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[Q&A – Catholicism and Sex]: Have you been discriminated against because of your beliefs?

The Q: “Have you been profiled, discriminated against or otherwise treated with intolerance over your beliefs at work or school? How do you handle it?” -Trish

The A: The short answer is sort of yes, sort of no. I’m not sure my experiences have been discrimination or intolerance as much as they have been challenging. But how have I handled them? Discussion, and sometimes defense. Standing up for the truth about what I believe without the expectation that the people I meet will believe it. Here’s the long answer:

A set of beliefs prone to pokes and prods from the people who don’t share them is what I believe about love, chastity, and sex. Virginity in a culture that values sexual experience is treated as an anomaly. For the most part, readers of what I’ve written about it respond with respect (including the rock jocks who discussed me on a local FM station’s morning show!). But there are readers – especially when I worked for the newspaper – who write me notes or leave me voicemails solely to say how much they don’t like what I write. Others – out of anger or out of compassion – list reasons “chastity won’t work” or express pity for my having chosen it.

And then there’s my belief system in general: Catholicism. I didn’t know what Protestants were the day my fifth grade teacher told my class it’s easier for them to get to heaven than it is for Catholics. That year – my first at the private, Protestant school where I stayed through my high school graduation – started my eight-year, accidental education in apologetics and tolerance.

I’ve written before about my experiences there (primarily here and here), but here’s how I’d sum it up: The faculty and staff at the school generally treated my family and me with respect. But what several members of the faculty and staff did not treat with respect was my Catholicism. By excluding the word “creed” in its equal opportunity statements in its handbook, the school reserved the right to discriminate on the basis of religious beliefs. In distributing Jack Chick tracts and using a history curriculum that said Catholics worship Mary and saints, the school ultimately exercised that right. But in banning both when my family spoke up, the school exhibited respect.

Defense of faith on the fly is a lot to expect of a kid. Discussion of beliefs is hard at any age. But it also how change happens, both in and outside you. I had to stop caring what other people think. Accepting that not everybody believes what I do has been important for handling it when somebody actually doesn’t. Admitting that it is unreasonable to expect all the people I encounter to be nice to me has helped, too. Another great help has been the Dialogue Decalogue, a set of rules to follow when talking with people who don’t believe what you do.

How do you handle mistreatment as a result of what you believe?

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Q&A is an occasional feature. If you have a Q, I can come up with an A (and if I don’t have an A, I’ll find somebody who does). To submit a question, click here. No topic is taboo (although I can’t promise I will answer every question).

Click here to read all the posts in this series.

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Thoughts on Mark Ruffalo’s open letter regarding abortion.

Last weekend, at an abortion rights rally outside a clinic in Jackson, Mississippi, somebody read an open letter aloud, written by actor Mark Ruffalo. Ruffalo, who is the Hulk in The Avengers, is for the right to choose abortion, which – according to the letter – is what his mother did. Below are excerpts of the letter (in italics), plus my commentary:

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What happened to my mother was a relic of an America that was not free nor equal nor very kind. My mother’s illegal abortion marked a time in America that we have worked long and hard to leave behind. It was a time when women were seen as second rate citizens who were not smart enough, nor responsible enough, nor capable enough to make decisions about their lives. 

Women (and men) are created able to be smart, responsible, and capable enough to make good decisions. I agree with what Ruffalo implies: a woman in whose womb there is a baby can (and should) make a responsible choice. What I haven’t heard from Ruffalo yet, or much at all in this conversation, is an important reminder: Couples capable of making good decisions after conception can make good decisions before conception, too. So why don’t they? Probably because pro-choice people and pro-life people define “good decisions” differently. Because we live in a culture that still thinks we can have our cake and eat it, too. Because contraception.

It was a time that deserved to be left behind, and leave it behind we did, or so it seemed. We made abortion and a woman’s ability to be her own master a Right. That Right was codified into law. That law was the law of the land for decades. My own mother fought to make herself more than a possession; she lived her life as a mother who chose when she would have children, and a wife who could earn a living if she so chose. I want my daughters to enjoy that same choice. I don’t want to turn back the hands of time to when women shuttled across state lines in the thick of night to resolve an unwanted pregnancy, in a cheap hotel room just south of the state line. Where a transaction of $600 cash becomes the worth of a young woman’s life. 

I admire Ruffalo’s compassion for people who are in the toughest imaginable spots. I get how he hopes his daughters have a choice. But I am not as interested in whether it is legal to choose. (If abortion were outlawed entirely, it would be a Band-Aid anyway, for a wound way bigger than that.) If I have kids, my hope is not that they can choose. My hope is that they don’t have to make that choice. That they will choose chastity. That pregnancy, before or after a marriage, is regarded as a miracle instead of as a disease.

There was no mistake us making Abortion legal and available on demand. That was what we call progress. Just like it was no mistake that we abolished institutional racism in this country around the same time. The easy thing to do is lay low, but then are we who we say we are? Do we actually stand for anything, if what we do stand for is under attack and we say nothing? There is nothing to be ashamed of here except to allow a radical and recessive group of people to bully and intimidate our mothers and sisters and daughters for exercising their right of choice. 

Bullying or intimidating people who have had or are considering abortions is egregious. It’s unloving and Jesus wouldn’t do it. So stop it. To this I would add it is also egregious to bully people who have made another choice: not to have sex. It is also egregious to intimidate them. To tell them they are virgins because “I can’t tell if you’re a man or a woman,” to encourage them to compromise because “no guy will wait that long to have sex.” (And yes, people have said both to me.)

I invite you to find your voice and let it be known that you stand for abortion rights and the dignity of a woman to be the master of her own life and body. I invite you to search your soul and ask yourself if you actually stand for what you say you stand for. 

Our bodies are temples. Dwelling places of God. We have been given a human nature, which – according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church – “has not been totally corrupted.” It is only wounded. Which means we indeed can learn self-mastery, in chastity, which – far more than any movement I have encountered – promotes the dignity of all human life.

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Click here to read Ruffalo’s letter in full.

Click here to read 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, ’cause it’s relevant.

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Thoughts on the Theology of the Body Institute.

A week ago, the charter bus struggled up the steep driveway that ends in front of the Black Rock Retreat Center, 50 miles outside Philly, where my flight had landed several hours earlier.

We had arrived for the Theology of the Body Institute’s TOB I: Head and Heart Immersion Course, instructed by Bill Donaghy in 10 sessions in six days in Amish Country. At home now, I type from my couch, ultimately aware of this:

BEST. WEEK. EVER.

I’ve never done anything like it in my life: fly somewhere where nobody I know would be waiting at the other side, to stay for a week with strangers. The strangers, as it turns out, were brothers and sisters in Christ and the week, one of my most memorable.
In no particular order, here are my thoughts on the experience, and what I learned:

  • I have so much more to learn about TOB.
  • “Prayer can progress, as a genuine dialogue of love, to the point of rendering the person wholly possessed by the divine Beloved.” -JP2 in Novo Millenio Ineunte
  • I need more Legionaries of Christ in my life. (And if you’re ever given the opp to sit around a table to have late night tea and conversation with a couple of ’em, do it.)
  • “Man cannot live without love. … his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it.” -JP2 in Redemptor Hominis
  • Good Catholic men DO exist.
  • On men and women: “They are ‘brother and sister’ in the same humanity before they are ‘husband and wife.'” -page 25 of our workbook
  • HOW AWESOME ARE AMISH PEOPLE? For real.
  • “Human nature has not been totally corrupted; it is wounded…” -Catechism of the Catholic Church
  • “Lust … is eros cut off from agape.” -page 40 of our workbook
  • You can find examples of TOB everywhere, including in Lil Wayne songs.
  • “Love God, and do whatever you want.” -St. Augustine
  • I need no further proof that the human body is good and worth taking care of than the reminder that it’ll eventually resurrect and reunite with my soul after I’m dead.
  • TOB is the answer to the misguided (aka “totally wrong”) messages that the body is bad, sex is dirty, and it’s a woman’s fault if a man lusts, which circulate in and outside the church all the time.
  • Bill Donaghy is hilarious. And his son now refers to me as “G-ma,” which is short for grandma. And I’m ok with it.
  • “Every man is called in some way to be both a husband (self-gift) and a father (fruitfulness). Every woman is called in some way to be both a wife (self-gift) and a mother (fruitfulness).” -page 69 in our workbook
  • Christ didn’t dominate his church. (Remember that when you read Ephesians 5.)
  • I am VERY excited to wear my TOB t-shirt to mass tonight.
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Theology of the Body, etc.

Who flew to Philly today? This girl! I type from a baggage claim at Philadelphia International Airport where I await the arrival of a shuttle to the Theology of the Body Institute. Which is code for: I’m not sure how often I’ll blog this week. But pray this week for all in attendance while we dive into Pope John Paul II’s brilliant instruction.
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Commentary on “My Virginity Mistake.”

In a column Sunday on Salon.com, Jessica Ciencin Henriquez – a fabulous writer, as far as I can tell – called her virginity at marriage a mistake. Wedding night sex was not what the church (nor the purity ring she wore) promised it would be.

Neither was her marriage.

Six months into it, Jessica wrote, “the idea of separating seemed more appealing than feigning headaches for the rest of my life.” She saved sex for marriage, “hoping it would ensure a successful marriage. Instead,” she wrote, “it led to my divorce.”

But did it?

I agree with what Jessica implies: the church camp where people preached premarital abstinence at her probably can be blamed in part for the sour start of what would be a short-term marriage.

But I disagree with what else she implies: That saving sex for marriage is a problem.

Excerpts of Jessica’s essay follow in italics, followed by my commentary:

But that ring! Silver and engraved with entwined hearts – everyone I knew was wearing one and I’d finally been given the opportunity to get my hands on it. And it wasn’t just the ring. This was a movement with T-shirts and hats and the added bonus of superiority over kids in school who couldn’t keep their clothes on, those sinners. 

This points to an important, unfortunate truth. Churches long have promoted premarital abstinence by talking about everything except for sex: the perils of unwed parenthood, the stigma associated with sexually transmitted infections, and how much “better” you are for not having sex than the kids who do. This is fear mongering, a lot of shame-based “why not,” and not a lot of genuine “why.” That is a problem.

The morning of my wedding day, I threw up. Everyone assumed that I was nervous about having sex. I wasn’t.

That everybody assumed Jessica barfed because she was anxious about having sex is indicative of a lie our culture tells us: that “the big moment” is what happens in bed on your wedding night, and not on the altar at your wedding. That is a problem.

When I look back on my wedding day, I remember a passionate kiss at the altar. But after rewatching video footage, I see it was little more than a peck on the corner of my mouth and a long hug. Two years of halting wandering hands as they grazed under blue jeans, and the second we have the permission from God, we hug. These are what red flags look like; my rearview mirror is lined with them.

When a church (or a school or a parent) says “wear this ring” and “sign this pledge” and then stops talking about relationships, girls and boys become women and men who basically only know not to have sex. Otherwise, their concepts of marriage and sex are shaped by their friends or media. That is a problem.

This was not lovemaking. There was no bond, no sanctity – this was not the amazing sex I was promised from the pulpit. This was disappointment three to four times a week.

To all people who preach “amazing sex” from pulpits: Please define amazing. The amazing part is not the sex. The amazing part is what’s implied by the fact that you saved it – your patience, your participation in the destruction of self absorption, your willingness to communicate outside (and eventually in) the bedroom. When you don’t define amazing, the assumption is “pleasurable sex will be intuitive and effortless, beginning with our wedding night” when, for most couples, that is so not true. That is a problem.

These problems plus premarital abstinence do not equal exemption from the consequences of these problems. They equal virgins at marriage who experience the consequences of these problems: not knowing the purpose of marriage or sex, more concern with preparedness for the wedding night than with preparedness for marriage, concepts of relationships and sex shaped by the media, and unrealistic expectations.

It is these consequences (among others, of course) that result in divorce, regardless of whether you’ve saved sex for marriage.

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Click here to read Jessica’s essay in full.