Balancing Denial with Optimism

Friday November 26, 2004

Balancing Denial with Optimism

One of the challenges for contemporary pastors and preachers is to balance reality with optimism. In the face of a dysfunctional denial of reality, it is the role of prophets and preachers to engage listeners in a conversation not only with the preacher and prophet but also with the reality that faces all us.

Let me give you an example.

Although smoking was never considered a virtue, it was not always considered an unhealthy vice. Three of the four recreation rooms in the seminary were “smokers.” One room was reserved for non-smokers or for those non-smokers who preferred low or no exposure to smoking.

The seminarians on either side of me in theology class were heavy smokers and their cassocks reeked of smoke. Ugh! I was not a smoker at the time and rarely frequented the ‘rec’ rooms designated for smokers. There were designated areas for smoking out of doors and there were cans at all the doors of the seminary for cigarette butts.

Two of the three priests in my parish growing up were cigarette smokers and the third smoked cigars.

My maternal grandfather smoked cigarettes and my paternal grandfather smoked cigars. My parents did not smoke but most of their friends did and so we had an ample supply of ashtrays in our home.

I began smoking in graduate school at the age of 26 just as studies about the possible dangers of smoking were hitting the headlines. My initial response was to turn to the pipe but when I started inhaling the pipe, I realized that filtered cigarettes might be ‘healthier!’ Do you see a pattern here?

As the bad news increased about smoking, my denial increased until I became intransigent in my denial.

Then one day I got the word. It took a battle with the Flu, which turned me off on everything including food and cigarettes. I remember placing a half pack of unsmoked cigarettes on the standing ash tray in the rectory rec room and leaving it there until I recovered from the Flu and then they were too dried out to smoke. I realized that I survived two weeks without a cigarette and realized that I could become a smoke-free zone forever if I so chose despite the fact that there was one other smoker in the rectory.

As my denial subsided, I opened myself to the truth about the dangers of smoking. After getting over my initial guilt about polluting the environment for others, I began to feel better about myself and healthier too. After succumbing to early temptations to reform other smokers, I decided that my example would be a stronger prophetic argument and that I would use words only when necessary. There’s nothing worse than a reformed smoker, drinker or addict of whatever kind.

My initial confidence was broken upon my reassignment as the pastor of St. Joseph in Mendham. It was a challenging assignment and after one week, I lit up my first cigarette after two three years of cigarette sobriety! Ugh! What a downer. However, the voice of the prophet had not been stilled within my deepest self and after three months, I bummed my last cigarette. It was on December 6, 1983 at approximately 1:30 PM! That was my last cigarette.

I still have guilt associated with flashbacks of the times I lit up at home despite my mother’s allergies and how inconsiderate I was of her right to clean air in her own home.

Despite the surge of smoking among young people, we Americans have come a long way in changing our personal smoking habits. More importantly, we now view smoking in public places as a public health issue. Second hand smoke contributes to Cancer as much as the smoke for the smoker. Some personal ‘sins’ are not so personal after all.

What is the point of this diatribe?

Well, by now, most middle or the road Americans and many on the right and left are no longer in denial about the inherent dangers of smoking. Progressive legislation has been effective for the most part thanks to the diffusion of accurate information and those prophetic voices who have not given up on the possibility of change through good information backed up by good legislation and vice versa. Did you notice that the Church was rather slow to add a moral voice to the debate? I have always found that rather interesting. More fodder for my own personal guilt, I suppose.

Now for the application to other vital issues of the day.

Let’s begin with women’s role and women’s rights in society in general and in the Church in particular. Despite in depth interdisciplinary studies and despite prophetic voices from the left, right and center, religious among them, and despite legislation favoring women’s role in government and women’s place in the marketplace, and notwithstanding limited support from the Pope, there is still a great deal of denial about women’s equality in public policy to say nothing of women’s role in the Church.

We have made progress for sure especially in government, but a glass ceiling remains in many corporations in the various layers of management and the acceptance of women in positions of authority in the Roman Catholic Church is very limited indeed.

The feminist movement has probably helped and hurt the cause. There is no prophetic movement that does not bear within it the hidden dangers of excess and overstatement. This was no less true of the great prophets of Israel as it has been of the great prophets of our age, e.g., the Berrigans, the ‘Ralph Naders’ and a host of others who direct our attention to the truth in the face of denial. They challenge our hypocrisy but they also irritate and at times harden our intransigence, which in turn may push them to extremes. Jesus was one such prophet who spoke often in parables so that “hearing it, they might not understand.” In other words, Jesus’ words had their desired effect only in those who were disposed to listen and understand. The others became more hardened in their denial.

This having been stated, the consciousness of ‘the many’ has been raised to the extent that exclusionary language is no longer considered acceptable in many quarters. Church liturgists have been more than prophetic in their efforts to update and upgrade liturgical texts in order to bring them into harmony with contemporary biblical and sociological studies but Church authorities have not responded with much enthusiasm. In fact, they have stymied their efforts.

The prophetic voice of Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister has reinforced the thinking of both women and men in their desire for a greater voice in the deliberations of clerical authorities that continue to dominant Church life. Indeed, she is not universally accepted but she and many other articulate women are making a difference not because they are speaking a new truth but more so because they are igniting a flame of truth that has lain dormant in the hearts of many women and men. In the words of Teilhard de Chardain, they are giving voice to” an idea come of age.”

Prophets give a new lens through which we are able to perceive reality in a new light. The lens has the effect of broadening our view and expanding our consciousness. This enables us to see areas and angles of truth that we either overlooked before or consciously denied.

The so-called “women’s issue” is no longer just a women’s issue. It is an issue for the political, corporate and religious ‘worlds’ and touches almost every aspect of our lives as individuals, men and women, and as a family.

Of course, sexism is related to feminism and other ‘isms’ in the world and surely in the Church and touches on other issues ranging from sexuality to clericalism and the abuse of power.

The uncovering of abuse of minors in the Church by priests and religious as difficult as it has been for both victim/survivors and for the Church at large, it has proven to be the doorway toward greater understanding of the need for greater accountability among Church leaders and greater inclusion of the lay faithful at the highest levels of Church leadership.

There is reason for a great deal of optimism if for no other reason than the fact that there is no going back to the days when ‘pray, pay and obey’ was the rule of thumb for Roman Catholics. Prophetic groups such as VOTF and SNAP as important as they may be will not change the Church however. Only the increasing awareness of Catholics in the pew and their heightened consciousness will lead to a new way of thinking that will lead to the necessary reforms based on a broader understanding of Church and the inclusion of all its members in its deliberations and in its governance.

A word of caution.

Warrior-like posturing and combative language will not have their desired effect any more than preemptive strikes in battle, whatever the case and cause. Reformed smokers, recovering alcoholics and converted addicts who moralize at others tend to increase the level of the denial in others rather than convert them. Tyranny from the left or right is tyranny and ultimately contaminates the environment. Truth is always the victim.

There is a spirituality lacking in many reform movements and a pessimism that belies the truth of the message of Good News that Jesus Christ came not to judge but to liberate. We judge ourselves by our own myopia and selective blindness.

Optimism is not a false hope or the denial of the evil that infects the thinking of good people. Optimism is based on the three virtues of faith, hope and love, i.e., the firm belief that God who reveals him/herself in creation, who revealed him/herself in Jesus will continue to break through the darkness of closed minds and will soften hardened hearts; the well-founded hope that what God has promised, God will fulfill in God’s time using ‘the salami technique,’ one thin slice at a time; and above all, the indiscriminate love demanded by the Gospel that does not disqualify or exclude anyone from the feast that God has prepared for all who search for God, the ultimate truth, goodness and beauty, through whatever path or plan that excludes the ‘wisdom’ of any sincere and single-minded pilgrim.

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