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.

Midnight Mass: A Beginning Critique

Boy, that was something.

Peter wanted me to watch this show. I did. I've a lot of thoughts. And I'm going to start with what I disagree with in this show. Understand I do not do this to show disrespect. On the contrary! This is a good show worthy of your time. But I need to get the bile out of the way. So bear with me please.

This is the most accurate and cutting take on modern Catholicism and Orthodoxy I've ever seen. If you are a believer in either Church you owe it to yourself to watch it. Period. It's not a question. Flanagan is an Ex-Catholic, who has measured and reasonable critiques of both Churches.

Yes, oh smug and self-satisfied Orthodox, especially you. 

We'll get there.

But first, my critiques. Flanagan makes two points I think need to be broken, and hard. I think them a smudge on what is an otherwise pristine production. Flanagan's thoughts on why religion exists are catastrophically wrong, and his ending statement on pantheism is a bandaid on the gaping wound which is theodicy.

Now, to the best of my knowledge, Flanagan is an atheist. And I will respond like he is. And, like most atheists, Flanagan posits that religion was developed for two reasons: the fear of death and early mankind being stupid. These aren't new claims, of course, and are just as tired and trite here as the first time I heard them. Religion was not invented due to a fear of death and needing to explain it. We think of Egypt and its detailed murals of the afterlife for its Pharaohs... and then forget Judaism didn't really have an afterlife. And that the Greek's underworld was a sad and dismal place for most, except the favorites of the gods. Norse mythology certainly doesn't have great options.  I could probably go on.

But I won't.

Here's how religion came about.  I think.

Go into the woods. Or on the prairie. Mountains. Somewhere isolated from our society. Leave your phone behind. 

Quiet, isn't it? It's a different kind of quiet than being in a city. Cities have always felt dead to me. All that concrete, you just get used to things around you not being alive.

Not out here, though. Everything is alive. Stay out there for about an hour or three. However long you can.  And listen. Soothing, isn't it? As you walk through the place you're in you'll find places quieter than others, where it almost feels.. well.. personal! There's an awareness you can find there. It's not an awareness like yours, of course, but if you sit in it and actually listen, jettison your expectations and just... exist... you can be aware something is there.

Now imagine if you couldn't get away from it. Imagine you didn't have that phone. Or anything else in your modern life. We're not aware of it, but electricity actually does make noise. It pulses all around us and blocks out everything else. But if you could hear that silence, all the time, and didn't really travel all that far, you'd get used to that presence, in that place. You'd probably go there just to feel like you're not alone. 

And then one day the thoughts in your head aren't yours. It's Something Else. And, after some initial shock, you might find yourself talking to it. It doesn't speak in a way you'd normally recognize but it is communicating. Turns out you have to have an open mind to the idea that not all consciousness works like yours. You have to accept real diversity.

No, the basis of religion is wonder and joy, as Carlyle says. And it is a wonder and joy that is now alien to us, living in the wreckage of the world wars. Men were different before World War I, that is a fact of history. Only a time as disllusioned and stupid as our could say something so ridiculous. So I don't fault Flanagan. I think that's a far more accurate take. Pre-moderns weren't cowards like us. Death was so present they didn't notice it the same way we do now. To even bring death into the center of the picture is so laughably modern that it almost doesn't deserve a response, except that it's a central idea in this show. So yes, it's wrong, and can prove it by picking up any pre-modern story and forcing yourself not to sneer. It's a titanic effort. But it's worth it.

Flanagan, through the words of Riley, who is really the hero of this show, posits that man likened stars to campfires, and that they had to be incredible because they were in the sky. Basically, since man had limited ways to figure out the world he anthromorphized everything. It is with reason, with science, that the world needs to be examined. Standard new atheist stuff, right out of that modern playbook of foolishness, The Golden Bough. The problem isn't just that this is inaccurate to every single actual shred of evidence we have of ancients, it's that science can only give is information about the material world. You cannot ask what the best way to raise a family is, whether or not morality need exist, or even why we exist. Those aren't scientific questions. Science has its limits, being a method for getting information about the material world. Morals aren't material. Neither is joy. You can't figure those out with science. You can collect material data on them, sure, but that doesn't make thing you're talking about material in itself.

The other thing that Flanagan does that I disagree with is he makes an open case for pantheism as a solution to the problem of evil. The self is just a dream of the cosmos. This sounds familiar.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce Azathoth, the Blind Idiot God! He sits in the center of the cosmos, where many profane beings play on their discordant flutes to make sure he keeps dreaming. See, we are his dreams. If he wakes up we wink out. He is all. I'm not sure he even counts as distinct from us. And what a horrifying dream it is, isn't it?? Death and disease and terror and despair and people singing insipid Marty Haugen songs at Catholic mass and dictators and the World Wars and all the petty personal evils I commit involuntarily and paperwork and-

Have I made my point? If we are God we deserve what we get. The child sleeping on my chest as I write this, her energy comes from someplace evil and profane and I owe it to the world to snuff it out, so that way the dream doesn't turn into a nightmare again.

No?

Too dark?

I didn't ask if it was too dark. If you're going to follow the logic follow the fucking logic, all the way to the end. If the abyss blinks you may as well smile and wave and hold its gaze, cause I got news: you came out of it and to it you will return.

No, painted pantheism doesn't solve the problem of evil. 

And Flanagan saying it does is the true horror of the show.

Next week let's be more positive. Flanagan gets so much right. And I can't wait to talk about it. So much good can come out of this show, and I can't wait to share it with you.