At this point, I am tempted to do any one of several things as I pursue the topic of self-love/self-acceptance even further (see Is Self-Love OK for Catholics? for my first post on the subject). I don't know exactly in which direction to proceed next, so let me try this one:
My intuition tells me that the gory details of my own "cracked pot" (see the parable I quoted in the previous post) are idiosyncratic to myself; they may be of little interest (or even repulsive) to others. Or, to the Howard Sterns of this world, they may be diverting to hear about, but really no big deal. Yet I feel the need to allude to them to make a general point: things that happen to us early in life can twist us irrevocably for the rest of our lives.
In that previous post I revealed that I, at 58, am still an unmarried male virgin (technically speaking) with a decidedly unnatural (or "disordered") interest in such grossly immature, voyeuristic pursuits as — dare I say it right out loud — viewing women going to the potty.
It's been that way for me all my life. I can remember being as a young child stimulated in ways I was too small to understand when a female playmate abruptly dropped pants and did her business before me on one of those potties parents use to toilet-train their toddlers. Both of us were a bit too old for that sort of thing by then ... and both of us knew it. It was one of several acts of provocation I remember by this little girl who would grow up to be, if I recall aright, quite a flirt. Another was when she had me remain in her room while she changed from pajamas to clothes, and I found out for the first time exactly how boys and girls, anatomically speaking, differ.
But my point is that, if I have a sexual quirk, it was already with me at a tender age, and I simply never grew out of it.
I was a thumb-sucker till I was 12, a bed-wetter till 16. In my early 40s I had to retire early due to burnout and stress. And I'm something of a confirmed hypochondriac. In an earlier, Freudian age, I would have been called a neurotic from the word go. I have to believe that my neuroses and my sexual quirks are somehow related.
My neuroses are, in that old-fashioned parlance associated with Sigmund Freud, well-compensated. And I don't let my sexual quirks actually express themselves, in terms of my outward behavior. So I've managed to live something which looks very much like a normal life ... for a never-married bachelor of 58, that is.
And I'm a pretty good Christian to boot ... don't commit a lot of sins, do my share of good works, live a fairly clean life, try to care a lot more about others and a lot less about myself.
But in terms of my personal spiritual growth I think I've hit a sort of glass ceiling. I started to notice it as I was reading about and blogging about the "theology of the body," as I did most recently in Theology of the Body, Part 6: The Riddle of the Third Way and in preceding posts. The book which I have been reading on the subject, Theology of the Body for Beginners: A Basic Introduction to Pope John Paul II's Sexual Revolution by Christopher West, talks about our ability to confirm that conjugal or celibate chastity is uniquely blessed by God; we can do this by means of our own inner experience. Supposedly, we can convince ourselves that God's plan for human sexuality allows for either faithful, man-woman, married sex (conjugal chastity) or no sex at all (celibacy "for the kingdom"), depending on our specific calling.
But that, admittedly, assumes our psycho-sexual maturity. If we are not sufficiently mature in our psycho-sexual development, all bets are off.
Take, for example, the issue of homosexuality. The Catholic Church has recently promulgated a new set of guidelines which bar men who "present deep-seated homosexual tendencies" from entering seminaries and becoming priests (see the official document On Priesthood and Those With Homosexual Tendencies: Instruction From Congregation for Catholic Education).
Such men lack "affective maturity" and cannot relate properly — in a constructive, priestly way, that is — to either men or women, it is said. According to Dr. Richard Fitzgibbons in the supporting document "The Psychology Behind Homosexual Tendencies": "These individuals in the priesthood have a significant affective immaturity with excessive anger and jealousy toward males who are not homosexual, insecurity that leads them to avoid close friendships with such males and an inordinate need for attention."
Though I'm not gay, I can surely relate to that — though in my experience it is possible to learn to counterbalance such immaturities of affect, insofar as how one actually lives one's life. (Affect is psychologists' lingo for "the conscious subjective aspect of an emotion."). I no longer get angry, or at least not very often. I no longer let my "inordinate" need for attention run away with me. I don't follow women into rest rooms.
But although on the surface I seem mature and tranquil enough, down deep there's trauma. I don't know what caused it, possibly when I was a babe in arms ... but it's there, and it's not going away. It's ultimately responsible for the "cracked pot" aspects of this particular person whom God loves at this particular moment in time.
I'm never going to grow any further spiritually until I can accept that basic fact about myself, and love myself because of my flaws.
Specifically, then, I've got to find a term to complete the analogy cracked pot:waters flowers::psycho-sexual immaturity:does X. X, in terms of the parable told by Father Joe Breighner as cited in the previous post, has to be some way to redeem the psycho-sexual immaturity which is the biggest stumbling block to my own self-love and self-acceptance.
The best candidate I cam come up with for X leverages the idea which I mentioned above, that deep-seated homosexual tendencies are also psycho-sexual immaturities with their roots in earliest childhood.
Confirmed gays are no more able to change whatever malformation exists deep, deep down than am I ... though mine expresses itself in a different, more oddball (and some would say yet more odious) way.
I feel that my inner, early malformation blocks me from attaining the transcendent redemption of sexual self spoken of by Christopher West in Theology of the Body for Beginners: A Basic Introduction to Pope John Paul II's Sexual Revolution. I assume confirmed gays with deep-seated homosexual tendencies are blocked in the same way.
But neither of us is blocked from the kind of redemption spoken of in Fr. Joe Breighner's somewhat surprising-to-me Spirituality piece entitled "Love yourself because of your flaws." Rather, Father Joe's type of redemption is especially appropriate to the "cracked pots" in the world ... and, when you come right down to it, who among us is anything but a cracked pot, in one way or another?
So the does X in my analogical version of Father Joe's parable would seem to be: works to reverse the recent decision by the Catholic Church not to admit men who "present deep-seated homosexual tendencies" to seminaries.
No comments:
Post a Comment