When Words Fail, and Love Overwhelms Us

As I wade into the trenches of perhaps the most intense parting of my life - rivaled only by leaving Notre Dame and beginning the long distance chapter of my relationship with my girlfriend - I find emotion and insight swirling about me. I remain grounded in my contextualized perspective that leaving  must involve carrying what you've found and who've you become with you as you move on. However, the emotions power through that truism to demand a deeper perspective.

Allow me to muddle through it all with you.

The relationships I have formed with these students are of a flavor I have yet to experience. I focus so intently on these students that I often neglect to build relationships with colleagues. I leave behind a few dear friends who happen to also be co-workers, but on a larger scale, my impact was quite minimal in the landscape of the staff. This is an added wrinkle I must develop as I mature because quality campus ministry depends so heavily on collegiality. I just freeloaded on the pre-existing teamwork in my current job whereas in future endeavors I will have to be more proactive about cultivating such a community to support the work I'll shepherd.

In terms of the students, the kind of presence I am for and with them is mostly new for me. It was hinted at by my experience as Mentor-in-Faith with Notre Dame Vision, when the age difference was similar. However, it takes that paradigm and blows it up to massive proportion, from a five-day intensive course to a year-long journey together.

The relationships are given fuller term to develop and grow, so they take on such nuance and particularity. I get to become the go-to for different people for different things. I can wander the grounds of our campus, encounter different students, and be excited for their various entreaties. I become the big brother to dozens upon dozens of beloved little brothers and sisters.

At first, the jokes about leaving were easy to deflect - "You're leaving me!?" or "How can you leave us?!", often emoted in artificially dramatic exclamations. However, as the reality of parting creeps nearer, the comments have taken deeper root and a profound personal character - congratulations for my new job and my scholarship, authentic excitement that my girlfriend and I get to live near each other finally, actual tears of disbelief that I won't be back, heartfelt affirmations that I'm one of their favorites, notes and unsolicited exclamations of joy about the connections we've forged or the way their faith has grown this year, and kids' even saying "I love you" straight up.

This is when is gets real. That's when I can't just smile and laugh and say someone else will come and make a new difference or that I'm not worth it. That's when I just want to hug my students and never let go. That's when words fail, and love overwhelms us. This is what Christ meant when He reassured that where two or three are gathered, there am I in the midst of them.

I had the thought that this must be how priests and celibate religious are sustained. I remember asking a priest at my high school how he goes on without a wife or kids, and he told me and my fellow students that he looks at us as his children. Now I really understand what he meant. We didn't just fill in a gap for him; we really were his kids. The love that can be shared when a priest or nun or even a Dan invests his/herself completely into a community abounds and overflows one's cup through the quality and depth of relationships that can form.

These relationships aren't just the means to fulfilling one's vocation or paying the bills; they are the fuel that keep the heart pumping to give and receive the love of God constantly. For me, I need the sustenance of an exclusive human relationship, of someone who gets me better than anyone else, who prioritizes me highly in her life, and gives me the love of God first so I may return it and pass it on. But in the midst of this sea of love, I see how the priest or sister, who embraces this different challenge, can navigate the celibate life and carry on in joy.

This reality recontextualizes my emotional state beautifully. As I sign yearbooks, pose for and take pictures, and share my email address with my dear teenage friends, I can't help but feel like I would at the end of a retreat. The retreat high carries you through the final day, the partings, and the shock of reentry to life, but it is sure to fade. Currently, I'm riding the high.

I'm delighting in the pictures. I'm laughing at the texts. I'm basking in the love of emails and notes. And I, a self-proclaimed retreat junkie, know better than most that it will most certainly fade.

Yet I also know better than most that just because the high fades doesn't mean that the faith and love within me have to fade, too.

The greatest way to sustain the good feelings of happiness is through the relationships that created those good feelings. Happiness is fleeting and surface-level; joy is deep-seated in the heart and lasting. These young men and women are the smile on my face, the love in my heart, the confirmation that my gifts and passions are serving the needs of God's world. I cannot force them to text, call, email, Facebook message, or even to remember me, but I can invite them to maintain our connection with deep gratitude for what has been.

And that is just what I will do. True, beneath the too-often flimsy promises lies the reality that we all won't keep in touch perfectly. However, I find solace in the fact that a few will.

Every community and job and person that touches our hearts forever owns a piece of it. Thank God, love is not supplied finitely, and that these pieces of our heart are not limited edition. Those few who stay connected with me will remind me of the whole and keep alive the part of my heart that is forever theirs.

And as life and love carry me and you and all of us on the sea of life, our sacramental lives are the ebb and flow of the waves that carry us toward love and good and God. The Eucharist brings us the nourishment and renewal of the God who became man and remains close to us always. The reach of Jesus Christ transcends time and space to reinforce and sustain those relationships, in that Something and Someone who is bigger than any one of us, so that no matter how far and wide we may spread, or how many years elapse between our meetings, we remain ever intimately connected.

Right and Righter

Time and time again, then time and time again... then a few more times, students in theology classes at the school where I teach wonder and ask about non-Catholics - do they have to adhere to Church teaching? Why? What if they don't agree with what the Church teaches?

Then we, as faithful, well-catechized, thoroughly formed Catholics trying to teach theology, become readily tempted to launch into argument.

I want to cite the Gospels and Acts, when Jesus vests authority in the apostles. I want to tell the story of Pentecost, the emboldening of these people to go and preach in Jesus' name. I want to tell the story of Peter, the rock on whom Christ builds His Church. I want to explore ecclesiology and unpack the realities of the Church. I want to throw down about the necessity of absolute truth. I want to invalidate relativism for the contradictory and shaky viewpoint that it is.

And there's the catch - our courses do all that. We hash out those pieces of the puzzle that validate the authority of our Church, that connect us to Christ, that explain our claims to authority and ability to teach in Jesus' name, that identify God as the source of Truth, revealed to us by Scripture and Tradition. We address those objections as part of the catechesis.

Yet this repeated objection becomes a road-block, a push back in the direction of revisiting that stuff. It drags us back toward arguments that we offered and discussed but ultimately must not sink in. In an infinitely long school year, they could be rehashed, but time is of the essence. We futily hope that our discussions will address their beefs.

This generation of youngens cannot wrap their heads around the idea that John Paul II is speaking truth to all people in The Gospel of Life. They can't believe that this man (the pope) and his advisers (the bishops) are composing advice that is based upon the absolute truth of God and directed toward - and useful and relevant to! - all people of good will.

In part, I think it's generational and teenage skepticism of authority. In part, a lot of my interaction with them suggests that they simply discount institutionalized religion on a count of the attraction of the "spiritual but not religious" fad. In part, I think many of them are disillusioned because the only religion they see is people practicing religion poorly - judgmentally, radically, intolerantly.

For whatever reason, they often will only get on board with the Church and her unpacking of absolute truth unless it happens to jive with their personal opinions.

When it comes to addressing these students concerns without rehashing previous days' worth of discussions, the issue has to be framed well.

I recently observed a colleague teacher emphasize dialogue to his students. Right on the money.

Many students have an image of the Church as "my way or the highway." True, our Church is one of all-or-nothing subscription. It's not a buffet; we're called to conscientious dialogue with truth. However, it's not meant to be so cold and militaristic. It's meant to be conversation, a what and why that unpacks the teaching to the heart and the mind. It's judgment of evil actions, affirmation of the goodness of people but condemnation of the stain of sin, whether social or personal.

When he asked me to chime in, I reframed the tension/conflict - it's not always a matter of you're wrong and we're right; it's often a matter of you and us are both right but we're righter.

Pro-choice advocates are right to value privacy and mothers'/women's rights. It's just righter to do so through a whole sexuality that embraces the completeness of marriage and a full understanding of sex rather than to encourage free sex, contraceptives, and abortion.

Death penalty supporters are right to advocate justice, law enforcement, and social peace. It's just righter to further those causes through life imprisonment and the opportunity for repentance.

Assisted suicide advocates are right to value the dignity of life, individual autonomy, and practicality. It's just righter to value life by understanding the fullness of suffering, the value of surrender, and the distinctions between passive and active means.

The tensions between the sides are full of friction, especially on these issues, but therein lies the challenge and the call: Christians are blessed with a beautifully cohesive and coherent faith, manifested beautifully in the consistent ethic of life - valuing life and its dignity and value in all forms from conception until natural death.

Our task is to manifest, in our actions and words, a faith that upholds the dignity of life. We must demonstrate the light and joy and the culture of life, amid the battle against a culture of death.

Ultimately, most people aspire to be part of a culture of life. Our dialogue, grounded in our understanding of Truth as delivered to us by Christ through Scripture and Tradition, must help everyone discover how we can help and hurt that force of good. And while we must discourage and condemn evil when we find it, we shouldn't assume evil in all our interactions.

We must find the good.

We can have dialogue in which both sides are right and seek the mutual illumination of conversation. Viewpoints of right and wrong can lead us to be dumb and dumber. Let's discover a context of right and righter, and let the One Who is Right shine.

Limiting the Unlimited

On Friday, I grabbed the keys to a school van and loaded it up with baseball equipment and a handful of my players. Our last game of the season was against our in-town public school, a hated rival from just 10 minutes down the same road our school is on.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, the van was pretty quiet. Sure, it was Friday, and the school week leaves teenagers drained and dragging (until Friday night rolls around, at least). But this silence resulted from something else.

I picked up on it when I heard noises coming from the lap of my shotgun passenger. He was playing a game on his iPhone. And a quick survey of my rearview mirror revealed that his teammates were all doing the same thing. Nary a word was spoken. Every set of eyeballs - except the driver's - were glued to a tiny touch-screen.

The next morning, we played a just-for-fun scrimmage, some players, some parents and siblings, and me ending our season with some light-hearted competition. A couple hours swinging the bats, throwing a tennis ball around, and trying to hit a jack over the tantalizingly close homerun fence on the softball field. After six innings of ball, the sprinklers going off, and a lot of laughs, we put a cap on the season with a 12-10 victory for the home team. I came out on the losing end but managed to take a ball yard.

After the game ended and we cleaned up after ourselves a bit, six players were left in the dugout, waiting for rides. Again, an almost unbroken silence reigned where laughter and jokes should have been. Six sets of eyes focused on smartphones. Game over. Time to text.

This is a tough issue.

I tried to resist and stood strongly on my soapbox for ages, but I, too, have a smartphone. At first, I turned the cellular data off to keep temptation at bay, but one can't even picture message without it. So now I had the internet in the palm of my hand. I made a rule that, just like when my iPod traveled with me in my pocket, I'd restrict my data usage to WiFi, with exceptions for times of legitimate need (like the maps to get directions or Safari to find an address or store hours). I've survived the first 3 months pretty strongly accordingly to those rules, but the compulsion becomes so strong when the boundaries evaporate and those little red numbers appear on my apps.

Ultimately, I don't necessarily think there's a great moral absolute at play here. Smartphones are not inherently evil. The internet is not inherently evil. It comes down to, as always, intention. But given the prevalence of internet access and the constant ability we have to shift our attention to a handheld device, I think intention has to include omission.

Even if shifting our gaze down to a phone isn't evil, might preoccupying ourselves from other things around us be a move in the wrong direction? My concern isn't so much that phones drag us down. It's that too much use of our phones keep us from realizing each other.

Facebook, other social media, and our phones should supplement our personal relationships, giving them new avenues in which to grow an exist, but those things should not become the primary means of communication and sustaining relationships.

Think of the waiting room at your doctor's or dentist's office. Typically, you'll be in for a long wait, so you grab a magazine to pass, or even "kill", time. Nothing wrong with that. Get lost in the political issues afoot, or catch up on Hollywood happenings. Too often we are starting to treat any "down" time as being like a waiting room - meeting up with friends at a theater or mall, waiting for a table at a restaurant, a lull in conversation - and that's scary.

I can't tell you how many times I see people standing around in a circle looking at their phones instead of chatting with each other. I have pulled my phone out just because everyone in my vicinity has gone there and I don't want to be left out. I have pulled my phone out because I sometimes forget that this potential for conversation used to be our default.

It's a dangerous trend for us to default to a smartphone, to a personal, customizable world rather than to community with others. Sometimes, we go to our phones to share an article, a video, a picture, to include others, start a conversation, have a laugh; sometimes it's pure compulsion. We are increasingly drifting to that set of square icons to check up on the social scene rather than partaking of the one in our midst.

The trend is present in ads, and it's kind of a chicken-and-egg scenario - do the ads reflect what we're already doing or do the ads goad us toward behaviors by their power of suggestion?



I showed a Droid commercial to my students. Some of them understood the implication of our phones' becoming literally one with us as seriously dangerous. Others dismissed the commercial, saying that we don't have to do something just because a commercial tells us to do it. My question remains...



Then I think of this Sprint commercial, which implies that everything we do should be captured on our phones and shared, without our devices or their data pools limiting our activity. I am all for the opening of information, for more and more to be readily available to be researched, discovered, learned.

I am grateful for Blogger and the chance I get to compose thoughts and disseminate them widely. However, I don't bare 100% of my soul on this blog. I share myself openly and genuinely, but there are things that are private to me and my family or friends. I tell stories and offer insights, but a fraction of my life remains my own, unpublished to any social platform. Again, I'm not saying Sprint will eradicate that boundary or that we ought to get rid of it because Sprint told us to do that. However, the trend is real, something for us to confront and reflect upon.

Do we feel the need to be plugged in 24-7-365? Why do we have to check for little red numbers every 5 minutes? Can we go without sharing things with others? Can we go without checking what others are sharing?

My point is not to poo-poo smartphones or apps. I just hope everyone can stop for a moment to reflect upon their habits or compulsions.

I need to recommit to my WiFi rule. I need to trust that emails about my potential new job or my plans for grad school will not go anywhere even if I don't check and see them right away. I can let myself play 7 Little Words and Crosswords while in the bathroom but not while sitting at a table amid conversation.

How can you create fair and just limits on your usage? Can self-denial lead you to realization? What moderation might you need?

The Things We Carry

I am currently looking for my next job. I'm moving back to Chicago to start graduate school part-time. I'm leaving my job and my current school community, and I need to find a new community in which I can do my ministry.

Leaving has never been really hard for me. I guess I have solid control on my emotions - sometimes good, sometimes bad. I love a good cry, but it takes something quite intense or a factor of surprise to bring out my tears. Leaving my high school, leaving London, leaving each summer of Notre Dame Vision, leaving my beloved Folk Choir, leaving Notre Dame, leaving Ireland...

I've had to do a lot of leaving. Not to be trite, but Semisonic was on to something when they said, "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." I've always been aware of the finiteness of those experiences - of the four-year progression of school, of the development and subsequent sending forth, or fraction rite, of a community, of loving but leaving a certain place. The joy and love of each piece to that puzzle endures in pictures and videos. It lasts even more strongly in memories. Yet the greatest vestiges of those places, people, and communities live on in my life of faith.

Each chapter of my formation sowed seeds for the future while harvesting the seeds from my past. That reality doesn't eliminate emotion, but it places it in right proportion. I could leave each place, each community with an enormous grin, fueled by deep-seeded joy because I knew I would carry those people and experiences in my heart. I didn't have to cling to things lost, or grasp after fleeting reality. The specific times and places may pass, but the impact they had in developing me lasts.

I felt this most acutely when I got the chance to direct my first retreat. In October, I directed a two-night, 36-hourish Junior Retreat. It'd be up to me to keep us on track, catalyze the creation of the proper atmosphere, and kind of "emcee" the thing. As I moved through the pieces of the retreat, re-gathering the group for talks, finding ways to transition between things, and wanting to let my true self to show through, I realized, in a beautiful way, that I am a conglomerate of those people who I had seen in leadership along my way: the unabashed catechesis of Tim O, the utilization of viral videos for spiritual renewal of Lenny, the reflective use of guitar of Steve, the comfortable awkwardness of John, the attention to detail of Jess, the friendly relatability of Betsy, the meditative guidance of Jimmy...

As a minister, as a teacher, as a person, I am the product of those people who have impacted me, from my parents and brothers to those who have ministered to me. The benevolent love and grace of God follows me everywhere. It didn't restrict itself to St. Viator or Notre Dame or Clonard or Xavier.

The temptation we have at Notre Dame, or in any community which nourishes us in faith, is to cling to it. We want to have more and more of the good things. We want to stay at Notre Dame. The sustenance is so great; why leave it behind? We wrestle with the allure of ACE, of Notre Dame Law, of AR posts, of internships and staff positions, of finding a job in South Bend, of infinite dorm masses and basilica and grotto trips. Sometimes staying on is a welcome stepping stone toward post-grad dreams or a fitting gap year before diving headlong into career aspirations; other times, it's the fear of the unknown, of the beyond, or a reach for the metaphorical snooze button.

Whether you clung to Notre Dame or cut the cord (or, like me, did a little of both), the important thing is that the Church we found in a most colorful way at Our Lady's University is a truly global church. The very word which describes our faith means universal. The reach of the Body of Christ is not limited by time or space. The faithfulness and zeal that we find at Notre Dame exists elsewhere in the world.

It may be less vibrantly visible; it may take some looking; it may not be as readily available. But you betcha it's out there.

Each time you leave a place, a job, a community, you risk not being able to get it as good as you had it. But we are an Easter people. Jesus defeated death. His victory permeates everything. It makes us the people of faith, hope, and love, which necessitates optimism, even if realistic optimism. You can doubt the prospects of gainful employment, the ability to pull in a certain salary, the likelihood of finding new friends, but you cannot the doubt the strength of our Church, the community of Christ that is found everywhere and anywhere.

I got to Ireland after leaving Notre Dame and found a priest with firy opinions of what our Church needs to do better, a family of fervent prayer and faith in a culture readily forsaking it, and a community of humble Vincent de Paul volunteers bringing help to those in need. I came to California and found a high school preaching a counter-cultural message of care for the whole person, of spiritual formation alongside college preparations, of community and fellowship beyond the classroom. Now I return to Chicago, to family, to a school that desires to form people theologically and ministerially, and to a yet unknown job...

Maybe most important of all, I have found potential employers who spoke the language. I found a retreat director in Wisconsin who valued community and frank, open conversation. I found a principal and a campus minister in SoCal who actively encourage tensions, constant discernment, and the agitation of shallow comforts and complacency. I found a principal in Illinois who seeks to give his kids intellectual, spiritual, and professional formation, all in one school. I found another principal in Indiana who wants a campus minister with a real vision that will further invigorate the faith family at her school.

Notre Dame and Holy Cross certainly provide a unique flavor and intensity of faith formation. But we are silly and narrow-sighted to focus too much on that, just like Jesuit alumni are missing out when they fixate of Ignatian spirituality. The best way to develop any stance is to expose it to new, different environments. Our Catholic faith deepens and broadens when we take it from where we're at to where we're going, from our home parish, from our alma mater, from the place we live or work now, to the place we may end up going.

We don't need to all be missionaries, jumping from one thing to another in search of the next big thing. We don't all need to suddenly forsake our routines or comfort zones or the status quo. However, we do need to readily embrace the unknown, the step ahead, the new thing. We need to consider going to that Taize Prayer service that happens every week down the road. We need to consider working in a Jesuit school, even if we've never experienced it before. We need to try Adoration, even if it's intimidating. We need to go to daily Mass once in a while. We need to give our local parish a chance, and consider how we can help, even if that church in the next town over seems more appealing.

For my current job, our students go on retreat at a mountain ranch. The high altitude, the fogs and mists, the clear, clean air, the starry skies, the woodsy wilderness - it all creates a special world. Their temptation is to want to stay forever, to sustain this community they've created by never leaving that place. I remind them that the goodness they've shared and received from one another isn't confined to that place. It's something quite sustainable and realistic. It doesn't require the establishment of a mountainous utopia. It requires the courage and trust to carry the changes you experience with you as you go on.

The universality of the Church, the infinite reach of Christ, gathers us together in this way. Don't be afraid of leaving what you know. You always carry with you those things that have shaped your heart. The power of formation comes when we share our formation with others and receive theirs in turn.

I Writes the Applications

For those of you who I haven't been able to catch up with, I am moving back to Chicago this summer. My girlfriend, Katherine, is starting graduate school at DePaul's School of Nursing. I will be starting a part-time MA at Catholic Theological Union. As part of this transition, I have leave my wonderful job as a campus minister/theology teacher/coach out here in California and look for my next wonderful job in Chicagoland. As I assemble materials to submit to high schools, universities, and parishes, I have had to do some serious reflecting to articulate who I am, what I believe, what I love and am passionate about, etc.

Below I share with you my responses to some questions I've answered for job applications. Hopefully, some of my amateur insights resonate with you in some way...

Identify two to three skills or tools you view as essential to being an effective educator. Provide reasons to support your response.

Compassionate patience: As a theology teacher at a Catholic school, I find students to be skeptical and critical of me by default. They seem to have a generational inclination toward doubting the benevolence of organized religion. They cling stubbornly to the fallacy of relativism. They see people misusing, abusing, and otherwise poorly practicing their religions. I have to work with/against this. Deep down, I hope they will find resonance with the teachings of the Church and feel inclined toward Catholic faith. Realistically, I am just aiming to communicate Catholic values to them in a way they can understand; I frequently tell them, "I don't need you to agree with this, but I need you to understand it." Hoping for faith and working for faith/religious literacy in the midst of skepticism requires a lot of patience and great compassion. It does not mean I should let them think whatever they want. It means I must move gently, challenge their faulty understandings, their flimsy opinions, and their ungrounded objections with grace.

Relatability: I have to be credible. If students view me as being out of touch, as not understanding what they are going through as teenagers, as people living in this time and place, then I am discredited. If I dismiss them too readily or hastily, I am intolerant and heartless. I have to remain human, real; I cannot in any way become a cardboard cutout, a stuffed shirt just looking to execute a lesson and evaluate their academic performance in exchange for compensation. I have to show feeling, show my doubts, show my humor. I have to be in on the viral videos, the pop songs, and the trending hashtags - and not in a token way, because teenagers can detect phony-ness with incredible sensitivity. Ultimately, I must remain an adult while relating intimately to their status as teenagers. I love the challenge, and I am deeply consoled when students tell me I am like a loving big brother.

Given today's culture, what values are critical to teach our young men and women? Extrapolate on why these values are critical to teaching at a Catholic, Jesuit and college preparatory school and why they are important to you.


Faith: In an increasingly secular culture, we are told that it is ok to be spiritual-but-not-religious. This is a fallacy. People who lack religion lack community. Humans are inherently social creatures; we function better when we work together around meaningful causes that we share in common. Atheists, nontheists, and "nones" sometimes band together but do so loosely and often solely on social media. Religion is the social, communal force that enfleshes our beliefs and values, the things we think are so important, that fuel us to prioritize family and love in our lives. We need to encourage teens to retain faith, to take ownership of what they believe, to challenge and doubt and discern the faith of their parents and family and make it their own rather than disavow it. Teens can be incredible role models of faithfulness, spirituality, and religiosity. If we can show them its value, they can teach it to each other and help stem the tide of secularism and SBNR's.

Communication: As social media proliferate and we become more interconnected, the temptation increasingly becomes to downplay face-to-face interactions and keep our eyes glued to backlit electronic screens. The solution to this trend is not to liquidate social media; it is to teach ourselves and our young people how to use them well. Social media ought to be a supplemental means of communication. We should use Twitter and Facebook to increase our connectedness to each other so that we can have more to our relationships than ever before. The problem comes when social media become the primary means of communication and relegate phone calls and in-person contact to the sidelines. We need to reinforce the value and superiority of in-person conversation and highlight the reductiveness of communicating solely by texts, tweets, instagrams, and Facebook posts.

In Christ there is no Left or Right

Flying cross-country today, I read the spring issue of Notre Dame magazine basically cover to cover, for what I believe is the first time in my life. Among the highlights were a batch of fascinating profiles of current students by Tara Hunt, a reflection on the media's love of hating Notre Dame by my hero Matt Storin, and a lengthy investigation of the evaporation of the middle ground in American politics by the great Bob Schmuhl.

As a split ticket voter and an independent, I'm keenly aware of the middle ground, for I seek to stand on it in the political arena. My political science classes taught me about the "myth of the independent" - that the majority of self-titled independents that admit a "leaning" toward one party or the other basically vote like affiliates of that party. I am a true independent without a leaning, one who has too many differences with each party and one who finds his preferences split between the two sides. I seek to support those candidates who are to the middle of their parties' bases, who will articulate shades of grey and/or stick with a slate of stances that don't line up uniformly with the party platform.

Schmuhl wrote about how parties don't move an inch, insisting on holding their ground under the standard of their party. He spoke of the two most liberal Republicans and two most conservative Democrats leaving office by retirement or electoral defeat. He pointed out how consensus building is no longer a strength because those who work bipartisanly are labeled defectors and systematically eliminated by the party leaders.

The labels of Democrat an Republican no longer primarily function to identify the political preferences of voters. They are a wedge, an either/or, a red or blue, a finely demarcated Congressional district that entrenches the candidate of the majority party.

As an amateur theologian and committed minister, I often read stories like this through the lens of our lived faith, our challenge to live our Christian baptismal call in the modern context. Schmuhl's article roused my dislike of people's using the labels "liberal" and "conservative" to describe the Church, its leaders, and its members.

Words become labels so easily, charged up, connotatively loaded tools used to evoke a response, to create an image in the hearer's mind, to elicit emotions. Liberal and conservative describe ideology; they refer to the tilt of people or a group toward policy issues. These words work for politicians to some extent. They become charged up with connotation, but they are fitting because politicians, parties, and voters are in the business of ideology and policy. These words do not work for the Church, its groups, or its members; we are not in the business of ideology and policy.

America suffers from its loss of the moderate bloc; the Catholic Church suffers from pick-and-choose faith and excessive heterogeneity. We should seek diversity, but such a pursuit cannot be exclusive. Charismatic Catholics must recognize the validity of Tridentine Catholics; neither can scorn the other or look down on their brothers' and sisters' piety. The Church is not political. It is the social organ that Christ instituted so that all those who sought to be part of Him could join together in the one baptism to live, pray, and serve alongside each other in His name. There should not be liberal and conservative, Democrat or Republican within her embrace.

Sure, some of us are better gifted to work in solidarity with the poor while others' passions lead them to theological studies and professorial careers. Ultimately, all of us are called to respond to every call to love, whether from those in need on our streets or from the Scriptures and writings of theologians. We can always grow toward a fuller, broader faith, yet we must identify our gifts and passions and put them to work answering the call to love.

We should challenge one another both to take action and to embrace contemplation. However, we must resist calling those who attend Adoration regularly "conservative" while labeling those committed to social justice as "liberal." Such labels may serve to indicate political preferences in electoral races, but they are reductive in the way we use them and shouldn't be applied to our faith. I'd prefer "traditionalist" and "progressive," but even those gesture at an implicit claim that is extraneous to the issue.

No matter how we live our faith, we are all called to orthodoxy - to hear the teachings of the Church, as handed down by Christ to us through the apostles and bishops and their interpreting the deposit of faith for us, through the lived faith of the Church (Tradition), and through the Scriptures. Our Church should be the united Body of Christ, an assemblage of believers seeking to manifest their belonging to Someone (Christ!) and Something (the Church!) bigger than themselves, through prayer, community, and service.

Even when we find conscientious tension with the Church, we are called to embrace it. Even if we cannot fully understand or fully line up with the communicated guidance of our Church, we are called to dialogue with it. Even when we disagree, we are called to navigate the tensions.

The orthodoxy of our united community comes not in blind faith, in unthinking subscription to a bill of doctrines and teachings. True orthodoxy comes from our conscientious dialogue with the teaching of Christ's Church. When we use our reason and our will, we are most human. God gave us these gifts so that we might understand Nature and Truth and live in accordance with His will and develop a relationship with Him through Christ. Let us shake off temptations toward "left" or "right" and instead move directly to an orthodox faith in the Gospels, in the Church, and in Christ.

Flipping the Script

Before diving into Humanae vitae with my students, I had them do a "four corners" activity. I put together a list of a handful of statements and ask them to take a stand - strongly disagree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree. They have to choose a stance (or neutral/no opinion), write out a short explanation, and then stand in their corner of the room ready to talk when we have our discussion. Thus we started our unit of marriage, sexuality, and birth control.

As we discuss these issues, my goal is to elicit an explanation from them and challenge their principles. Even if they disagree with me and my understanding of morality, I want them to identify their reasoning so I can push them to articulate what underrides their opinions to make them more than shallow stances.

Toward the end, after talking about childless couples and simultaneously procreative and unitive sex, my students had to react to the statement, "Couples in exclusive, committed relationships should be allowed to use birth control." Naturally, I'm trying to see where their line is for birth control - some think it's for everyone, for just committed couples, for marriage alone, or not to be used at all. Ultimately, I'm hoping to make a coherent case for not using birth control, even if many students' instinct is to resist.

So as we unpacked the usual process of the birth control debate, I had a thought to reframe the issue. I love to put new parameters onto these discussions, to keep the focus on the crux of the issue that drives the discussion but to be refresh the context. It's a beautiful combination of professional BS'ing and providential Holy Spirit inspiration to draw on knowledge, wisdom, and much more and to have a moment like this in the midst of a classroom discussion. And keeping with the God who has a sense of humor, sometimes it falls completely flat.

In this case, I admitted to them that my next question might not work or make sense, but that I'd try it anyway and see. I asked my students, "What if we had technology that withheld the unitive part of sex - so no emotional, physical intimacy, no feeling the closeness of sex, no pleasure from the act - but maintained the procreative part of sex - so the act still resulted in conception and pregnancy?"

My "strongly agree and agree" students took a moment to react, taken aback a bit by the strangeness of the idea. They processed their reaction into words and rightly identified it as being wrong, backwards, even boring. They were uninterested in such a thing, viewing it as missing something. I followed up by saying that this is the reaction that I have to birth control.

Birth control eliminates an integral part of sex through the means of artificial, human-made, human-chosen actions. People who advocate for its use emphasize the pleasure and freedom while devaluing the procreative element of sex. The true value of sex, the fullness of our sexuality, is in upholding these parts together.

These students didn't want birth control to sustain procreation but eliminate union. Why then is it so much more ok to restrict procreation but retain union?