What is Happiness?

Is there Really Such a thing as Happiness?

 

 

During the crushing times of the Great Depression, my financially restricted family patronized a local grocery store run by a man we respectfully called MR. Thompson. He was a very important person in our neighborhood because he supplied us with the needed cold cuts, veggies, milk and butter. As it often happens in times of social stress, we had great "community" solidarity. Everyone was poor—or so we thought. Everyone was struggling just to survive. And we were impressed with Mr. Thompson's formidable skills in running his "Food emporium". And, further, we, with our rough New Yawkese, were awed at his fancy New Hampshire accent whenever, with his loose fitting dentures, he discussed Shakespeare and classical literature. Although he wore a battered old gray fedora all year, a long dirty apron (like the waiters in the paintings of Lautrec) and glasses that kept slipping down his nose, we thought he was very "cultured".

 

He had come to New York seeking his fortune and wound up running a tiny food supply store and living in a walk up, third floor, cold water flat. He worked six days a week and saved Sundays for his passion and enjoyment----reading. I recall when I was a high school sophomore just beginning to marvel at the joy of books, he mesmerized me with a re-cap of Goldsmith's "Deserted Village" which he had read the day before. His eyes sparkled and his voice vibrated with palpable joy as he shared this classic with a dirty necked kid from the streets. He had had a happy Sunday. I was struck by this. An old man with very little of this world's goods can sit huddled by a primitive stove in a near slum and experience something of what every single human being wants—happiness. How can this be?

 

I had been raised in the world of the pragmatic. Get a good job, preferably a City job. Move out of this seedy neighborhood. Study only that which will help you get more money. Don't study useless stuff like poetry or philosophy. Material security is what really matters. Save for your old age. Watch out for your pennies and the dollars will watch out for you.

 

Endless were those admonitions. And it made great sense in the terrible world of the early 20^th century where hunger and street evictions were commonplace. But even in the world of the 21^st century where opulence abounds and potbellied stoves are a quaint reminder of an earlier and more restricted era, we see such throwback examples as the Citibank highway signs: "Money can't buy you happiness but it can buy marshmallows which is kinda' the same thing." Energy and time are invested mainly in the tangible and material. One's hope for happiness is based on the size of one's bank account. Obviously, without some kind of material resource, human existence would be short lived. Who pays the rent and the food bill and the clothier? Who pays the tuition for the kids' education? How does one move about without a car? Who pays the medical bills? The list is endless and must be factored into the question. But the needs Pyramid gets to a point where there is something more needed for this elusive quality, so difficult to define, which we call Happiness.

 

With all our money, we have widespread anxiety, distrust, loneliness, fear, and discontent. We observe something close to a terror of being alone. Why are we so often unhappy in spite of our enormously improved material status? Why is this? What does it mean? What kind of world view allows some one like Mr.Thompson to extract from a limited environment such profound feelings of contentment and fulfillment? On the other hand, how is it that some one I know who owns a $4,000,000 apartment in a very fancy building on the East Side, is miserable on a daily basis? He has money, good health, a successful career, a family, and a reasonable Faith level. What is he missing? Is it genetic? Or emotional? Or social? Or cultural? Or what?

 

Is happiness a relative thing? I recall that, years ago, the advertising industry used to attempt to plumb such dimensions. How frequently we were bombarded with those eye catching slogans -- " Happiness is a Kent cigarette" or " Happiness is owning a puppy dog" or "Happiness is owning a house in the Hamptons".

 

Clearly, happiness has a large subjective dimension in its makeup. What pleases me can be another man's poison. Is it merely another Rorschach test? Nonetheless, a common variable in this search has to be "contentment" which is some kind of pervasive feeling that the "hand" I have been dealt can be fulfilling, valuable and generally worthwhile. I recall one of my professors in Graduate school telling us how he looked into the mirror each morning, reviewed his assets like health, love, a fulfilling job, friends, a sense of humor, a lively Faith and life, itself, and said to himself: "Not bad." This is not character dwarfism but the very contrary. The more one appreciates what one has, the more one appreciates life--- and gains even more. This does not lead to smugness, stagnation or indifference but, paradoxically, to personal growth. It leads to the freedom of "looking around" seeing what is there!

 

It is ironic that the more one "sees" and appreciates the specific values and goods of life, the more such an emotional treasury expands. It is remarkable that sometimes we cannot recognize the happiness potential right under our noses. Experience endlessly teaches that the grass is not always greener on the other side of the fence. It hardly ever is.

 

Where does all this lead? One startling conclusion is that Negative factors in life and contentment, (even positive resignation) can make surprisingly congenial bedfellows! It depends on how one views "life." At the same time, it is interesting that Jesus never promised happiness in this life. He did clearly promise something called "shalom." This is a profound inner experience of Order. Of Tranquility. Of oughtness. But it differs from happiness which is obviously so difficult to define.. Permanent happiness belongs to Paradise, the state of Heaven, but the deep interior feeling of Things-are-the way-they-are- supposed-to-be is attainable in this Valley of tears. But how?

 

I suggest that the earthly happiness/ Peace/ contentment constellation would include the following:

 

1. Living in the Present or one day at a time. Remorse, regret and guilt are often a waste of energy. I can control my Now but not my past or my future.

 

2. Cultivating a habit of gratitude for the blessings and joys in my immediate cosmos. Constantly recalling the street wisdom of the half filled glass.

 

3. Noticing what goes on in my world. Cultivating the habit of seeing the many good things under my very nose. Becoming aware of the phoniness of the "beautiful" people hoopla. Seeing that the glitz of the media is largely superficial and consequently discovering freedom from envy.

 

4. Instantly halting the first inklings of self pity realizing that the "pity pot" is close to the most damaging human emotion.

 

5. Cutting the roots of the silliness of perfectionism again realizing that the notion of perfection is an illusion which discourages real attempts at human growth.

 

6. Getting deeply rooted in God and His truth whereby one finally discovers one's own value as the Lord's own child. Understanding, as a consequence, that life is meant to be enjoyed and that having appropriate "fun" is not only permitted by the Lord but is highly encouraged. This is highly linked to an authentic religious way of life which brings that profound joy of the inner awareness of walking with God.

 

Everyone has a right and even an obligation to figure out the best way to live one's life. Of course, we can lose that which makes us happy in this life while Heaven is for ever. Yet, we should, it would appear, make the most of what we have in this life and get the maximum of the happiness/peace/ contentment potential in our lives. May God and Our Lady direct us to lead the good and merry Christian life.

 

Can a Priest Lose His Faith?

 

Can a Priest lose his Faith?

 

It was at one of those unplanned casual meetings of priests that I was profoundly shocked at my own naiveté and ruffled by the ruthless nature of reality "up close". There were six or seven clerics in the group with varying backgrounds, disparate talents and psyches. One of them, not young but somewhat "long in the tooth", startled me by his nonchalant observation that the world will never come to an end.

Innocently, I asked how his statement squared with the Second Coming of Christ, the Final Judgment and the Resurrection of the Dead. Giving me that look of the Illuminati and tinged with a touch of pity for my Ignorance, he suggested that I get into the 21st century. Although I am simple of heart, 92 and peacefully set into a belief in a loving God made man in Jesus Who left a teaching Church to guide us to eternal life, I pushed him (perhaps goaded is a more precise word) into further reflections on Catholicism.

His eyes, rheumy with an alarming blankness, fixed on me as he responded to my probing. All religions are the same, he said. There is no need for evangelization. The Church is incorrect. It must modernize and get into the present time. All people go to heaven. Sin is a myth. Masturbation is perfectly normal.

My shock today is that I was shocked at all. I had been taught very early in my life all about the human tendency to sin, the weakness of the will and the darkening of the intellect through the great aboriginal calamity called Original sin.

 

 

 

With apologies to the holy Biblical Pharisees like St. Paul, only a modern Pharisee and phony would be startled by human perversity. Yet here I am with extensive years of experience as a priest plus over 50 years of professional experience as a licensed psychologist, shaken to my core about a priest who sounds like he lost his Faith!

Is there something special or very different about loss of Faith in the case of a priest? What could be basically different? How could he continue honestly to remain a priest tacitly appearing, by staying a priest, to give full belief and support to the Church in which he does not fully believe? Does he experience the dis-stress of Cognitive dissonance so clearly demonstrated years ago by Festinger? Does he have a turbulent interior?

Has he really lost his Faith? Perhaps. But there may be something else operative here. I am reminded about Freud's famous caveat. "Things are rarely, if ever, only what they seem." Many years ago, as a young priest I was asked to give a Priests' retreat "somewhere" during which I received a similar jolt. A priest retreat-ant told me that he did not believe in God anymore. And, of course, I reacted with alarm and asked how he could celebrate Mass and preach with such a mind set. He airily replied that the Mass was a great platform for "community building" which was now his vocation. After a bit of primitive probing, I discovered that he was deep into sexual practices which apparently had conflicted with "old fashioned" views of priesthood. Dropping the God dimension allowed him to continue, as if on a purely secular basis, his real interest and concern for others. Dissonance personified. Yet he did enjoy the public life of the priesthood and basked in the popularity of those who cheered his "progressive" policies. No prayer. No Eucharistic visits. No spiritual reading, only the latest in Social Work techniques and possibly the New York Times.

The rheumy eyed cleric mentioned earlier turned out to be a priest with serious sexual difficulties as result of which he no longer is permitted to "perform" as a priest in public. The obvious question is whether or not there is a link between his sexual (and punished) lapses and his patently heretical utterances spoken through a clearly observable "repressed" anger.

When I was a graduate student at NYU and proudly wearing my clerical collar, I was approached by a middle aged classmate who whispered to me that he used to be a priest. With my curiosity aroused tinged with a probable salacious interest, I eagerly sought the details of his narrative, especially since my dissertation was on former Catholic priests.

He presented a noble story highlighted by a profound rebellion against unfeeling out of touch American Bishops who had no concern for the poor but who loudly screamed about the evils of contraception. So, like a clerical Robin Hood, he left the priesthood to work for the poor. However, sometime later he invited me to dinner at his home in suburbia. An elegant, classy, upper case home, presided over by— you guessed it--- a good looking, charming gal. He talked incessantly about the public school system and his hopes of being appointed soon to the post of Principal or top dog. When I, in my astonishment, asked what happened to the "poor thing", he, well oiled with several glasses of very good wine, replied: "Oh, I needed that to get angry enough to leave."

It sounds strangely like Freud's "displaced allegation" or as the toughs in Hells's Kitchen used to say: " It ain't a question of the Trinity. It's a question below the belt buckle." Of course, there may be all kinds of turbulence other than sexual in the troubled priest's soul. Avarice and ambition have always been great energizers. Who really knows? We do know that such dissonance, whatever its source, makes not for inner peace, love and the spread of Catholic life but rather unhappiness, bitterness and destruction. But why should it happen at all, this so called "loss of Faith"? What happened that he should be so vulnerable? Further, what might the average priest do to safeguard his personal "Pearl of Great Price"?

Psychological research has often been, thank the Lord, most helpful in aiding us to appreciate the influence of environment, familial matrix, peer pressures and experience, temperament, cultural mores, and genetic/DNA input on how we act and even who we are. But religion teaches us something even more telling—the amazing and powerful Grace of the Lord which can do utterly fantastic things. And yet it does appear that Grace of Faith which is a gift can be spurned, misused and lost.

I recall one of my fellow students in the major seminary who was the envy of us slower, more plebian types, for his talents, his personality, his apparent holiness, his overwhelming superiority. As a priest, he was spectacular, particularly in his powerful preaching. Another Sheen, they said. Yet after some years of glamorous success, he "fell in love." With another man. After leaving the priesthood, he made his living as a Maitre D'. a greeter, in a restaurant. Before he died, he insisted that there be no religious factor in his funeral. None. He had long since given up even ambiguous prayer. He became a complete unbeliever. How could such sadness and "tergiversation" happen?

From what I can see there are two things to forestall the sadness of the loss of Faith, especially for a priest. The Eucharist and the Blessed Mother. So many others feel the same way. Archbishop Fulton Sheen, for example, writes about both in his autobiography, "Treasure in Clay."

"It is impossible for me to explain how helpful the Holy Hour has been in preserving my vocation…………the Holy Hour apart from all its positive spiritual benefits, kept my feet from wandering too far. Being tethered to the tabernacle, one's rope for finding other pastures is not so long. That dim tabernacle lamp, however pale and faint, had some mysterious luminosity to darken the brightness of " bright lights."

And

"despite the unglutted beast that strains in the body of every priest, she (Blessed Mother) held onto the leash to tame its madness…..she changes eros to agape..she really loves me – and if she can love me then Christ is with me…"

The priest so busy going to theatres and watching Television junk, who doesn't pray before the Tabernacle or to say the Rosary is more vulnerable than clay. He is a setup, hyperbolically predictable for "trouble." In spite of my age and experience, I am still amazed when priests and religious tell me that it has been years since they "fingered" a Rosary asking Our Lady for help and love. The super busy priest whom I know, says he has no time but we all know "way down deep" that there is time if we really want to make it. In fact, the priest has been seduced into a state of darkened awareness. But why? And how?

It was the great Apostle Paul who warned himself to be careful lest he who had preached to others might also become a castaway. It looks like anyone can be severely tested in matters of Faith----clergy and laity alike. In fact, even Cardinals. Tests and temptations are one thing but outcome is another. John Cardinal O'Connor, Archbishop of New York, Admiral of the United States Navy, Author, Ph.D, confessed publicly of his own war time trial of Faith in the South Pacific. Wracked by loneliness and frequent periods of profound silences, he clung to the Eucharist for resolution. He spent many long hours in a corrugated roofed chapel in physical darkness lighted only by the small red tabernacle lamp. He wrestled with his God and heard many times the Biblical Voice: "My grace is enough for you." As we know he went on to fabulous Church leadership and high national impact in a future which was then unknown to him. Probably his Faith issues made him even more fit for the role the Lord had chosen for him.

Yes, priests can and have lost their Faith. But it is not the temptation that matters. It's what we do with it that matters. It is the grappling and the wrestling and the trust in God that matters, even and especially in periods of utter darkness and spiritual pain.

I wonder how many fallen priests would have been "saved" if they sat before their Eucharistic Lord every day and faced Him with their difficulties. I wonder how many could have been consoled if they had knelt at the Blessed Mother's knee and asked for her help!

The title of this essay asks a question which rhetorical. The implication however is real. Priests can and do lose their Faith. Priests who lose the Faith could have been helped. When a gift such as Faith, to say nothing of the glory of the priesthood, is no longer seen as valuable and precious, it will soon end up on the dung heap. The priest who doesn't pray is not only a misnomer, but someone who has lost his "vision" as well as his way. To my wavering priest brother, I paraphrase, a little, the urging of Mel Brooks:

"Don't be stupid

Be a smarty

Come and join the praying party"

Join up! Or re-enlist! The rewards are stupendous!