Category Archives: Spirituality

Musings on the Meaning of Celibacy

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Almost exactly four months ago, we published this post on questions to ask oneself if considering the possibility of entering a celibate partnership. Commenters on that post challenged us to think more deeply about our own questions, particularly #4: “Do I have an idea of what celibacy might mean for me?” We think this is one of the most important items on our list, and we hope that we’ll always be asking ourselves this question as we continue living our celibate vocations together. If you’ve been with us since the beginning of our blog 10 months ago, you’ve likely read our “Why celibacy?” and “Defining celibacy” posts. Newer readers may have seen our post from two months ago where we revisited these. If you’ve perused the “Celibacy and Vocation” section of our index page, you can probably tell that our understandings of celibacy and vocation are constantly evolving. When we launched A Queer Calling on January 16, 2014, our concept of celibate vocation lived in partnership was very basic. One of our original hopes for AQC was that God would use our blog to help us mature in our vocations. Ten months in, we’re already seeing that the question “What does celibacy mean for us?” doesn’t have a simple, consistent answer. As we look through old posts and comment responses, we notice that over time there have been shifts — mostly subtle, a few more dramatic — in how we discuss the same topics we began broaching in January.

We think the best example of this is how we conceive of the four core values of celibacy that we laid out during week 1: hospitality, vulnerability, commitment, and shared spiritual life. One of the criticisms we’ve received over and over again is that our definition of celibacy says nothing about sexual abstinence. That was intentional because at the time we began blogging, we took sexual abstinence as a given when discussing celibate vocations. It’s obvious that part of a celibate vocation is not having sex, so our questions ten months ago focused on, “But what else? Christian vocations aren’t reducible to ‘having sex,’ or ‘not having sex.’ Vocations are more than that. Where is the more in celibacy?” Spending almost a year pondering the four values intensely has brought us a lovely surprise: at this point, hospitality, vulnerability, commitment, and shared spiritual life are becoming as much a given for us as sexual abstinence was in the beginning. We find that we no longer need to set aside specific, intentional times to think and pray about these issues. This focus is happening automatically, every day, and is often woven seamlessly into other aspects of our lives. It’s present even during seasons when we’re blogging more about LGBT issues than celibacy.

Last night over dinner, we were talking about how our approach to hospitality has changed since we first began our life together. While we’ve always wanted to be available for friends and acquaintances who need us, we used to be a bit more selective about how we would offer hospitality. Our primary questions for extending hospitality were once, “Is meeting x need something we can do without much trouble? How will extending hospitality in this way force us to make adjustments to our everyday lives?” As we enjoyed our salads and sandwiches, we reflected on the fact that neither of those questions enters our minds much anymore. Instead, we’re thinking, “How can we be most welcoming to this person? What are the needs, and how can we help?” We’re observing more unity of mind in our relationship as we discern how to best use what we have to welcome other people. If someone we know needs a place to stay short-term or long-term, we don’t even have to discuss pros and cons: without saying anything, we are already in agreement that this person can live in our guest room and dine at our table for as long as he or she needs. If a friend living several hours away is in trouble and has no one local to reach out to, we’re on the road as soon as work is over that day: Lindsey is packing bags and Sarah is planning logistics, and neither of us has ever questioned whether we would go. “Hows” instead of “whethers” have come to dominate our discussions of hospitality.

We’ve noticed that as we’ve spent more time thinking (and blogging) about celibacy, vulnerability as become less painful and more freeing for both of us. Our conversations at home, with celibate and non-celibate friends, at church, and in our professional lives have deepened beyond imagination. Both of us have already shared far more vulnerably at AQC than we ever thought possible. When we began this blog, Sarah had absolutely no intention of writing anything too specific about Sarah’s history of sexual trauma, eating disorders, and addiction. Lindsey had never dreamed of being able to share anything about celibacy or LGBT issues with people from our own Christian tradition. Our attempt to live the value of vulnerability has opened dozens of doors for conversation. We’ve been contacted by family members who had no idea what we’ve experienced while coming into our own as gay adults in the Christian faith, former classmates who wanted to apologize for haranguing us in middle school and high school, people we met in graduate school who never quite new how to engage thoughtfully with LGBT Christians, and folks from across the globe who are trying their best to discern what non-monastic celibacy looks like. In contacting us, they have gifted us with their vulnerability. At this point in our lives, we see vulnerability becoming so much more natural in our relationship with each other, our friends, and even people we don’t know that well. We’re learning that living into the value of vulnerability allows us to give of ourselves more freely.

Also, our commitments to each other, our Christian tradition, our faith community, our family of choice, and other people in general have grown in complexity and breadth since January. At the beginning, we really didn’t know what we were doing. We had been a couple for a little over a year, we had discerned vocations to celibacy lived in the world, and sensed that God was calling us into celibacy in partnership together. We were unsure of how this would manifest. How would we honor the commitment we have to one another, and what would be the best terminology for describing that? Would the people who had been telling us that we’re nothing more than “marriage without the sex” turn out to be right? As our relationship developed, would it come to look more like marriage, monasticism, or neither? The uncertainty hung over our heads like heavy rainclouds even though we had spent years independently pondering celibacy, marriage, and vocation. It has become clear to us over the past few months that we don’t need the perfect label to describe our mutual commitment or the commitments we have to God and others. For some things, there are no words — only wonder and mystery. We’ve learned that word choice isn’t what solidifies our willingness to be there for each other through thick and thin for the rest of our lives. We’ve also learned that as other people interact with our community of two in whatever ways they will, we don’t necessarily require language to describe our commitments to them either. A friend moves into our guest room for an indefinite period of time: does that make him a “member” of our community? Is he now part of our family? Another friend lives several hours away but is as emotionally and spiritually close to us as a brother: who is he to us, and how does that fit in with our vocation? We don’t worry about these things anymore. They’re distractions. Living celibacy is teaching us what it means to have faith that God — not humanity — is who truly makes vocations and relationships what they are.

The spiritual life we share began as a shared prayer rule. At the beginning of our relationship, we made a commitment to say Matins and Compline together every day, even if that meant one of us was reading while the other was driving to work. We experienced difficulty in honoring and appreciating the two very different spiritualities we bring into our current shared Christian tradition. Sarah’s inner Catholic and Lindsey’s inner evangelical had more than a few clashes at the beginning. As we’ve grown in our vocation, we’ve seen that a shared spiritual life involves significantly more than a daily prayer rule and debates over which variety of Christian music should blast from the car radio. Over time, we’ve experienced greater ease in discussing spiritual matters. We never hesitate to share openly about our personal spiritual lives with one another. Talking about our different experiences of sin and the graces of confession no longer has to be a theological debate and in hypothetical terms. These days in our home, “I’ve been struggling with x lately,” is met more often with, “I know and I’ve been waiting for you to talk with me about that,” than, “Really? What’s going on?” We’ve come to greater unity of mind when it comes to dealing with problems at church as well. We used to spend significantly more time thinking through dozens of possible approaches to troubled relationships with other parishioners and even more for broaching complicated issues with our priest. As it is now, we come to a sense of oneness very quickly most of the time when such issues arise. And if we’re in the midst of a difficult conversation with someone at church, we don’t have to wait for privacy to ask each other how to do better next time. We’re becoming a proficient team when it comes to managing the toughest parts of interaction with other humans.

When we started writing this post, we didn’t realize it would get lengthy this quickly! But we also wanted to touch upon a couple of other issues. This morning before publishing the post, we asked each other, “What do you think God is using our shared celibate vocation to teach you right now?” Lindsey’s answer focused on caregiving — that acts of providing and caring intimately for another person are not and should not be confined to marriage. We can both see how living celibacy is teaching us about the larger need for Christians (especially in the West) to rethink the artificial boundaries our societies have created around acts of care. Sarah’s response focused on the countercultural nature of celibacy — that an abundant Christian life in the world does not require marrying and having children, and that often, marriage has a way of locking people into certain cultural expectations. Celibacy poses challenges to the expectations our societies have for “responsible” adults, and it puts Christian traditions face to face with the idol we’ve made of marriage. We would like to delve more deeply into both these topics in later posts.

We’re grateful for all the lessons God has been teaching us as we strive to live our celibate vocations, and we’re awaiting eagerly what is to come. Circling back to the question at the beginning of the post: each day we see increasing evidence that, “Do I have an idea of what celibacy might mean for me?” is not truly a “yes or no” question. It’s a question that requires continuous and thorough self-examination in order to respond honestly. And our answer has become more organic and dynamic than either of us ever could have dreamed.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

From Hermitage to Celibate Village — The Ephrata Cloister

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Recently, we took a short Saturday trip to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to visit a historic site that Sarah has been wanting to see for years: the Ephrata Cloister. We think it’s likely that most of our readers are not familiar with this place, so it seems appropriate to include it in our Profiles of Celibates series. We’re including some photos from our visit within the post itself, but not all. You can see additional photos on our Facebook page.

Most of the time when Christians think of celibacy, Catholic priests and Catholic and Orthodox monastics come to mind first. Speaking comparatively, there aren’t many current or historic examples of Protestant celibacy. We decided to write about the Ephrata Cloister not only because it was a fascinating movement, but also because it was a Protestant movement. We’ve received many questions from Protestant readers about whether any celibate communities have arisen from within their traditions. As we continue this series, we plan to offer (insofar as it is possible) a balance of posts on Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians who have committed to celibacy either temporarily or perpetually.

During our visit to the Ephrata Cloister, we learned that the term “cloister” was foisted upon the community by outsiders who perceived the brothers and sisters as living like Catholic monastics. To the people who lived there, it was simply the town of Ephrata — named for Ephrath, the biblical site where the matriarch Rachel died during childbirth. Ephrata was founded by Conrad Beissel (1691-1768), a German Pietist who had originally intended to create a hermitage for himself rather than a village of vowed celibates. Beissel had been forced to leave Germany for his involvement with non-state-sanctioned religious groups. After immigrating to Pennsylvania but before experiencing a call to celibacy and solitude, he became a leader in the congregation of Conestoga Brethren. During this time, he attracted a number of followers due to his vibrant personality and unusual theological ideas (i.e. Saturday, not Sunday, is when the Sabbath should be observed). In 1732 as he resigned from leadership in the Brethren congregation and sought a quiet place to find unity with God, a number of his former followers desired to continue under his leadership and the village of Ephrata was born.

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The founders of Ephrata believed that the most complete union with God was a marriage of sorts. Giving one’s entire life over to God required abandoning any possibility of earthly marriage. To Beissel’s understanding, God’s wrath was his masculine aspect and God’s gentle mercy was his feminine aspect. Because both masculine and feminine could be found within God, men at Ephrata committed their lives in marriage to Sophia (Divine Wisdom) and women became brides of Christ. They adopted a rigorous rule of living that involved several hours of work, even more time in prayer, and one vegetarian or vegan meal per day. Brothers and sisters slept on wooden beds and awakened in the middle of the night to pray and watch for Christ’s coming. Sabbath worship took place in the community’s meetinghouse on Saturdays with the brothers and sisters physically separated while in the same room. Exceptions to the schedule were made for the community’s Love Feast which involved a grand banquet, reception of communion, and the washing of feet. Brothers and sisters donned white robes to hide the curves of their bodies and to symbolize their heavenly marriages.

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Approximately 80 celibate members resided at Ephrata, and eventually the village grew to include more than twice as many non-celibate members who lived in their own family farmhouses surrounding the core community of brothers and sisters. Families at Ephrata worked and worshipped alongside celibate members, often providing them with food and other necessary resources. Celibate members operated a German school for the local children. The dominant focus areas of work at Ephrata were music and writing. While manual labor played a role in the community’s daily life, members were trained to be singers, calligraphers, printers, and bookbinders. Ephrata left as its legacy an extensive collection of musical compositions, which a volunteer choir continues to sing for the public today.

When Beissel reposed in 1768 and Peter Miller assumed leadership, the celibate community at Ephrata began to decline rapidly. Beissel’s charismatic personality had been its driving force for years, and with less interested in celibacy amongst young men and women who had been educated by the brothers and sisters, Ephrata’s original vision for seeking unity with God in solitude lost its popularity. The last celibate member reposed in 1813, after which the village’s remaining residents became the German Seventh Day Baptist Church. The last non-celibate resident of the Ephrata Cloister — Marie Elizabeth Kachel Bucher — reposed in 2008.

Visiting the Ephrata Cloister gave us a window into a different kind of celibate life. We found it fascinating how Beissel used Genesis 1 to garner support for celibacy. In his theology, God intended to create humans with a perfect balance of male and female. Achieving this balance after the Fall required intense effort to discipline the body and the mind. Every dimension of the ascetical effort hinged upon integrating the masculine and the feminine. At Ephrata, it was essential to integrate one’s sexuality fully in order to balance masculine and feminine rather than attempt to repress all sexual desires. People interested in cultivating a celibate vocation might find some of Ephrata’s practices for honoring the masculine and feminine within as a helpful frame for integrating, rather than repressing, one’s sexuality. The daily disciplines of the Ephrata Cloister at its height were impressively demanding and reminded us of many other monastic communities we’ve visited. We have found ourselves musing about the connections between discipling the body and fully integrating one’s sexuality, and this topic might be helpful for others pursuing celibacy to consider.

We were intrigued by how the Ephrata Cloister blossomed as an artistic community. Several celibate members became skilled at writing Fraktur, preparing a number of texts such as this decorative wall hanging.

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Those who had taken on Ephrata’s monastic life saw their vocations blossoming into art. The depth of detail and care in Ephrata’s creative endeavors bears witness to one of many possibilities for how celibates can love and serve the world differently. We were amazed to learn that some Ephrata hymns consist of over 200 verses offered to God in witness to his work within the hearts of the community. Even 200 years after the last celibate member of the Ephrata community reposed, the artistic legacy of Ephrata continues. As we reflected on the art at Ephrata Cloister, we wondered what aspects of our own celibate vocation might have a broader impact. How might our commitments to vulnerability, hospitality, and a shared spiritual life bear fruit that reflects God’s glory?

We found our trip to Ephrata to be incredibly refreshing and have enjoyed talking about the visit together and with friends. We’re eager to continue the conversation with all of our readers in the comments.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Challenging the Norms of Female Celibacy — The Beguines

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Several months ago, one of our readers asked if we would consider writing on the Beguines. Recently, another reader raised the issue again, so we thought now might be a good time to post something about the Beguine movement as part of our sporadic “profiles of celibates” series. We’ll admit upfront that we’ve been hesitant to write on this movement, mostly because it consisted of multiple groups with little cohesion. Also, because the Beguines were suppressed multiple times by the Church for heretical beliefs and practices, one needs to be careful when drawing upon their history for a model of living non-monsatic or semi-monastic celibacy. However, we think there is much that a celibate person living in the world can learn from the Beguine movement. In today’s post, we’ll introduce you to the Beguines and offer some brief thoughts about how reflecting on their stories and experiences could benefit celibate people today.

The Beguines were active in Northern Europe from the 12th to 16th centuries, primarily in Belgium and the Netherlands. They were groups of women who joined in semi-monastic communities under no vows and very low levels of commitment. The major contributing factor to the emergence of this movement was a disproportionate population of women in the Low Countries. Because women outnumbered men in most urban areas, many women of marrying age were unable to find husbands. Beguinages — houses of Beguines — began popping up throughout these areas in the 13th century. Each community was autonomous, so the degree of theological orthodoxy in this movement was variable, as was understanding of the movement’s goals and work. Some groups of beguines accepted only women of high social status, and others took in women from a wider range of circumstances. Women who lived in these spaces were highly independent, usually held onto personal property, and were free to leave at any time for almost any reason, including marriage. Some widowed women entered beguinages and brought their children along. Typically, Beguine women funded themselves through educating children, working in the cloth industry or some other variety of trade, or using their inheritances. Whether her time as a Beguine would be a year or less, several years, or a lifetime, each woman committed to celibacy and charitable works while living as part of her community.

The Beguine movement was also part of the larger phenomenon of mysticism in medieval Europe. Within the movement’s first hundred years, some groups shifted focus from independence and charitable works to poverty and contemplative prayer. With this evolution came an emphasis on mysticism, and several Beguines lived out their days as beggars claiming experiences of frequent visions from God. Marguerite Porete, one of the most well-known late 13th-early 14th century Beguines, was condemned by the Church for heresy and executed by burning at the stake — largely because her Mirror of Simple Souls contained statements that authorities interpreted as autotheistic and antinomian, two characteristics of the Heresy of the Free Spirit.

In addition to mysticism, the Beguines encountered pushback from the Church in other areas. Their lack of vowed commitment and supervision under any authority except a confessor was problematic in the eyes of the Church. As time progressed and mendicant religious orders expanded, some Beguine groups became part of established, Church-sanctioned celibate communities — but others joined with heretical groups. Beguinages that did not join with other groups continued as they were. By the 16th century, most had disbanded. However, some avoided suppression during the Protestant Reformation and other political conflicts, continuing even into the 20th century.

Now, what can today’s celibates living in the world learn from the Beguines? After reflecting on this question, we see two items worthy of special emphasis:

The case of the Beguines offers an intriguing model of organic and varied celibate community. Each beguinage was independent and able to determine a way of life for itself without needing to consider what the others were doing, which will probably resonate with celibates living in today’s secular world. As a celibate single, member of a celibate couple, or member of another kind of lay celibate community, a person usually has significant freedom in determining how to live his/her vocation on a daily basis. This is an advantage because it provides the opportunity to use one’s gifts to serve God and others without restriction. But it also poses a challenge because a lack of accountability can led to a number of spiritual problems (you should read Eve Tushnet’s post on self-abbotting). In this way, the two of us see the Beguines as both a model to draw upon and a cautionary tale. We’ve learned never to doubt the importance of regular spiritual direction where we can be open about all aspects of our relationship and work.

The Beguines also challenge what both Western and Eastern Christians see as norms for celibate living. The Beguines were not nuns. They weren’t vowed to their communities. The relationships amongst women living in beguinages were diverse, and it’s clear that words like “friend” and “sister” don’t adequately describe every instance of meaningful relationship between one Beguine woman and another. The Beguines pushed back on the idea that celibacy must be lived out within the context of monasticism. In today’s world where more young people are remaining celibate (or at least single) either by choice or by circumstance, there’s a need for better discussion about non-monastic celibacy and what it could look like as a purposeful, Christ-centered way of life. Though the Beguines faced many problems, not the least of which was frequent run-ins with Church hierarchy, today’s celibates can take inspiration from this movement’s experimentation with a different kind of vocation. For celibate people to live meaningfully in the secular world, we need to get creative. We need to consider new possibilities and be open to the idea that there are more vocations than marriage and monasticism. But of course, we must reiterate that any person discerning a vocation — especially an unusual one — would benefit from spiritual direction.

We’re interested to know if there are other lessons our readers think celibate people could learn from the Beguines. Leave a comment if you feel so led, and also let us know if there are other celibate people or groups you would like us to consider profiling.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Some thoughts on chastity

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We’ve been talking a lot about welcoming LGBT people who attend Christian gatherings. In the last week alone, we’ve talked about welcome in Christian traditions generally, Catholic and Evangelical traditions, and in specific local church communities. We’ve hit a record for the number of first-time commenters in a week (welcome!) and sheer volume of long comments (we’re working on responding, promise!).

As we’ve been talking about welcoming LGBT people, we’ve noticed an uptick in commenters with concerns about what LGBT Christians are actually doing. Pressing further, we have discovered the principal concerns are about lust and sexual conduct. Some readers have asked us directly to write more about chastity. We don’t want to minimize the importance of sexual morality in the Christian life, but the line of thinking that fixates on sexual behavior distorts chastity by diminishing it to genital obedience. For Christians, living chastely requires that we fix our eyes on Christ, so that we can devote our whole selves to following him. We are called to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our mind, and with all our strength. Therefore, chastity requires thoughtful stewardship of our bodies, our minds, and our hearts.

We’ve noted before that many people think first about chastity by trying to draw lines around what counts as “sex.” Defining chastity with a legalistic “Just say no” approach does not do anyone any favors. Our bodies are so much more than our genitals. Our capacity for human connection extends in myriad forms. A triune God made us for relationships with each other. Scripture bears witness to our need to conduct ourselves chastely not only in family relationships but also in relationships with our neighbors. Cultivating chastity requires that adults help children develop a healthy sense of bodily autonomy, touch-oriented people grow in their understanding of what various forms of physical contact communicate, spouses learn the nuances of mutual submission to one another, and we learn to love our neighbors as ourselves.

One of the hardest tasks for any Christian is to cultivate a chaste mind. Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk prescribed this course of action should we desire to acquire the mind of Christ:

“Let thy mind fast from vain thoughts; let thy memory fast from remembering evil; let thy will fast from evil desire; let thine eyes fast from bad sights: turn away thine eyes that thou mayest not see vanity; let thine ears fast from vile songs and slanderous whispers; let thy tongue fast from slander, condemnation, blasphemy, falsehood, deception, foul language and every idle and rotten word; let thy hands fast from killing and from stealing another’s goods; let thy legs fast from going to evil deeds: Turn away from evil, and do good.”

This exhortation starts with purifying the mind from vain thoughts, but Saint Tikhon provides further wisdom. We can make every effort to keep our mind off of evil. In our prayer life, we constantly bring concerns to God that reflect evil in the world, but we strive to follow the Psalmist’s example and think on how God is at work to restore all things. Thinking about our prayer life reminds us that our tongues make our invisible thoughts visible. We cultivate chastity by speaking kindly, compassionately, honestly, and directly.

As we work on developing chastity in our own lives, it seems to us that chastity’s true home is the heart. We are drawn by our heart to love the world around us. A heart that is full of the love of God strengthens the body in order to extend its hands and its feet in meaningful service. Service is a tricky aspect of chastity. When people serve, it’s easy for them to become disillusioned and jaded, especially if their service is motivated solely from an intellectual sense of obligation. When actions flow from a heart captivated by God’s love, Christ-centered forms of service can be particularly life-giving. It seems to us that chastity, rightly understood, involves cultivating virtues that allow people to reflect the image and likeness of Christ more fully.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Confessions of a Former Bad Catholic

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A reflection by Sarah

Another surprise blog post today. We seem to be in a season of life where the need for these is popping up quite often. After a very intense response to my ear injections yesterday which kept me riding an evil tilt-a-whirl all night, I’m spending the day working from home. Usually my vertigo episodes continue steadily for minutes to hours until coming to a sudden end, but last night I had about an hour of respite around 3am, during which time I read this article by Aaron Taylor at Ethika Politika. Taylor cites the story of Louise Mensch — a divorced and remarried Catholic who is not currently receiving communion due to her own convictions — as an example of the quickly dying (perhaps already dead) “bad Catholic” archetype:

Reactions to Mensch’s piece fell predictably into two camps. On one side, “liberals” decried Mensch for being self-loathing, for not dancing to the beat of the modern, sexually enlightened drum. On the other side, “conservatives” were baffled as to why, if Mensch really believed the Church’s teachings, she would not abandon her lifestyle as an “adulteress.” What both critics share is the belief that Mensch’s situation makes little sense because one cannot simultaneously uphold a set of moral standards and fall short of those standards.

Yet, until fairly recently in Catholic history, women and men like Mensch were easily understood by others in the Church as conforming to a particular type: the type of the “bad Catholic.”

“Bad Catholics” knew the moral rules taught by the Church, and they broke—even flouted—them, particularly when it came to sex. They did not, however, argue that the rules should be changed to confer moral approval on their behavior. Despite their moral failings, bad Catholics also tended to maintain a high regard for the Church’s sacramental and spiritual rules and practices. They attended Mass, were devoted to the Virgin Mary, and expressed love for the Blessed Sacrament precisely by not receiving it in Communion when in an unworthy state to do so.

Taylor goes on to point out that Mensch’s story is not representative of what generally happens to today’s “bad Catholics,” who usually end up identifying as “liberal Catholics” or leaving Catholicism altogether. Without judgment upon anyone’s faith journey and without intending to stigmatize anyone who identifies as a liberal Catholic, I am inclined to agree with his basic point. This is what becomes of today’s bad Catholics. I’ve seen it myself more times than I can count. As I’ve already outed myself on the blog as a former Catholic, I can say openly that this article struck a strong chord with me. My own reasons for leaving the Catholic Church for a different Christian tradition are completely removed from any moral teaching or behavioral expectation. (If you must know, the final nail in the coffin was my inability assent to papal supremacy after significant theological study on this doctrine’s development, but perhaps that’s a post for another time.) However, after reading the article I spent the rest of the night — at least what time I wasn’t focused on asking God to save me from falling off the floor — in reflection. I suppose I ought to thank Eve Tushnet for this as well. Somehow I’m feeling both unusually brave and extra vulnerable after my recent read of her new book.

Confession time: not only am I a former Catholic, but I’m also a former “bad Catholic.” And today, I’m still entirely capable of being a bad Christian within my current tradition. Yet despite this awareness, most of the time I don’t feel free to admit it to anyone other than Lindsey and our parish priest. I don’t have permission to be a bad Christian, and when I think seriously about it I realize that this was also true during my years as a Catholic.

Let’s back up a bit…

Though sexual sin has never been a serious struggle for me, I’ve experienced seasons in which I’ve been unable or unwilling (or both) to behave morally in other ways. Everyone who practices rigorous honesty can identify with this to an extent. But somehow, it’s still easy to presume that if a person is engaging in unchristian behaviors, his/her spiritual life is nonexistent…or alternatively, that if a person engages regularly in spiritually healthy devotional practices, he/she must be living in a way that is fully aligned with the teachings of the Gospel.

As I thought about this last night, I was taken back to my college and early graduate school days. Without hesitation, I can say that I was a deeply devoted Catholic. I attended Mass almost every day, not out of compulsion but because I woke up each morning with an eagerness to hear that day’s Gospel proclaimed, to be present with the very small daily Mass-going community in my college town, and to be in the same chapel where bread and wine mysteriously became Christ’s Body and Blood despite my inability to see this happening. I had a consistent daily prayer rule and engaged regularly in theological conversations with friends. But quite often, my most profound spiritual moments were intertwined with my most immoral behaviors.

I was a very good student and never had trouble maintaining excellent grades, and during my freshman and sophomore years everyone in my residence hall knew me as the girl who would sit in the lobby and study for hours into the night. As I immersed myself in the works of Aristotle, Tertullian, Shakespeare, and Virginia Woolf, I would take frequent mini-breaks to say a Chaplet of Divine Mercy and snort an Adderall, crushing it beforehand with my copy of the Langenscheidt German Dictionary…or the Daily Roman Missal. There wasn’t an evening that passed without my calling out to the Theotokos, whom I referred to as “Mom” at that point. On weekends after I had finished all my homework, I would load my pockets with prayer cards, a rosary, some cash for cocaine, a fake ID, and head off to a party with my sorority sisters or friends from work. I remember one night when after my eighth jello shot and an untold amount of Bacardi and diet coke, I sat in the backseat of one of my sisters’ cars, pulled a rosary from my pocket and began praying it loudly on the way back to campus. My sisters all found this quite amusing, and I remember one requesting jovially, “Pray one for me too, Sparky!” Then, there was also bulimia — the “good girl’s addiction” that I had developed by age 12. Saying the Litany of Loreto or part of Vespers/Compline on my drive to the grocery store and between binge/purge sessions was a common practice of mine for several years.

I have no doubt that some readers are horrified by this point in the post. I’m anticipating getting some nasty comments and emails from pious individuals demanding to know what possessed me to engage in such appalling and irreverent behavior. Sometimes, I wonder that myself. I wondered about it at the time too, which is why despite going to Mass almost every day, more often than not I didn’t commune. And while I always took these matters with me to confession, I never attempted to approach this sacrament if my attitude was, “I know what I’m doing is wrong, but I’m not ready to repent and amend my life.” During these times I always held onto the hope that God would eventually guide me to a place of desiring repentance. I was a bad Catholic, and I knew it and accepted it as the present reality.

I’m sure my reflection today will also receive many responses from readers who are wondering, “Why are you beating up on yourself? Why can’t you see that these behaviors you’re describing are indicative of mental illness, not sin?” I’m not beating up on myself. I’m calling a duck a duck. Sin and illness are not mutually exclusive. Yes, there’s a level at which my culpability for some of these actions was compromised. Identifying these actions as results of sin is not the same as blaming, shaming, or implying that struggles with substance abuse and behavioral addiction are my “fault.”

Coming full circle to the article’s discussion of what happens to bad Catholics, I’ve seen stories similar to mine play out very differently in the lives of other people I’ve known. There are folks who leave Catholicism or Christianity altogether because of the pressure to be perfectly free from sin before ever approaching the church’s front stoop. They know that they can’t be perfect, so they stop trying. There are others who experience pressure from secular society to ease up on themselves to the point of dismissing Christian teaching altogether, or picking and choosing the parts that are gentlest. They hear from friends and mental health professionals that thinking about their struggles in any way related to sin is pathological and masochistic. Because issues of sin that are directly related to mental health can be highly sensitive topics, these people may find that the only way they can move forward in life is to reject the moral expectations of traditional Christianity and replace them with whatever counsel is helping at the moment. I’ve noticed that these things happen frequently when a person struggling with serious sin attempts to discuss it with a priest or pastor who is more concerned with quoting dogmas than attending to the needs of a deeply wounded soul. Another common instigator is members of the parish who do not trust their priests to steward the chalice, so they take it upon themselves to protect the Church from sinners. Such people use passive aggression or sometimes direct confrontation to inform the sinner that his/her lack of repentance is scandalous. And fellow parishioners who encourage abandoning truth in favor of grace also contribute to the problem.

At this time, I am (mostly) in a positive space with regard to the spiritual issues I’ve discussed in this post. But I am still a bad Christian, and still capable of fitting the “bad Catholic” archetype at times. I can’t speak for anyone else, but seeking space where I can be accepted as a “bad Christian” or “bad Catholic” has been necessary for my spiritual growth. Such spaces are woefully rare, and I can’t say that I’ve ever belonged to a parish where the community fully appreciates what it means to accept those who believe, have committed to being obedient, but do morality poorly most all of the time and are willing to admit it. It troubles me that at our current parish, neither Lindsey nor I feel free to abstain from communion when necessary. If we do, the culture warriors begin imagining that we must be having sex. Sometimes people indicate to us that they know exactly what our sins are, and if we aren’t ready to repent of them we shouldn’t even show up. If we aren’t able to commune for whatever reason on a given Sunday, we’ve taken to visiting a large parish where we can be invisible. It also troubles me that when I’ve been a member of parishes with more “liberal” members, I’ve not felt free to abstain from communion. In these settings, everyone — no matter how much or how little he or she knows about my spiritual life — has been eager to tell me that whatever is bothering me, I should approach the chalice because God loves me and nothing else matters. What’s a person to do when he or she feels caught in the middle of all this? I ask myself that question at least once a week, usually on our drive to Liturgy. But like Taylor, I am convinced that until we all make room once again for the “bad Christians,” the entire Church will suffer from their absence.

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