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“I do not believe there is an atheist in the world who would bulldoze Mecca — or Chartres, York, Minster, or Notre Dame.”

— Richard Dawkins, "The God Delusion," p. 249

On 5 December 1931, by order of Stalin's minister Lazar Kaganovich, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour,the largest Orthodox church ever built, was dynamited and reduced to rubble. It took more than one blast to destroy the church and more than a year to clear the debris from the site.

Better Catholicism through Bolshevism!

I have three kids and I’m pretty proud of them. They are all honest, hard-working, polite, have never been in trouble, have always done well in school. The only thing that disappoints me about them is that my oldest, Pumpkin, is totally secular.

This came up last night when I was having a smoke on the front porch with my son. “Why do you think Pumpkin is so secular?” I asked.

The answer came immediately, “Because she’s bourgeois.”

I understood his meaning immediately. Pumpkin was the very model of bourgeois success. She had excelled in school, won a prestigious scholarship, and is poised to go to graduate school after she finishes college next year. She dresses well, yet is never flashy nor does she stand out in a crowd. She would never say anything that might be called “politically incorrect.” She believes in dealing with things reasonably,” by which she means in a way that is both practical and secular.

I had never thought about it in these terms before, but the logic of it became immediately self-evident to me, and I replied (only half-teasingly), “And I suppose you’re a good Catholic because you’re such a good communist?”

“Being a good communist is nine-tenths of being a good Catholic, and those are the nine-tenths I’m good at.”

[A bit of back-ground here. I had spent the years of my youth and young adulthood as a godless communist and, even after finding God, I never bought in to a bourgeois world view. Let me be clear about what sort of communism I’m talking about here. I was an Old Left, Soviet style, puritanical, party discipline and heavy industry, working class communist, not a New Left, pacifistic, counter-cultural, hippie who simply dressed up his anti-social bourgeois liberalism in Marxist jargon. When I came to God this involved adding to my beliefs more than changing them. I had always renounced those aspects of the Soviet System that the Church had objected to (e.g. political and religious oppression, gulags, torture), so this was mostly a matter of adding a spiritual aspect to my life.]

This sparked a long discussion and, at the end of it, I agreed with him completely. The upbringing he had received inculcated a strongly communist world-view that had not only fitted hand-in-glove with his Catholicism, but had given him the discipline and habits to live a good Catholic life. I think it might be worthwhile now to present our findings.

Being Comradely!

Xeno said that one of the worst reproaches he could get as a child was: “That’s not the comradely thing to do.” Leaving dirty dishes at the table, taking seconds before making sure everyone had firsts, using up something without replacing it, cutting in line, not sharing with your playmates, even crabbyness would garner this reproach. Xeno was taught to pitch-in when there’s work to do, not to slack off until the work is done, never to brag, always to treat people politely. People often comment on Xeno’s respect for his elders and consideration for workers, and this too is because of my insistence upon being comradely.

“I feel dirty about money.”

Money matters were something about which I always demanded extra scrupulosity. Sharp dealing (as opposed to fair dealing) was regarded as a sin which cried to Heaven for vengeance. Whenever Xeno is paid for a bit of work, he is always on time, works until the job is finished, and keeps a better-than-average pace. Around the neighborhood, Xeno is in demand as a dog-walker, baby sitter, and snow shoveler because of his good communist work ethic. Unearned wealth was regarded as the root of all evil, and Xeno takes real pride in always giving full value for his wages.

“You took the glamor off evil.”

We go to a rather conservative parish. You know the type: Latin mass, big families, girls modestly dressed, boys in white shirts and slax. And these are good people, but many of them slip into materialism now and then. They live in the suburbs, drive big cars, have a few possessions of which they are overly proud of. By and large, they are very moral people (chaste, generous, pious) but they have trouble seeing consumerism as being un-Christian.

In our house, consumerism was bad, not only because of a Christian rejection of materialism, but because it makes you the hod-man of the bourgeois. If you never bought into the bourgeois notion that every year you needed a new car, the latest fashions, a larger house, an ever bigger screen TV, exotic vacations, whatever it was that they were advertising now, then you could be truly free. As soon as you want these things, you are capitalism’s slave, and we positively gloried in not having cable TV, not owning an automobile, living in a cramped house, eating home-cooked meals, buying most of our clothes at the thrift store. The things we really wanted were modest: books, really first-rate work boots, a night out bowling.

The communist principle of “production for use” is a further inoculation against consumerism. Xeno has a cell phone (He needs it so that we can keep track of him when he’s at his various after-school jobs.) and it’s old, battered, and has none of the “functions” that people are so enamored of nowadays. When his friends show off their new phones that play games, stream video, and connect to Twitter, he is supremely indifferent. “A cell phone is for communication, not amusement.”

“Consumerism degrades culture”

Even at my own parish I see this. Altar boys exchanging “ghetto handshakes” in the vestry. Admiring talk of violent movies. Familiarity with the lyrics of rap songs. These things are seen as harmless by many parents yet I would not tolerate them in my children.

Bourgeois popular entertainment is aimed at the lowest common denominator to ensure the highest return on investment so it naturally degrades into crap. While Xeno’s friends were going to the newest, most popular movies, I showed him classic films. While other parents listened to soft-rock or “oldies,” I had the radio tuned to the classical station. While I didn’t shun or forbid all popular entertainment, I always made it clear that it was high culture that had real worth.

“A Good Communist Rejects Sexual Consumerism”

Strangely, this is best expressed by someone trying to justify sexual consumerism:

But if the sexual market-place is impersonal, non-judgemental, and pluralistic, it still has its own built-in biases. These biases are covert — invisible in snap-shot impression — and they have more to do with the nature of markets than the nature of sex. The market for consumer goods of any kind is ever-changing, quick to absorb each new novelty and abandon the old … Without novelty and variety, short-term “necessities” and quick-turnover “classics,” our consumer culture would go into decline and, so too, no doubt, would our particular variety of capitalism.

…It is not a sign of moral breakdown or “excessive” permissiveness that the sexuality visible in the consumer culture seems always to be out-reaching old limits: this is the dynamic of the market, and in sex as well as fashion or entertainment, it pushes always and inexorably toward new frontiers.

Thus the sexual market-place both democratizes and INSTITUTIONALIZES (authors’ italics) the sexual revolution. Practices that were once pioneered by a few brave souls become, through the market-place, the potential property of anyone … The perverse becomes the commonplace.

— Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Hess, and Gloria Jacobs
Re-making Love — The Feminization Of Sex,
Anchor Press / Doubleday, Garden City /
New York, 1986, p. 110-111.

My son finds sexual excesses revolting, not so much from his Christian morality, as from his rejection of consumerism. The fact that many of these have become matters of commerce (e.g. pornography, prostitution, strippers) actually sickens him, however this is not a prudish rejection of sex, but a communist revulsion at consumerism.

“Proletarian Morality”

A good communist doesn’t waste his time on sexual adventuring, but rather, settles down in a stable relationship and sets about making cadres for the revolution. My son often teases me about this, asking, “How does Proletarian Morality differ from Bourgeois Propriety?” Simple, just as the same revolver has a different meaning when it is in the hands of a cossack or of a class conscious worker.

And this is just one more example, of which there are many, of how my communism has inculcated good Catholic habits into my son.

The Baby-sitting Attitude

Some years ago, I was sitting on my front steps watching my two youngest as they drew in chalk on the sidewalk. This was a pretty usual thing. Wife-mate and I would come home from work, she would need time to make dinner, and so I would take the kids out front, or maybe to the park about a block away, and watch them for a hour or so to give Wife-mate a chance to make dinner without interruption. Sometimes I would take something to read with me, sometimes I would take the football to throw with my son, sometimes I would just watch them. It was a nice, relaxing part of my day and, now that my kids hang-out with their school chums until dinner time, I miss it.

Anyway, I was sitting there one day when a fellow came by, looked at my kids, and asked me, “Baby-sitting?”

Now, to my mind, “baby-sitting” means taking responsibility for someone else’s kids. I am responsible for my kids all the time, night and day. The word “baby-sitting” only makes sense when there is some time when you are not responsible, ergo parents are never “baby-sitting.” This being self-evident to me, I answered the man, “No, they’re my own kids.”

Again he asked, “Baby-sitting?”

Baffled by his meaning, I just shrugged and answered, “I guess.” He walked away and I thought it over. Probably to him, watching kids was women’s work, and represented an imposition when he had to do it. Or maybe he conceded that watching his own kids was his responsibility, but found the task onerous or inconvenient. Either way, this was diametrically opposed to my own attitude. I loved watching my kids. I miss it now that they’re old enough to do things on their own.

After that run-in I began to notice that the “baby-sitting attitude" was common. And not just among men. I began to notice how many parents were constantly looking for chances to get away from their kids. How they were always hiring baby-sitters, dropping their kids off for play-dates, scheduling sports, lessons, a myriad of activities that would keep their kids busy for a few hours.

I guess the ultimate example of this was when my son was about five and needed some serious dental work. I stayed right with him throughout the procedure, even though he was out with gas for most of it. While the dentist worked from one side, I sat on the other, holding his hand just in case he came to. When it was over, he wanted me to pick him up, and I was right there to do it. Just before we left, the dentist thanked me for sticking around. He said that most parents went out for coffee when he was working on their kids, and that it made it a whole lot easier when the parent was there to comfort the child.

Naturally, I was appalled. What kind of parent would go out for coffee when their child was facing something so potentially traumatic as dental work? Hearing about this probably made me even more conscientious than before.

Another aspect of this is the “do as I say, not as I do” problem. The best way is to lead by example, and I would never think of asking my kids to do something that I, myself would not do.

My parents used to send me to Sunday School when I was a kid. I hated it, balked at it, and, eventually, they gave up. Years later, when I was in high school, my dad asked me why I hated Sunday School so much, and I answered, “You never went to church; why would I like Sunday School?”

He didn’t get it, and evidently, most people don’t. For when I had kids of my own, and my first daughter was up for first confession, I asked her catechism teacher if it wouldn’t be a good idea for the parents to go to confession at the same time so as to give the kids a good example. She thought this was a bad idea, “since it would take too much time.” When I suggested that at least I could set an example by confessing right before my daughter, she agreed to that. After the event, however, I was approached by some very angry parents who resented what I had done because it caused their kids to ask why they didn’t make confession. (Wow! That’s when I decided to find a more traditional parish.)

I don’t mean to brag here, but once in a while someone will ask me how I got such great kids. My answer is always the same, “I’ve dedicated my life to it.” Really — it’s not hard to know what your kids need, it’s just hard to keep at it and do those things all the time.


The reason I bring this up is because of something good I heard about the other day. My best friend and her husband just had their first baby two months ago. They were taking baby Liam out for his first trip in the stroller. After the dad carried the stroller down the front steps, he began to push it. His wife offered, “I’ll push it if you want.”

“I can do it.”

“Well — I wouldn’t want you to feel emasculated, you know, pushing a baby carriage.”

He stopped dead. “This is my son, I’m proud of him! Why would I feel emasculated showing him off to the world?”

I think baby Liam is in good hands, don’t you?

The Downside of Paganism

“You can’t believe the extra work I had when I was a god.”

— Shōwa tennō (Hirohito)

Where's the Outrage?

Three Sundays ago, Dr. George Tiller was shot dead by an anti-abortion fanatic while attending Holy Service in Wichita Kansas. I found out about it when I saw this posting on Facebook: “Eric Scheidler is utterly dismayed at the Tiller shooting. Reprehensible. A dark day.” Later that day, I got an e-mail of the press release from the Pro-Life Action League stating that “any act of violence in the name of protecting the lives of unborn children is a betrayal of the pro-life movement, which proclaims the sanctity of all human life." The next day, my buddy John Jansen despaired of the killing on his blog. Almost immediately, American Life League’s Executive Director, Shaun Kenney denounced the killing, and later that week, his associate Judy Brown abhored the killing and offered her condolences to the Tiller family.

I read a lot of Catholic/Pro-Life stuff. I’m on the e-mail list for several Pro-Life organizations, read most of the blogs of the members of the “Catholic Dad’s Blogspot,” have a number of friends who work full-time in the Pro-Life movement, and no one that I read regularly or know personally condoned the Tiller murder. So I looked further afield and found that the overwhelming majority of Pro-Life organizations, organizers, spokesmen, bloggers came out against this crime.

[Don’t bother citing contrary examples, because I already know they're out there. My point is that they are a statistically insignificant minority.]

Let me try to reduce all of those statements that I read into one sentence:

“I oppose abortion, but I can’t condone murder.”

And, was there a corresponding outpouring from the other side? Did anyone say:

“I approve of abortion, but I can’t condone murder.”

Because murder was what Dr. Tiller was up to. Say what you will about first (or even second) trimester fetuses merely being a “blob of tissue,” you are either a liar or a sociopath if you say that a third-trimester fetus is anything less than a baby waiting to be born. I’m not going to argue with you right now about when life begins, but by the third trimester, by any morally honest standard, we are talking about a real baby. I will concede that a morally honest individual might not think that a fetus is really a person before quickening, or before viability, but these landmarks are long past by the twenty-first week, and killing these late-term babies was what Tiller was up to.

[Don’t give me the “medical necessity” argument. By Tiller’s own admission only 8% of his cases were for “fetal indications.” And, think about it, if an abortion were really medically necessary, then it would be done in a hospital, by the woman’s own doctor, not by some hired-gun in a hick town.]

Where is the outrage?

If the “Pro-Choice” camp were really morally honest, when Tiller was shot, they would have qualified their grief over this instead of lionizing him. Instead, I read on Sister Anne’s blog that days after the murder, protestors were waling down Michigan Avenue with signs reading "abortion on demand without apology."

Spiritual but not Mystical

I often work at night, alone, and I usually listen to a book on tape when I do this. Since picking up a book to listen to involves almost no effort, I routinely listen to books that I would never actually read. Sometimes this allows me an insight into what people who differ from me think (e.g. “Suicide of the West,” by James Burnham), sometimes I find hidden gems that I never knew existed (e.g. “Down and Out in Paris and London,” by George Orwell), sometimes this allows me to read classics that I never seemed to have the time for (e.g. “House of Mirth” by Edith Wharton), and sometimes it simply allows me to say “Yes, I read that, and it’s a piece of crap!” (e.g. [and especially] “Atlas Shrugged,” by Ayn Rand, and “Left Behind” by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, possibly the two most incompetent works of fiction and wrong-headed philosophical outlooks ever to get into print). Other times, is just gets me thinking.


“Tuesdays With Morrie” is a book by Mitch Albom describing his visits with Morrie Schwartz, his favorite professor in college, as he is dying of ALS. It was hugely popular and is held to be a work of great insight and wisdom. The dying Morrie lays stress on “human” values, like love, family, compassion, he bears up cheerfully in the face of death, which indicates his inner peace, and he counsels his student not to spend so much time pursuing transient successes like money, career, or fame. The trick here, is that fairly obvious insights are lent weight by the gravity of their coming from a dying man. If it were merely thin broth, then it would have bothered me no more than the uninspired sort of homily one gets at Old Saint Pat’s, that poster of the cat saying “hang in there,” or a mirror painted with the words of the “footsteps prayer.” But this book bugged me, and I thought about it for days.

The obvious short-coming was that it was “spiritual without being religious,” by which I suppose I mean it dealt with matters of the spirit outside of any fixed system of spiritual duties. So I asked my son, Xeno, (who had to read the book for class) if the “spiritual without being religious” thing bothered him as well. He told me that he didn’t like the book either but that I didn’t really have the problem by the tail. “After all,” he said, “Your friend Karl is as spiritual a guy as there is, and he’s not religious.”

This was an excellent point. My buddy Karl the Anarchist left the Church years ago, isn’t really sure if there is a God or what sort of nature a god might have, yet he was profoundly spiritual. Every fiber of Karl’s being is devoted to working out his vocation in life, to social justice, to sanctifying mankind. He is a mystic.

By mystic, I mean he has a personal knowledge of God. I know this by how he walks the earth without fear or violence. By his refusal to value earthly things as much as by his complete practically in dealing with the world. I know this as much by his compassion as by his sense of humor. He spoke to my son once about the first time he was in prison (he has been imprisoned many times for civil disobedience). He was eighteen when he met Dorothy Day on a park bench and she talked him into joining her in refusing to participate in an air raid drill. They were both arrested and he was sent to Ryker’s Island to await trial. Immediately he was set upon by toughs who said, “I’m going to have your shit on my dick or your blood on my knife.” He thought for a moment, realized that no knife could ever touch his spirit, and told them to go ahead and do what they would. He was left alone, just as he has been in the dozens of times he has been jailed since, and the months he spent in federal prison for refusing to pay war taxes. You cannot intimidate a mystic because the world does not matter to them.

Reflecting on this, I realized that the problem with Morrie Schwartz’s “wisdom” was not that it was “spiritual without being religious,” but that it was “spiritual without being mystical.” In fact, this is almost always the problem with what we might call “secular spirituality.” Karl is just about the only person I’ve ever met who is mystical without being religious. And Schwartz is not a mystic.

[How do I know? Because I am a mystic. You will forgive me for this arrogant boast, but it is the only valid claim to knowing anything about mysticism. I have long resisted writing about mysticism, as it would involve divulging my own mysticism, and I don’t want to set myself up as some kind of bodhisattva or something. I’m just a regular guy, who’s had the mystical experience. I’m not nearly the better person I ought to be for this either, so it probably counts against me in the scheme of things.]

It doesn’t take long to tell when you are talking to a mystic and not just a dying man with equanimity. Mystical detachment is simple (think of Descarte’s melting wax, or Bridget of Sweden looking into Christ’s palm) yet its impact is beyond profound (think of Saint Teresa of Ávila saying how the love of God pierced her heart “like a flaming arrow.”). A real mystic never dwells on why the world doesn’t matter, he takes that as his starting point. A real mystic never tells you to work less, he tells you to find your vocation. A real mystic never tells you to “simplify your life,” he tells you to embrace mortification. A mystic never speaks of family as a “support system,” of marriage as a “partnership,” nor does he dwell upon “being a good person.” For just as faith without works are dead, so too is charity without love, for it will not do your soul a bit of good to give a hungry man a bowl of soup unless you love him. The mystic cares not for the accidents of this world.

So must a genuine spirituality always be mystical? No, and this is where religion comes in. Religion is there to allow the ordinary, un-mystical person, to live like a mystic. It demands that you do things out of duty that a mystic would do out of communion with God. Genuine religion demands that you forego the consolations of the world and focus on the spirit. Genuine religion demands that you spend time in prayer, time that a mystic might spend in direct communion with God. Genuine religion demands that you cherish your spouse as your own flesh, that you receive the Holy Spirit, that you act always out love, that you look for God’s hand in everything — and no mystic needs to be told any of those things!

“Tuesdays With Morrie,” however well-meaning it might be, is yet another attempt to give spiritual succor to those without either religion or mysticism. As such, it is a fraud.

A Shocking Admission

To each group we explained what contraception was; that abortion was the wrong way—no matter how early it was performed it was taking life; that contraception was the better way, the safer way—it took a little time, a little trouble, but was well worth while in the long run, because life had not yet begun.

— Margaret Sanger