Screamland
Maybe faith like this has at least one practitioner
In March 2017, I went to my first socialist meeting. I happened to be seated next to some very friendly people, and in the breakout, they asked me why I came, what it was I cared about, what made me so concerned with the need for change that I would show up to a meeting with dozens of people I didn't know, in a branch library meeting room. I said I cared most about the hateful speech that had been directed at immigrants, and I said that I cared about it because I was Catholic.
That was the first thing. It was immigration, it was compassion towards those who had to flee their homes and needed to be welcomed somewhere else, that was what did it. And I did it “because I was Catholic”, what did that mean? I sure as hell didn't know - I wasn't a particularly active or devout Catholic, and went to Mass every week mainly because that's where my wife went every week. I sure as hell don't know what it means now: now I don't even go to Mass, and if I ever do again, I doubt I'll be receiving Communion anytime soon. But I was Catholic, this thing that I barely understood, still don’t understand, and was pretty sure even at the time that I didn’t much care for, and it made me give a shit about this one thing, so I showed up to a meeting.
The open secret about working to make the world better is that the work that needs to be done is not actually difficult at all, in a technical sense. It’s difficult to make time for it, it’s difficult to push yourself to do it, but there aren’t really special skills required beyond being a somewhat generous person. People need rides to meetings and protests, even if they’re out of your way, but you know how to drive. Somebody’s gotta order pizza for the group, even though that costs the money you could spend on going out yourself, but you know how to put in an order. You have to call around to find a big enough space to book for cheap, and you can only call on your lunch break, but you have a phone. You have to take good notes at the meeting, type them up, and make sure they get archived properly on the share drive, but you know how to use a computer. You have to talk to the new person in the room and make sure they feel welcome and comfortable, even if they are off-putting or annoying or intimidating, but you know how to have a conversation and ask someone what it is they care about and why. You see the same unhoused person every day on your way to work, and you never carry cash, but you know how to stop at an ATM before heading up again. You have to think hard about what you’re willing to risk before you protest, but marching in the street does not usually require advanced physical conditioning. Yes, if you find a way to organize with other people and do that work at scale, you can help people in a way that lasts longer, but even if you can't do that, you can still help people now, you can still be some form of relief to someone in a precarious position, someone who could be you someday. It’s not even hard to figure out what it is that needs to be done; all you need to do is find someone already doing the work that must always be done - feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, visiting the sick and imprisoned, burying the dead - ask that person what they need to keep working, and then just get those things done for them, even if those things are inconvenient or expensive or annoying.
The other open secret about working to make the world better is that the work that needs to be done is actually extremely difficult, because it is boring or exhausting or time-consuming or nerve-wracking. You do not feel like a brave warrior fighting fascism or white supremacy or capitalism or whatever, you do not feel like a fierce dissident being brave in the face of oppression, you do not go to sleep at night with another victory behind you. You just feel like a guy trying to do something that needs doing, and you don’t really know if it'll add up to anything, and you go to bed at night very tired, and you wake up tired, and there’s another thing that will need doing then. Most of the time, you will not enjoy doing these things. You should do them anyways, and you might as well pretend that you enjoy them, pretend that you are a better person than you are, because that helps those things get done. Helping people does not feel good; this is, for my money, the central tension of the Christian life, one about which I have attempted to write for almost a decade, and with which I will continue to struggle for the rest of my life.
I don’t know what “I’m Catholic” means as an explanation for why I care about anything or want to do any of this work. You’d think being part of a long-lasting faith tradition would sustain me in this work, but given that my church barely works at all when it comes to doing anything from “delivering a coherent homily” to “acknowledging that women have talent and worth” to “paying teachers a living wage” to “not sexually abusing children”, it seems like the Catholic church is not much help for me right now in doing the work that needs to be done. Catholicism, though, happens to be the religion that brought me to the work of Gene Wolfe and Kaya Oakes and Corita Kent and Therese Lysaught and Guillermo del Toro and Kathy Cummings and John Bellairs and Renée Roden and Mollie O’Reilly and Natalia Imperatori-Lee and Susan Reynolds and Gerard Way and Oscar Romero and Blaise Pascal and Dorothy Day and Mary Doria Russell and all of those people - along with many others - have felt some version of that way about the work that needed to be done, that it was hard, that it was not at all glorious, that the formal institutional church was not going to be much help in doing it, that it was hard to articulate why our faith compelled us to do it, and that, especially in uncertain times, we had to do it anyways, to find the other people that did it, to connect with and support each other in this work. Which is why a newsletter that I started five years ago to make fun of the people that made me ask “why are the assholes always Catholic?” turned into something where I ended up learning from the people that made me ask “how are so many people I admire Catholic?” And how is that? What is it about Catholicism, if anything, that mentally prepares a person for the unglamorous, crushing work that is actually needed in the world, in a way that makes me admire and want to emulate them? Five years in and I still don’t have any answers.
Yeah, G.O.T.H.S. is five years old now, did you know that? The original, bombastic, 8,000-word pieces on Tommy Monaghan, Ricky Heilman, and Randy Terry all debuted in December 2019, reaching the inboxes of six whole readers who each knew me personally. As with most things in my life, it is impossible to look back at five years of G.O.T.H.S. with anything but gratitude - and, to be honest, ongoing shock that the newsletter now reaches more than six readers - and I have found that gratitude is important to hold on to in uncertain times. I mean, I think I’m better at writing and better at being funny than I was five years ago, but more importantly, through my writing I was able to connect with other people, people I really admire and respect, and then I got to talk to and write to those people, brilliant and kind people who shared their own thoughts on faith and Catholicism and power, and helped me work through my own. When I think about how I have been able to think through what it is I actually believe and am supposed to do, and when I think about the kind of people I was able to connect with through this project, I realize that something like “this project has blown far past my wildest expectations for success” would be a wild understatement bordering on deadpan comedy.
And something else kept happening this past year in particular that was especially humbling and made me especially grateful: I met, like, half a dozen of you in person throughout the year. I met more of you over the phone or on a video call. What a blessing that has been for me this year, to meet people who say “you're not alone, when you feel this way and think this way and write this way. I feel this way, too, and I feel better knowing that you feel the same way and write about it.” In this stupid broken church in this stupid broken country in this stupid broken world, that is enough to give me one more day where I'm not scared and I can keep doing the work that needs to be done.
I'm going to need a lot more “one more days” to nourish me in the coming years as I try to do this work. I'm going to need art and writing and, yes, dumbass comedy, to nourish me. I'm going to need all of the connections I make with other real and brilliant and passionate and faithful and angry people, which I’ve been blessed to have as I’ve been writing this for five years.
Now, the entire time I've been writing G.O.T.H.S., the question in the front of my mind as I put together each essay has always been “what would I want to read right now?” That's always the primary question; I mean, I hope that you'll read the stuff and find it maybe different from other blogs about Catholicism out there, or at the very least you'll find it entertaining, but if that doesn't happen, well, whatever, I still wrote something that I would have wanted to read. That said, I'm not entirely sure “what I would want to read” right now; in the short term, I think I've lost my appetite for writing pieces on “look at this stupid thing the bishops said” or “look at this stupid thing in this Catholic magazine”1. I think we now have a good handle on the potential adverse effects of important voices in American Catholicism being huge fucking idiots. I also doubt I’ll be able to keep up the idiotic pace of writing that I was somehow able to maintain throughout most of this year. But I’ll find something else that I want to write about and that I want to read, this project has always found a way to shift and adjust its focus. I don’t know what that focus will be, but hey, Gerard Way watched 9/11 happen, saw his world end, and chose to tell us that “you’re not in this alone”. Kurt Vonnegut watched the firebombing of Dresden, watched us repeat all of our bloody mistakes over and over again, and chose to tell us that “you were sick, but now you’re well again, and there’s work to do”. Corita Kent got squeezed out of her church and religious vocation in which she had lived for thirty years and chose to tell us that”the only rule is work” and “love is hard work”. There are worse messages that we could choose to listen to and let guide us into 2025.
Why do I care about these messages? Why do I care about doing these things? Why get up and try at all? Because I’m Catholic. What does that mean? Am I really Catholic? Why would my being Catholic actually matter, if I don’t much care for being Catholic? No idea. I think you’ve all figured this out by now, but I don’t have any answers, I don’t have any new insights, especially now. I just have work to do.
Although I can't wait for America to run the latest by J.D. Long-Garcia, “Why Won't My Stupid Bitch Wife Stop Crying”.