Really----What is Human Nature?

                                          Really----What is Human Nature?

When I was an adenoidal sophomore in college I was fascinated by the difficulty of definition. It seemed the more basic a term, the more difficult it was to define. A Professor would ask me to define, for example, a  book or a rose. I would stumble and sputter. But in handling  more complicated  terms, I was  fluid and verbal. Tautology  in human communication, is commonplace. It amused me to observe students in graduate psychology studies who, when asked to define “Intelligence”, would reply that   “Intelligence is that which intelligence tests are designed to measure.” There were so many cognitive side  streets and copouts to traverse that we could always find some  lame  justification for our positions. It has always been so with me and as, I suppose, with many others. An intellectual cop-out, in the instance of this essay, could be something like “Human nature is that which empowers human beings to be and function naturally.”

But, recently, a very urbane, sophisticated book publisher jogged me into thinking about a taken-for-granted- term I was using without definition of it. He rejected a monumental manuscript of mine,  stating, among other legitimate criticisms,  that nowhere did I ever define what I  saw as “human nature”, a term I used generously throughout the work. So, dutifully, I asked myself “What really is human nature?”   I found many perceptions, my own and a multitude of others..

 Some elites say you can buy any one ultimately.  Everyone has his “price.” Just  offer him enough of some kind of bribe and he’ll give in. Politicians, business people, theatrical people, sports figures, the Church,  they  all have a weak spot!  “It’s only human nature.”   We are all envious, proud, selfish, greedy, lazy, insensitive  and mean on some level. Sex drives, also, demand outward expression. Spending time trying to promote chastity, especially with young people tyis a waste of time and a joke. “It’s only human nature.” They all “fool around”.  Teens are going to do “it”. Everybody does.   It’s doing “what comes naturally.” Everyone needs some affection or love or attention. Whatever human nature is or is not, it demands companionship and “being with others.”  Copulation is part of this Human nature and will always be around as long as the human instinct for survival exists!

All you really can do is limit the damage done to self or others. All you                                                                              can do is to make your brief, meaningless span on earth as pleasant                                                                                                                                                                                           and long lasting as possible. So give in and accept reality!        

So goes the much thinking in our era. Defeatist. Damaging.  Corrosive. Bleak.  While partly true, it is the Gospel of the Half Truth.   The description above is not really a full picture of the human nature. It is a skewed and inaccurate battle cry of much of our populace.  And a tragic battle cry that shrieks boredom and low self esteem. It insinuates that “man” is really too weak and too “human” to resist the call of the easy way out.  “I’m only human” is not only a copout but an almost universal justification for anything the human does or endues. But, I am interested in more than function. I seek what this human nature is—in itself!

 I suppose the publisher is right. I haven’t defined something I am taking for granted. Yet, commonly, we say “ It’s only human  nature…” Perhaps, this is a case of everyone functioning  under his own perception while differing from everyone else’s. To a shark  mating and hunting for food is its nature—but it is a shark. To a dog  pleasing its master/mistress  is what its nature demands—but it  is a dog,  male or female. To a tree, nature means that leaves bloom in the spring and die in the fall. This is its nature—but it is a tree. While one might say that the best one can do is offer a descriptive definition of human nature, Christians claim there is a real possibility to truly plumb this mystery for spiritual and intellectual satisfaction and profound benefit.

But the concern of this paper is the nature of a human being –no other for the moment. So, what is human nature?  First of all, the term, Nature. It speaks  to that which makes something what it is. It speaks to the reason something exists. Atheists must ultimately claim that nothing has a nature. There is no meaning. There is no purpose. There is, beyond physics, neuroscience and chemistry, nothing but illusion. But, since these physical sciences can give only an abstract understanding of “things”, consistently  there is basically nothing, ultimately, to the honest atheist.    Physics, for example, tells us nothing about the inner nature of things that flesh out abstract structure.   It has been said that physics in fact is unintelligible unless there is more to reality than it tells us. This reduces life to a Reductio ad absurdum. Such dreary fantasy is unacceptable to my mind and to millions of others. Most of us intuit beyond such limitation and ask questions and make challenges. 

In my own questing for some kind of reasonable defined nition of human nature”, I quizzed a colleague (who is a professional, academic philosopher-- see footnote) on his perception of the term. Though wedded to intellectual resolution through natural law thinking, he instantly suggested the Genesis insight.  Namely that God, the Creator, made man in His own image, with an intellect with which man could reason, analyze, and see humor and with a will with which man could choose, decide and love. “In God’s image” would mean that these faculties would be spiritual, physically non-dimensional. Then I remembered  a phrase I had used many times myself  that we were called to  be “participators in the Divine Nature..”  But, of course.  Unite the faculties of intellect and will (the Divine Image) to the body and we now have full human nature. And there had to be a reason for this Creation which reason becomes part of the definition.

But,  then , I fancied, there is the whole question of the Adam and Eve  “thing.” Christianity teaches that somewhere along the generational Line there was some kind of great aboriginal calamity which is commonly called “Original sin.”  This Original “Fall” tainted the whole of the then human species, i.e. the primal parents, the aforementionedy Adam and Eve. All descendants of this Pair would inherit and pass on the wounded (but not evil nor corrupt) tainted  “Nature”. All descendants, because of the wound of Original sin, would be inclined to sin, categorized as the Seven Capital Sins flowing from this original tragedy (i.e. inherent inclinations to a series of misbehaviors). How this recalled for me the famous Wordsworth description of the Mother of Jesus,  “Our tainted nature’s solitary boast” as a poetic  acknowledgement of the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. Clearly this all presupposes the role of the “body” in definition. Body and soul “make” the Person who possesses this Human Nature.

But it would be important to note that  the  “inclination” with its coincidental temptations is not sinful in itself. There would be no pre- determined inevitability for evil or weakness to prevail since the Original sin would only darken the intellect and weaken the Uwill. It did not destroy the original powers of thinking and loving. So, the possibility of rising to share in the Divine Nature looms largely real for the believer. While the Original trial centered on the lie that “Ye shall be like  gods”  if you disobey Him, the truth  is that You shall share in His nature if you  obey Him. 

This “Nature” of the created tainted human being would be real since the very Creator Who allowed such things as rebellion to His will, at the same time, provides aid and help to resist the lure of Temptation and to rise to holiness and to unbelievable levels of generosity, love, courage and goodness. This is  called “Grace”  which is powerful and “amazin’”. So while “man” would be ever tempted to Pride, covetousness, sloth, wrath,  lust, envy ,gluttony, hatred, insensitivity, ingratitude  and bigotry as dictated by his wounded, inherited nature, even with the harmful effects of the Original sin, his outlook should be optimistic and bright.

‘Man’ would, as the Blessed Apostle Paul noted, be ever torn by interior tension in that on the one hand he does what he does not will, yet on the  other hand , does not what he wills. While his separation from God, the Creator, was healed  through the sacrifice of God’s own Son, Jesus, the effects of this Fall would remain and Man would hear the  alluring Siren cry “Ye shall be like God”. The central problem of the human being would be the residual echo of the Great Lie: You can be God. So man has ever striven for the perfection which belongs to God alone, with the inevitable frustrating results. Man has constantly compared himself to others in the dynamic drive to be superior, to be above all others as is God. Hence, the commands given by God is Thou shalt not  have strange gods before me.  All sin is reducible to this order. The temptation not to strive for full human nature is strong. The inclinations to “sin” are powerful and difficult to control.                                                   It is not easy to be a truly human being. It is easier to settle for less and “give in.”

Obviously, then, the person, both body and soul, who is informed by and who possesses the human nature is a complex being. Superficial definitions  are probably wrong or at least very wanting.    “O Man, strange composite of heaven and earth” wrote John Henry Cardinal Newman in the “Dream of Gerontius”.  But, Cardinal Basil Hume wrote in his “Turning  to God”,  “there is in the composition of the human being a need to turn to God.” There is deep within the human nature a certain destiny which must be found if one is to have a satisfactory definition. St. Augustine  in  the “Confessions” stated the  destiny of man in these terms: “Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” To define human nature by functions  and usage is limited and relatively easy. That had been my own failing in perception like scores of others.  Human nature, by its own nature, is attuned to God. Any real definition must include that dimension. The Publisher who depressed me with his rejection of my manuscript has perhaps gifted me with a commission to think. Maybe that is what I can do with my eternity!

What does “Sic transit gloria mundi” mean?

He was a Paulist priest “star.” He could do almost everything spectacularly well. He impacted the lives of multitudes. So, a large white marble “Icon” or plaque was constructed in his honor listing his triumphs and priestly labors for all to see. Yet as the years went on, his name faded from public awareness and attention focused on current affairs, other events and achievements of others.. The plaque, finally, wound up against a basement wall wedged between trash boxes and musty old furniture. 

Should a research scholar writing the history of the earlier Paulist priests ask to see the famous icon, he might be greeted with a quizzical look and an honest question…” Alexander who?” Such a discursive narrative is not unusual. It is the stuff of which time is partially made. The human mind so operates perhaps for its own survival. How often do we hear ” The King is dead. Long live the King”? Or variations thereof ? 

I recall with great clarity the instance of the Paulist priest who was universally viewed as our rare Saint. At the funeral Mass, heavily attended by the members of his community, his virtues were formally sung and poetic opinions were raised about his quick entrance into Paradise. Yet at lunch not one word was spoken of him..only eager observations about baseball, the weather or community gossip. It was as if that Icon of holiness had never lived. So quickly this communal phenomenon occured after the somewhat mechanical rituals of praise. 

Was such behavior a kind of defense? Perhaps even a need to blot out the “elephant” in one’s own awareness? That I too must die? It is the experience of most human beings that we forget frighteningly quickly those whom we have loved and to whom we promised eternal fealty? As time passes, so does clarity and sharp recollection. The media, except for bright eyed zealots, often run by the adage “Nothing is so dead as yesterday’s news”. 

Yet perhaps there are deep emotional drives unseen and unrecognized operating within the apparantly sophisticated and escatalogically oriented priests? 

Was it some kind of masculine masking so as not to express the sorrow of losing a beloved person? Or not knowing what to say? Or was it simply what it appeared to be? We have done our job.That is done. What’s next? We don’t really want to remember. Or is forget fulness built into human survival? 

Without completely analysing this type of human behavior, the student of life might still draw some rules for healthy behavior. The old Romans knew something of this. Hence, the Latin title of this little piece. “Thus goes the glory of the world”!!!! It was apparently the pagan custom that a slave would stand behind a returning victorious General who was receiving the plaudits of the crowd to remind the hero. It all passes. Glory is a fleeting thing. You too will pass. Out of sight.Out of mind. 

This sounds suprisingly similar to the thinking of the great Spanish mystic, Teresa of Avila. “Let nothing affright thee…… 
all things pass….One thing alone remains………” It is God alone Who is present to me always whether I am aware of His Presence or not. 

Is there some kind of wistful thinking that “they” will nostalgically remember me with fondness and tenderness when I am called back to God? When in fact the human mind forgets so quickly? Think how we recover from the devestation of grief when we lose a loved one in death. Even a parent! This is the way it is !! 

As Puck opined: “What fools we mortals be…” I am urged by my Insight (or perhaps by the Holy Spirit) to say: “Fie upon thee” to people pleasing and to hopes of being remembered by others. My energy and attention and love must ultimately be driven by and to my Lord and my God, Jesus Himself. And surprise!!!! When I do that, everything I ever wanted comes to me. Maybe, the message of the “Hound of Heaven” is true and pragmatic after all.

On Reaching 85 years of age!!!! April 3, 2006

I was born (85 years ago today) in the ground floor apartment of a New York City Brownstone. It was Easter Sunday morning, at dawn. Although, the old Catholic ladies of that era thought that the Sun danced on Easter morn, I was too occupied to check it out. I was grasping for the dawn in that dingy front bedroom—as the local Physician, Dr. Sprague, was tugging me out of my mother’s womb. My mother’s (twin and older) sisters had just returned from Mass at the Paulist church and were agog with the excitement that there was a new Catholic (and half- Jewish) boy in the McArdle clan.

I would live in a circumscribed neighborhood for the immediate future, worshipping at the Paulist Church, learning the “ropes” of our own street (called in the local parlance “sixty foist” street) with the local dirty necks, of which I was one, attending the Paulist grammar school for eight years and occasionally  risking the long trek to Central Park where we played baseball, football and watched the awesome animals in the zoo. We, also, liked to see a tree occasionally. We played creative street games  which cost nothing for equipment or space. In our ignorance of how the other half lived, we were “happy.” 

We were apparently poor. I was never aware of that since we always had three meals a day, had cyclically new clothes and we laughed a lot. Everyone I knew lived the same way. Once in a while some family would be “evicted” or thrown out on the street with all their furniture and few belongings. This never happened to me. Hence, I never gave that possibility a thought. It never struck me that because I didn’t go away on vacations or that my family didn’t have a car  (or “machine” as they called it), that there was something inferior to my way of life. I lived in the present and felt very loved by all my family, especially by my Jewish father and my laughing Irish mother and my loving Grandmother. I was relatively content. It was the Great Depression era anyway.  It was the era of “Buddy can you spare a dime” and of well dressed guys selling apples on the corner. I felt lucky, blessed and very secure. I just somehow knew that I would always have three squares and a “flop.”

That eerie sense of confidence has always stayed with me all these years. “Somehow” I have known I’ll be OK and will always make it. More than hormones or ganglia, this sense of trust has fed my joie de vivre and my enthusiasm for what others have called the banal and repetitious. My prayer has been: My God stands by me. I place all my trust in Him. I have had a great life, or more accurately a delicious one. I have experienced the profundity of the Catholic Faith which has sustained and nourished me through stress and 

strain. The faith which clearly taught me the endless love of God the Father for me, the marvelous comradeship of Jesus the Lord, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. It has made real the affection of the Blessed Mother and the endless and dazzling array of saints I can pray to.

I have had unbelievable deep friendships. I have had good health. I have been honored with the priesthood of the Jesus Himself. I have traveled much of the world and been appropriately impressed. I have experienced the thrill of higher education, of teaching on graduate levels, the challenges of modern radio and television broadcasting. I have had the confidences and trust of Archbishops, priests, religious brothers, nuns, married people, and single ones, the very young and the very old, the bright and the slow, who have asked me to walk with them through their fears and joys and perplexities. Scientists, police chiefs, Broadway personnel, frightened street people, alcoholics, sexaholics, anorexics, varlets with anorexic sideburns, all have trusted me with their secrets. 

In my later life I had the inexpressible privilege to minister to the good Catholic souls (of Courage) who struggle with the unasked for disordered tendency of Same Sex attraction. Week after week I have been spiritually wide eyed as I watch the miracle of God’s grace transform men of discouragement and despair to men of hope and self esteem.. 

Through the mysterious plan of the Lord, I became a local confessor for the fabulous Sisters of Life at the Sacred Heart convent where I had more than privilege or pleasure but deep seated joy. I saw the beauty of real Vocation and the noble lifestyle that confronts and challenges the contemporary Christian.

How much joy can the heart hold?  Or how does one articulate to the Lord the dimensions of Gratitude? How does one put into words one’s depth of feeling? Perhaps, there is no way except to stand in awe in His gracious and ineffable Presence and be still. Be still.  Be still.

I have been able to recognize my gifts, as Rush says: “On loan from God”. I have used them unhestitatingly, with joy and without apology. There is always something missing, to be sure. But that is the meaning of Paradise and life with Lord in eternity. On balance, it has been a really great ride especially for a primitive, dirty necked kid from the West side.     I am filled with gratitude to the Lord and my friends and family. Hallejuia.

Anomie

                                                       Anomie

It was a very  hot Saturday afternoon in the middle of August in the year 1940. I was walking down 9th avenue on the East side of the avenue trying to become accustomed to an avenue now denuded of the elevated railway,  the “el”,  which had been a staple for me since I was a child. It all seemed so strange in a strange world. And rumor had it that the iron was sold as scrap to the Empire of Japan  which was making omninous rumblings in the Far East.

I was 19, a college student, with no money. No job. I had  recently broken up with my girl friend, Dolly, the best looking girl in the parish. She was an extremely smooth ball room dancer which fed into my adolescent fantasy that we made a great team on the dance floor. But our dates over cherry cokes had become blah as we talked endlessly of Benny Goodman and Glen Miller. It wasn’t working!

I hadn’t the foggiest what I would do with my life. Engineering? Medicine— to please my father? Teaching? Nothing seemed to grab me. I had some ROTC  training  at CCNY. Should I go into the military?  Theatre —like my parents?  I felt no pull towards anything. The worst thing was that I didn’t  know if I wanted anything.  Nothing seemed to matter. It was dull. Drab. Deadly.  I was sleeping excessively and wasting time day after day.

I had had great academic success in my educational experience—honor student all the way.   Awards and recognition. But it didn’t matter.I was hanging out at Broker’s, the soda fountain watering hole on Columbus and 59th but my high school friends were disappearing  for one reason or another.Loneliness and boredom and alienation  were my affective companions.  Meaninglessness, a disease, was taking me over.

Even the most poorly prepared modern mental health professional would instantly recognize the  symptoms of what we call today  “depression.”

But some thing  happened  to me  that day in 1940. I had stopped  to look in the window of the huge Castle’s Pawn shop just opposite the Paulist Church.  I turned aound and looked across the avenue  and saw a priest in full soutane or cassock, wearing a biretta ( or priest’s head  covering) taking a break from his onerous job hearing confessions on a Saturday afternoon in a stifling box with no air conditioning (and which was heavily curtained to preserve the anonymity of the penitent).  He was leaning over the great gray stone parapet—which is still there to this day—  lazily watching the passing parade on the avenue.

I cannot explain or understand what happened to me —-in such a flash. He seemed so peaceful. So content.  So sure he had some thing important to give. He seemed not to have to explain himself to anyone. Even to himself. Priesthood! That was it !!  How come it never struck me? It took me  two more years  to make the move but  I became a Paulist, for never looked back.  The years of excitement and meaning and friendship  and God  have been all consuming. 

I learned later that this priest was Scottish, a convert to the Faith and an ex -British Naval officer from World War I. But who  he was personally doesn’t really matter, I suppose, but what does matter is that God writes His messages  through what ever messenger He wishes.

It doesn’t have to add up logically. I  believe  with A. Einstein who said:  “I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.” Whatever hidden cerebral and emotional pathways may have been at work are basically uninteresting to me. It is where I landed  that gives me cause for  gratitude and personal joy. A bolt out of the blue! An  “ah ha” moment!

Ultimately, it means  that my God spoke to me.

anomie

                                                       Anomie

It was a very  hot Saturday afternoon in the middle of August in the year 1940. I was walking down 9th avenue on the East side of the avenue trying to become accustomed to an avenue now denuded of the elevated railway,  the “el”,  which had been a staple for me since I was a child. It all seemed so strange in a strange world. And rumor had it that the iron was sold as scrap to the Empire of Japan  which was making omninous rumblings in the Far East.

I was 19, a college student, with no money. No job. I had  recently broken up with my girl friend, Dolly, the best looking girl in the parish. She was an extremely smooth ball room dancer which fed into my adolescent fantasy that we made a great team on the dance floor. But our dates over cherry cokes had become blah as we talked endlessly of Benny Goodman and Glen Miller. It wasn’t working!

I hadn’t the foggiest what I would do with my life. Engineering? Medicine— to please my father? Teaching? Nothing seemed to grab me. I had some ROTC  training  at CCNY. Should I go into the military?  Theatre —like my parents?  I felt no pull towards anything. The worst thing was that I didn’t  know if I wanted anything.  Nothing seemed to matter. It was dull. Drab. Deadly.  I was sleeping excessively and wasting time day after day.

I had had great academic success in my educational experience—honor student all the way.   Awards and recognition. But it didn’t matter.I was hanging out at Broker’s, the soda fountain watering hole on Columbus and 59th but my high school friends were disappearing  for one reason or another.Loneliness and boredom and alienation  were my affective companions.  Meaninglessness, a disease, was taking me over.

Even the most poorly prepared modern mental health professional would instantly recognize the  symptoms of what we call today  “depression.”

But some thing  happened  to me  that day in 1940. I had stopped  to look in the window of the huge Castle’s Pawn shop just opposite the Paulist Church.  I turned aound and looked across the avenue  and saw a priest in full soutane or cassock, wearing a biretta ( or priest’s head  covering) taking a break from his onerous job hearing confessions on a Saturday afternoon in a stifling box with no air conditioning (and which was heavily curtained to preserve the anonymity of the penitent).  He was leaning over the great gray stone parapet—which is still there to this day—  lazily watching the passing parade on the avenue.

I cannot explain or understand what happened to me —-in such a flash. He seemed so peaceful. So content.  So sure he had some thing important to give. He seemed not to have to explain himself to anyone. Even to himself. Priesthood! That was it !!  How come it never struck me? It took me  two more years  to make the move but  I became a Paulist, a never looked back.  The years of excitement and meaning and friendship  and God  have been all consuming. 

I learned later that this priest was Scottish, a convert to the Faith and an ex -British Naval officer from World War I. But who  he was personally doesn’t really matter, I suppose, but what does matter is that God writes His messages  through what ever messenger He wishes.

It doesn’t have to add up logically. I  believe  with A. Einstein who said:  “I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.” Whatever hidden cerebral and emotional pathways may have been at work are basically uninteresting to me. It is where I landed  that gives me cause for  gratitude and personal joy. A bolt out of the blue! An  “ah ha” moment!

Ultimately, it means  that my God spoke to me.

Is Devotion to the Mother of God “Ante-Deluvian”?

                               Is Devotion to the Mother of God “Ante-Deluvian”?

Dr. Paul Chaim Scheneck, a Jewish intellectual who converted to Catholicism, once noted, in discussing his conversion, that, sometimes, the heart does not understand or accept what the mind can know. All the logic, the data, the experience are irrelevant when the heart is closed. No matter what is presented, the response is negative. Nothing can persuade because “from the beginning”, the heart has said that it is not possible. “I will not agree.” Dr. Scheneck had all the logic and the proof needed but it was not enough. It simply couldn’t be. It recalls for me the famous remark in a religious debate which stunned us all. “Don’t confuse me with the facts.”  Such a position annihilates any exploration as to a possible other side.

But isn’t the opposite likewise compelling?  If one’s heart embraces and is supported by a dimension unavailable to immediate intellectual verification, it is very difficult to move through  “pre-judgment” to a supple and rich emotional or spiritual life. The juvenile demand for empirical proof can be utterly deadly to growth and warmth.  The skeptic will demand proof of love and honor and patriotism and appreciation, draining life of its possibilities of profound  joy. “I feel it but I don’t believe it” is compared with the other mode---  “I see it with my mind’s eye but I can’t accept it.” That can be the end of any significant exploration.

Let me explore a concrete instance. The practice of an unquestioning and loving devotion to Mary, the Mother of Jesus (Who, I believe to be the Divine Itself, in human nature) seems to be completely incomprehensible to many moderns. For example, a brilliant and devout Jewish woman who likes and respects me, cannot do other than characterize my Marian practice as “ante-deluvian”  i.e. prior to the flood which made Noah so famous. Perhaps, the “given” (for Catholics) of Christ’s Divinity is so great a block for devout Judaism that any further probing is exceedingly difficult or impossible. Perhaps, for “childlike” Catholics like me (hopefully not childish) the warmth, comfort and “rightness” of such spiritual dynamics stem not from heavy intellectual exegesis and theological rigor but from “something” else. Something terribly human (which yet smacks of the divine), which meets and fulfills my need to flesh out my own developing spiritual life. And that Something, I sense, emanates from God which empowers me with some kind of ability to “see” and  humility to accept. Perhaps I probe for the “affective” as compared with the “cognitive.” Or is this the mysterious entity called “grace”?

 When I was a child I knew nothing of the glorious Cathedrals dedicated to “Our Blessed Mother.” I never heard of Chartres or Notre Dame, Ile de la Cite de Paris. I never knew of the towering music of Mozart and  Shubert  and  Gregorian chant which “incarnated”  the love of the BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary) into sensible,  exalted forms. I never heard of the Alma Redemptoris Mater or the Salve Regina or the Tota Pulchra est, Maria. I never heard of Wordsworth’s famous line “Our tainted nature’s solitary boast” which he, the Protestant, applied to Mary, this Mother of the Lord.  I never saw the magnificent statuary in the Metropolitan Museum of Art concretizing the Catholic love of Mary. I never heard of the Pieta of Michelangelo depicting the beauty of the Mother of God.

Whatever I learned about devotion to Mary, I received from my Irish Grandmother whose formal education ended with the Third grade.  She taught me, for example, that when I die, should they not allow me to enter by the Front gates of heaven I should go around to the back and Our Lady, the Blessed Mother will let me in. This is because she has GREAT love for me and will help me always. Grandmother told me that Jesus set this up when he was dying a terribly painful death on a Great Cross. Just before He died, He made everyone to be her children, including me, and she would ALWAYS be there for me. She would always love me - - no matter what!  And I should LOVE her back! And incidentally I note that Mel Gibson in his powerful “Passion of the Christ” presents Peter, agonized and distraught after his cowardly denial of the Lord, kneeling before Mother Mary, with great heart broken tears rolling down his cheeks. She does not scold nor reject. She silently places her healing hand upon his head.  “It is all right” she seems to be saying. “It is all right, my child.” No matter what is our sin, Mary our Mother still loves us. This, it seems to me, is REALLY affective.

Such childlike devotion has been of enormous help to me in my life ---particularly in times of smashing life difficulties. I did not develop this view from the many formal impediments I have met - - such as ponderous professors who took themselves very seriously and who insisted that I plow through boring and sterile tomes written by academics who lived in metaphorical and real ivory towers.

I was amazed how quickly I was able to jettison the cumbersome balderdash backpack of Academe.  How quickly and gratefully I reverted back to the joy of my youth as I continuously recited and applied the first prayer I ever learned:  “pray for us NOW and at the hour of our death.”  For example, I recall  being on a slow moving, coal burning night train, trudging across the Great Karoo of South Africa. The windows wouldn’t close. The lights wouldn’t work The soot poured in through the open windows. I felt lonely and dirty and afraid. So, I “did” my beads, i.e. my Rosary and prayed as I envisioned the “mysteries” of Christ’s life, which were the main events of His Death and Redemptive Sacrifice. I saw “her” there, His and my mother sharing His pain and His meaning. As the beads passed through my fingers I felt release, both emotional and physical and found, even with tears streaming down my cheeks, a calm and peace entering my being. This is not the Security Blanket of the Peanuts comic strip. This is the Presence of my Heavenly Mother who has always been there for me at critical times.

How many millions of Catholics over the years have had the same experience. Yet, there have been all kinds of clever (or “cute”) attempts to “make nice” with devotion to the BVM. In order to counter any latent uncomfortable  feelings that devotion to her is somehow detracting from devotion to HIM, Who is all  and above all, some skittish Catholics have come up with  fanciful stories and devices to counteract the harmful antics of Big Mouths like me. However some do have some credence and possible utility. I recall the little thing about the school boy rebutting the scoffing college Professor who claimed that there is “ no difference between His (Jesus) mother and MY mother…” The kid jauntily replies: “ Yeah, but there is a big difference between the sons…”  Touché!  And O.K. but it doesn’t really move me.

Or the little kid, with his prayer for a bicycle unanswered, yelling at the statue of Jesus  “I’m gonna’ tell your mother.”

The implication is clearly that the Mother of the Lord has great  influence with the Divine One and will properly castigate the  unresponsive Jesus. The kid extrapolates from his experience with his own mother and applies it directly to the Blessed Mother. Again, O.K.  while coming close to affectivity  this doesn’t really move me either, even though I can understand  because of  my  relationship with my own earthly mother.

Or astronomical metaphors like He, being the Sun, and she, being the moon, who shines ONLY by reflection from Him—very true and very intellectual but not sufficiently affective for me. Since each of us, like David, fighting Goliath, with a mere sling shot and some stones rather than with the fancy armor of Saul, must choose our own weapons in this struggle called life,  I choose the notion of  a Celestial Mother loving me  with a profound and pervasive love. And I find that love in my prayer: “..NOW and at the hour of my death….”

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The “now” of this prayer is enormously important to me.  I personally focus my spiritual life on the Great Now. Spirituality to me must be pragmatic and helpful.  For me, the academic tends more to irritate than to inspire. All my life I have been able to intuit or pre-articulately depend on the Blessed Mother for her immediate and ever present assistance. Since, similarly, I am deep into the existential Indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the Presence of the Lord, this approach - - - devotion to the loving Blessed Mother---  is exceedingly meaningful to me. Yesterday or tomorrow, certainly,  has some effect on my life but the dominant dimension is Now - -  which I find each time I say to her---“pray for us (me) NOW……” 

In particular, I find her gentle urgings in my heart when I suffer difficulty being obedient to the Lord’s Will--- when I want my own way in everything I do. I hear her exhortation from the Wedding feast at Cana:  “ Whatever  He tells  you, DO IT.”  Since I am  positive  about her love for me  and  her wish for my happiness,  when she tells me that His will is for my well being, even if I don’t understand or  if I am tempted to struggle in defiance, I am drawn to do His Holy will. She will never mislead me BECAUSE SHE LOVES ME!

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When I boggle in my occasional   “dark night” and trust in my God tends to waver, there she comes again. I see her as she responds to Gabriel with his apparently ridiculous message: “Behold – (she says)- -  the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done to me according to HIS word.”  My lesson:  I don’t know how I will do it (whatever IT is), but I will and can, if I trust in His Word and His Power as did  my Blessed Mother.

When I have difficulty with my emotional balance, I listen to her Magnificat when she proclaims the astounding insight about humility:  “All nations will declare me blessed……………”  She acknowledges and lives the Truth of her life. There is no phony modesty here. There is the calm and clear  statement of who she is. I learn from her that I do not deny my gifts and talents nor do I deny my limitations. All is from God to be used for His glory and Will. I cannot cavil and waste energy with spurious self depreciation.

When I feel the turbulent  scream of libido, I call upon her to help  me maintain my sexual integration and respect for the great God-gift of sexuality.  The Queen of Chastity is powerful!

As for the future ---- particularly my own death, I sense her presence also there for me—as she was for Joseph, her husband, as he left this life for Heaven. She was there helping him, as she will –me! She died herself showing me the way. Though I am naturally fearful of death, terror has no priority. She will be there for me leading me to her Divine Son and eternal JOY….again because of her love for me, personally!

Devotion to Mary “ante-deluvian’?  Certainly for me it is not. After all I am one of those dinosaurs who believe in Personal survival after death!   So, on the contrary it is most appropriate for this 95 year old kid. I believe in Eternal life. My summation is in an old poem I recall only partially:

                                        If Christ should come on earth some summer’s day

                                        And walk unknown upon our busy street

                                        I wonder how ‘twould be

                                        If we should meet----

                                        And being God if He would act that way—

                                        Perhaps the kindest thing that He could do

                                        Would be just to forget that I failed to pray  

                                        And clasp my hand forgivingly and say

                                        “My Child, I’ve heard my Mother speak of you.”

                                              

                                  SOMETIMES, REPRESSION IS NECESSARY FOR PEACE OF MIND - 

Across the oaken table from me in the Refectory was a priest in his mid-eighties who has had a distinguished and memorable career in leadership, scholarship and fidelity.  But he profoundly disturbed me when he “opined” that we were witnessing the death throes of the Religious Community to which we both belong. He pointed out that we will have no ordinations this year nor the next nor the next. We have ONE novice and four students spread over a four year theology course.  With such a poor backup in the manpower pool, and with a graying, arthritic priest population, the prospects of staffing the Community in the future look bleak.

Yet, the relatively young and recently elected President of this particular Community writes that hopefully we are on the brink of one of the most glorious eras in our history.  This strikes a somewhat dissonant chord in my own aging brain. Are we dying or are we about to blast off the launching pad into unforeseen glory?  The old timer bases his dreary prediction on numbers and observable facts while the comparative youngster enthuses and hopes from a speculation perspective.

 What is one to make of this?  Is it just an old man spewing sour grapes and a young man just bouncing off his fantasies and wishful thinking? Is it again the old man dreaming revisionist dreams and the young man seeing visions of what he hopes will be so?  I don’t know but suppose that the old man is right and the young man knows, unconsciously, the truth: demise is near and inevitable.            What does the young man do? How does he as leader inspire enthusiasm in his troops? How does he fire up morale? Indeed, how does he live with himself if he senses that he is presiding over an increasingly moribund situation? And this  in spite of the raucous cheerleading on the sidelines?   

Does he take semi-refuge in the theological speculation that God might raise up groups for a specific time and role in a specific era to meet a specific task and let them lapse into extinction when their need is no longer present or pressing?  Or does he hustle around trying to find some palatable, Couesque, self hypnotizing mantra that we are getting better every day in every way (as the ship sinks)?  How would he or any other human being survive in the face of the painful and traumatic?

On Feb. 23, 2003, the New York Times ran a lengthy article on Repression airing the new and provocative hypothesis that, contrary to the Sacred Cows of the Psychotherapeutic Community, it is sometimes far better to avoid, deny or repress painful, traumatic or threatening material. Those of us who were trained within the last 40 years had it drummed into us that it was essential for the emotional and mental health of our patients that they face, embrace, and dissect   traumas, fears and perplexities with full scale enthusiasm. They were to throw their emotional guts right out front, pick them up and regurgitate again and again. Only then would they be free people   --- so went all the hoop-la- and badda bing, badda boom, badda bing.

Yet with all the academic and clinical pressures from colleagues and mentors, something just didn’t wash. We all saw some of our patients come back unchanged again and again in spite of all the embracing of pain and sorrow and anger. In fact, consonant with the Times article, it seemed almost as if the focusing - - even riveting - - -  fueled the problems. It kept the problem front and center which demanded more time, more concentration, more energy funneled away from enjoyment of one’s life. 

A 43 year old student of mine who was supposed to be centering on learning the art and science of counseling was intently hooked on the recollection of her being sexually molested, thirty years prior. She insisted on “ talking this out” in personal therapy, lectures and supervision hours.  She was personally unattractive, unmarried and uninteresting.  Her ONE claim to possess the spotlight was the telling and re-telling of her unhappy childhood experience. Her life centered on having others listen to her sad story as she eked out of anyone she met any possible shred of sympathy for  “ poor me.” Meanwhile, life was speeding by her. She angrily resisted any suggestion that she might MOVE on in her life. But she seemed almost to enjoy her misery. Is this healthy?

In the movie, ANALYZE THIS, which was about a Mafia boss in therapy, the psychiatrist is presented as having two verbalizations with a self pitying client. One, the public one, was the  standard Sacred Cow  response of empathy and understanding.  Two, interiorly and truthfully, he said:  “ Why the_____________, don’t you get yourself a life?”

We are seeing in many patients, a PROLONGATION of pain and trauma, when we allow the endless and narcissistic wallowing in the traditional  “ pity pot.” We are called to be healers yet it does look, in some instances, that we are enablers. It would be far healthier--- at least in some patients---- to put the lid on the pain, do a spot of repression, denial and avoidance, and GET ON WITH IT!   There are so many wonderful, awesome and fulfilling things in life which are available but which need attention and energy. To substitute the almost maternal offerings of our offices for the really satisfying possibilities of the real world is tantamount to alchemy! God forgive the therapist who stokes the patient’s fire of self pity and fear for financial rewards! Although hopefully infrequent, it has been known to happen. 

Allowing a patient to give disproportionate attention to a past trauma - - - with full awareness of the research on PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) -- - - can actually harm a person’s healthy development since it places TOO much of a patient’s personal failures on someone or something else.  A therapist can never forget the lesson of Shakespeare:  ‘ THE FAULT, MY DEAR BRUTUS, IS NOT IN THE STARS, BUT IN OURSELVES.” It can get too comfortable in the chair or the couch when one can blame one’s failure in life or unhappiness on something other than self.  

Incidentally, on 9/11, we had one therapist for every three persons. It has been noted that there was NO appreciable help from these offerings. Support came from the GROUP feeling and the camaraderie of all of us involved in Ground Zero. I have pushed some of my own patients to get on with their lives and DO something rather than sit in my office and have me hold their hand even figuratively!  Even Sig Freud noted that catharsis alone was probably useless at best and harmful at worst.

Still, the hypothesis remains. FOR SOME PEOPLE, repression and denial may be essential for their peace of mind.

For example, some uninformed and insensitive hospital chaplains have insisted on brutally telling ALL terminal patients that they are dying. This is poor practice and fails to note that SOME terminal patients NEED to deny their own deaths. This negative procedure is more for the chaplain’s need to feel that he is doing his job. The role of the helping person is to help - - - not to hurt !! Surprisingly, denial and repression are sometimes a real way to help the hurting one. Let the chaplain find some other mode of resolving his own hang-ups. It might be helpful to  recall  that (at least theoretically) the chaplain, the therapist, the priest  are there for the good of the “ other”. The patient is not supposed to minister to us but we to them.

So, if the young President of a dying religious Community finds it too painful to face the brutal truth, who can blame him for his avoidance? By the use of repression he can continue with enthusiasm and energy, to find some kind of meaning in what is truly still available. We all can do it, with God’s help, and some of us can bite our tongues as we thank the New York Times for at least occasionally publishing something of value.

p.s. this was written over ten years ago (2016).  Some of the observations are  in sync with certain levels of  the fixed and immutable in human nature and derive from the essence of natural law, but some  observations reflect  the unpredictable possibilities for change so inherenrt in human nature and  behavior.  Plus ca change, plus le meme chose! 

                                     An  aha moment 

For  two long,  frustrating and demanding years, I had been instructing a  brilliant young Jewish woman in the  mysteries of the  Catholic Faith. She was  too bright for me. At every turn she would clean my clock intellectually in spite of  all my fancy syllogisms, theology and history.  I could get nowhere with her.

However, somewhere in her soul or psyche was a kind of gnawing  wish for some sort of Faith. She was an agnostic, leaning slightly towards atheism but too intelligent to accept it.  She, somewhat irked with me,  asked was there anything further I could offer her. In desperation , I volunteered what she called a stupid prayer. The prayer of the atheist.

                           Oh, God, if there  is a God, help me !

Some time later, she wrote me that she had been to a movie which she had to leave. She was experiencing the most urgent  need to find a Catholic church immediately.  On entering the Church, she genuflected and when her knee touched the floor she was flooded with a belief in God  which she has deeply retained to this day  when she is now 80 years old.

Basically, this was a moment (to me) in my life I could call  “a ah—-  out of the blue— cloudbursts of joy—-elation—-cataclysmic  surprise——-floating on air— bring me giants to slay—.   A moment  never to be repeated  but never to be forgotten. A moment when the Lord used me to help a good person move towards Him——but in His, not my, way..

Certainly,  for her it was THE  ah ha exprience.  To meet the Lord  not through human strivings or skills, but through something simple,rustic and even stupid like  The Atheist’s prayer.”  There is a lesson to be learned here.ac

               I Asked  “why” on Visiting an Alzheimer’s Patient!

Although it is extremely clear to me that asking “why” in the face of the terrrible negatives of life, is futile and even stupid, I still have the surging unconscious roiling within me that struggles to emerge  with shouting and symbolic fist thumping.  I know well that angrily responding to negatives  with a furious why is no route to resolution and peace of mind.  Yet I still do it! I scream affectively to the Lord:  “Why do You allow this to go on? Why do You allow such obscenities to happen at all? These good innocent people—what did they do to deserve such a gruesome finale to their lives?  Why? Why? Why?

I know cognitively it is in responding to the how that I can carry on with peace of mind..   How will I deal with this huge pain (of whatever stripe it might be), is the mature and efficient response.  This is the sensible question,This has  to be the mode  for successful resolution.  I  know this  but I, with multitudes of others,feel the opposite.

With such a cognitive/affective  psychic makeup, I recently visited  a relative in a dementia facility. She is advanced in the disease, unable to read, write, watch television, use the  telephone or carry on a conversaton more than a few words. Her day is eating,sleeping 14 hours a day  and looking vacantly out at some far distant horizon which only she can see. When she does try to talk, it is with a painful  groping for words—-and she will stop and say “I don’t  know what I am trying to say.” Or she will engage in what sounds like incomprehensible babble.

It is exceedingly difficult and unsettling to see this woman who  attained two degrees from an  ivy league school in such an infantile  state..A  woman  who ran complex  nursing departments  in a large New york city medical center…a woman who was charming, easy to meet and a facile conversationalist. ,  Now she was unrecognizable, a puzzlement. A substantively “different” (?) human being. A caricature!

She is replicated multiple times in her fellow “residents” who stare and sleep and eat and drool and spout sounds or words with no apparent  connection to the environment they are in. They rarely truly speak. They look emptily at others. They do  not know the names of their fellow patients and seem not to care.  If anything would fascinate them,it would seem to be food which has apparently an almost hypnotic appeal for them.

The over all atmosphere ,then, would be depressing—even in the best of these  dementia worlds.  This faciity which  is operated by nuns, is superior to many I have seen. It is clean  and bright. A chapel is provided for daily Mass if they could remember what a chapel might mean! Programs are offered  with some limited succcess  but also with a bit of unreal  expectation from these poor people who are confused, angry, afraid, lonely, and debilitated and whose capacity  for real response is seriously limited. The spectrum of the disease is wide, but no matter where the patient is placed on that line, it is sad and unsettling.

Basically, the problem is organic. That is to say that there is  a serious physical deterioration in the brain which makes it impossible to retain data or information stored in the dendrites.  Memory facility is methodically  destroyed until there is nothing left but a vegetable state awaiting death. There is no cure. (As of now)  All one  can do is  stand by and watch  and  do what one can to make life easier for the patient and assist his passage to His Lord.

The atmosphere is bound to invade the souls of the residents.They  all seem to break into passivity, their wills look broken.  Perhaps, this is caused by the heavy unending, unyielding  sameness of routine and the powerful insistence of the”Staff” to obey.  Perhaps it is caused   by the inevitable array of medications they all take daily, not only for specific illnesses but for some kind of  “management” medication. In any event,  there  is much  empty gazing, much nodding off  and much waiting for meals or bedtime. 

Prima facie, one asks —why should this go on? For what purpose?  Is there any real meaning in this terrible panoply? If one is basically pagan, there is little reason to continue this debacle. Progressive governments are already seriously discussing ways—-with humane methods, of course  -  of “terminating” the useless, expensive, time consuming procedures needed to take care of this  non-productive population. Kill them!  Mercifully, but kill them. It is effective and better for them in the long run, anyway. However find another, less threatening word than “kill”  but which has the same imperative to do the job.

Parenthetically, a kind of reasoning,  somewhat similar yet different, is used to justify the brutality of killing young humans in the womb.”It is expensive to have babies. It is very inconvenient now. It is an
encumberance  to us who have to do the caretaking. We don’t  want this additional burden.Times are tough enough.”  And endless variations on these themes.

For a believing Christian, however, there is a huge  transcendental truth running through all of this.   Namely, every single human being, regardless of age or physical condition, or mental disfunction or socio-economic status, or race or religion  or education or political affiliation is a true child of Almighty God Himself. Each is to be treated as such regardless of anything. Control of Life and its expectancy belongs to Him.  It is His Call as to when life shall cease for any child of His. There is (generally) no justification to take anyone’s life—that prerogative belongs to the Creator Himself. 

Street assasins, thieves, cartels, angry husbands and frustrated wives, blood thirsty military leaders lusting for personal glory, all violate the sense of the sacred about human life. Society  has always considered Murder  as one  of the extremely serious offenses which oppose God’s will and the rights of Man. Everyone has the right to life, young and old, and even those should be protected who cannot defend themselves in the womb! Euthensia and abortion,  when stripped of the  buzz words, are unjustly taking human llife..Some will label it more clearly,  murder!

No matter how inconvenient the  “dementias” are or can be,they are His children and they must be protected and cared for.  They cannot  be simply ”terminated”  by a deluded  and sometimes evil government! 

But where do the carertakers fit into this scheme?

Does any one tell us of their spiritual life ? Those who feed and clean and clothe and watch the mentally ill?—Have many seen the patience and care and the love  nurses and aides give to these unfortunates?  It is generally more than a job. To see the tenderness in word, action and mood is an inspiration.  To see the staff move into the “world” of the patient  with the more than infrequent unreasonable demands, calls to mind the mandate of the Master……”…whenever you did it to one these, my least brethren, you did it to Me…”

I saw them caress those sad persons from whom  others  (even families) flee after a perfunctory visit, their consciences temporarily salved—- leaving  a cheap box of candy  to show how caring they are! The caretakers are there  24/7—often frustrated themselves,  elated when  they see the dementia people light up at the attention and  saddened when they get little or no response.  

It is more stressful  than caring for a baby where one gets joy and fun. It is a difficult ministry,  (an appropriate word description especially for  caretakers with a spiritual dimension)   which  carries the ever present mood factor of death ——which can come at anytime. Several times I have seen a blanket covered body being taken out by  black suited, business like funeral directors. But no matter what! It is the Human Famify Under God.  It is the duty of  all of us to defend and protect life—-

  

Do we take the lives of criminals?  Do we kill each other in wars? Is it moral?  Serious  reflection and prayer and awareness  are needed to resolve and understand the huge mysteries of life. Others, more talented than  I, must wrestle with the wider picture. I, as one little human being, simply react to the inexplicable fact of  dementia and pray the Good Lord to  give us insights so that we can respond as loving Christians at least to  this one terrible imponderable.

written  in New York City, 2016, at  the age of 95.