yourself.”

In truth there is no such thing as a private sin. And this sin reaches dramatically beyond the bedroom (or office) door. Here is just a partial list:

The person viewing is radically turning inward (as opposed to marriage which is to radically turn us toward “the other.”) When he is watching porn the man is not thinking of his wife and family, he is not thinking of the woman in the movie who likely did not grow up thinking that this was the lifestyle she dreamed of and is proud to tell her family about. Even if it is “free” porn he perpetuates the system that feeds on these women that it eventually throws away – who now turns to the very society that used her to help her. It is all about meeting the desires of the man.

It prevents the man from being leaders, providers, and protectors. Whether hours a day are spent or hours a week, this is time stolen from the very people the man loves. With companies installing monitoring systems there is good number of men losing their jobs daily. (Think Wiener.)  Whether he realizes it or not his attitude toward women is altered. He will pass this attitude (where it may become exaggerated) on to his children.

It ruins marriages. Men tend to compartmentalize. He can put porn into a drawer and pretend to separate it from the rest of his life. Women, according to Dr. Kleponis, see life more as a bucket of water and porn a drop of ink. It spreads and colors everything. That is why women tend to see it as something worse than men and why men, particularly those struggling with porn, sometimes do not register it as something as severe. So women see this as a betrayal and something against which they must compete and images against which they could never compare.

It perpetuates lying and deceit as the man tries to hide his porn use. (If you have to hide it, there is something wrong in a relationship where you are supposed to be one flesh.) This leads to damage in communication. All this together can lead to divorce which has a nasty effect sociologically and economically on the family, particularly the children, and on society in general. It ALWAYS harms marriage in some way.

It is ALWAYS damaging to faith. Faith calls us to see the dignity of the human person. All of them. Even those who voluntarily throw it away. To miss this is to miss out on one of the primary tenants of the faith that Jesus came here to teach as necessary to salvation. It is your sister (or brother) that you are turning into a commodity. As John Paul II said it is not that porn reveals too much of the person. It is that it reveals too little. It reduces a person to their organs and skin to be used and thrown away.

Porn is addictive. For some more than others. It is always a problem but for some it leads not only to hours a day being lost to fantasy but also to thousands of dollars on site fees and other materials. Worst of all are boarders starting to become fuzzy between reality and fantasy as men try to live out what they see on the screen. Loss of resources for the family at this point, while terrible, is not as devastating as the possibility of bringing home a disease that can seriously harm or lead to the death of himself and his wife.

For the man who is addicted it can seriously harm his feelings of self worth and his male confidence. The viscous circle being the thing that makes him feel better temporarily is the very thing that throws him deeper into despair. We do not have to wonder what it is like when men are no longer men in their families and neighborhoods. Weak, ineffectual, and/or absent husbands and fathers lead to a breakdown in our social fabric.




Finally it absorbs BILLIONS of dollars every year – not to mention loss of production of paid work time and loss of volunteer hours. (Who is available to be a scout master or a basketball coach?) $97 billion a year is spent on porn ($13 billion from the U.S.) That is more than to top tech companies combined and more than double the NFL. Every 39 minutes a new porn movie made in the USA causing us to spend over $3,000 a second on porn and the using of thousands and thousands of people including children. This is a terrible drain on our nation. What would you suggest $3,000 a second be spent on – education? Parks? Medical care? National infrastructure? Job creation?

THE PROBLEM WITH MEN

There is a definite problem with “men” in the Church and there does not seem to be a great solution. This will be most clearly seen in the new translation of the Mass as well as being one of the reasons we need a new translation of the Mass.

“Man” has changed over the past 40 some years; that is, the meaning of man, of men, of brethren. In the new translation if one were to see the priest’s parts at times it will read like this;

“Pray brethren (brothers and sisters) that . . .”

The reason for this is that we no longer have a single word that unites the congregation into a single, familial, covenantal entity. “Brethren” forty some odd years ago meant the entire Church, united together, equal heirs in the kingdom of God. That is no longer the case. As the word “gay” seems to mean something other than a state of happiness in today’s vernacular, “brethren,” for far too many people, means only male gender people.

The biggest problem is that we do not have a new word to take its place.

“People” and similar words do not work for they do not have the connotation of connectedness that brethren had. The word “siblings” comes about as close to what was formally meant by brethren as we have but it also does not quite fit the bill.

“Pray siblings that . . .”

“All translators are betrayers” says the Italian proverb. It is so in this case because we do not have a word to translate “fratres” well into English. Saying, “Pray brothers and sisters that . . .” or “Pray sisters and brothers that . . .” does not fix the problem either. First there is the problem of sensitivity as to who is mentioned first: the men or the women? That there is an order is already a problem. Then there is the obvious of being divided into to two groups of people: one of men and women. “Pray women and men that . . .” This is particularly evident when saying Mass in certain situations in which there just happens to be one man or one woman present amoungst others in the congregation. This may happen at a nursing home Mass, or a small daily Mass or a retreat for women or men etc. “Pray my brothers and sister that . . .” or visa versa. There was someone just completely singled out because of their gender. (There was the case when there a person who would have made up the solitary person of the opposite gender if there were such and for the life of me I could not tell if the person was male or female. THERE was a dice roll . . .)

The argument could be made that we are using much more formal language now and the use of male pronouns and such to denote entire groups of people regardless of sex may be used. But as anyone will tell you that is not always wise. Yet the lack of depth of meaning in saying “sisters AND brothers” is also a loss.

So . . . we are thrown under the buss to decide and the Sacramentary will read, “Pray brethren (brothers and sisters) that . . .”

With challenges like these on the board I'm glad I did not have to be on the committee trying to sort all this out!

MONDAY DIARY: BOXERS VS BRIEFS

I am afraid there is not too much intriguing to report from last week. Most of Easter Week I was as sick as can be. I got up tried to work for an hour or so and then would be so tired that I would have to lay down for a spell. It was supposed to be a catch up week and now I find I am further behind than ever.

One thing I did not miss however was getting together with priest friends to do an Easter report. We talk about what went right and (mostly) what went wrong at our respective parishes. Of course I told the story that I told you last week about getting to baptisms and suddenly discovering that we had forgotten to prepare for this most important moment.

One of the topics we discussed I almost hesitate to mention now because it is so charged with emotion. But it happened. One of my best priest friends asked, “What did people most complain about?” That was easy. On Maundy Thursday the celebrant had washed only men’s feet. That brought about an equal amount of mail both pro and con but the cons were defiantly more passionate. With a grin he reported that he had received equally heated letters because he had decided to wash women’s feet this year.

If you want to have a discussion about rubrics and symbols versus social justice please feel free to carry that on among yourselves. I will not get involved. If we were truly equal it wouldn’t matter a jot if it were all men, or 50/50, or what have you, it would be “people had their feet washed.” But it shows we have a long way to go that it matters so much. Such is life.

But what gave me a heart attack was the Easter Vigil. We are in the sacristy and I am giving last minute instructions when I stop in mid sentence. “Where are the girls?” Out of 12 servers there was only one girl. This was not planned. A sheet is posted on the wall and people sign up first come first serve. It just happened to be mostly boys that signed up. A certain dread fell over me. “This isn’t good,” I thought, “this is going to come back in a bad way.”

Then the readers stepped forward. Man heavy. Oh! We shouldn’t care! But we do! And I felt a trickle of sweat go down my back. It was like a dream where you are at a party and think everything is Okay and then suddenly realize you don’t have pants on and you pray nobody notices. So every day of Easter Week I approached my phone, mailbox, and Emails with trepidation. Fortunately there were no more angry letters concerning any observances of my boxers though I am sure there are those who noticed and for one reason or another decided not to mention them.

So . . . if your pastor seems to have done something (anything) that you find offensive might I suggest to you that you call, write, Email him a polite letter of inquiry to make sure if he woke in this dream discovering he had only boxers on or if he in fact purposefully came to the party sans trousers and what his motivation might have been in appearing so. The motivation may have been noble or innocent even if it does not appear to be so at first. More offense is brought into the world by people taking it than by it actually being offered.

MASCULINISM

Does this word bother you? There is something about it that at best feels clumsy and maybe even a bit disturbing. Going out for coffee last night after the great presentation by Colleen Caroll Cambell as mentioned as up and coming below (Feminism, Rising from the Ashes) one of my compatriots posed the question, “Does a new understanding of feminism require a new understanding of . . .” And he had to stop for lack of a corresponding word.

But what the conversation was trying to surface was, “Does a new understanding of what it is to be woman in the modern age require a new understanding of what if is to be man?” Obviously it does. Though the preponderance of the discussion must focus on what it is to be authentically human, for God made all of us in His likeness and image (Genesis 1:26), He also made us male and female (Gen, 1:27). Though equal in all things, we are not the same. Our mere physical make-up radically influences how we experience and relate to the world and to each other.

Adam knew what it was to be human in relation to the animals. But he only knew what it was to be a man in relation to Eve. Certainly, the reverse is also true. But for a man, who comes from a woman’s body, who is largely raised and educated by women, yet whose body sets him apart, the cycle seems to begin with man defining who he is compared to woman. So when the feminine is undervalued he becomes domineering. When the feminine is over valued and a man’s role is seen as minimal or unnecessary, he becomes ineffectual and weak. Neither is healthy for either of the sexes. Accordingly, any reevaluation of what it is to be female will have an equal and opposite thrust in the understanding of what it is to be male. So all considerations must bear in mind not only how it will effect women, but how it will form our men.

A sign that used to hang in my parents room read, “The best gift a father can give his children is to love their mother.” It is also, I believe, the best recipe for raising noble sons. For only then will he see his proper relation to woman and this will naturally lead him to the most healthy understanding what it is to be confidently and authentically a man.

IN OTHER NEWS

Yesterday, in the Diocese of Cleveland, thousands of persons entering the church gathered at the Cleveland Convention Center for the Rite of Election with Bishop Lennon, an event far too large for the cathedral. Seventeen of these people were from Saint Clare. Pictured here are many of the catechumens and candidates with their godparents and sponsors from all parts of the diocese. These are all the adults who will be brought into full communion with Catholic Church this Easter Vigil. Please say a prayer for them and the people of your own diocese as they continue the final leg of their journey to the Eucharist this Easter!