If an Enemy had Done This, I Could Bear It. But It was You.

My life closed twice before its close—
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

Emily Dickinson 

We make many assumptions, just to get us through each day. Perhaps the most necessary is our bland assumption of life itself. 

We go to bed at night with our alarms set and food for breakfast in the refrigerator, assured in our own minds that we will have a tomorrow. 

We get up each morning equally assured that our day is before us, and we will get through it so uneventfully that, once it’s done, we’ll forget it ever happened. 

The days slide by and we don’t notice their passing. 

I did that for decades; day passing day, my mortality more like a technicality than a reality. Death was far off in the mists of a future that I didn’t, deep in my heart, think would ever come to pass. Life — living — simply being alive in this world, was my given. 

It happened slowly. 

And then it happened suddenly. Full stop.

I was young and the earth was green. I couldn’t get tired and had no concept of ultimate defeat in anything. 

I was middle-aged, but I felt young. I was stronger, through experience and acquired skills, than I had ever been. 

I was young elderly, but I still felt young, with more than enough energy to do whatever I wanted. 

Then, one day, I woke up like every other day.  

And I was old. 

Not only could I get tired, but coming back from tired took a while. The stairs were steeper. The cold colder. The heat hotter. And, suddenly, that horizon I’d seen as far in the distance was at most a few years in the future. 

Elderly living is many things. It holds unique challenges, and unique opportunities to learn and grow in faith and wisdom. But it is, first and foremost, an astonishment. 

My life changed the first time when I was diagnosed with cancer. The cancer didn’t kill me. I’m 10 years into cancer survivorship, and I’ve begun to think that maybe it never will come back. The cancer didn’t kill me, I dar to think. I killed the cancer. 

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Matthew 10: 28

But it was a hard-fought fight that took a wrecking ball to my bland assumption faux immortality. Death can happen — will happen — and it will happen to me. I learned that when the doctor said “You have a mass in your breast.” 

I came out of that experience much stronger in my faith. I learned so much about Our Lord’s tender care for me during those days. He really does walk with you through the fire. He really does answer prayer for courage and peace. You ask. He gives. It’s as simple as that. And it is absolutely reliable. 

I never knew that before cancer. I’d been a Christian for decades. I’d built my life on my faith in Christ. But until I had cancer I had never experienced that simplicity of “I ask. He gives.” I didn’t know it was so reliable; that I could count on it and never doubt it. 

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. Philippians 4: 6-7

The same year I had cancer, Trump was elected the first time. That was the second time my life changed. 

I pretty much ignored his campaign. I was too busy trying to stay alive to notice his obscene, hate-filled rhetoric and out-front racism, corruption and hatred of women. By the time I woke up, it was almost over. But when I saw it, I was appalled. 

I didn’t know, never expected, that my religious leaders were going to fall face first into what has become a satanic cult of twisted Neo Nazi corruption and amorality. I didn’t anticipate the hideously painful challenge to my faith in my Church that this would become for me. 

Trump and the failure of the American Catholic Church to teach and preach Christ in the face of corruption, racism, misogyny and fascism, has been far more painful to endure than cancer ever was. It is a betrayal so profound that it feels like a kind of death. 

Christ in the Eucharist called me to the Catholic Church. It was a clear, persistent, undeniable call from Christ Himself. I was a broken person when I stumbled into this Church, broken by my own sins and mistakes; shattered to the core with grief and remorse. 

I had been rejected by other denominations, basically cast aside and told there was no redemption for me. 

The Catholic Church was the most forgiving and loving institution that I had ever encountered in my life. The Catholic Church of 25 years ago really did believe in conversion. That pre-Trump Catholic Church was focused on Christ. It drew a line on people’s past and let them start over as new creatures in Christ. 

I absolutely loved the Catholic Church. I believed what it taught and accepted its guidance in my life without question. The peace I found in that, the freedom of not having to decide every moral question for myself was enormous. It was peace with myself and with God. 

If the Church had not fallen into the pit along with so many Evangelicals, I would never have deviated from that. The years of anguish over this Church that I have suffered and am still suffering would never have happened. 

But we live in a fallen world. Our priests and bishops are not the self-deifying “other Christs” they claim themselves to be when they’re ramping up their authority. They are the ordinary, weak and sinful humans they fall back on to excuse themselves when they get caught doing wrong. 

The graces of the sacraments flow through them into us. But it’s pretty obvious that those graces don’t necessarily imprint themselves on the priest on their way through. The priests I’ve known have been good. I’ve never had a bad pastor. I am grateful to them for their love and care. 

I want to be clear about that because there is a real tendency in any circumstance to blacken whole groups of people because of the misconduct of vocal and destructive people within that group. 

There are many reasons why people have fallen into this evil Trump cult. But by far the most damaging to the moral fabric of our society and the message of Hope and Salvation in Jesus is the failure of the churches of many denominations to preach and teach Christ. 

Her leaders pronounce judgment for a bribe, Her priests instruct for a price and her prophets divine for money. Micah 3: 11

What happened with me was simple and primal. The bishops and priests in my church don’t care that Trump himself and evidently most of the people he surrounds himself with are sexual predators who hate and abuse women for sport and fun. Rape is sadistic cruelty and brutality. And the men who I thought spoke for God don’t care. 

Once I finally allowed myself to believe that, it changed everything. I can’t stand to listen to them. When they start a homily, I want to get up and walk out. I don’t believe them. 

I don’t want to feel this way. It just is. 

At the same time, the Eucharist is real. The sacraments are real. I still believe what the Church teaches. And I still love the Church. 

I am caught — trapped — in this endless cycle of loving the Church and believing that it does not care if women are brutalized, raped, oppressed, and even killed. I do not think the Church sees me or any other woman as a full human being who is made in the Image and Likeness of God. I think the Church is such a self-referencing, closed-circle boys’ club that it sees half the people that God made as some sort of inferior “other.” 

If an enemy were insulting me, I could endure it; if a foe were rising against me, I could hide.
 But it is you, a man like myself, my companion, my close friend, with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship at the house of God, as we walked about among the worshipers. Psalm 55: 12-14

I think the Church sees women as lesser humans, defective humans, simply because they are not men like the priests and bishops. I think the bishops believe and act on the belief that women’s lives and dignity as human beings are inconsequential simply because they are female and not male like the bishops themselves. I think they see themselves and people they believe are their equals as the only real humans who matter.  

This isn’t Christianity. It isn’t of Christ. It’s the curse of misogyny. It’s satan, pitting humanity against itself in order to induce every other sort of sin. I think this stubborn adherence to the black evil of misogyny, even to the point of using their moral and teaching voice to put rapists and sexual predators in positions of great authority and power and then sucking up to them for access to money and privilege, opened the door for the American Church’s fall into the cult of Trump. 

Anyone who had any moral compass at all would have run backwards from him, day one. 

But if you’re already so sick with the sin of misogyny that you can think rape is ok, the next step down isn’t deep at all. 

I woke up one day and I was old. I’ve had cancer, a heart attack and a stroke. Every member in the generation ahead of me has passed. Almost all of my cousins are gone. I’ve buried a number of my playmates and friends from childhood. I have a sell-by date and I know it’s not all that far off. 

It’s a sad thing, losing the peace of trusting my Church at this time in my life. But I have found that Jesus Christ does not change, even when the Church that proclaims Him goes off the rails. 

I’m not the only person experiencing something like this. People are leaving the churches in great numbers. Public morality in our society has caved in on itself to the point of non-existence. I know many women who feel as betrayed as I do by their churches’ open hatred of women. 

That is why I’m writing this. These clergy of any denomination who have sold Jesus for political power and money are not speaking for Christ. They’re not Christ’s men. They’re Trump’s whores. Do not confuse them with Jesus. And do not lose your faith.

Jesus walks with me through this trial just as He walked with me through cancer, a heart attack and a stroke. I ask for peace and courage. He gives it. It’s a simple as that. 

Do not be afraid, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you.  Isaiah 41:10