The memory of the martyrs has historically played an important role in the Christian imagination. It is extremely important that the martyrs not be sentimentalized. They are not always especially good, virtuous, or innocent folk. Ironically, to idealize the martyrs, or victims generally, is to rob them of their common humanity. What makes murder so terrible is not that the victims are virtuous, but that it is murder, the taking of human life in contravention of the law of God. By analogy, we might also say that what constitutes a martyr is not necessarily possession of the Christian virtues, although many martyrs have possessed these in abundance, but rather his or her witness to Jesus Christ. Indeed, William Cavanaugh argues that it is not so much a person’s subjective intention that makes him or her a martyr — motives may well be ambiguous — as simply the church’s recognition of a life that shows forth the reality of Jesus. Paradoxically, the death of the martyr serves as a confirmatory sign that the world belongs not the principalities of the present age, but to God.
--Joseph Mangina, but I found it here

STRONGER AT THE BROKEN PLACES: I've been thinking a bit about the use of language of "brokenness" in discussions of Christianity and homosexuality, and why I rebel against both that language and other people's reaction against it. I'll try to just briefly make some tentative points; tomorrow I'll have an even more tentative post soliciting alternative ways of discussing or describing the Church's prohibition on gay sex (rather than the alternative vocations open to gay people, where I feel much more certain of what I want to say--I am much more confident in what I want to say about the "yes" than what I'd say about the "no," but the picture is incomplete without both, I think).

The good thing about the language of brokenness should be obvious: It's humbling.

There's a contemporary American tendency to insist that we're good people, or that through bourgeois productivity and respectability we purchase indulgences and can therefore create our own Christian doctrine. (I can't remember where I read the tart aphorism, "Europeans don't believe in God, so they do whatever they want. Americans do whatever they want and call that Christianity.") At the very least we demand to be recognized as just as good as you. To say that we're broken is considered morbid or even offensive; to say that we might actually be unusually or distinctively broken is considered repulsive.

I am basically in favor of almost anything which prompts an admission of weakness, vulnerability, or similarly un-American expressions of spiritual poverty. To the extent that actual existing gay Christians use language of brokenness to express our need for unconditional surrender to God, I find it beautiful and spiritually-fruitful; I didn't share some readers' negative reaction to this language in Wesley Hill's Washed and Waiting, for example. (And I thought he either avoided or explicitly countered most of the negative aspects of brokenness language which I'll discuss in a moment.)

That said, here are some reasons I don't use that language myself.

First, I still do suspect that straight Christians often use "We're all broken!"/"The ground is level at the foot of the Cross"-type language, when discussing homosexuality, as a kind of rhetorical toll to be paid before you can get to the thing you're actually interested in talking about, which is Other People's Problems. If there's a danger of pharisaism for gay Christians who insist they're not broken, not like those messed-up addicts or crazy people (We Are Respectable Homos!), there's also a danger of pharisaism for straight Christians who want to use the language of brokenness when discussing situations they've never been in.

Second, and relatedly, using language of brokenness in the context of an already-stigmatized group has the obvious potential to provoke shame rather than humility, despair rather than surrender to God. I don't know that I need to go into detail here really, do I? Gay pride is wrong, but it's the wrong response to gay shame.

Thirdly, what do you do with a broken thing? I mean, you either throw it out or fix it, right? The imagery does not conduce to viewing homosexuality as a potential source of insight for the Christian. It's not a metaphor which suggests vocation. It's a metaphor in which one's orientation is a problem to be solved or at best endured. Even imagery of woundedness is more complex, insofar as wounds, in Christian thought, are not solely healed but sometimes glorified.

And finally, the language has been handled so much in this context that it's a cliche, a coin with its face worn off. When you say "brokenness" and "gay" in the same sentence I think a lot of people can only hear the five thousand previous times someone has used the metaphor, no matter what you personally intend to say with it.

But there's enough good in it that I wonder if it can be rescued, revived. After all, there are ways of describing a broken place as a place of insight--that's where the light gets in.

So I'm posting this more as a provocation than anything else: Talk to me more about brokenness. It isn't a metaphor which comes naturally to me and it's easier for me to see the limitations than the insights or beauty it can provide. But I think there's some poetry to be found here if we're willing to look for it: Are you broken like a wave, coming home on sharp rocks? Are you broken like a voice deepening into manhood? Are you broken like the Eucharist?

DOCTOR, MY EYES: Unequally Yoked is holding a contest-type thing where atheists and Christians attempt to answer relatively basic apologetic questions without letting on what they really believe. Then, you guys (yes, you, the viewers at home, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea) get to vote on which responses you think are from real atheists and which are from papists and snake-handlers dressed up in ghost suits. This seems fun! So I figured I'd let you know that voting on the Talk Like an Atheist round is now open.

I have a lot of problems with the questions for atheists, which seem to provoke really bloodless and boring responses (cf the repetition of some variation on, "If I had a road to Damascus experience, I'd check myself in to a respected medical establishment"). That said, I think it's kind of fascinating to see what people think atheists are like, as a tribe or contemporary identity-group, and I suspect the same will be true for the Christian responses.

I'm startled and dismayed by how few of the "atheist" responses (again, some are really written by Christians, so keep that in mind) are basically, "The world is obvious and boring! Morality is mostly a matter of willpower, not discernment. I'm a good person!" Very few of these guys have anything to say to Kafka, let alone an actual Christian. That said, I'm totally fascinated to see which kinds of self-presentation are considered most convincing by atheists and by Christians; I think this is mostly an exercise not in philosophy but in cultural criticism, in which we try to figure out who we think we are and who we think they are. As such it's pretty great.

ECSTASY AS SOLACE: I really liked this quote from Fr. Alexander Schmemann, found via Wesley Hill:

Secularism is a religion because it has a faith, it has its own eschatology and its own ethics. And it “works” and it “helps.” Quite frankly, if “help” were the criterion, one would have to admit that life-centered secularism helps actually more than religion. To compete with it, religion has to present itself as “adjustment to life,” “counselling,” “enrichment,” it has to be publicized on subways and buses as a valuable addition to “your friendly bank” and all other “friendly dealers”: try it, it helps! And the religious success of secularism is so great that it leads some Christian theologians to “give up” the very category of “transcendence,” or in much simpler words, the very idea of “God.” This is the price we must pay if we want to be “understood” and “accepted” by modern man, proclaim the Gnostics of the twentieth century.

For it is here that we reach the heart of the matter. For Christianity, help is not the criterion. Truth is the criterion. The purpose of Christianity is not to help poeple by reconciling them with death, but to reveal the Truth about life and death i order that people may be saved by this Truth. Salvation, however, is not only not identical with help, but is, in fact, opposed to it. Christianity quarrels with religion and secularism not because they offer “insufficient help,” but precisely because they “suffice,” because the “satisfy” the needs of men. If the purpose of Christianity were to take away from man the fear of death, to reconcile him with death, there would be no need for Christianity, for other religions have done this, indeed, better than Christianity. And secularism is about to produce men who will gladly and corporately die — and not just live — for the triumph of the Cause, whatever it may be.

Christianity is not reconciliation with death. It is the revelation of death, and it reveals death because it is the revelation of Life. Christ is this Life. And only if Christ is Life is death what Christianity proclaims it to be, namely an enemy to be destroyed, and not a “mystery” to be explained.

more

So here are some random thoughts prompted by this quotation. Take home what resonates with you and discard the rest as the styrofoam peanuts of my stupidity!

One thing I like about this quote--I like a lot of things about it, but this is one--is that it may seem to contradict Augustine's famous line about how "our hearts are restless 'til we rest in Thee," and yet I really don't think it does. Just as the Desert Fathers often seem to contradict themselves (let alone one another!) because they're addressing very different seekers with radically divergent needs, weaknesses, and longings, so I think Schmemann is simply not addressing the same kind of person Augustine is. I suspect each of us is a Schmemann-addressee some of the time and an Augustine-addressee some of the time, although we'll sway more toward one end or the other (I'm much more an A-a, I think), so here are some scattered thoughts about Christ as comforter and as troubler of the waters.

First, Christ always stands against contentment. If you're satisfied you aren't a philosopher, let alone a Christian. Christ, like the James Bond franchise, tells us that The World Is Not Enough.

Sometimes we really need to hear that! Sometimes we are content to cultivate our gardens, to love the people we want to love and turn away from the shadow of death. An immense amount of basic, boring, necessary good gets done in the world by people who are contented... and yet that should never be enough for us.

Then there are those of us for whom the inadequacy of immanent beauty and everyday love is all too obvious. We're like the people in the AA slogan, for whom "one drink is too many and a hundred isn't enough." We're like the people in Chesterton's punchline, which was instrumental in my conversion: "The man who enters the whorehouse is seeking God." We're like the Bagthorpes, in Helen Cresswell's terrifically sardonic children's series, whose family motto might be Too Much Is Never Enough.

It's easy for those who can suffice themselves on the incredible loveliness of this life to look down on those of us who can't. They can accuse us of ingratitude and of pretension; who promised us a life in capital letters? And so they can remain where they are.

And it's easy for those of us who do feel that both ourselves and the world are radically insufficient to make do with "cheap grace," in the form of politics or alcohol or art or psychoanalysis, all of which are well enough in their own right and legitimate sources of insight and/or ekstasis but none of which are as big as the need. All of these possibilities are erotic in some sense, but none are as erotic as religious devotion. (But then, what is?) And so we, too, find a million ways to remain where we are.

Or to summarize this entire post in two sentences: A life without unconditional surrender is banal. Only in devotion to God can the ecstasy of surrender marry the solace of ethical love.

IT'S THE CIRCLE OF LIFE!: 1. Conservative, moralizing politician gets caught [EDITED to remove unnecessarily crass description; "gets caught" pretty much covers it...].

2. Conservative Christian commentator wails about how could he? with much throwing of the fiftieth stone. I would never!

3. Liberal commentator (Christian or not--all look same!) inveighs against the obvious Schadenfreude and piling-on of aforementioned conservative Christian types. Drink if they cite "Judge not, lest ye be judged"; drain your drink if they bother looking up the chapter and verse. Drain somebody else's drink if they specify that they're atheist and they really, really think adultery is bad, and they'd totally shame the initial bad guy as much as you would, but they just can't help themselves in pointing out the hypocrisy!

4. Bitchy blogger notes that patting yourself on the back for your rejection of pride might actually be... prideful. Thus, she judges your judgeyness of others' judging of sexual sin! It would be so awesome if this action were virtuous!

5. Lather, rinse, repent.

I know so many good people, I mean, where do I start?

UPDATE: [edited: ehhh, changed my mind about this.]

FURTHER UPDATED: Doesn't change what I say in this post, but this does offer context and assorted whatnot.

THE SILLY PUTTY CHURCH: I guess you all already know exactly what I think of Nancy Pelosi's ardent-Catholic-abortion shtik. (more) It's "I'm a good person," it's We Are Church, and you know, if I'm church, I think maybe church isn't that great.

It's also how a nearly three-quarters majority of American Catholics (in that order, apparently) end up supporting torture.

I was once privileged to hear a discourse on the nature of conscience in the Church, in which the obvious righteousness of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was marshaled to support the potential okayness of gay sex. The Magisterium: so inconvenient!

"The creatures outside looked from Giuliani to Biden, and from Biden to Giuliani, and from Giuliani to Biden again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

Me, I'm not devout. I have a rosary kicking around in my bookbag and daggone if I don't always find some excuse not to hike it out and spend twenty minutes fitfully contemplating my Lord. I'm not ardent. I am lucky if I pray twice in a day, not counting when the ambulances and the cop cars go by. I'm not a good Catholic. I don't say this with a kind of reverse pride. I think it's creepy, and you guys can point out that I've written for money about praying the rosary even though I do it much, much less than 99.99% of the people who do it for free. I say this as someone who needs to go to Confession, someone who (Ratty can attest) consistently puts off confessing until I've spiraled low enough that I can't ignore it anymore. I hang on by the fingernails and skate on thin ice and hope like hell--or, you know, I hope I hope like purgatory.

I'm completely convinced that the people who say they're good, they're ardent, they're devout, are people who try hard to do the right thing and believe what they say they believe and don't lie, and in many cases do a lot more concrete good in the world than I do. I just... I can't agree that what they support is Catholic--at least, not in the way that Morrissey is Catholic.