There has been a massive rash of toppling statues in the United States - followed by a rush to defend the fallen statues.

There are two separate issues for me here: destruction of churches/church property and destruction of public statues and figures. Vandalism and destruction of churches and statues on church property likely veer into hate crime territory and should be denounced with ferocity. That is not ok, ever. Catholics are not just here to be abused and no one should ever be targeted for violence.

Public statues are different. Many of those have had appeals for decades for their removal. Those appeals have been kicked down the road, ignored, or outright belittled for years upon years. Contrary to beliefs that I have heard around the Catholic internet, these public statues are not an issue purely because they are of a person who was Catholic (which would be a problem). The statues are at issue because of the actions of the individuals and systems they represent.

Let's talk about the top two controversial statues of Catholic people at the moment: Columbus and Serra. Both have many public statues. Both have a legacy that greatly concerns Native people in the Americas.

Columbus

This guy. Not a saint. Never landed in the United States. Did not land under the Italian flag. Yet somehow he became the image for Italian-American Catholics in the United States.
His supporters like to claim that Columbus never had slaves, never committed atrocities, and merely wanted to bring Catholicism to the greater world. None of that is remotely supported by the historical record. From his own diary about the native Arawaks, "with fifty men they can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them." If that sounds like slavery, it is.
It gets worse. There are records of reports that Columbus rewarded his men with women from the local tribes. If that sounds like sanctioned rape, it is.
The following was written by Columbus to a friend in Spain in 1500, "A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand." In case you missed it, this is Columbus advertising to his friend that girls as young as 9 were being hunted to be used at will. That's child slavery, and often child sex slavery.

No matter what century you are in, this was wrong. I find it incredibly disturbing to hear Catholics defend these actions as some sort of product of his time. Rape, mass enslavement, child abuse, and other evils are not products of their time. They are symptoms of evil. This is a particularly weak argument because there were debates and movements contemporary with Columbus for humane treatment of the native peoples. Servant of God Bartolomé de las Casas, O.P. was integral in many of these debates, especially the famous Valladolid debate.

For that matter, Italian-Americans have better choices! People who really were strong practicing Catholics who lived in the United States. Mother Cabrini is a good example, and in fact has been picked up by the state of Colorado to replace Columbus Day with Cabrini Day. She was an Italian immigrant herself, a saint, and her work directly made the lives of Italian immigrants better. I can get behind that.

Serra

Serra is more complicated because he is a canonized saint. In theory, his cause has gone through a rigorous examination that should take into account any possible places where his life and works would bring controversy or concern. But Junipero Serra was not canonized under the normal system. His cause was formed centuries after his death, lacking in personal writings, reliant on descendant testimony of those who knew him, and allowed to skip typical steps in the process.

Much of the controversy is this: for Native people, and most Californians, Serra embodies and represents the mission system (see this beautifully written perspective). Serra came with the conquistadors, and the situation for decades would remain a choice of terrible option A or terrible option B.
Terrible option A: die brutally by the hands of the conquistadors or in via forced work in the mines or plantations/ranches.
Terrible option B: die in the missions where the work was also brutally hard and disease so prevalent the death rate exceeded the birth rate for most of it's existence.
Option C, stay outside of both, was hardly an option with disease continuing to spread, food scarce due to the arrival of the Spaniards, and the frequent rounding up of Native people. The terrible options weren't so much options as they were an inevitability.

Being told we shouldn't see the effects of the mission system when evaluating Serra seems near impossible. If Serra had not founded the mission system in California, his work would not have nearly the interest or support that it does for his sainthood. I don't see how to speak of one without the other.  The voices of Native people are a large and echoing void in the Church discussions of Serra. Very few perspectives of the Native descendants of the missions were included in the documentation for his cause, and the consistent protest of Native people to his canonization were ignored for the sake of image.
Pope Francis had declared he would canonize Serra, despite lacking the requirements and procedures to do so. He wanted to do it during his US visit, which was already scheduled and looming. The Curia found a way to make it happen. Native people feel silenced because they were silenced. Silenced for the sake of a political statement, and once again used as a regrettable sacrifice for the Church.
This is why many people are upset. You would be too.

The Bishop Barron thing

I take special issue with public Catholic leaders trying to claim that they shouldn't have to do anything about statues and denying their normal claim to leadership. Suddenly when it becomes iffy, complicated, something that might make the church look less than stellar - it's the laity's problem.
I can't believe I have to say this to people who should know better, but if it's a problem in the church it's a problem for us all - laity and clergy alike. No one gets to opt out. This is a moral question, and a question of the actions of the church hierarchy. Both facets deserve to be answered by our clergy with respect and attention. The laity must do work too, absolutely, but it is shameful for clergy to try and wash their hands of the issues.

Many of these statues were controversial when they were erected. They have remained controversial. Instead of caring about legitimate concerns, Native people have been brushed off and ignored - often told that these concerns were just due to our anti-Catholicism. When 25% of Native people are Catholic, that's a major problem. Native people should not have to choose between speaking truth about history and being seen as good Catholics.

If the Church has made mistakes, those mistakes must be acknowledged and rectified. Anything less is dishonest and fatal to the Body of Christ. Where corruption has leaked in, it must be repaired not ignored. These are truths we know. We have lived through years of scandal already. We have no business pretending that we don't know how serious it is to refuse to address wrongs.

************

Weeeeeelllll this was a fun one. I was REALLY hoping to do this piece later, but current events and statements meant moving it up sooner rather than later. Statues and dissent about popular figures is not my favorite subject, but this is a very common topic where people read one source that is agreeable to them and proceed to never learn about it again. It matters even more as decisions are made now for how to replace, or not, the statues that have fallen. 

So let's discuss! 

Other posts of interest on this blog:

A Story of a Mixed Race, White Passing, Woman

Indian Boarding Schools: A Forgotten Legacy

Indian Boarding Schools: A Forgotten Legacy

Much of the wider US population only hears about Native concerns when the news covers a conflict about a statue of Columbus, a racist mascot, or an oil pipeline. These things do genuinely matter, but I think most people have never heard of one of the root traumas that is at the heart of the desperation to defend what is Native: Indian boarding schools.

Don't feel bad if you've never heard of the Indian Boarding Schools. I didn't know about them myself until I was asked to put together an exhibit on them for my college library during Native Heritage Month - despite my own grandmother and great-grandparents having attended some of the most infamous of the boarding schools.

These were not like what you might be picturing when I say boarding schools: with manicured lawns, high academics, and social climbing. This was more akin to industrial school/boot camp/prison for young Native children.

The primary objective of these schools was to assimilate the children into mainstream white, Christian, western centered culture. From the beginning that was not seen as something to be done with respect for their Native cultures. Brigadier General Richard Henry Pratt, who would found the Carlisle Indian School that both of my great-grandparents attended, famously said "kill the indian, save the man" to describe the ethos of the schools. In a speech in 1892 Pratt said,  "A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one. In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead."

In 1891 an Indian appropriation act was passed that made attendance at the boarding schools compulsory. Significantly, this allowed children to be forcibly taken from their families and tribes. If parents did not send their children, the Commissioner of Indian Affairs was authorized to withhold rations, clothing, and annuities (something in violation of treaty agreements.) Many families and tribes tried to resist. They attempted the hide the children. Some Native police officers resigned rather than carry out orders to take the children. In 1895, 19 Hopi men were imprisoned in Alcatraz for refusing to send their children to the Indian schools.

It wasn't until 1978, with the Indian Child Welfare Act, that parents were given the legal right to refuse to place their children in Indian schools. That's 87 years when there was no legal ability to refuse to be separated from their children.

Life at Indian Boarding Schools

Many of the schools were intentionally located far away from the children's tribe, family, and homelands. Speaking Native languages was forbidden, including out of the classroom. Punishments for speaking Native languages, even if the child didn't know a word of English, could be swift and severe. Upon arrival at the schools, the children would be given new names, English names. Their hair would be cut (in many tribes cutting your hair is cutting off your connection to your past and ancestors). Practice of the school's sponsoring denomination's religion was often required to some degree.

My family were sent to the Carlisle Indian School, the Ponca Indian School, and the Haskell Institute (now Haskell Indian Nations University). My great-grandparents were given the names Theodore and Zilla by the time they arrived at school. I have no idea what their tribal names were. They didn't record those names. Carlisle has been digitizing all of their student records, and I highly recommend giving the project some of your time. They kept every scrap of correspondence, reviews, intake forms, and reports. As a descendant it's both a fascinating treasure trove and incredibly unsettling to have my family so exposed and documented.

Zilla was an orphan - likely her parents died either before or during the Ponca Trail of Tears. Over a quarter of the Ponca tribe died in the first year after forced relocation due to food shortages and malaria. She was alone by the time they arrived in Oklahoma from Ponca homelands in Nebraska. Her reports at school are consistently good. She clearly wanted to be liked by those in charge. She worked hard at her studies and followed the rules. She was smart and actually achieved a high school education by the time she left the school in 1917 - a feat for anyone at that time, but even more so for an orphaned Native girl. In reading her file I felt like I could see the desperation of an orphan realizing that her survival depends on the approval of others. She could not afford resisting.

Theodore was consistently a pain to the school administration. He resisted as much as possible. He eventually went on leave to visit his sister in New York state and never returned. Punishments are not recorded in the files I have found, but there are records of visits to family being refused by letter. The administration felt that he was too resistant to his work and breaks were liable to make that continue. Breaking bonds among family and tribal members was not just a consequence but a goal of the schools.

Both of my ancestors arrived at Carlisle in their teens as a finish to their time in Indian boarding schools, but they started much younger. Children as young as 4 and 5 years old were taken from their families and sent away to boarding school. Many never came home. Malnutrition, overwork, overcrowding, and rampant infectious disease killed many children. Rates of tuberculous in 1915 Indian boarding schools were 4-5 times higher than the non-native rate. Rates of diseases like measles, mumps, and smallpox were double or triple the national rates. Conditions were often unsanitary and the farm work that was part of their education hard and dangerous.
Every boarding school has it's own cemetery due to the high mortality rate.

Catholic run Indian boarding schools

How did the Catholic run schools fare? Unfortunately, many of the worse stories of abuse happened in the religious run schools. For many Native people, the association with clerical garb and fear started here.

In 1872 the Board of Indian Commissioners allotted 73 Indian agencies to various Christian religious denominations. Seven of those agencies were under the Catholic Church in some way. In 1872 that was 17,856 Native people under Catholic run Indian agencies. Catholics never operated the majority of boarding schools. Most students attending boarding school would have experienced a school run by a mainline Protestant denomination or the federal government. But we should resist the temptation to blame shift that most of the offenses were not committed by Catholics. For one, there are no hard numbers on the abuses that occurred in these schools in order to know for certain if that is even a true claim. For another, one case of abuse is too many. These were children who deserved to be safe.

Many Catholic run schools and missions were sponsored in large part by St. Katherine Drexel. Her interaction with funding and furthering Catholic schools for Native students deserves it's own space, but includes much overlap with American anti-Catholicism, misogyny among clergy, and resentment of outside influence on local decisions.
Crucially, many Catholic run schools were located on reservations. This meant that Catholic tradition had to interact with the local Native culture and traditions in a way that was avoided or banned in many of the off-reservation schools. This meshing of Catholicism and Native traditions in the boarding schools has multiple consequences. It meant that trauma and struggles of the school environment would become connected with Catholicism forever more for those students - a phenomenon that is observed in people who attended non-boarding Catholic schools as well.

Most of the historical sources I have found focus on the struggles of the individuals and orders running the schools, and there's a echoing lack of stories from the perspective of the students in the academic literature. This is something to be aware of whenever doing work to understand experience. I've included resources for first hand stories from students of these schools at the end of this post. I strongly encourage everyone to listen to them, with the awareness that these are hard and raw things.

There is a parallel story here for the Catholic Church. The Church was/is very involved in the Canadian school system, and the boarding schools experienced by First Nations people. There are many factors that make the experience of Native peoples living in the United States and Canada very different. For the sake of clarity, I have focused on those schools operating in the United States, but I encourage you to learn more about First Nations as well.

Indian boarding schools today

Yes, there are still boarding schools for Native kids around the United States today. Many have been given over to tribal or local control. Some are still run by the Catholic Church. There is an American Indian Catholic Schools Network that maintains a list of current US Catholic Indian Mission Schools.

The legacy of boarding school is varied and wide. Some students, like my grandmother, were proud of graduating from boarding school. Others carried physical, emotional, and mental scars for the rest of their lives. Many would not/do not speak about their school experiences. Others are just beginning to give voice to those memories.

Boarding school did contribute to the formation of some kind of pan-Native identity. This was an experience that both pulled apart tribes and brought them together in a shared goal or fight. The tradition of Indian Princess pageants, which began at boarding school as another tool for assimilation, has been reclaimed by many tribes as a way to pass down their particular traditions and values.

The schools did change the religious landscape among Native peoples. As of 2000, it was estimated that 780,000 people of Native ancestry in the US were Catholics. The involvement and exposure to Catholic tradition remains important to many Native people, and the intersections of the two identities continues to be a work in progress. This a living, breathing, experience - a far cry from the static museum approach too many use when discussing Native people.

Want to learn more?

The Heard Museum opened an exhibit in 2000 entitled Away from Home: Indian Boarding School Stories. Their website includes a good overview of the boarding school experience and includes first hand accounts. Most of their education curriculum is focused on high school aged students, but there are good book lists for all grade levels (starting in 1st grade) and the educator reading list is helpful for curious adults.

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition - based in Minneapolis, MN, this group has a number of resources for education, advocacy, and healing resources. Their repatriation project is of particular interest for Carlisle school descendants and survivors after the army ruled to fund the return of the dead to their tribes and families in 2016.

Stringing Rosaries: The History, the Unforgivable, and the Healing of Northern Plains American Indian Boarding School Survivors by Denise K. Lajimodiere

Education for Extinction by David Wallace Adams

Black and Indian Mission Office history - gives a good overview of Catholic Indian missions. This is not from the Native perspective, but is useful to get a wider picture.



What questions still remain for you? The boarding school experience was very different for various peoples and locations. Have you looked into the experience of your local tribes? What was in your area?

A Story of a Mixed Race, White Passing, Catholic Woman

I'm one of the many mixed race Catholics you might not realize are around in your parish. We can pass for one of our race categories, and mostly no one questions their first assumption until little signs are dropped. Like talking about "my tribe." Mentioning being excited for an exhibit of Native women artists coming to town.

My Dad is from the Ponca of Oklahoma. We're not just rumors-in-the-family-of-Cherokee-blood natives, but on the rolls, card carrying, Natives. Our tribe is teeny tiny, and hits most of your ideas of Native culture. We invented Fancy Dance with the big feather headdress and regalia you might picture when you think of a powwow. Also we powwow. We did hunt buffalo and live in tepees. Someone has to be the stereotype.

My family is also Catholic. That can get painful. You see, most Catholics haven't heard of the history that can make those two legacies difficult to reconcile. I've met many Native people who are openly antagonistic toward the Catholic Church and practicing Catholic Natives. I've also been around many Catholics who speak of Native people as a historic past, not a living breathing reality. Between the people in the parish who don't understand why you might be hurt by their adoration of Columbus or jokes about Native treaty claims, and the other Natives who think you're brainwashed for being Catholic at all - we end up in a no mans land.

Over the next few weeks I hope to start to share more about these places where these two parts of me end up talking past each other. We are capable to expanding understanding, and learning the historical background that helps prevent harmful ignorance. This will be mostly about sharing Native perspectives. While there are many voices explaining Catholicism, there are very few for the intersection of Catholicism and Native history/experience.

Some topics that have come to mind:
Indian Boarding Schools, including the Catholic run schools
Doctrine of Discovery, Columbus, and Missionary Mandate
Treaties, Reservations, Nationhood
Family, Blood quantum, Adoptions, Native Womanhood
Native traditions and the Catholic faith

What kinds of questions do you have? Where would you like to grow and learn? It's ok to be coming at this from a place of minimal to no background. We all have to start somewhere. I love sharing history and stories, and it helps to have questions!

Don't Let a Pandemic Become a Failure of Love

I have been watching a tragedy unfold in the past weeks of this pandemic. It's not just a tragedy due to the virus itself. It's a tragedy of choice. It's one that has revealed an infestation present and hovering beneath the surface of many parishes. The pandemic has rooted it from the unspoken underground and brought it to light.

These past weeks my heart and trust has been broken over and over again by my pastor, parish, community, and many of those I called friend. I can't deny the sickness of pride and the crippling of love that has been unavoidable to notice.

It is not courage to seek loopholes and work arounds to the rules during a pandemic.
It is not faith that seeks the sacraments regardless of the consequences.
This is not a religious persecution issue.
Your enemy is not the rules. We are not up against a typical enemy of war. This is a virus.
A virus does not care about your reason for gathering. Expecting a miracle to prevent the transmission of disease so you can attend an underground mass is both the sin of presumption and an act of disobedience against your rightful bishop, in many cases. You are not demonstrating your devotion to the Eucharist. On the contrary, you are demonstrating a depth of pride and failure of love.

Love desires the good of another. Love does not say the risk of illness and death to yourself and others is an acceptable consequence of your chosen action. Especially when that is a foreseeable consequence.
Love does not choose ignorance. Love does not deny reality. Love is not hard headed.

Yet many of us are receiving a warped version of love and community from our parishes and pastors lately. The adherence to ignorance, and narrow minded focus on one way of being Church, will have consequences well beyond this time of physical sickness.

Our neighbors see us. They see the churches that have refused to comply with rules. That delayed and put off reasonable precautions. They will remember how slow that church was to act when the community was under threat.

The more vulnerable members of the community see us. They will remember how their lives were discussed as not a point of concern. That their health was seen as their own problem that was only getting in the way of other's need for access to the sacraments as they desired.

Don't kid yourself that a parish is justified in it's sins against faith and community merely because of it's adherence to beautiful liturgy and orthodox catechists. Because if I have not love, I have nothing.

"If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing." 
- 1 Corinthians 13: 1-3

There is a phenomenon about the stories of epidemics throughout history. Despite their wide reach and shared experience throughout a population, the first hand stories of the lived experiences of an epidemic are few. It's as though, collectively, human communities have experienced a sense of shame and desire to forget what happened. But, as we should know by now, it's never true that evils disappear as long as they stay unspoken and unacknowledged. They wait. They fester. They come back again.

The only way to break that cycle is to root out the sickness. COVID-19 will end someday. We pray for a treatment, a cure, a vaccine. But there is no medicine that can heal a wounded soul without truth, faith, and love.
My prayer is for parishes to break the cycle of us vs them thinking. For pastors who have made errors in their response to apologize publicly. For members of those parishes to open their eyes and see what has been happening. For an abundance of faith, trust, and love over fear, pride, and ignorance.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.“By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
 - John 13:34-35

We've Done This Before - Cancelling Mass for Outbreaks, A History

Viral outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics have happened throughout human history. Some require different responses to see to the end. The Catholic Church, being a 2000+ year old institution, has seen quite a few.
I've heard many Catholics, and priests, calling the closure of churches and shutting of public masses to be "unprecedented." Au contraire! There is in fact historical precedent for closing churches and avoiding large gatherings during illness outbreaks. There is also historical precedent for what happens when we decide to not follow the advice of health authorities in regards to churches.

I love me a good history tour, so join this one: cancelling mass for outbreaks, a history.

1918 Pandemic Flu

The pandemic flu of 1918-1919 is the most recent example of the scale of global impact that we are seeing develop with COVID-19.

 From Baltimore, MD: "The city’s leading Catholic clergyman continued to question why local churches were closed “while the stores, saloons, markets and the like remain open.” While recognizing public health concerns, James Cardinal Gibbons argued that “it would be a much-needed relief to our church-going population if they could be allowed to attend brief morning services… I am told that a number of calls upon our physicians are simply the result of nervousness, or the consequence of alarm. This might be considerably allayed by the reassurance of religion, and discreet words from our priests given the people in church.”
This quote is from October 15, 1918, yet is almost identical to statements I have seen shared on social media in the past few weeks.

In the Fall of 1918 awareness of the virus was high, but acceptance of the need for social distancing was not.

In Spain we see what happens when Catholic leaders and faithful refuse to comply with local health authorities. "Because of a strong social influence of the Bishop, the Catholic Church authorities in Zamora [Spain] stated that “the evil upon us might be a consequence of our sins and lack of gratitude, and therefore the vengeance of eternal justice felt upon us” [19, p. 149] and, subsequently, organized a series of Mass gatherings at Zamora's Cathedral. One of the likely consequences of the events was the easy spread of the virus. The attempts of civil authorities to forbid Mass gatherings were disputed by the Bishop, who accused the political and public health authorities of undue interference with the church."
Zamora had the highest death toll from the pandemic flu in all of Spain, due in no small part to the refusal to accept social distancing measures. Zamora had a peak death rate of 10.1% in October 1918. Mortality in all of Spain in the same month? 3.8%
Those mass gatherings to pray the virus away? They were held in October 1918.

On October 12, 1918 Rochester, NY announced the closure of all churches, including public masses. This is after steps such as cancelling confirmations and other public devotions. The bishop put a statement in the newspaper encouraging the faithful to follow the direction of the health authorities, act prudently, and to pray in communion with the Church at home.
Rochester would fare much better than other comparable cities in the area. It's excess death rate was 360 per 100,000 residents - putting it just about equal with St. Louis, MO. Both cities are now held up as examples of how many lives can be saved with the early adoption of social distancing measures.

A More Recent Example

1918 too far back for you? How about May of 2018. That was when an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo led to a ban on most sacraments.  No baptisms, confirmations, ordinations, or anointings until further notice. By September thousands of churches were closed in the hardest hit regions. Communion in the hand only, if you are lucky enough to be able to receive it. The DRC is a very Catholic country, with some 650,000 of the region's 1.2 million residents are Catholic in the Ebola effected regions. That means about 650,000 Catholics have already been living without access to the sacraments for over 19 months straight due to a virus.

Did you know that outbreak just officially saw an end in sight only last week? The discharge of the last Ebola patient, and a lack of new cases in two weeks, means the outbreak might finally be over. For now.

Adds a little perspective, doesn't it?

Letting Go of Policing Advent

Advent is just around the corner, and perhaps the cringy-est liturgical living ghost is about to appear: the Advent Grinch.

I get it. It bothers you that December is filled with Christmas parties, sales, community events, and  movies. Because it is NOT Christmas, and you DON'T want to celebrate it already.
However, it's probably bad for evangelization to put down the secular world trying to participate in a season it vaguely remembers and longs to hold. It seems counterproductive to be against celebrating such an important season, even if it is done a little off time. They're trying.

Instead of making Advent a protest against the secular world celebrating imperfectly, it seems far more charitable to stop policing Advent as a negative and start celebrating it as a positive.

The Little Lent

If you want to make sure your family is clear on the difference between Advent and Christmas, a simple way to start is embracing the penitential aspect of the season. Have you noticed how the liturgical color is purple, the same as during Lent? Advent is a "little Lent", a second preparatory and penitential season. Picking a mortification as individuals or as a family can help focus the season.

This comes with a caveat - your mortification cannot force the mortification of others. It's just unkind and negates the individual discipline of the practice. If you want to give up "going to Christmas parties during Advent" largely because you want a reason to not attend those gatherings, that might need a little more examination. Are you really doing a private mortification to prepare your heart for the coming of Christmas or are you falling into pride? Telling your friend that you aren't attending their party because it's inappropriate to have Christmas parties in Advent is probably going to embarrass your friend and cause harm to that relationship.
You don't have to accept every invitation, but you do have to exercise kindness and charity.


Pick and Choose

Although we are generally able to better accept Lent will look a little different for each of us, we aren't always as generous with variation when it comes to Advent. Instead it's easy to fall into the trap of trying to do ALL THE THINGS. Jesse Tree, Advent wreath, special feast days and the feast days that don't resonate with your family.

 You don't have to do any of it. It's nice, they can make good memories, but if it is causing you to be stretched thin or beat yourself up for forgetting the Jessie Tree again - maybe you're better off simplifying.


It's fine to do what works for you.

The only Advent traditions we do are the ones that have deep meaning for us, we enjoy doing, and that help us orient towards Christmas. For us St. Nicholas, St. Lucia, Ember Days, Advent wreath, and slow decorating make the cut. That's it.

We don't do much of anything for Our Lady of Guadalupe now, we don't do Jessie Tree, hunt for the baby Jesus, or many other fine and dandy traditions. What you do once does not actually mean you are trapped in celebrating in a particular way forever. Extend yourself the grace to grow and change, and it makes it easier to extend that to others.

Lean into the Christmas season.

The single easiest way I have found to not be an Advent Grinch is to make my Christmas season radically different from Advent. We lean way into the Christmas season. The 12 Days of Christmas (Christmas to Epiphany) are both highly celebratory and laid back. We are off from school and outside classes. We make ourselves available to welcome friends and family. I prep freezer meals and cookie dough and do a deep clean during the Ember Days. That leaves me free of lots of household duties during the 12 Days of Christmas.

It doesn't need to be fancy. In fact, it probably shouldn't be fancy.

If you want some ideas for this time, you can check out my 12 lists for the 12 Days of Christmas post.
Haven't heard of these Ember Days I mentioned? Here's a little about them.

Want a breakdown of how to prep during Advent for this truly relaxing (even for mom) 12 Days of Christmas? Check out this post.

Was It Worth Being Open to Life When My Baby Died?

Last week I discussed the worth of walking down the wrong path. In that piece I focused more on saying a full yes to one vocation, only to ultimately learn that it was not meant for me. That time spent discerning was a gift instead of a waste.

It's relatively easy to accept that taking a risk on discernment will pay off somehow. But what about when the "wrong road" involves losing a child? What if it means losing multiple children? Was it still worth it?

I've shared a bit about our story from this summer. A very complicated miscarriage in June that didn't end until July when we also had to do surgery to remove a cystic tumor on my ovary (unrelated to miscarriage, I'm just lucky like that.) A subsequent miscarriage in September.

I don't think it truly was a "wrong road" to have been open to those pregnancies, but it was a wrong road in the sense that it did not lead to a living baby as one would hope. Roads that lead to heartache are roads most people would rather not travel. It's not wrong to feel that.

However, I wasn't anticipating how strongly my losses would result in me being avoided. Like miscarriage is catching. Like I have a bad luck virus. Even among women who have had miscarriages, my story is odd. This particular road is rare, and, perhaps the scariest of all, unavoidable.
My losses are not due to any underlying problem we have been able to identify. All three are more than likely due to bad luck. There is nothing I could have done to prevent them. There is nothing to do to avoid losing future children.

That terrifies people.

We don't like it, but it's true - being open to life will entail being open to death. Whether we accept that reality or not. A road that you thought was bordered by sunshine and daisies can turn into a nightmare in an instant. But it's still a grace to be on that road. It is better to have been open to grace and cooperating with it, than to have prevented the heartache with sameness.

Heartache is a reminder of the power and size of your yes. When your heart breaks over a sudden turn in the road, it lets you know how deeply you meant your yes. Heartache is a beautiful reminder that you were willing to become more. More open, more loving, more a follower of Christ. This is not the "be more" of Pinterest inspirational quotes. This is the being more that is our invitation to accept God can do anything. We can be more his on this hard path.

God did not intend for your baby to die. Our God is not a cruel God. I think it's important to lay that out there.
The idea that this road has included loss, or losses, that furthers God's grace does not mean that you should not grieve. If anything it means grief will be so much more real.

A pothole in this road is the temptation to what I call the Pain Olympics. Comparing our pain to be greater than or less than the pain of others, and using that comparison to justify harmful behavior. This is not a healing strategy. The Pain Olympics only hands out loser awards. Even if you "win" it just means you are still hurting. We can do that without belittling the pain of others.

What I don't want to become is bitter on this road. Which does not mean I accept that the people who have reacted hurtfully in this process haven't hurt me. It's right to be hurt by hurtful things. It just means that instead of pretending these awful months didn't happen, I can use this experience to push for change. To allow the next woman walking her sudden wrong road to have someone next to her. To do the little things I can do. Cooperating with God's grace does not have to die with my babies. It can be the ultimate sign of their life.

Was this road worth it? 100% yes. Does it hurt? 100% yes.

Yes is a super power if we allow it to be.

What have been some of your unexpected "wrong roads"? How have you cooperated with Grace?

The Worth of Walking Down the Wrong Road

"I don't want it to have been a waste of time."
"I'm not sure if it will pay off."
"How can I be positive God is calling me?"

These are probably the top three responses I hear in discussions about discernment. They are the same responses when the discussion is about discerning a primary vocation, deciding to start a new venture, or listening for another kind of calling.
The underlying fear is the same: no one wants to start down the wrong road.

But what makes something "the wrong road" when you are choosing between good things?
I think most of us assume that any path that does not end in our eventual calling was a wrong road.
What if God might be calling you to walk one path for a while, but not arrive at your anticipated destination? What if it's not about finding out God's big picture plan, but more of a practice in letting him walk with you on every path?

This changes things. Now it's less about being sure and confident of God's will, and more being willing to come along on the adventure.

There have been two big roads in my life that could have been considered a wrong road, but have been incredibly important in shaping me, my faith life, and my vocation: my time spent discerning a religious vocation, and my miscarriages.

I'll cover the miscarriages in part 2, but I wanted to talk about discerning the religious life in particular today.

I wrote some thoughts on vocations as a wannabe nun called to marriage a while back. A question I got a lot from sharing that story was: Do you regret spending all that time discerning when the answer was no?
No, I think it was still worth doing, and I encourage everyone to discern this particular path if at all possible. I didn't get too far along in the process of actually entering an order, but I have friends who became postulates, took temporary vows, and spent years pursuing the religious life vocation only to discern out. Did they take a "wrong road"?

Religious discernment is not just a single person talking God's ear off until they get a yes or no answer. It involves a deep awareness of self, an honest evaluation of strengths and weaknesses, and relationships with a whole host of people. I think everyone can agree all of those things are well worth doing in order to grow into a mature adult faith. Doing so in a religious community brings with it a fundamentally changed relationship between the discerning person and Jesus and his Church.

When a woman discerns a religious vocation, she is discerning marriage with Jesus. That is, at a basic level, what is happening.
Want to start seeing God as a person and not just a far off in the sky being? Try dating him.
To discern out means reaching a point where Jesus lets you know that you are not meant to become a Bride of Christ. It's awful and wonderful.

Those of us who discerned out will forever have a relationship with Jesus that has a different kind of intimacy. I have personally found a connection with others who discerned the religious life. There is a grace that comes from the act of putting the question to God "Is this what you want of me?"

Regrets don't come from the good you were open to pursuing, they come from failing to ask the question out of fear of the what ifs.

Check back next week for Part 2 and what this all means when applied to being open to life and losing your baby. Especially multiple times.

When Lent Tests You

You could say I failed Lent this year.
In the sense that I did not achieve what I set out to do in my initial vision.

But by that standard I "fail" in just about everything I attempt.

Lent is a popular practice - even among non-Catholics and non-Christians. There is something about systematically setting aside a time for simplicity, challenge, and trying to be more honestly who we are meant to be, that speaks to a deep longing many of us find within ourselves.

What I find most thrilling about Lent is how much better it gets because of the intentional surrender to God's Will.

I do a give up, a take on, and a pray on.

This year I decided to give up meat as a family, take on fostering intentional community, and praying on healing for victims of abuse.

I thought this would be a Lent of trying new recipes and re-visiting old favorites from when we ate tons of veggies in California. Calling up old friends, and making intentional time to foster new friendships. Spending some time in adoration and dedicating rosaries for abuse victim/survivors.

Then we had a house fire.

Suddenly meatless Lent became about being grateful for any meal that was provided for us.
Intentional community became learning to accept help when it was offered, and being ok with saying yes to letting people into our hard times.
I haven't had those times of extra silent prayer and adoration time. But I talked to The Atlantic about how parents are dealing with the crisis (or, in some cases, not dealing with the crisis), listened to the stories of survivors, and supported those creating future plans for parish and diocese events for furthering healing and understanding.

Nothing about this Lent is something I could have planned. It's not at all what I had planned.

And it's so much better.

Getting back into our house the weekend of Passiontide was both a relief and a burden. We're just so, overwhelmingly, grateful to be home, to still have a home, and to start to get things back to normal. But it's also so painfully obvious how much further we have to go.

The house hadn't been lived in for five weeks. It had been through temperature fluctuations ranging from -18 to 55 degrees. The dust and dirt of winter plus that time of non-habitation plus fire and smoke meant every, single, thing needs attention.

It would be so easy not to deal with it. To pretend that everything is fine and not even start. And suddenly I realized how often we do that with those non-physical aspects of Lent.

How often are there issues in our own lives that are within our grasp to address, but we don't.
Maybe we think it will be too much effort.
Too much demand.
Too much change.
Too overwhelming.

Many of those things we need to address are easy to hide, easy to ignore. Yeah, it's not great to ignore your mental health, overindulge, or entertain destructive thought processes. But it's easy to hide and pretend everything is fine under the hood. We all know that's a bad long term plan, but do we do it? For sure. I do it too.

But it's so much better to deal with it. To get in the dirt and grime, and start to chip away at the hold it has on you.

As we go into Holy Week this year, think about what in your Lent needs a little elbow grease? Where could you push just a little further in these last days of Passiontide? Where could you let grace shine in a little more?

A Young Parent Response to the Church Abuse Crisis

Yesterday, an article was published by The Atlantic about how parents are responding to the abuse crisis within the Catholic Church. I was interviewed for the article, but I was still surprised, and sometimes shocked, by what my fellow parents had to say.

Age is a Factor

I was the youngest person interviewed, at 28, and I want to talk about something that has come up repeatedly in the past months of grappling with the crisis. 2002 seems to be a dividing line in the young Catholic experience - in the same way the 2009 crash is a dividing line in our generational experience of employment.

If you were a child at the time of the 2002 scandal breaking, a first feeling seems to be more on the side of anger and a call for justice. We were the kids who were old enough to see and hear about what was going on, but too young to do much about it. We came of age into a world that was formed by that crisis.
Those who were teens or adults in 2002 seem to be reacting very differently. I've found many of the parents older than me to be apathetic or downright antagonistic toward discussing the Church crisis. Many have told me that "it doesn't concern them."

Obviously there are exceptions to both of these generalizations, but it's enough of a pattern that I think it should be noticed and understood if we are going to do a better job this time around. Maybe good enough to mean there won't need to be a next time.

Responses can not be just about my family and my kids. 

Back in September I wrote for YA Respond that our response, as parents, cannot be just about MY family and MY kids.

 "We cannot retreat and focus solely on ourselves and our families as a means of protecting our families. Our families have already been violated.

The survivors are not distant people - they ARE family. They are our brothers and sisters in Christ. If we truly mean to follow Jesus, we must follow him when he says "Love one another as I have loved you."

It's important to raise your own kids to be strong in their intellectual understanding of faith, healthy boundaries, etc. Absolutely! But it's not enough. We must all look, and work, beyond familial ties in this narrow sense if we are going to honestly be Church.

Stop buying into, and propagating, the lies of factionalism.

This is my fancy way of saying “quit thinking that people who look/think/do like you are unlikely to be abusers or abusees.”

Seriously, stop it.

One quote that shocked and appalled me from The Atlantic article was this one from Chris Meyerle's interview. "The way a priest says Mass, Mayerle believes, is one clue to his personality, and that plays a role in whether or not Mayerle will trust him."
"... One of the things we look for is when they do things the way they’re supposed to. In other words, they’re obedient—it means they’re probably obedient to their vows also. When they just start winging it, it means they view themselves as their own authority, which I don’t think is healthy."

I've heard this before from self-identified traditionalist Catholics, and other identity factions within the Catholic Church. Maybe there's something to it. Maybe that priest might be safer.

But what has been made clear through investigations, like the John Jay Report, is that there is no standard profile of a priest likely to abuse. Just like in the secular world, predators are smart and can blend in. They could be anyone, anywhere - even your Latin mass saying priest who loves all the smells and bells.

I don't say this to be alarmist, but to convey what I have learned from the stories that survivors have told me over the past few months. Many repeated that they think they were targeted, in part, because they believed abuse couldn't happen.
Because he was a good priest.
Because they were a smart person.
Because it only happened to altar boys in the 1960s.
Ultimately, believing that a category of person cannot be an abuser, in my opinion, makes you and yours an easier abuse target. You have made a nice wide blindspot for yourself. Those blindspots of unfounded beliefs are what predators hope to find. Falling for this lie, and propagating it, is dangerous and reckless.

Survivors might look like anyone

I've heard many Catholics speak recklessly about the abuse crisis, and I'm starting to wonder if it's because they have never met a survivor - that they know of. You might be surprised at who they are. They’re not all angry old ex-altar boys. They can be older women, young women, young men, seminarians, even priests themselves. Their abuse might have been decades ago, it might have been last week.

Abuse is appalling in all situations, and it’s never our place to judge if someone was abused enough or if they really were victimized. Maybe you believe that any adult who gets in an abusive situation was somehow reckless or asking for it (real comments from real people, everybody.) But frankly you don't know what you don't know.
If someone decides to trust you enough to open up to you with their story, the best response you can give is "I believe you." Let the police sort out validity, etc. Your job is to hear and love that person - not to pass judgement on their story.

Be aware when you talk about the abuse crisis, there might very well be someone in the room with a personal experience. Let’s try to act in that awareness.

What we should do

• Listen. If you have no first experience with abuse - congratulations. But you will probably have to work more actively to cultivate empathy for those with that experience. All of us, myself included, can work on becoming better listeners for those who need our humanity.
• Find a way to make space for victim/survivors. We talk about how the poor have a special claim on us as Christians. Survivors/victims of clergy abuse have an even more personal claim. Often they are fellow Catholics abused within the church. We have a personal obligation to them, as our brothers and sisters, to minister to them in love and facilitate healing - full stop. Not if we feel personally called. Not if it happens to come up. Not if it is convenient. If you are a faithful Catholic, these are your people and your family who have been hurt so deeply by those in our family. It doesn’t get more personal, urgent, and necessary than that.
• If your parish/pastor isn’t making active moves toward healing, openness, and discussion of the crisis, talk to him. You have a claim on your pastor to remind him to minister to his full flock - not just the 10% who run the ship. He might need someone to give him that boost of confidence to do this part of pastoring well.
• Talk about the good things that ARE happening. Right now there are lay people all over the country, and the world, working on creative responses to the crisis. Let's talk to each other! There is no need for us all the re-invent the wheel individually. Let people know what you are doing, what worked, what didn't, what you learned. We all need the encouragement of collective effort to make real, on going, change in our ability to love and be Church for each other.

I would love to hear your thoughts on The Atlantic article, and what I had to say here! What have you noticed? What is good that is happening in your diocese or parish? What still needs to happen? 

If you are one of the people who have shared your story with me in the past, Thank You! From the bottom of my heart, I appreciate your openness and willingness to teach me in sharing your story.

Maybe Don't Diet for Lent

Lent is coming in a matter of days (days!). Which  means "What are you giving up?" is the Catholic conversation starter of choice.

In the past few years I've seen a progression from giving up soda, desserts, or alcohol to giving up whole food groups or taking on highly restrictive diets. While not necessarily a bad practice, and comes with the territory if you are an Eastern rite Catholic, I wonder if this is becoming popular for non-spiritually fruitful reasons.

Often I've heard the argument that using fad restrictive diets is an easy way to challenge yourself and to get information about your body. While Whole 30, Keto, Paleo and whatever else is the hip way to eat in a year from now, may hit the criteria of challenging your food choices, I'm not sure they are useful as a Lenten practice.
Here are some questions to ask yourself before choosing a restrictive diet as your Lenten discipline.

If you're brutally honest, why you want to do this?

It's very easy to fall into the trap of thinking Lent will work like a magic spell. Everything you touch in the name of Lent will work out because it's a holy time! When we think like this, we forget that we are still ourselves. We still come into Lent with our personalities, baggage, struggles, and state of life.

Is your relationship to food something that has been difficult for you for a while?
Do you believe the foods you are cutting out via the diet are "bad" foods?
Did you pick this diet because it's popular in your friend group?

These are all questions that deserve some thought before embarking on this Lent!

Have you struggled with "failing" Lents before?

Do you tend to set your Lenten bar high, and go into deep disappointment when you slip up? Has that happened over and over?

Even though the fasting and abstinence traditions in the Eastern rites look incredibly demanding (and are demanding) that bar is more of a aspiration than it is a base level. Perhaps give yourself some grace this Lent and choose to set your bar high and work up to it. Or make small conscientious choices throughout the day instead of cutting food groups out wholesale.

Consider the weight your mortification will place on others

Perhaps you don't mind subsisting on veggies exclusively, cutting out all added sugars, or having limited protein sources - but is that true for your spouse? Is it reasonable to plan on making multiple dinners? Are your choices going to make it difficult to participate in community events? Thinking about the impact your choices have on others is a big part of being true Church.

Think beyond the food box

Maybe what you seek to rectify is not really about food. Perhaps you are struggling with self-discipline. Or simplicity. Or generosity.

Many of us grew up giving up a food something as a Lenten discipline, and still think of food restrictions as The Way to Lent. But I would like to challenge you to a little more honesty and awareness of your own struggles. Name the underlying struggle you are trying to address.

Last year I realized partway through Lent that I was struggling with procrastination. It didn't look like it, I'm very much a type A over-doer, but I was procrastinating never the less.
Phone calls would get carried over on my to do list for weeks.
Prayer time was something I would get to "later".
I would avoid rest by finding just one more chore to do.
Choosing to be aware of my underlying struggle made for a fruitful Lent that didn't leave me feeling like a failure for my slip ups!

Have you ever done a restrictive diet for Lent? What were your reasons? Did it make for a fruitful Lent? What did you learn?

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? - TO CATHOLIC WOMEN IN THE STORM

"If you were an educated laywoman in Rome [this] week, what would you do? Who would you talk to you? What would you say?"

Meg Hunter-Kilmer asked this question a few days ago, and it took me a little while to process the possibility. Even though I'm an educated Catholic woman, who is anything but leery of speaking my mind, I must confess I have never honestly believed that men in the upper echelons of the clergy would have any interest in what I have to say.
Because I don't wield any canonical power.
Because I don't have a degree in Philosophy, Theology, or Law.

But I do have dreams, hopes, and longings of my soul that scream to be told to these men who have been entrusted with the future of our Church.
I will be honest and say I don't have much of any faith in these men as a group - even though I hold individuals in high esteem for the help and support I have witnessed them generously give toward healing the offenses of their brothers. I don't expect this summit to bring closure, a path forward, or be much more than finally getting around to doing "the least they could do."

But I recklessly continue to pray, against the evidence of my senses and mind, that these men will surprise us all.

I pray that the magnitude and gravity of the offenses committed be unavoidable

How often have I read statements and comments from bishops, cardinals, and priests that just show that they don't fully understand the seriousness of the situation. That they cannot consider the possibility that their vows classmate, seminary buddy, associate, etc. could have fallen so far from the standards of decent humanity. I pray daily that the scales will fall from their eyes, and that they will have the strength to accept the failings of their brothers with a full and swift justice.

I pray that the feminine genius be allowed to serve its role

Even though, as far as I know, this meeting is being held by and for the male clergy, I pray that women may be allowed to serve their role and form these men. This means men will have to deliberately practice hearing the women of their flock. Women have the potential to bring new perspectives and innovative solutions for crafting space for healing and reconciling victim-survivors back into the life of the Body of Christ. It's not standing in the place of the priest, but it is standing as a stepping stone for someone who has been violated by the those who wore the face of the church.

I pray that every bishop will confront the demons in their own diocese, and any within themselves

This is particularly that every bishop will not focus solely on the abuse of minors, even though this summit makes that error, but addresses all vulnerable people who have been violated. This requires seeing the scandal of abuse and it's cover up in it's full, messy, complicated evil.

I pray that every cleric will make a conscious decision to see the consequences of depravity and the depth of the betrayal wrought by the systemic cover up of abuse.

Not every priest or deacon has been ready, or willing, to reconsider their own prejudices and blind spots. Too many have leaned into comfortable party lines of blaming Vatican II, liberals, traditionalists, whatever their pet project might be. But to do so uses victims for selfish ends - violating again those who have already been unconscionably violated.
There can be no excuses for evil, no matter how uncomfortable or inconvenient.

I pray that these realities of our shared history will be poignant and unfathomable

This is a forever turning point in our church history. This is a moment where innocent belief and blind faith has to die away. I pray that the laity will never return to "business as usual". That we will make a collective effort to see and hear the victim-survivors who have found it within themselves to make steps back to the church that has so betrayed them. That we will have willing hands and loving hearts open to fighting against the temptation to fall back into comfortable habits.

I pray that this will be the moment we can honestly stand together, in the fullness of being church, and say "never again."

Logically I know that abuses will happen again, but that doesn't stop me from praying that they won't. I want every member of the church, and every non-Catholic, to stand and see and refuse to look away from abuses when they happen. To prevent as much as we can, and be ready to do what is necessary and just when they do.
Maybe I can't truly hope for "never again" for abuse, but you can bet I'm going to fight tooth and nail for "never again" will another cover up occur in my faith family.

*************

Related Post

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? - TO CATHOLIC WOMEN IN THE STORM

Rise of the Catholic Guru

I grew up in the Bible Belt. In the heart of Texas where our megachurches are numerous and anti-Catholicism barely shaded. The ridiculous claims of prosperity gospel Christianity were clear even to eleven year old me. I took comfort in the assurance that this sideshow Christianity was not Catholicism.
I was so sure that Catholics were inoculated from falling for such antics due to our magisterial teaching, handy millennia of writings, our leadership, and history of great thinkers.

Well the revelations of the summer seem to have changed the waters for my perspective. Lately I have noticed a rise of the Catholic guru.

What I mean by "guru" is someone who has a platform and uses that platform to broadcast their particular perspective without nuance. What makes a guru, in my mind, versus a public Catholic is a guru has a worrying grip on their audience. A guru is capable of making wild claims and has so conditioned their audience that those claims will be upheld, even by otherwise reasonable people.

I have had faithful Catholic women tell me that "NFP is overused" based on the claims of a priest YouTuber. Never mind that there is absolutely no way to back up such a claim. Unless they know of some Registry of Adequate Discernment that I have never heard about.

Other ridiculous claims have been: mental illness is caused by a lack of prayer, working mothers are incurring mortal sin, priests decorating gingerbread houses are not being men, and Joseph was the real person in charge of Mary's uterus.
And these are the examples I have heard passively in the past WEEK. I did not even go hunting for these, y'all.

But why now? While it's not fair to entirely blame the rise of the Catholic guru on the Church crisis, it's certainly not without impact.

The ongoing crisis has led to a crisis of trust. Not necessarily faith, but trust in being told the fullness of truth as the extent of the cover-up continues to roll. Many Catholics have been swimming in search of someone willing to tell them how to think about this. Sometimes that process has been healthy - such as being led to really grapple with and learn the teachings of the Church, perhaps for the first time as an adult. But others have fallen into the clutches of a Catholic guru.

Catholic gurus might be ordained people or laity.

Converts or cradle Catholics.

Bloggers, YouTubers, Podcasters, Authors, etc.

Which means...there is no one profile of a Catholic guru. Not all priests with a YouTube channel could be called a Catholic guru. Just as not all Catholic moms with a blog are automatically not a guru.

Now what to do if you realize you have been duped by one of these figures? Pushing back when they cross a line is a good first choice. Message them, email them, let them know why what they said is not ok.

I have chosen not to link to many of the specific instances I have mentioned here in order to not reward the publicity greed that probably contributed to the outlandish claims. Lessening their reach as long as these figures continue this behavior is a loving choice.

Tell other people what attracted you about this person, but also address why they should not be taken wholesale. If you have been recommending this person for a while, it's honest to set the record straight if you can. Very smart people can be taken in by guru strategies.

God is good and gave us such wonderful gifts intellect, critical thinking, and a propensity to seek truth. He wants more for us than being the sheep of a Catholic guru. He wants us to follow Christ. Christ is the literal Word of God. He is love incarnate. He is truth.
These Catholic gurus might temporarily make you feel better, there's a reason they attracted you in the first place! But our hearts should be turned toward truth, and not the perversion of truth espoused by gurus.

Have you seen the impact of a Catholic guru? What did you do? 

Have you been taken in by one of these figures? How did you change your thinking?

What's Your Liturgical Living Style?

I've been documenting a bit of how I do Advent and Christmas over the past few weeks. But it's occurred to me that there are particular styles to living liturgically. Figuring out what style resonates with you is phenomenally helpful for liturgical living success! Here's a few of the basic styles:

The Food liturgical living person

This person likely either cooks at home most of the time, or generally likes to cook. Meal planning may or may not be their strong point, but they can totally handle throwing a dessert together with a week to a couple days notice! Likely enjoys browsing Pinterest for new recipes to try out. It helps to be an adventurous eater!

The Crafty liturgical living person

This person finds happiness in creating with their hands. May have a stash of various craft supplies, or just rescued recycling scraps waiting to be made into something marvelous. Experience with crafting techniques will vary, but enthusiasm for the attempt is a given. Likely enjoys adult coloring books.

The Bookish liturgical living person

This person has a book for every possible situation. This style will range from the Children's Literature enthusiast, to the Tolkein nerd, to Poetry lovers. Saints days, for the bookish style,  are best celebrated by being curled up with a cozy blanket and enjoying the words or stories that belong to that feast.

The Party Throwing liturgical living person

This person sees changes in the liturgical year, or any given feast day, as an excellent excuse to throw a party! Large or small, cocktail party or play date. Doesn't matter, they will be there! And will likely host. This person is probably an extrovert, but there will be the odd introvert among these party throwing liturgical livers.

Bonus Categories!
There are some life situations that will impact how your liturgical living style manifests in practice.

The Parenting liturgical living person

This is the person with the most available resources for their liturgical living (let's be real.) While this person has the needs and preferences of a tiny army to factor in, kids make the joy and wonder aspect of liturgical living easy and accessible.

The Single liturgical living person

This person has to wade through the flood of liturgical living resources that assume you are trying to celebrate with, and for, small children. However, the feasts and fasts are meant for everyone in the Church! It helps to join forces with a group of friends to do at least some celebrations in community. Own your tradition and allow for others to join in! You might find that celebrating with another family, a local religious order, or your roommates make for some wonderful experiences.

The Convert liturgical living person

This person may be brand new to Catholicism, Christianity, or religion in general. They may be suffering from convert fever ("Do. All. The. Things!") or from convert overwhelm ("Please don't let there be one more thing to add on my plate, sweet Jesus!") The beautiful thing about the liturgical year? It always comes back around! This isn't set in stone. You will live if you miss a feast day.
Little secret from a cradle Catholic? *whispers* No celebrates all of the feasts! Really.
Pick a thing, see styles above to get an idea of what is a good thing to start with for you, and just try it out!

Linking up with This Ain't the Lyceum for 7 Quick Takes!

Which of these styles is you? Are there any I forgot? What are some other categories that impact how someone celebrates the liturgical year?

Caring About It All When You Don't Have Answers

There always seems to be something, doesn't it? Always something to be outraged about, annoyed by. Something that needs correcting. It's natural to feel burned out, tuned out, and tempted to numbness. But I don't think Jesus calls his disciples to become numb to pain or to silence righteous anger. Here's five ways we can care about it all, even, and especially, when we don't have the answers.

1 Clean your own house first

It's so much easier to be angry and correct "those" people. Those others. Those guys who aren't us.
Case in point: #postcardsformacon. Yes, the French president was a misogynist jerk to make that kind of blanket claim. He should be called out on that. But I saw post after post after post about THAT and crickets about the issues in our own Catholic Church.

Was not another Catholic woman upset that in that same week as Macon's comments we had multiple comments from Bishops claiming that women can be represented at the Synod without the vote? This is a Synod talking about vocational discernment, and women make up 80% of consecrated people in the Church. But not a single one can vote?

Before we get on this comfortable pedestal about how much more enlightened we are than the French president about the value of women in all areas, we need to notice the log in our own eye.

2 Be aware of your own baggage

Are there issues that you react to without thinking critically? I sincerely doubt any person can say an honest no to that question.
We all have our own prejudices and personal orthodoxies. It's not bad to let your history and experiences shape your perception, but it is bad to not be aware of the impact of your baggage.

For instance, I know that I need to wait a beat before talking about breastfeeding. I suffered under the "breast is best" message - to the detriment of my own health and that of my first two babies. I want desperately to prevent any other woman from going through that, but I must make sure I first understand what a mother is asking when she talks to me about breastfeeding difficulties.

Sometimes she doesn't want me to say anything, she just wants to tell another human being her honest struggles. Sometimes she wants me to point her in the direction of help. Sometimes she wants someone to tell her it's ok to do something different.

If I told every woman who talks to me about her struggles with breastfeeding to "just formula feed like me!" I would be an awful friend. That is tempting, having the answer feels good, but I have to keep my own baggage in check to be present to the other person.

3 Righteous Anger is not "emoting"

There is a bias toward stoicism in Western culture. We tend to think of the sterile and detached perceptions as the correct ones. If there is a whiff of intensity, we are told to "not be so emotional".
But emotional intensity does not necessarily equal "emoting". Emotional intensity can be an appropriate reaction to a great evil.

Emotions get associated with women, non-white cultures, and other people who generally not been welcomed in the public discussion sphere. I have experienced a group policing of other's emotionally charged reactions. Because the intensity of one might impact us all.
We wouldn't want those in charge to see the true impact of their choices. Let's keep that quiet.
And then we wonder how abuse and evil could possibly have been allowed to fester.

Don't be afraid of big emotions! But harness them. Let them out and look behind them to see what is informing them. Don't train your body not to be upset about upsetting things. 

4 Others can care more than you, but you don't get to not care

Sometimes the current outrage is outside of your range of experience. That's ok.
Maybe you have not personally experienced sexual abuse or systemic discrimination. It can feel overwhelming to process the reactions of people who have experienced something so far away from your own life events.

But it's important not to let the people who have lived through something awful to confront that awfulness alone. Christians are called to love our neighbors as ourselves. It's not optional to be unaware of the evils of the world.

5 Self care is important, but do it well

Self care is a concept that I hear many women struggle to reconcile with the sheer amount of demands in their lives. Because to give something to yourself, you must take away from someone else, right?
I don't think self care has to come from a zero sum game. I think there are more choices within our days than we give ourselves license to notice. But not everything we do in the name of self care is a healthy choice.

I hear many people say they no longer keep up with news. They honestly have no idea what is going on the in the world, their city, their community. Yes, it's probably mentally healthy not to be glued to our 24-hour news cycle, but it's not community building to have it's members be oblivious to issues.

Healthy self care, like most things in life, rests in the happy, yet uncomfortable, middle. Maybe you need to take a few days set aside to not be connected to news, but then you can come back from that ready to keep your news consumption within limited hours. The goal is to avoid extremism while still being informed enough to have productive conversations that have the power to move the conversation forward. We can't do that if community members don't even know there is a problem to discuss.


All of this is not to say that there can't be diversity in our reactions, responses, and concerns.
Not every single person is called to be an organizer, a writer, a speaker, a public doer.
But we are all called to love and be connection with each other.
That calling means caring. Even when we don't want to hear it or think there is nothing we can do.

What do you wish you could see discussed more often among Catholic women? Is there something that has been sitting on your heart that you wish you could share more openly?

Um, Why Aren't We More Concerned About This Synod?

Many Catholics questioned the wisdom of continuing with the Synod on Young People, the Faith, and Vocational Discernment. We are in the middle on an ongoing, world wide, crisis of abuse and it's cover up. That seems to fundamentally impact the very people this Synod is meant to address - a concern shared by some bishops. But the Synod has been in the works for so long, better not to stand in front of that train. At least it couldn't cause harm, right?

Well, that remains to be seen.

As a young Catholic woman, this Synod has given me some serious concerns about the Vatican's ability or inclination to work with women within the Church.

Even though 80% of consecrated people are women, they are not represented among those with voting power at the Synod. In stark contrast, brothers, who share the same canonical status as religious sisters ARE afforded a vote. This is not a question of ordination or Canon Law. This is a direct discrimination based solely on gender.

I love the Church, and I believe in it's teachings, but I want to remind my fellow Catholics that we are not required to believe and support every little nuance of how things have been done. If it is not a matter of Faith and Morals, faithful Catholics are fully allowed to disagree.

I am exhausted by the commentary on this issue of overt exclusion of women that is often ended by "let's hope and pray that we can do things differently in the future." Often a reminder that we shouldn't get angry about this injustice is thrown in there for good measure.

Frankly, if this situation doesn't upset you I am a little concerned for you.

I understand crisis fatigue, the desire to talk about good things for a change, and the apathy that sets in after watching the bumbling attempts at damage control by the hierarchy - instead of the kind loving guidance of a father that we are due. However, I believe we have good reason not to place our trust in the same men who failed to amend and render justice in the Church when they said they did over a decade ago. An attempt that still came decades too late.

When the reasoning for why women religious superior generals cannot vote, but brother superiors may, relies on numerous people overlooking women because "They haven’t been used to thinking this way" I don't think the hierarchy is ready for their relating to women training wheels to come off just yet.

I keep speaking up, and writing, and talking to people, about the crisis and the reality of the Church because I understand that that is what it means to be a faithful Catholic woman right now. It's not a nice option if it's something you feel called to do. It is abundantly clear that the men of our Church might desire to do the right thing, but they cannot do it if we don't tell them what we need and hold them accountable.

It is very easy for little voices to be silenced. It is so simple to be apathetic and allow for injustice to continue it's course. How nice it would be for Someone Else to stick their neck out as a sacrificial lamb for ourselves.

Oh wait, Jesus did.
Jesus already came and provided an open path for salvation. But we have free will, and we have to cooperate with grace.

I hate to be a debby downer, but sanctifying grace is not known for it's warm fuzzies. You probably aren't going to feel good. You might not see an immediate result. But refusing grace is not an option if we wish to be disciples.

If we love Jesus, we must love his Church. The most loving thing to do in the face of injustice is not to enable it. To call it what it is by name, and to push for the good. For a Church to be what she preaches.

Men, we need you to listen to women and see injustice too. The beauty of talking about reality is it is ready and available for anyone to see if they merely look.
Women, we need to speak to each other and educate ourselves. Keeping up to date on what is happening in the Church is necessary if we are to have productive conversations.

UPDATE: I was reminded that the superiors general of the Dominicans, Jesuits, and Conventual Franciscans, all voting members of the Synod, are calling for the inclusion of women voters, and that the men's Union of Superiors General has been sending non-ordained representatives as voting representatives since 2015. This synod was the opportunity for a change at a later synod.

Was any of this news for you? How can you become involved in discussions that move the Church forward, whatever your state in life?