The Thrill of the Chaste world tour continues tomorrow, March 1, when I speak in the state of "Liberty and Independence," addressing a Theology on Tap group in Wilmington, Del. The fully clothed fun starts at 7:30 p.m. at Catherine Rooney’s Irish Pub and Restaurant, and admission is free. They'll have a small number of copies of my book available; if you'd like a signed copy, you might want to buy one at a bookshop beforehand and bring it in to be on the safe side. Coming later in March: talks at the University of Illinois and Southern Methodist University.
One of the things I've discovered upon being a first-year Catholic is that the embarrassment never ends.
A woman from Cleveland, writing an e-mail complimenting me on a talk I gave there, took the opportunity to correct my pronunciation of St. Augustine's name. Apparently, it's Aug-GUS-tin. During a recent confession, my priest corrected me when I tried to say the Act of Contrition too soon: "I have to give you your penance first." A dear friend questioned why I touch myself so high on the forehead when I cross myself — is it a Jewish thing, he asked? (I guess it is.)
So, now I have the embarrassment of admitting that I am finally beginning a long-overdue obsession with the work of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, as I've started reading him for the first time with his classic Three to Get Married.
Wikipedia's bio of the bishop is filled with delightful trivia, like these lines about Sheen's network TV show "Life Is Worth Living":
The show, scheduled for Tuesday nights at 8:00 p.m., was not expected to offer much of a challenge against ratings giants Milton Berle and Frank Sinatra, but surprisingly held its own, causing Berle to joke, "He uses old material, too". In 1952, Sheen won an Emmy Award for his efforts, accepting the acknowledgement by saying, "I feel it is time I pay tribute to my four writers. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John."
AND ANOTHER THING: Brenda from Flatbush writes in a comment:
I had the prodigious blessing of hearing Sheen preach during a brief period of renewed activity here in NYC before his death. In college, in the depths of depression, I heard him preach his famous Good Friday homily, and the experience literally reshaped my soul. I also had a chance to meet him briefly several times.
And here's what you won't learn from Wikipedia, or even the unconscionably bad video record of his preaching: He was--is--one of the great saints of the 20th Century. Perfect, no, but that is the point of sainthood, the surmounting of deep flaws. He radiated a quality--one that I call, after Chesterton, "cosmic mirth"--that I have encountered in only one other adult, the Dalai Lama. Tragically, he may yet go down in newsclip amber as a Cold Warrior/TV novelty act, an artifact of Fifties American Catholicism rampant who was "kicked upstairs" in a late-life in-house ecclessial power struggle. Or worse yet, be remembered merely as the glib and charismatic guy who drew angels on a blackboard and beat Uncle Miltie in the ratings.
In fact, he was a mystic of the truest kind (no mere "theologian," "original" or otherwise), and his famously hypnotic eyes burned with some interior suffering that only he knew. To touch his hand was to be in the presence of electrifying grace, not mere charisma. His "dated" topical commentaries on the evils of Communism and the pitfalls of modernity have stood the test of time to become astonishingly prophetic. And his gifts as a communicator--which he could dial up or down in sophistication with no loss of mastery depending on his audience--have brought countless souls into the Body of Christ, including my own father,who was introduced to the young Rev.Sheen in the 1930s through the "Catholic Radio Hour." I grew up in a house with many of Sheen's autographed books (each autograph preceded by "God Love You"), and pray daily for his canonization. The bio that does him justice has yet to be written. But he's waiting to hear from you as a powerful intercessor, and given his gifts as a media master, I nominate him for Patron Saint of the Internet.
[Previous entries in this series may be found through the pull-down menu at left, or by clicking the "Wuz" tag below.]
I stopped by a pay phone at Third Avenue and St. Mark's Place on that day in October 1999 to call my mother and stepfather to tell them I was laid off. The call to Dad could wait until I got home; Mom and Ron lived closer and deserved to be alerted that I would be coming out to visit them — and pick up food to take home — more sooner than later.
At Ninth Street and Sixth Avenue, I hopped a train home to Hoboken, where I proceeded to go through my narrowing list of music-biz contacts. Since starting work at Kim's Video, I had tried to keep up my writing for Salon, Mojo, and others, but necessity forced me to cut back — especially after D.D. chewed me out for coming to work on one hour's sleep. (I had done an all-nighter writing up my interview with Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices, most of it spent painstakingly composing the rather lame introduction.)
My depression was such that I didn't have manic highs. Instead, I had "normal" periods, when I wished I were dead but didn't feel like doing anything about it. Each normal period was followed inevitably by a descent into darkness, when I had that same wish only I did feel like doing something about it.
As I fired off hopeful e-mails to various editors, I wondered how long it would be until the initial rush of relief from losing my horrible job would pass and I would fall back into the black hole. The fear made me redouble my efforts to get as many freelance-writing gigs as I could before my mood would sap my initiative.
A phone call to my downstairs neighbor, popular-music historian and WFMU DJ Irwin Chusid, elicited an intriguing lead. Irwin had a friend, a fellow Hobokenite whom I'll call J., who was a New York Post headline writer. In his spare time, he ran a site with entertainment news items and reviews, and was looking for writers. Better still, he was willing to pay — $25 for each short review.
I gave J. a call and was immediately taken with him. He was witty, spoke my pop-culture language, and was gloriously overschooled, most recently at Columbia University. Without knowing what he looked like, I began to foster a crush on him. Fostering crushes was my second-favorite pasttime after staying up late simultaneously eating Cheez Doodles, drinking Diet Pepsi, reading J.M. Barrie's collected plays, and listening to Phil Ochs' The War Is Over best-of with the same seven songs programmed on "repeat."*
We arranged to meet for lunch at my favorite cheap-eats spot, Carmelita's on Washington St. It initially went according to my fantasy; as soon as I saw J.'s face through the restaurant's window, I was smitten. The only thing was, he didn't betray any interest in me beyond friendship. (Indeed, he never has; seven years later, we're still just friends, and my crush is thankfully long gone.)
J. did seem to enoy my conversation, so I persuaded him to pick up the threads of it with me a few days later. This time, we walked around Castle Point Park, where scenes from "On the Waterfront" were filmed. It was a brisk autumn day and J. and I waxed philosophical as we walked amid the falling leaves. He had a similar background to mine; Reform Jewish upbringing, divorced parents, stable dad, artistic mother. Like me, he had fallen away from the faith, but he was a Sinophile and took an interest in Buddhism.
I told him I didn't go for Eastern religion nor for New Age practices. The closest I'd come to supernatural experiences, I said, were some odd nighttime disturbances that had happened a few years back — which were probably the effects of antidepressants.
A few times since I first started taking antidepressants in 1991, I explained, I had what are known as hypnagogic experiences — where I would wake up during the night unable to move. During those times, I would feel a presence in the room and would be terrified — until I would force myself to wake up fully, and find that there was nobody there but me. The experiences, I told him, usually included some sort of sensory input — like the bed shaking, or a breeze inexplicably blowing back and forth over my face.
If I had wanted to, I told J., I could obsess over those mysterious experiences. But there wasn't any point to drawing conclusions from them, because they never made any sense. Even though they felt real at the time, in retrospect there was nothing in them that couldn't have come from my subconscious (with help from the medication).
Still, I missed the experiences. I hadn't had one in a few years, and, despite their being scary, they added some welcome intrigue to my life.
I remember that conversation well because it came back to me a night or two later, when I woke up at around 5 a.m. and thought, Here we go again ...
It was October 22, 1999, about 5 a.m. I woke up and felt that familiar feeling of being in the twilight between sleep and wakefulness, my muscles frozen, as the blood rushed loudly through my ears. That's one of the hallmarks of such an experience; you hear the swirling sound that your brain tunes out when you're awake — just like when you put a seashell to your ear.
Despite the familiarity, it was terrifying just the same. More terrifying than the previous times, actually, because it was punctuated with a loud, bizarre noise that I was sure I heard with my ears and not my imagination. The sound jolted me awake.
Only years later did I figure out what the noise was. I was so scared that I took in a sharp breath through my teeth, which resulted in a high-pitched squawk. Sleepy and already frightened, I didn't even realize I was the source of the noise.
Something else happened too, just before I woke myself up with my gritted-teeth gasp, but I didn't remember it until later that day.
[To be continued ...]
*"One Way Ticket Home," "Tape from California," "The Flower Lady," "Half a Century High" "Rehearsals for Retirement," "Pleasures of the Harbor," and "No More Songs."
I met my friend B.'s mother once, last December 31, when she was in a local hospital recovering from surgery. Although she had lived in the Northeast for most of her life, she remained a real Southern belle, with her long blonde hair and delicate features, and especially her exceedingly gracious manner.
It wasn't surprising to me, seeing her there in her weakened state, that she should seem subdued. Yet, there was something languid and delicate in her manner that almost made me forget that I was in a hospital room. It was sort of like meeting one of Tennessee Williams' faded beauty queens, except that instead of being obsessed with past glories, she was intent on being present — giving her full attention to her guests, and treating them with unaffected, childlike sweetness. She made no complaints about the IV in her arm, nor did she mention the pain she must have been feeling only a day after going under the knife.
Before I arrived, I had thought I was doing something nice for B.'s mother by visiting her in the hospital. But as I stood at her bedside, it was clear that it was the other way around. She was giving me the gift of her presence. I left the room convinced she was a saint.
Yesterday, B. called me, sounding the saddest that I had ever heard him. He told me his mother had been put on a ventilator the night before last, after she suddenly stopped breathing on her own. The last I heard, he was flying cross-country in hope of seeing his mother once more before she dies. Please pray for B., his mother, and all his family.
If you're planning to come to my talk tonight at the Diocese of Rockville Centre's Faith on Tap, watch this space for updates. I'm waiting to hear whether it's still on, or if it will be rescheduled due to the snowfall.
UPDATE: The event is still on (click link above for details), but I just learned the organizers didn't purchase books. I'm bringing a few, but your best bet if you'd like to have me sign a copy is to buy one beforehand if you can.
UPDATE #2, 2/27/07:Had a fine time speaking and meeting people at the event. The Faith on Tap crowd proved to be one of the best that I've had the pleasure to address; warm, friendly, and engaged. It was also great to finally get to meet Gen X Revert, as well as Leticia, Nolan, and others.
In the discussion forums at thrillofthechaste.com, a number of people have been listing pro-chastity tunes. Now a reader named Whistler has suggested one on his blog that I think would make a fab addition to the list: "I'm Not Who I Was," a brand-new song by Brandon Heath. I really like the recording's creative arrangement. (I'm learning that John Davis isn't the only Christian artist making songs that are on the same artistic level as the best secular rock tunes. ) You can hear it on Heath's MySpace page. As for the lyrics, boy, can I relate.
I've long fantasized of writing a "Thrill of the Chaste" theme song, but all I've been able to manage is the title: "I Don't Do That (Anymore)." (That parenthetical is very important.)
Heath recently posted a video of "I'm Not Who I Was" on YouTube that's quite moving (and is — unwittingly, I'm sure — a straight-faced cousin of "Subterranean Rome-Chick Blues"):
What was the most embarrassingly awful stage production that you ever took part in at school?
I can't recall the name of the nightmarish one in which I starred when I was in first grade, when a teacher — what she was thinking, I'll never know — decided to cast me as both of the show's leads. (The parents thought it was a riot when I changed hats and wigs back and forth onstage.) So I'll cast my vote for "A Pink Party Dress," the eighth-grade musical when I was at South Orange (N.J.) Middle School.
The show's director had fallen in love with "A Pink Party Dress" during the one night in 1960 when it hit the New York City stage — rumor had it that, by the time the curtain went down, he was the only audience member left. He personally got Samuel French, Inc. to send over the scripts and sheet music to the show, which were dreadful beyond words.
"A mountain girl yearns for new pink clothes, and a woman from the outside world brings her a present which is, unfortunately, another patched dress. Can be done by an all-female cast.”
I played the "woman from the outside world," a rich lady for whom the poor mountain girl did some kind of menial work at a country club during the previous summer. Out of the goodness of her heart, she makes the trip up to the girl's family's Appalachian home just to give the girl a dress. The girl is buoyant because, ever since she worked for the lady, she has fantasized about owning the lady's "pink party dress."
I regret to say that I can still remember the show's theme, which the girl sings rhapsodically to her uncaring brother before the rich lady arrives:
In a pink party dress Any girl could feel purty and proud Just a pink party dress Like a far-away little pink cloud
The rest of the verse has mercifully escaped me, but the bridge remains:
The party'd be lit up by candles The floors and the table would shine. And everything I'd ever wanted would be mine!
The girl's brother attempts to tear down her fantasy by telling her that she is doomed to a life of hardship. He gets to sing the comedy tune "Womenfolk Work for Menfolk." I can remember only the ending:
BROTHER: Womenfolk work for menfolk, while the menfolk take their —
SISTER: And the gals forsake their —
BOTH: While the menfolk take their ease!
It's after that number that the rich lady hits the scene to provide the deus ex machina. She makes a bit of small talk and attempts to hide her disgust as the mountain girl's widowed mother offers her snuff. Finally — and you can feel the mountain girl's suspense — Rich Lady opens the dress box she's brought, revealing a garment that looks like a potato sack.
Rich Lady leaves, the mother tells the mountain girl to buck up, the brother goes "ha, ha," or something, and the mountain girl is left to sing a mournful reprise of "Pink Party Dress" in half-time before running off the stage crying. The End.
"... good on you for reminding your audience that girls not necessarily always lose their hymen through sex. Of course, not that this stops some virginity fetishists from judging them. Horseback riding, tampons and acting on stage are also 'immodest,' i.e. distractions from the singular need to treat your body like it's the possession of some future husband."
I had no idea that such virginity fetishists walked among us — let alone that there were enough of them to warrant referring to them as "some" and not "a tiny handful of characters well removed from organized religion."
But apparently there are — that is, unless I'm taking Marcotte too seriously or quoting her out of context. (It's been done before.)
If I'm interpreting Marcotte correctly, then I ask her to please tell me who these people are who won't allow virgins to be equestrians or thespians, and who forbid them to use internal sanitary protection. I promise her that if she identifies them, I will add my blog voice to hers in criticizing them. Our posts will be all the more powerful because they'll be complementary. I'll aim mine at the readers who go in for EWTN; she can reach those who go in for NSFW.
So far, I've found one group of virginity fetishists that sorta meets thethreespecifications. But in the absence of further clarification from Marcotte, I don't want to assume it's the one she had in mind.
Continuing our dialogue on whether it is right to promote virginity (or — as I prefer — chastity) more to young women than to young men, Elizabeth Kantor begins her response to my "Women on the virgin" post by arguing that men and women experience different kinds of fallout from premarital sex.
It is precisely because of these differences, she says, that chastity should not be taught the same way to everyone — regardless of modern ideals of equality of the sexes. "Has the belief that men and women are essentially the same been a great support and encouragement for chastity?" she asks.
No argument there; different sexes call for different approaches. I believe it is possible to have equality without sameness, so I don't see why one would need to teach chastity — let alone math — the exact same way to men and women, providing the end results are the same.
But Elizabeth's not talking merely about teaching chastity in different ways. She believes in elevating female virginity above male virginity as the ideal expression of chastity:
Why shouldn't a young woman appreciate the fact that she has a bodily integrity that's as yet unbreached, and decide it's important to her to maintain that integrity?
That's a very old-fashioned way of talking, but I think it's truer than most of what we hear on this subject today.
A special concern for female virginity was a crucial part of a widespread attitude of respect for men and women's very different qualities, which gave individual men and women support for better choices.
Something about that reference to "a bodily integrity that's as yet unbreached" awakens my inner Amanda Marcotte.
Marcotte, I'm certain, would attack such a philosophy as hymen-centric[link contains obscene language]. What disturbs me is that she would be right.
I'm having a hard time putting this into words, because I respect where Elizabeth is coming from, but there is something very discomfiting for me about a philosophy of chastity that is based upon women keeping their hymen. This is exactly what I have been trying to counter in writing The Thrill of the Chaste — the idea that technical virginity is the same as chastity, or that only virgins can be chaste. (As St. Francis de Sales has noted, St. Mary Magdalene was no virgin, but, once she began to live a holy life, she joined the virgins who followed after the Virgin Mary and was no less chaste than them.)
There are women who, through no fault of their own — tampons, horseback riding, falling halfway off a stage at a Jewish summer camp in Bruceville, Texas, in 1978 — have no hymen. Is their "bodily integrity" less pure?
If the answer is no — that bodily integrity is based on chastity and not connective tissue — then why is it a "special concern" for women and not for men?
What men do with their bodies affects their integrity every bit as much as what women do. Please, let's leave the hymen talk to the Marcottes of this world (who, with due respect to Elizabeth, do it so much more colorfully than either she or I can) and encourage everyone, men and women, to understand the true, nontechnical meaning of chastity.
Please.
UPDATE: Elizabeth has posted a thoughtful response. She writes that she doesn't "think it's quite accurate" for me to write that she believes "in elevating female virginity above male virginity as the ideal expression of chastity." I apologize for mischaracterizing her views. What had confused me was her using examples of only female virginity when discussing her ideals. At any rate, I greatly appreciate her engaging in this discussion with me and will let her latest post be the last word. I believe she and I agree on core values; any disagreements we may have are in the area of emphasis.
12:53 AM |
Thursday, February 22, 2007
National Review gets The Thrill
"The right-wing anti-sex polemic is a seriously tired genre. Its Reefer Madness tone tends to inspire doubt that its authors have any idea what they are talking about; it attracts critical mirth (e.g., 'This essay must have been even better in the original Arabic!'); and, in the end, it does more harm than good to the cause of those of us who believe that today's hypersexualization is a sign no longer of personal liberation but of America's protracted cultural immaturity. All the more praise, then, to New York journalist Dawn Eden, who has produced a book called The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On (W, 224 pp., $13.99 &8212; an intelligent, culturally aware, and (not least important) highly entertaining account of how one woman was able to break free of a culture of sexual objectification.
"The author makes a strong case for the traditional moral position of eschewing sex before marriage. But her book should not, on that account, be avoided by the very large audience of those who view that position skeptically. Indeed, her book may have more to teach them than it does those who already have leanings toward the traditional point of view. Dawn Eden reminds us forcefully that our happiness does not, in fact, lie in the cycle of sexual gratifications, or in being a "winner" in the manhunting/womanhunting game; it consists of a life of love and respect for others, whether one is married or single. An analogy to temperance literature suggests itself: When you start asking yourself, 'Why do I drink so much?' you may not end up being a teetotaler, but you will be wiser about who you really are - and what hole you are really trying to fill with that third martini."
— Books editor Michael Potemra, from his "Shelf Life" column in the March 5 edition of National Review (online for subscribers only)
Buy The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On at Amazon.com.
Elizabeth Kantor of Human Events' Right Angle blog offers a three-part response to my criticism of the way that she and another writer promote female virginity on its own rather than promoting virginity for both sexes. (I also criticized the writers' emphasis on virginity rather than chastity, something she touches on only in passing.)
I'm in complete agreement with the first part and the second part of her response. The second evokes G.K. Chesterton and St. Francis de Sales with its insights into Christian history, capped off with the persuasive assertion, "If we want to keep or restore the parts of the Christian sexual ethic that seem attractive to us, hadn't we better be careful about rejecting the parts that we don't find attractive, or don't understand?"
The final part of Elizabeth's response, however, fails to convince me that there is good reason to promote virginity for women more than for men. She writes:
Now, we can all agree that bad sexual behavior is equally wrong for men and women. If a double standard means giving men permission to behave badly, that can't be right. But if it means reminding women that there are special reasons for them to take chastity seriously, I'm all for it.
Just because fornication is equally wrong for men and women, does it follow that it's equally harmful in every particular?
Men and women have equal souls, but they don't have the same biologies or psychologies.
She backs up her argument by noting that women can get pregnant and are vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases that can damage their fertility, adding, "We're fertile — and sexually attractive — for a shorter period of time."
The Argument from Short-Term Sexual Attractiveness completely eludes me as a reason for virginity until marriage.
As for the other reasons Elizabeth offers, they still fail to convince that virginity should be promoted to women more than it should be to men. For one thing, if men are left to their own devices, they'll still get sexually transmitted diseases and pass them on to the few poor women who didn't get the virginity memo. But more than that, while the assumption that fornication doesn't hurt men as much as it hurts women may be true on a psychological level, it is certainly not true on a spiritual level. Any Catholic priest will tell you that the sin is the same regardless of whether a man or woman commits it. Elizabeth makes it clear that her promotion of virginity is based upon her faith. Taking the sinfulness of fornication into account would seem to require her all the more to emphasize virginity for both sexes alike.
I say that fornication may be less psychologically harmful to men. Truthfully, however, with regard to the "Sex and the City" question — "Can a woman have sex like a man?" — I am no longer convinced that a man can "have sex like a man," let alone a woman. When I think back upon the men I have known who have had premarital sex, none of them escaped being damaged by it. Perhaps they were not damaged in ways that psychologists measure, such as the tendency to suicide and depression (though a 2003 study did find that — sexually active teenage boys as well as girls had a higher rate of depression than abstinent teens), but I believe they were damaged in other ways, such as being:
Less able to achieve intimacy in relationships
Less able to maintain long-term relationships
More likely to seek out pornography
Less secure in their faith
Less mature
Less able to choose and focus upon long-term life goals
To promote virginity for women (or what I would advocate, chastity, which is attainable for both virgins and nonvirgins) while leaving men as a secondary concern gives men up to suffer the consequences of their premarital sex while forcing women to fend for themselves against poorly catechized men. This is something akin to treating only half of a swimming pool with chlorine.
As Christians, we are called to love our neighbor. Sometimes that means sounding an alarm where everyone can hear it — not just those whom we may think need the message most.
1:42 AM |
The Associated Press story about a baby girl that survived after only 21 weeks' gestation omits the fact that doctors would have let the girl die. The mother lied about her daughter's age to save her. See-Dubya has the story.
"Marriage is that relationship between man and woman under whose shadow alone there can be true reverence for the mystery, dignity and sacredness of life. Scripture represents marriage not merely as a Mosaic ordinance, but as part of the scheme of Creation, intended for all humanity. Its sacredness thus goes back to the very birth of man.
"They do less than justice to this Divine institution who view it in no other light than as a civil contract. There is a vital difference between a marriage and a contract. In a contract the mutual rights and obligations are the result of an agreement, and their selection and formulation may flow from the momentary whim of the parties. In the marriage relation, however, such rights and obligations are high above the arbitrary will of both husband and wife; they are determined and imposed by Religion as well as by the Civil Law. The failure of the contract view to bring out this higher sphere of duty and conscience, which is of the very essence of marriage, led a philosopher like Hegel to denounce that view as a Schaendlichkeit [shamefulness]."
What better way to kick off the Lenten season than with a talk about chastity? Dr. Brian Kane, chairman of philosophy and theology at DeSales University in Center Valley, Pa., says he didn't realize the date on which he'd booked me to speak was Ash Wednesday, so I guess it's just a fortunate coincidence. I'll be talking about The Thrill of the Chaste, natch, at the 7:30 p.m. event, which is open to all. More information is available on the DeSales University Web site.
What real-life story would you like to have seen featured on the front page of today's newspaper besides Britney and Anna Nicole?
[Update: I really would like to know what else is going on in the world that is being bumped off the front page for bald Britney — though fake stories are fun too.]
Some pure pop music to start your Monday — a live rendition of "Stained Glass Window" by Superdrag singer John Davis:
I just got Davis's 2005 solo debut on the recommendation of reader Framermike and it blows me away. Sorry to say that this live video is more laid back than his recorded performance, and the creaky vocals aren't his best, but at least you can tell that he knows how to write a gossamer melody.
Mist rises from the Delaware River near Morning Star House of Prayer on the morning of October 18, 2006. It was the last day that I saw Sister Gerry.
"Now that I have made the transition from this life to a new life, I promise to hold each of you in my heart and to be your advocate before the throne of God.
"My prayer for you is, 'Let your light shine before all that they may see the good that you do and give glory to God, the Source of all light.'
"I will always love you."
Those are the words of Sister Geraldine Calabrese, MPF, part of a reflection that she wrote with the intention that it be read at her funeral. The entire text of the reflection is on the Web site of the Morning Star House of Prayer, which also features beautiful photos of Sister Gerry and a song for which she wrote lyrics.
Here is what I wrote about her in The Thrill of the Chaste:
I am typing this from a retreat house near the Delaware River, where I have come to write. The house is run by a pair of nuns who have retired from teaching. One of them, Sister Gerry, has been blind since the age of twenty-four due to a genetic disorder. Now eighty-two, she is remarkably vibrant, despite having cancer.
Have you ever met someone who positively radiated grace? I’ve had that experience on rare occasions, nearly always in the presence of someone old and frail. It seems that God gives something extra to older people who are suffering pain or a disability — if they’re open to receiving it.
Sister Gerry has that inner glow of one who has asked the Lord with all her heart to make her an instrument of His love and peace. Her eyes sparkle in a way that I’ve never witnessed in a blind person.
The other day, I discussed with Sister Gerry a book she had cowritten about the founder of her religious order, called Forever Yes: The Story of Lucy Filippini. A copy of the book was in my room at the retreat, and I’d begun reading about how the shy young woman living in seventeenth-century Italy reacted when the Church asked her to direct schools for girls and women.
Lucy went through an intense, dark period of soul-searching, feeling uncertain of God’s will. Finally, feeling no comfort or consolation despite her prayers, she stepped out in faith — “quivering” out a “yes,” as the book puts it.
Once Lucy made the decision to accept the daunting task, her comfort and consolation returned. But she had to take that first step on her own.
The story reminded me so much of my own life — times when, feeling trapped in darkness, I had taken a halting step out into the light. I might have felt stuck in an unsatisfying job or relationship, or just in a rut.
My experience of darkness could include fear of disappointment, fear of failing publicly, fear of ridicule — or all of the above. Most of all, I feared that there might be nothing out there for me —no job, or boyfriend, or life worth living, outside the familiar unhappiness that had become unbearable. When you’re facing that kind of hopelessness, you need more than ordinary strength to open the door that leads to a life of hope and opportunity. ...
... I told Sister Gerry of the memories that her description of Lucy’s anguish — and the eventual comfort she received — brought back to me. Then she told me that she had drawn upon personal experience as she and her co-author, a fellow nun, wrote that part of the book.
It was her reaction to becoming blind.
“I realized I had a choice,” she said.
Either she could believe her life was over, she explained — or she could say yes to blindness, and trust in what God had in store for her.
Looking at Sister Gerry — seeing her deep brown eyes with their improbable sparkle — couldn’t doubt that she had made the right choice. She had given so much to the world — and still had so much to give. Her existence alone was a gift.
When I was having casual sex, there was one moment I dreaded more than any other. I dreaded it not out of fear that the sex would be bad, but out of fear that it would be good.
If the sex was good, then, even if I knew in my heart that the relationship wouldn’t work, I would still feel as though the act had bonded me with my sex partner in a deeper way than we had been bonded before. It’s in the nature of sex to awaken deep emotions within us — emotions that are distinctly unwelcome when one is trying to keep it light.
A college senior from Dallas with deep brown eyes and thick hair to match was describing a man she had hooked up with a couple of times. Despite her best efforts, she said, she was falling for him and that worried her.
"It will suck if it's bad," she said, "but it will suck even more if it's good."
— Laura Sessions Stepp, "Love's Labor's Lost: What Young Women Are Saying About Their Aversion to Emotional Ties," Washington Post 9:54 PM |
As you can see, I'd picked up a bit of the Cleveland accent during my 48 hours there. Also, someone dear to me has pointed out that when I talk about the temptation to have sex, my stammer goes into overdrive.
We are the Custard Pie Appreciation Consortium God save the George Cross and all those who were awarded them We are the Sherlock Holmes English Speaking Vernacular Help save Fu Manchu, Moriarty and Dracula We are the Office Block Persecution Affinity God save little shops, china cups and virginity
I think the way to get [respect for chastity] back, ironically, is not to put so much emphasis on virginity. Virginity has replaced chastity in our culture's language, in the sense that people refer to chastity as secondary virginity. I've actually had very good-natured arguments with fellow Christians about this, because people who teach abstinence in schools rely upon the term secondary virginity. But in my view, the term secondary virginity implies that you can only be chaste if you are a virgin.
So if you're not a virgin, you have to pretend to be one in order to be chaste. Not all of us can be virgins. For some of us, that train has already left the station. But we all can be chaste.
Kantor responds:
Spinning post-virginity chastity as 'second virginity' is, I agree, silly -- even, you can argue, verging on wishful thinking and reality denial, which is the absolutely last thing the defenders of traditional sexual morality need to inject into this discussion. (There's more than enough contrary-to-fact nonsense coming from the other side: "it's just a mass of cells," Heather Has Two Mommies, "at the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence," &c., &c.)
And it certainly makes more sense for women who've had scarring sexual experiences to look forward to a post-virginity chastity than to look backward toward the virginity that they've lost.
But I do think a return to a healthier understanding of sexuality in our society would necessarily mean more -- not less -- emphasis on virginity.
Notice how feminists hate both the cult of virginity and the idealization of motherhood with an equal passion. The Virgin Mary is offensive ("super-patriarchal") to the Amanda Marcottes of the world for two reasons. The ideal of sexual purity must be, in some mysterious way, demeaning to women. And celebrating motherhood must mean seeing women as "nothing but vessels."
Feminists think the doctrine of the Virgin Birth has contributed to the oppression of women. Yet another contrary-to-fact belief.
Ask yourself, in what culture has the Virgin Birth been believed, and celebrated in art, song, and story? That's right -- Western culture. And in what culture, of all the cultures in world history, have women enjoyed the most freedom and dignity? That's right. The answer is just the same.
While I agree with Kantor that it is important to acknowledge the dignity of virginity, I don't believe that the anti-feminist argument she uses, which is essentially political, is convincing on a personal level. Most people don't make choices based on their desire to tick off Amanda Marcotte.
More to the point, I think that writers such as Kantor and the Heritage Foundation's Patrick F. Fagan, who is the leading writer and researcher on abstinence-related issues, need to bulk up their arguments considerably if they wish to raise the status of virginity in American culture. Kantor's argument hinges on the doctrine of the Virgin Birth — a distinctly female prototype, and one all but overwhelmed by its religious significance — while Fagan's, in his February 14 National Review Online article "Virgins Make the Best Valentines," is based entirely upon statistics relating to female virginity.
Fagan's statistics are jarring, to be sure — he quotes a survey showing that for women 30 or older, those had one sexual partner in a lifetime) were by far most likely to be still in a stable relationship (80 percent). "Sleeping with just one extra partner dropped that probability to 54 percent," he writes. "Two extra partners brought it down to 44 percent."
However, as a woman, I can easily see how one could come away from that article asking, "Why is it so important to the Heritage Foundation to stop women from having sex before marriage? Why not men?"
Coincidentally, a Dawn Patrol commenter who identifies herself as Kellie writes a response to my Beliefnet interview:
As much as I dislike resorting to "PC" writing, I believe on [chastity] it may be a worthwhile endeavor. There are so many people enraged (enraged for some crazy reason that I don't understand — what we think doesn't in any way impede their own actions. but I digress) with our way of thinking. Why not challenge those folks by stating up front that this is in no way accepting the standard of the past; a past in which men are to sow their oats while women are to stay pure and innocent. This (ours) is a new world —a new way of thinking in which men and women are to be equal in their quest to understand the depths of love by the control they exhibit over their bodies and the emphasis they put instead on the development of relationships. That, after all, is what makes us human and not animals.
I couldn't agree more.
Separating virginity from chastity, and implying that virginity alone is the ultimate goal for the unmarried, sets young people up for technical virginity. The efforts of Planned Parenthood and others to end abstinence-only education are fueled by such misconceptions (although those organizations' arguments are largely based upon inaccurate depictions of such programs). I know this because, as I write in my book, I lost my innocence many years before I lost my virginity.
I believe that virginity until marriage should be upheld as an ideal. But it is ideal only when virginity represents a perfect expression of the chastity that everyone, men and women, should practice — not when it is promoted primarily to one sex, and certainly not when virgins are presented as the only people who can live meaningful chaste lives.
12:52 AM |
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Good morning! I don't plan to post today, but invite you to pray for Sister Geraldine Calabrese, who passed away on Monday. Actually, at her funeral tomorrow, I would not be surprised at all if those there asked her to pray for them; there is no doubt among those who knew her that she went straight up. I hope to blog more about her soon. She was the blind nun I wrote about in Chapter 19 of my book and the co-author of Forever Yes: The Story of Lucy Filippini. (The lyrics and spoken interlude to the song on the above-linked site were penned by her.)
For most of my life, there have been two certainties about Valentines Day: I will not have a date, and my father will send me a jumbo box of chocolates.
Dad introduces me to the water at Henry Hudson Park, upstate N.Y., July 1969
Dad moved away when I was a kid, a few years after my parents split. I knew him then as a workaholic who sometimes had to be reminded of my birthday — but he never forgot February 14.
As a child, although I never minded getting candy, Dad's Valentine gift made me a bit sad because it left me wanting more. It reminded me how much I wanted his presence — not just his presents.
Once I began dating and Valentine's Day became a reminder that I wanted to be part of a couple, the sadness turned to pathos. Dad's heart-shaped box of chocolates, arriving every year with perfect predictability, became for me an excuse to feel sorry for myself — because the only man who remembered me on Valentine's Day was my father.
Most years, I would have a boyfriend at some point. Sometimes the relationship would last several months. But come Valentine's Day, it seemed as though I was under some sort of curse. No matter how serious my boyfriend and I were, we would always break up before February 14 rolled around.
Some of the breakups were due to simple incompatibility, the sort of thing that can take a while to discover when two people have a strong initial attraction to one another. Actually, when it comes down to it, I was incompatible with all the men I've dated; I don't believe that any of my past boyfriends, had I acted differently, could have become the great love of my life. But I now realize that the overriding reason most of my relationships ended as they did was because of premarital sex.
From as far back as I can remember, I wanted to be married. I also had the feeling that I would be happiest if I reserved sex for marriage. This was confirmed for me once I lost my virginity. Having sex with men who were not married to me — who would go all the way physically but not emotionally — hurt me inside.
It hurt me, because I keenly felt the intense intimacy of the act — that I was synchronizing my every motion and breath to that of my boyfriend, letting him get as close to me as was physically possible, literally under my skin. Such intimacy was painful when I knew that my boyfriend could, if he wanted, easily walk out the door afterwards and be out of my life — and I could do the same if I chose.
No matter what people say about marriage not being certain — and I'm well aware of that because of the failure of my own parents' union — a sexual relationship outside of marriage, when either partner can walk away with complete impunity, is infinitely less secure.
The physical vulnerability I experienced in sexual intimacy was intolerable when coupled with the risk of rejection. So I created a dichotomy, to protect myself. The more I would open myself up physically to a man, the more I would harden myself emotionally, closing myself off in order to stay in control and not get hurt.
I told myself that I could always open myself up as the relationship progressed, once I felt secure. But that never happened — and the very act of emotional detachment only made me less capable of sharing the love that I fervently wanted to experience.
Avoiding sex was out of the question, and not just because I enjoyed it. I believed that no man would marry me unless he had sex with me first.
For a man to forgo sex until he and I exchanged vows, he would have to love me so much that he would seek my greater good. I did not believe that any man would do that, because I did not believe a man would see anything in me that would be more important to him than his own sexual desire. My intrinsic value, I thought, was dependent upon my being willing to put out sans vows.
That all changed after I became a Christian at age 31 and began to explore chastity.
When I first started living chastely, I tried to tell myself that Valentine's Day was just like any other day. There was no need to treat it with such superstition, as though my love life would be ruined for the entire year if I wasn't treated to a candlelight meal on February 14.
The curse lifted a bit. I stopped obsessing on my loneliness and started to count my blessings, becoming more thankful for friends, family, church, and opportunities to reach out to help people outside my single-woman bubble. Dad's chocolates became less depressing and my co-workers sure appreciated my sharing them. But ultimately I still felt that there was something special about Valentine's Day, and that something existed for other people — not me.
It wasn't until 2005, when I was in my first-ever relationship with a man who shared my commitment to chastity, that I began to understand the meaning of my father's annual gift.
When Dad sent me those Valentine's chocolates, his generosity was not relative to my gratitude. I didn't have to do anything to earn the gift. All I had to do was exist. Even though at times I resented Dad's giving me one thing when I really wanted another, he was nonetheless giving me a gift, out of the goodness of his heart.
Most of all, Dad's gift taught me that his love was always there, regardless of whether it was welcome. Those heart-shaped boxes represented his opening up his heart to me, year after year.
Entering a chaste relationship, I realized more than ever that love means putting myself on the line like my father does. It's a lesson I could have learned when I was unattached, but I think I especially needed to learn it within a relationship, because that's the toughest and best way to unlearn all the defense mechanisms I used in the past. A supreme irony of chaste dating is that the longer you develop your relationship while keeping your clothes on, the more naked you feel.
My boyfriend and I parted well before Valentine's Day 2006 rolled around. If I were cynical, I could say the curse struck again. But I don't feel that way, because even though the relationship ended, there was something about it that makes me hopeful — something fundamentally different from the way my previous relationships unfolded.
Despite my personal foibles — and there are many — I made a real effort to give of myself to my boyfriend, and he did the same for me. I allowed myself to be vulnerable with him — admittedly, not as vulnerable as I could have been, but still, more so than I had been with any man to whom I gave my body.
After we broke up, instead of resolving to try harder not to be hurt, I resolved to try harder to be even more vulnerable, more giving, more loving in my next relationship. That has since caused me pain; there are times when I wonder, like Neil Young, why do I keep "F****in' Up." But there is a difference between my mistakes now and my mistakes before I was chaste, because I now am making them within a sincere effort to open myself up rather than closing myself off.
Ultimately, I'm learning how to give one man the kind of love that I'm supposed to give to everyone — love that is consistent, unconditional, personal, and persistent. That's the love that my father has given me all these years — the love I was reminded of yesterday when a beautiful tin of Godiva chocolates materialized on my doorstep.
Happy Valentine's Day, Dad. I love you. And thanks to your chocolates, there's more of me to love.
4:01 AM |
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Rite place at the right time
File this one under Why Penance Is a Good Thing.
Since I usually go to confession when it's convenient (picture that word said by the Church Lady with a disdainful sneer), I have had the unhappy experience of being sent away without a penance. Not because my sins weren't penance-worthy, but because the priest, for whatever reason, simply didn't do penances.
Yesterday I had an experience that made me profoundly thankful for a priest who gave me a penance — and not just because it gave me the proverbial sense of closure.
I went to the church across the street from my work — my job requires Sunday labor — and buttonholed the priest afterwards (does a robe even have buttonholes?) to ask if he would hear my confession. I wanted to be all confessed up before giving a talk that night at St. Joseph's in Greenwich Village.
The priest had the time, and when I finished confessing, he gave me my penance: to spend ten minutes praying before the Blessed Sacrament. Considering what a blessing that is, "it isn't really a penance," he added, but I was glad to accept it as one just the same. (Hey, if it comes down to that, I'm a new Catholic, so I wouldn't even think of the proverbial strings of Hail Marys and Our Fathers as really being penance; it's all joy.)
I had to run off to work, so I resolved to do my penance at St. Joseph's before my talk — which I did, at about 7 p.m. that night. I had a prayer book with traditional Catholic prayers, so I went through it and said 10 minutes' worth: Act of Faith, Act of Hope, Act of Love, Prayer to St. Michael, Guardian Angel Prayer, etc., along with the Our Father, Hail Mary, and Miraculous Medal prayer, Memorare, and others, plus petitions for myself and my loved ones. Saying them while kneeling before the tabernacle seemed to give them more meaning.
That was Sunday night. The following day, I received a phone call and learned that a loved one was in the hospital.
My loved one had taken ill shortly before I did my penance — so ill that the person stopped breathing and had to be revived with CPR.
Thank God, my loved one is all right now. I am thankful for that — and thankful that, right at the time that the person nearly died, I was praying before the Blessed Sacrament. If I had not received that penance, I would not have been by the tabernacle at that time.
After getting the call and speaking to my loved one, I phoned a favorite priest and asked his prayers for the person's recovery. I also told him the story of the penance I had been given that led to my prayer at the time that illness struck.
"Right priest, right time," he said.
After a moment's pause, he exclaimed, "God is so good! If He were running for office, I'd vote for Him!"
My Beliefnet interview, which was conducted December 14, is finally out; they'd been saving it for their Valentine's Day package. Read why I say our culture, in order to regain its respect for chastity, should, "ironically, ... not put so much emphasis on virginity."
An interview with me aired today on Australian national radio's Counterpoint show; you can hear it by going to the show's Web site and clicking on the "February 12" audio link. The segment with me is about two-thirds of the way into the show. Many thanks to Michael Duffy and Paul Comrie-Thomson for having me on the show — and for playing "Chastity Rome-Chick Blues"!
Buy The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On at Amazon.com.
My talk and book signing last night at the austere St. Joseph's in Greenwich Village last night went wonderfully. As you can see, the pastor invited me to speak from the pulpit, which was an honor for me, if a bit daunting. (Thanks to Patrick Sweeney for the photo.)
