Lilith: A Farewell

 

All I have written is as straw. 

When I was younger I had a span of years where my Lyme's disease returned. During these years I lived as one in a neverending nightmare, where to exist was to be in pain. There were days I couldn't get out of bed because my joints ached so; Kyle would come looking for me and, seeing me, would pity me in my pain. He would help me out of bed, bearing my cries of pain and anguish as my feet and ankles gave out, and hold me up until I could get my feet to cooperate with me. My dreams were visions of awful spectacle; I would frequently have to pray myself awake. Others pitied me, this I knew, but I saw them as one sees shadows in the corners of your room, after awaking from something awful and unholy.  I would frequently find myself wishing for death. That part makes sense well enough, but I couldn't get anyone to really connect with why I truly wished my death: somehow I knew there was a Life awaiting me, beyond the agony. Beyond the cacophony was Silence. I didn't hate my life, I wanted more, and I knew it was on the other side of this life. And that was for what I longed.

Eventually I recovered from Lyme's. The pain stopped and I barely remember it. But the memory of that yearning for Life haunts me, even still. I did not have much context for this desire. Most people who profess Christianity do not have this hope, the real one, the hope that can bear all things. Or maybe it's that hope either has you or it doesn't. It is a fearful thing, to be in the hands of God! To have hope is almost identical to the way a man "has" a woman: she takes him in, and while he may boast that he has her, no sane person says he owns the world that gives him life. So it is with lovemaking, and so it is with hope, and indeed all the virtues, especially love: it has one or it doesn't.

The last few years on this blog have been a journey I didn't expect. I have learned much about myself and the world and God while writing. I have tried more than a few things, and found them all wanting. Many failed experiments are on this blog. I regret none of them. I needed to try them all. I am thankful for the time I spent on them.

But I have read Lilith, and the end is come.

It has come like a thief in the night, most unexpected and unlooked for. But yet it is here. George MacDonald's novel is the answer to a riddle I didn't know I was posing. It is answered. My search is over, and I find myself back where I began: longing for death, for Life is within it. But it does not find me sick and crippled. It finds me with friends, family, that I did not have before. Years ago I thought I was not dreaming this world. The seeming insight almost broke me. I have felt the error keenly, ever since. I didn't know that was what I was feeling, but the error is now so obvious that I have to chuckle at my own expense. But now I understand it. And I have found a family I wouldn't have had if I hadn't made that mistake. O happy fall! O happy mistake! For life is a dream most serious, most consequential. What we call life is but the mood you will have upon actually waking up. 

And wake I shall. The timing is irrelevant, for I control it not. So I wait. "...asleep or awake, I wait." And until then I will spin dreams that that will help me awaken in the best way possible. This blog chronicled the process of realization. From The Last Jedi until Lilith, all has led me to this moment. I have many things to make yet, many things that must last in the dream for other sleepers, long after I leave it.

How will you find me? For I go, and I go now. Alas, I cannot stay here. You will never see a post on this blog again. The Facebook will come down on Christmas day. The Patreon will close before I take another cent from my dear friends, who have helped me so! But I do not go into oblivion, as I have many things to do before I am awakened to Life. I have not done my due diligence; I owe a debt that will still not be repaid when I am called home by Father. He will have to forgive the debt. 

So where will you find me? I'm not sure how to answer that. But, if you look, you'll find me. I'll be doing my work.  A recovering Scot can only be in so many places at once, after all. 

Thank you to everyone, from the bottom of my heart. Love God. Keep the faith. What we think of as life is but a dream that will impact how we wake up. 

Awaken well, friends.

All the things under Heaven and earth can help one wake up well. 

But wake we must.

The Book of the New Sun: Second Read Through

My first review of this book was a purposeful babbling. I was trying very hard to put into words something that I'd always been afraid would eat me if I did. I went and finished The Solar Cycle in a flurry of turning pages, puzzlement, and deep mourning. Gene Wolfe was wrestling with what I still wrestle with: the inherent dishonesty of mankind, the terrible mercy of the Divine, and a pain that was far deeper than personal. When I finished Short Sun I knew I wanted to return immediately; I knew this to be a terrible idea. Reading the books was like the most painful of soul surgeries. I would need to wait. I wasn't idle; I read and read and read and learned and played games and explored ideas and tried to change just enough. I had a bit of a plan on going back, reading-wise. And it was going well!

But then one night I had a dream. I was standing on an electric dam, at night. I was admiring this machine of power, and knew it to be mine. I had examined the schematics thoroughly and I knew this place. I was the master. As I stood in the dying sun's rays I felt confident. 

I heard Gene Wolfe's voice, echoing above the crashing water. And my blood turned cold. 

I followed where I thought the voice was coming from and found a stair, leading down into the dam. It should not have been there. I knew the schematics. There was nothing in the dam, not there. But Gene's voice was clear enough, even if the words weren't. I didn't want to go down. Staircases that aren't supposed to be there was weird enough, what was the ghost of Gene Wolfe doing in my dream?? But my legs started moving. I tried to stop them. I knew what was down there, I knew what waited, and I didn't want to see it. The lie had been so pretty! So complete! Couldn't I just be left alone?

There was a door at the bottom. I stood there, trying so hard not to open it. But Gene spoke, beyond the door, above the roar of the water. The metal of the handle was so cold.

An abyss of darkness. Gene's voice was no louder.

I felt a moment of vertigo. I couldn't, wouldn't, go in!

And then I was standing in the darkness. Inside the dam was only that darkness. Only! There should have been pipes, electrical equipment, stuff! My head began to hurt and I clutched it in my hands. A BANG and I was deserted by the door. Gene's voice got louder and louder, and I began to try and scream to block it out. It was something he'd said in an interview. 

"You'll be a motherfucker or a saint, and if you're lucky you'll be both." 

There was a laughter with the last phrase that always made my cold with terror. I collapsed, and felt the shifting of the dam. I was hit by a drop of water.

I woke up, in a foul mood. After a day I went upstairs and stared at The Book of the New Sun. It wasn't time yet, so I had declared.

My hands trembled as I picked it up.

Severian is easier to empathize with this time around. In the first read-through Severian comes off as an amoral womanizer. On a second read-through it's apparent that most of my impressions of Severian were a reaction against his culture; I had foisted my culture shock upon the protagonist, as if to blame him for not being like me. There is a funny tendency in modern liberal thought to ascribe the sins of a culture to the people who are held captive by it.  We all have this feeling that others should know the truth that we, as liberals, think is inherent to all humanity, and we judge all others by those standards. This time around I was better able to absorb what was coming from Severian and what was coming from his culture, and how they collided in Severian's skull. And what I found was a man continuously struggling against his own culture. Severian was always questioning, trying to be free. No matter how flawed he was Severian wanted freedom from his cultural climate, and was willing to sacrifice everything to own up to what was inside of him.. The fact that he mostly failed  shouldn't tarnish where he succeeded. And Severian does succeed, in all the ways that one actually can. Any further would require suicide or monasticism. He comes to the conclusion that nobody else would come to: that without the New Sun the rest doesn't matter. Humanity cannot solve its issues without changing the context it lives in.

The plot this time around was... clearer? It's certain that Severian was being watched, prodded, and manipulated from the word "Go". Severian is simply trying to get from point A to point  B, and the rest of the world, aware of what he will become, is doing everything it can to get him their side. I can certainly see why Severian was chosen. His willingness to protect life whenever he could, to question everything that was in his power to question, made him stand out. And that's a powerful person to get on your side. I think my favorite "book" of the bunch is The Sword of the Lictor, where Severian winds up accidentally leading a rebellion because, I mean, of course! That's a very Severian thing to do. The Citadel of the Autarch is a fitting end, however; Severian, the one who always felt the limits of his knowledge so keenly, now has more knowledge than anyone knows what to do with. It's a good place to leave him. He'll bring the New Sun.

I caught the dying woman under the guild this time around, ha!

As I try to tie this up I find myself at a loss for words, again. This time around changed everything, all over again, just like before. But this time I was looking for it. I expected Wolfe to rock me. And he did. There are things I'm deliberately leaving out here, because, just like the first time, they'll continue to percolate in my heart, changing how I see the world. Ultimately you'll see the changes in what I talk about on this blog and how I choose to write about it, just like last time. The dream, that eternity, that I spoke of so  brokenly in the first review isn't an external thing that I long for now; a spark is now deep down, in the recesses of my soul, where I keep the nightmares and darkness. The dam had been built to cover this spark. Somehow it had survived.

This time the spark wasn't lit. 

It was blown on.

A crackling can be heard. 

My soul is warmer.

May the Power Protect You: Ashley Hammond (Space Yellow)

Let's get something out of the way: this game is not perfectly balanced. It can't be. There's too many interactions to test for to make it balanced.  This is a balance conscious game. There's a baseline usability that's required for all the characters; you must be this effective to be in the game. MMPR Jason is clearly meant to be this benchmark of balance. I don't know of a single character who fails that litmus test. But some characters are better. It doesn't mean they're broken, but they take advantage of the basic rules of the game better than other characters. Ashley is one of these characters. No matter what you do with her you're going to benefit, somehow.

Optimism is one of my favorite character abilities in the game. My dice luck, even with rerolls, is so bad that I'm for sure to get the additional energy almost immediately. And that's helpful for pushing forward. That extra little boost goes a long way. Obviously if you never roll a miss result on these dice Optimism probably won't be too useful to you, but if that's the case I'm not sure you're a real person to begin with. Or, y'know, not playing with loaded dice. Actually that last one is more likely.

Rapid Fire is one of the best cards in the game, particularly if you have a reroll ability available. Roll, see the 0's, spend the energy Ashley just gave you, add two more dice, and then reroll them all! Ashley can either wreck shop with her own cards or throw it onto another character's attack.

Take Aim is a great card. We've talked about it before, with Kimberly. Any energy generation is good. And rerolls are absolutely necessary. Moving along.

Trick Shot is a weird card. On the one hand, 0's are good for hitting targets not adjacent to the target. On the other hand, I target a card to freaking blow it up. That doesn't make sense, it's backwards! So I target GUARD cards I've already damaged by attacking another card not adjacent. I roll badly enough, it certainly works for me! The reroll from Take Aim may be used for... unusual reasons... here.

Yeah, huh.

Precise Shot ignores GUARD and doesn't do a lot of damage, even if it's for sure damage. Once again, the card presupposes some damage has already been dealt to the target, or maybe there's a bonus I don't know you having.  Regardless, this probably isn't going to be a card you'll be using to one-shot a high health target. And that's okay. It's almost like you may have damage being sprinkled all over the place from Trick shot.

Star Slinger is like a reverse Power Axe. It is just as tricky to pull off on a small grid, with differing logistics required.  I generally find that having an enemy card with FAST puts you on the back foot; normally you want to hit the very first card in the sequence and splash the back cards. You can still do that here (just go to the rear-most card), just expect to take some fire for it. 

Ashley's zord lets you hang yourself as a group, by drawing as many cards as everyone likes. You're either nuking yourself or doing a last-ditch assault. And y'know what? I don't care. I generally don't draw cards, and am usually too cowardly to do so. If you want to? Go for it. That's never been me. Well, until I really need to do it. That's different. 

Ashley isn't broken, not by a long shot. But she is really good. Her cards take advantage of the base engine of the game really well, and she has some genuinely unique cards. She's definitely in my top five to play! There's always something interesting going on with her, and she can hit pretty much whatever she wants, whenever she wants. This makes her a great offensive character.

Design Journal: Crescendo and the OSR

 

During my last 4e game (Why We Kept Her) I had a conversation with a friend that was fated to change my RPG experience forever. I had been really happy with the story that had been coming out of that game. It remains one of my favorite campaigns. When I talked to Andy about the game and the story coming from it he remarked that 4e was not a story game. Flabbergasted, I shot back that I was getting quite a good story with that game, thank you very much! Andy's response was that the mechanics of 4e weren't generating the story itself, but that it was simply a combat game that happened to be present while the story was being told.

He then showed me Burning Wheel.

Eight years have passed. I've played the crap out of Burning Wheel. It's been with me through the beginning of my marriage and three children. But I began to notice something odd towards the end of the long campaigns I've done with Burning Wheel. In order to keep with the advancement system of Burning Wheel we had to play a very different game than what was happening organically at the table. The endings of our stories, while they had epic problems to solve, would normally grow quieter, more reflective. One of the games in particular (The Giggling Dark) was almost frustratingly difficult to tell the story that was happening with the mechanics. Its sequel, Autarchy, took the problem and exacerbated it. The game mechanics seemed to want pride of place, something that I don't want to do.

I really didn't know what to make of my experiences. So I kept quiet, observed, and processed.

Eventually I realized I wanted to do the character evolution game my own way, and thus work on Crescendo began. I'd never really designed before; I didn't think I had anything to add to the conversation of game design. Turns out I have a lot to say. Freaking figures. From this sudden realization Crescendo, Shadow, (Lovecraftian horror) and Its Shadow Still Remains (a 4e-inspired adventure game) have emerged. 

I was more or less designing Crescendo via playtesting; iterate a draft in a week, throw it at the players and see if their noses wrinkled. I'd then take it back and work the bits they didn't like, rise and repeat. I've got really good sports for playtesters. What a blessing! The only two sessions I've tested with a group of multiple people  (the game is meant for one to three players, plus GM) didn't go well. One of my players in particular was consistently shafted, in both sessions. I felt terrible of course, and asked what she felt was going wrong.  Keep in mind I'd had a good time playing around with the mechanics and moving the bits around. I could feel I had a blindspot. What Lena said threw me:

"No story happened. I felt like I was playing a board game."

Keep in mind Lena has done a 38 session campaign of Burning Wheel with me. It's the best story I've produced with that game. She may not realize it, but her opinion matters a whole hell of a lot.

And that's when something crucial began to click into place. My game had taken on a quality I'd come to loathe in Burning Wheel: the eating up of story-telling, player creativity, by the mechanics. Play Burning Wheel with all the extras and you'll see it: a group of players wrestling the mechanics into a coherent narrative. And the weird thing was that over the years I'd begun to think of story as something that came about by solely by pushing on the mechanics of a game. That's patently not true, of course. You need players who know what they're doing and who like each other to have a fun experience; mechanics guide generation, they're not the generator of the story itself. I've no idea if that's something other "story" game folks think about, consciously or unconsciously. But I'd realized that I'd been thinking it. And that's just not what I want in an RPG. The game I really wanted wasn't poking at the mechanics and watching the dominoes fall. I wanted folks to be interacting with each other in the shared world they'd imagined and only have the mechanics kick in where there "should" be uncertainty, and thus conflict. And yes, eventually that means dominoes, but that's to get you into an unexpected spot, not an end in itself.

Something was buzzing in the back of my head; it popped into my head to look over Principia Apocrypha, one of the seminal works describing the OSR.  Most of the principles I wanted in Crescendo, as it turns out, are OSR principles. And the concepts that are a little iffy (high lethality) actually work, if you get a little creative (if not outright esoteric).

Let me explain really quickly what Crescendo's setup currently is. The default is to develop one character per player over the course of a 30+ session game, pitting a character's Arcana, Tenets, and Traits against the Setting's Movements.

Players craft three Tenets, which are beliefs that the player wants to have Conflicts about. They're generally short ethical statements, or statements about a character or organization. Make a Tenet about things you want to make trouble about.

"Death before dishonor. (St. George) d6/6."

"Grieving doesn't get things done. (Rahab) d4/2."

"My sister is a goody two shoes. (Lilith) D4/1."

When you change the story meaningfully in acting on your Tenet you get a metacurrency called Fortune, which lowers the difficulty of challenges. When you spend Fortune one of the Immortals your GM drew up does something to help you. Or it could just be some random happenstance of chance. It's up to the GM, but Fortune expenditure can be as subtle or outrageous as the GM likes. 

There's a second major element to characters: Traits. Traits are what you want to be a sticking point in the narrative; you want them to gum up the works. Traits don't have to be bad, or evil. On the contrary, Traits can be things about the character that are good, but inconvenient. Traits are summed up as one or two words.

"Jaded"

"Brave"

"Congenial"

You get two Traits at the beginning of the game and can have as many as four. If you use Traits to further the story you get Dynamis, which allows you to reroll your dice. Traits are also used to recover the health of your Tenets, keeping the character from making hard (and almost never good) decisions.

Finally, there's Movements. These are the three things going on in the setting right now, with timers attached to them that give you a general idea of their urgency. These are simple statements that show the end result intended.

"The people will rebel against the Duke.  Rahab d20"

"The Duke will find the Holy Grail.  St. George d20"

"The Mayor frames the Duke for his own misdeeds. Lilith d12" 

Players, by interacting with these Movements and either helping or hindering them, get Persona, which allows you to increase the step of the dice you're using to roll.

All these metacurrencies, once spent, become XP. XP may be spent on improving your character, but it's really expensive and can only happen on certain times. XP may always be spent on contacts and relationships (making them findable without trouble), as well as property and equipment, converting the XP into currency.

"But wait," you may say, "My sessions can go without a dice roll, at times. I like it that way!"

That's okay. At the end of each session all unspent metacurrency can be converted to XP. But it doesn't transfer back, so be careful what you wish for!

This is the general framework I am attaching to the Principia Apocrypha. Exploration and investment in the world are rewarded, you can get your XP through careful planning, you're rewarded for interacting with things you care about, and the world is unfolded as you go along.

The biggest similarly between OSR games and Crescendo is the philosophy of rolling. In a standard "story" game rolling is an opportunity to push the story in a new direction. It's not a conflict, but seeing where the story may go. I've never agreed with this mentality. That's not a comment on that philosophy, per se. Just that I'm not happy doing it. Picking up the dice has always been a tedious thing to me, no matter how many cool things can happen as a result. So Crescendo will be a more happily antagonistic philosophy. Cool stuff will still happen, failing forward is still a thing and all that, but the dice are always stacked against you and the consequences for failure always lead to hard decisions. So make good plans. You'll get rewarded either way, regardless of whether you're rolling or not!

One of the coolest things about Basic DnD is the recognition that advancement should be based upon something connected to the world; in the case of a lot of OSRs, that's gold for XP. Because of its roots in Burning Wheel Crescendo has a really enjoyable reward system already: set agenda, go for agenda, get meta currency, which lets you fudge rolls in your favor. Meta currency then becomes XP. I have no wish to change that system, I find it one of the killer apps of the game.  But spending XP on Stats and Skills I've always found to be odd; there's not a whole lot of plain ole steady progression in most fantasy stories. So I restricted advancing those two things to specific times of personal growth, and made it stupidly expensive. But you can always spend XP on contacts, relationships, items, and property. Having the aforementioned four then lowers the cost of Stats and Skills, particularly relationships and property. So if you really invest in the world you get more rewarded in the long term! The more you're a part of the setting the more powerful you can become, as you hit personal milestones.

But what about lethality? Well this is where I get into my esoteric ranting. Those who like it may find it surprising in a good way. Those who don't will accuse me of sophistry. In the medieval era death was considered another name for change. In fact the prerequisite for changing was thought to be mortality. If you were immortal you could not change.  Change is a form of death; something in you dies and something new replaces it. So does the lethality inherent in the OSR show up here? No, but there is a constant change in the character, of a substantial nature. Characters will evolve and shift over time, in fundamental ways. And you don't necessarily control when that happens or even what that may look like, at least fully. The game is quite lethal, in its own way. But instead of dying you find that your are not really as dedicated to your causes as you'd like; things you think you believe in can die on the vine unexpectedly, forcing you into hard decisions that will have an impact that you don't expect, and for much longer than you had the Tenet.

So you're trying as hard as you can not to get forced into a rolling, because if you do your character will do probably do things that aren't just unexpected, but downright distressing. Something definitely can die as you play Crescendo, and its ephemeral nature makes the death of these things you thought you believed in almost more upsetting than losing a character. Who your character was is permanently in the rear mirror, waving as your character becomes something new, something strange. Smart play, however, will reward you and help you get where you want to go, all without rolling the dice. 

Does that make it an OSR game?

I don't know. I think the labels story-game and OSR are a bit strange. There's some philosophical differences, sure, but I find it telling that the big story-game umbrella, PBTA, is much closer to OSR design principles than either camp would care to admit. I'm also painfully aware that anyone can grab a bottle of piss and call it Granny's Peach Tea.  They may actually be right, depending upon the granny and the company who came to call.

Are there RPGs that are actually Granny's piss? Besides, y'know, FATAL? Inquiring minds. Point is, anyone can claim anything. Doesn't make it true. So I suppose I won't be making the claim that Crescendo is an OSR game. I doubt most OSR players would recognize it as such and if you're tasting piss no one should be telling you it's actually tea. There's definitely some sophistry in doing that.

But I will swear up and down that the Principia Apocrypha is a good chunk of the framework of Crescendo. The fact that I'm adapting it to my game on purpose is as certain as those federally required list of ingredients that have to be on the back of peach tea bottles.

"Was made with a healthy consciousness of The Principia Apocrypha."

I mean, at that point if you decide the ingredient's piss (nevermind Granny's) you can't blame the label. I hope.

Want to see what Crescendo is all about? Head over to the Crescendo Discord! The alpha launches in January of 2022!

Midnight Mass: Clericalism and Celibacy

SPOILERS for Midnight Mass ahead!  You're warned!!

When I was in my late teens and early twenties I hung out with a lot of Catholic priests, particularly Eastern Catholic ones. One of these priests in particular was kinda like an uncle to me. He was a cheerful man, full of life and the vigor of a person whose mind was always working. I admired him; my love of Dostoevsky and more grounded stories comes from the hours of conversation spent discussing our wildly differing tastes in narrative. To the best of my knowledge he is still at his parish, joyfully serving them.  I miss him. I hope he's okay. But there was a habit this priest had that haunts me to this day. 

When he came into his house he would say "Honey, I'm home!" to the empty house. There was a bit of an echo, every time. And every time my heart broke all over again. 

Sometimes, when I close my eyes, when I cross the threshold of my house, I hear him. Still.

If you think he's the only Catholic priest who has this sense of sadness crossing the threshold of his house you're dead wrong.

Look folks, this is about to get really uncomfortable for any Catholic. We're going to look at the ugly reality of "universal" priestly celibacy. It is not a universal apostolic tradition. It did not rise organically within the Western Church, and its universality in the West was imposed forcibly, resulting in plenty of nephews and nieces and broken hearts. I've nothing against celibacy itself, but the corruption of Father Paul resides in this abusive and awful system. I do think some people are called to celibacy, but it is not an assignment anyone can give but God.

First off, this is not an apostolic practice. Most of the apostles were married. They were not commanded to put their wives away to preach, and they didn't. On the contrary, St. Peter's wife traveled with him and preached as well; St. Peter helped talk her through martyrdom! St. Paul's "I wish all were like me" is usually taken grossly out of context, particularly the Song of Songs, the height of all wisdom literature. The Eastern Churches repeatedly tried to warn against this practice, referencing their own apostolic practice of married clergy. 

It gets uglier. Despite the warnings (and unanimous practice) of every single (and I do mean EVERY) Church the West continued in its idea that celibacy was necessary for all priests. It was clearly and obviously a hatred of marriage as it existed, with celibacy being considered the higher calling; marriage was a consolation prize, at best. 

Now, to be fair, existing Germanic and pagan marriage practices were hardly virtuous; what a Western Christian's ideal of marriage was at the time looked very different than how the modern Catholic imagines it today. Everything revolved around the clan, making marriages extremely political. A lot of marriages in the Germanic tribe were thought of as how we'd think of as a political marriage. Young men and women were being essentially sold to secure the clan. And they'd better reproduce, because their good was the clan's. Right?

Right?

The Catholic Church railed against the whole thing. Marriage was a sacrament, and the clans had no business using people the way they were. Celibacy was likely seen as an escape from an oppressive and demeaning system. Marriage couldn't be a good thing, not as it was.

So to be married was to be embroiled in the clan, something the Catholic Church obviously didn't want. But needs are needs; priests were mostly free to be married until 1049, when Pope Leo IX  issued a universal ban, with the Lateran Councils of 1123 and 1139 backing him up. The local clergy largely ignored the utter foolishness of such a measure. Until the 13th century priests had concubines and plenty of nieces and nephews, with parishioners generally in the know.  Then the bishops finally stamped it out. I do not advocate concubines (or nieces and nephews) but a clear human need was ignored by the Latin hierarchy. And then the hierarchy stamped it out. Like so many things Latin Catholics think of as Latin tradition (banning babies from communion, splitting up the Sacraments of initiation, Vatican I) priestly celibacy was a top down imposition to get an ideal that has never existed in any part of the Churches, not ever.

It still doesn't.

And lest anyone get the wrong idea, the Catholic Church had scored a legitimate moral victory! After a thousand years of struggling against a cultural force that essentially legalized rape, the Catholic Church had won out. Direct consent of the spouses, something alien to Germanic marriage, was a good won by the Catholic Church; never, ever, ever forget that if you, a Western reader, have a concept of the worth of the individual that you got it in part from this thousand year fight with a systemic oppression no SJW could even conceive of, nevermind have the balls to resist. The gross thing that is mandatory Western celibacy was one battle in the war to be free of the oppression of the clan, to be as God envisioned, and nothing else.

But the baby was thrown out with the bath water. It's all well and good if you're trying to free people from a totalitarian system, quite another to use what really should have been a temporary measure and use it as your own system of control. And make no mistake, it is. The recent uncoverings of the sex scandals in the Catholic Church reveal priests to be totally at the mercy of their bishops. The good face of the Church must be above all else, was the byline.

Ironic, isn't it?

And this brings us to Father Paul. I'll argue forcefully that his affair is the crack in his armor. Unable to address legitimate needs, he had to convince himself that he wasn't in the wrong for breaking his vow of celibacy. Now, an evil oath has no weight upon someone's conscience, but Father Paul didn't see it as evil, now did he? There's a basic incoherency in his conscience that I do not think would have been so exasperated if he had not been put into what is clearly an impossible situation. If the real enemy of this story isn't representative of that rift between two goods, that so many priests must face, then what is it? If the human is made to be opposed to the divine won't the Devil use that? 

 

To those who are called let them be celibate! It is the life of angels, the real ones, who I promise you are a thousand times scarier (not to mention crueler and kinder) than what's presented in Midnight Mass. But I do not think those wishing to imitate the Holy Trinity and Christ and the Church, in marriage, are lesser. That wasn't really the point of clerical celibacy to begin with. Like what is so common in history a method of freeing people from totalitarianism become totalitarian themselves.

But there is a greater truth than this struggle, floating just above the vale of tears. Marriage and celibacy aren't equal. You can't compare them. They are different callings. As different as an apple and a shoe. Comparing them is almost laughable. Not quite, as there are similarities. But I can say the same between an apple and a shoe.

But the Latin Church couldn't see this truth. When you fight evil, when you destroy what you hate, you lose sight of what you love. And the mess in this show is the direct fault of a church that, until St. John Paul the Great, couldn't come up with a marriage theology beyond consent being a God-given grace.  I will not say the East has been perfect. They haven't.  The monastic fetish is nothing short of disturbing to me. 

But the issues of Midnight Mass are systemic to the Catholic Church, especially the Latin Church. They simply aren't this severe in Orthodoxy.

Period.