Sea Change

by Fred Vilbig

I feel compelled to write an article about the Supreme Court’s recent decision on same-sex “marriage”, Obergefell v. Hodges.

It is not because I believe the decision was profoundly wrong for moral reasons, which I will assert to anyone. The Court has made and will continue to make bad decisions. See, Dred Scott v. Sandford.

It is not because the opinion (which I’ve admittedly only read once very quickly) reads more like a college sociology paper than a legal opinion. Legal opinions start by analyzing prior law and reach a conclusion. College sociology papers start with a stated position, and then seek to justify it. The Supreme Court’s opinion reads a lot like the latter.

Rather, I feel compelled to write about the decision’s basic holding and the threat it poses to faithful Catholics and other faithful Christians. What the Court holds is that people of the same sex have a constitutional right to marry. The reverse of this statement is that it is unconstitutional to deny a person the right to marry someone of the same sex. This a sea change.

a footnote ...

                                      

   "You’ve never had my fried chicken,” my excited great-aunt Mary proclaimed.  “See you. Sunday. You’ll taste the best fried chicken in town!”

     Our phone conversation concluded.  Aunt Mary was wrong.  She did serve the best fried chicken in town.  However, she’d forgotten she’d hosted me the previous Sunday for her chicken dinner.  Little did I know as a seventeen year old, new to Salina, Kansas, alone working the summer before college for the State grain inspection department that Aunt Mary showed signs of Alzheimer’s or dementia beginning. 

     The disease progressed as my graduate years emerged from undergraduate work to cancer research at KU Med.  As I passed through Salina, I’d stop to visit Mary as often as I could.  Months often lapsed between my visits to her Senior Living Center.  Mary struggled to recognize me.  I could understand how she might not recall me because I was not part of her long term memory having only grown to know her that summer before entering college.  She lived in a simple grandma house with a postage stamp yard.  Widowed for many years, she always gave to me so generously with several Sunday meals.  Despite her disease, I was determined to communicate with her in some meaningful way even if she could not recognize me.

     I convinced a retiring KU professor to allow me to enroll in a graduate “Psychology of the Aging” class though I had completed no prerequisites for it nor did it have anything to do with my biochemistry research.   I enjoyed the class discovering, by far, the vast majority of seniors live productive, independent lives … but what about my Aunt Mary?  During one particular class pertaining to dementia, clinicians discussed various effective techniques such as music therapy, games, crafts, etc. used to steer clients away from episodes in which they described communicating through dreams or in silence with a dead spouse, friends, children, siblings, a foe or two and even God.  An “*” appeared referencing a footnote at the bottom of the page in our authoritative text.  Though quite common in this aging population, it was recommended that diversion using the techniques above be attempted for the benefit of the individual.  Whose benefit?  Mine, the therapist or Aunt Mary’s?  What if the experience commands more than a footnote, certainly not a diversion?

     I expected more on this topic as I flipped wildly through the remaining pages.  Nothing … simply a footnote … and this situation was the entire reason I enrolled in this class.  So consuming, I set out to discover what I could about these “imaginings.”  I found little until I stumbled upon an insignificant paperback addressing birth and its similarities to later life.  Inspired, I worked through the night deriving parallels in a theory.    Morning arrived quickly.  Soaked in a torrential rain, I dashed to my professor’s office, 7:30 am, and begged to address the footnote from days earlier.  “I only need 10 minutes.”

     “It’s my last day.  I have critical material to squeeze in.  Several students have questions.”  He looked kindly upon my drenched frame.  “You’re not even a credible psych student.  It isn’t going to happen.”

     Discouraged in the early hour, I listened to my professor cram two hours of final material.  With fifteen minutes remaining, he paused abruptly.  “Normally I’d entertain questions at this time, but one of your classmates has brought some interesting material to my attention and I think it worthy to see.”  Without salutation, he humbly turned the small auditorium over to me.  On a chalkboard on wheels, I sketched the large graph below which I had adapted from the book I’d come across about birth and life after.

     Our lives do not follow the clean lines or curves I’ve shown in this graph.  For example, there are young lives lost far too soon.  (In fact, all dimensions of my life follow the yellow squiggles, anything, but straight.)However, most folks do experience lives on some average as shown.  From conception to birth, an infant develops to leave the comfort of mother’s shelter to life in a new world unknown to the infant.  As Aunt Mary aged, her independence, invincibility, control, physical health (and many more 'youthful' characteristics) diminished.  While at the same time,  her spirituality, relationship to the Lord, communicating in a unique way expanded … and … in her new relationship it became more personal, more difficult for me to understand or to participate other than to observe and to listen, perhaps similar to Peter’s, James' and John’s reactions at the transfiguration.  “Rabbi, how good it is for us to be here!   Mk 9:5.  One must surrender “control” or invincibility to enter the new relationship.  On many occasions, staff would mention Mary displayed a certain peace after I’d visit … and all I did was listen and ask the occasional question to foster our conversation.  Mary’s experience and many like her may be more significant than a footnote!

      For anyone who has lost, I found this poem to be beautiful.  Its words encouraged me to write this reflection.

My Beloved   by Heather Heath Reed, … best read slowly.

He had come home to die

in his own bed,

surrounded by his books and flowers,

his sweetheart by his side.

It was always understood

that she would die first,

it was non-negotiable, she’d said,

subject closed.

                Now, he was asking her to let him go,

                and she felt cheated and afraid.

                Watching the night sky fill with stars,

                he become the consoler,

                his work nearly done, hers just beginning.

                Bit by bit, he helped her remember

                their lifetime together,

                spirited soulmates,

                raising kids and traveling the world

                mostly with laughter, always with love.

With one last breath, he slipped away

while she slept beside him.

Later, she would awaken

to the scent of yellow roses.

What Did Jesus Pray?

by Fred Vilbig

I want to consider for a moment something that I think is very interesting: Jesus prayed. Jesus prayed throughout His ministry. He would get up early in the morning and go pray. (Mark 1:35, Luke 5:16.) Jesus prayed before major events such as the miracles of the loaves and the raising of the dead. (Mark 6:46, John 11:41-42.) He prayed all night before choosing the apostles. (Luke 6:12-13.) In addition, Jesus thought that prayer was so important that He took the time to teach his disciples how to pray, and He gave us the Our Father. The Evangelists thought this was important enough to mention in the Gospels.

But this also raises a question: what did Jesus pray? The only thing that the Gospels say is that Jesus went off alone to pray, but it doesn’t really tell us anything more. I am sure that he was in deep contemplative prayer being fully human. I don’t know how accessible that would be to us. But I think there is another possibility.

When Jesus was hanging on the Cross, he cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” That troubled me for a long time. How could God the Father have forsaken His Son, Jesus, with whom he was united in his very substance? That made no sense to me. Our God is One and Three, but He is still One. How could the Son be separated from the Father?

The Spiral of Silence

The PX90 summer book club is reading "Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus" by Sherry Weddell.  We are only through the first few chapters so far but I have found the book and material to be intriguing.  One of the concepts Sherry introduced to me is the Spiral of Silence.  As Sherry puts it, 
  
"The Spiral of Silence is a well-known communication theory originally proposed by political scientist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. In her research, Noelle-Neumann found that people are less likely to voice an opinion on a topic if they believe they are in the minority, because most people fear isolation from the majority. One of the crucial points of the Spiral of Silence theory is that people are constantly observing the behaviors of those around them, to see which behaviors gain approval and which receive disapproval from the majority."

If you are a visual person, maybe the illustration below will help.  In it we see that both the mass media and interpersonal interactions play a large role in the spiral behavior.

 

 In "Forming Intentional Disciples" the author sees this phenomena as one of the major factors explaining why in our society today talking about one's faith is considered by many  - even those who profess to be people of faith and attend mass regularly -to be taboo.  I agree with her, and have experienced this feeling myself many times when I have failed to bring faith into a conversation stemming from the fear of the opinions of others.    

Unless you are living under a rock, with no TV or internet access and have no friends or children, you are being confronted daily with opinions, opportunities and situations where the truths of the Catholic faith are being called into question and in many cases outright attacked.  This blog has highlighted a few of these everyday situations, like here and here.  The Spiral of Silence is in effect at these times, as we mentally - and most likely sub-consciously - weigh our options in how to respond.

My prayer today is that God provides us the grace to bring our response out of the subconscious and to provide the strength and courage to break the silence...

What's up with the prenupt?

Amazing what God presents in experiences and nature ….

In mid-March over two years ago, seven former students converged on St. Louis for a friend’s wedding. All seven, two females, five males graduated from the same high school eight years earlier and had dropped in to visit me. All worked professional careers. Three of the males and one female were already married while Rick and Lindsay were engaged separately to marry sometime during the next year. I changed the names to protect the rascals of whom I write. Employed with a leading Denver firm, Rick, a lawyer from a prestigious university had drafted a prenuptial agreement, a legal contract entered into prior to marriage commonly including provisions for division of property and spousal support in the event of divorce or breakup of marriage. 

“What’s up with the prenupt?” Lindsay, an engaged first year medical resident questioned her classmate’s motive.