breaks out some home truths:
…Today, I’m going to tell you why this article makes me want to stab someone with a rusty spork. …
Guess what, dude? Other people laughing at you and judging you doesn’t give you the freedom to do the same. If you’ve forgotten that whole “turn the other cheek” thing, how about trying to remember “if I have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal?” This article is so utterly devoid of love, from beginning to end, that if I weren’t a Christian it would serve as Exhibit A for why I don’t want to be one. As it is, it’s currently serving as Exhibit A for why my fellow-Christians make me want to vomit.
Most of you know a bit about my history. Drug addiction, unwed pregnancy, conversion. If EWTN made soap operas, mine would be the story to tell. But it wasn’t a soap opera. It was my life. It is my life. It is my past, who I was, what led me to who I am. It is the shifting, sandy ground that the Ogre and I built our future on. Over time we managed to shore it up and make it a solid foundation for our family, but that process was long and painful.
And you know what else? It was embarrassing. Humiliating, even. The author of this article has no idea what it’s like to be judged. Sure, he had people make fun of him for not having sex. That’s not being judged. That’s other people being stupid. I had people make legitimate judgments about the kind of person I was, judgments I had to swallow, because they were true. I had people make fun of me for being a pregnant, unwed drug addict. I had people refuse to baptize our daughter and try and keep the Ogre and I from getting married in the Church. I had people make fun of me for wanting to have a wedding when my daughter was a year and a half old, because “what’s the point?” I had members of my own family tell me they were embarrassed that I would wear a wedding dress when I didn’t deserve to wear one. Because I had already screwed up. Not, mind you, by having sex…but by having a child. …
I’m sure the author would insist that our wedding was just “one big party” because we had already had sex, because we had a child together, because we lived together.
It wasn’t. Our wedding was a sacrament. It was the moment when the Ogre and I stood before God and man and swore to give our lives to one another, until death, come what may. It was the moment when God joined our eternal souls, when we became one instead of two, when all the grace of the sacrament of marriage was poured out upon us. It was the moment that truly began our lives together, the moment that we had worked toward, the moment that gave us a foundation for all the difficult years to come. Our wedding, the actual sacrament, is the most beautiful, most cherished memory of my life. The reception, on the other hand, was horrible. It was a mess, a blur, it was disorganized, people were fighting, people drank too much, the cake got cut at the wrong time, the music was awful, and I couldn’t wait for it to end. I can look back now and laugh about that, because the party wasn’t the point. The point was the sacrament, the union of our souls.
more, and you really should read the whole thing.
September 20th, 2012 | 8:36 am
I thought this article compelling, addressed plaintively to the heart with humble righteous indignation which trumps the righteous indignation of the reactionary article it countered. Her perspective seems the more matured and weathered and broad one. Maybe we can check back with the author of the other article in ten years and see how things are going. I thought this captured well the problem with the article she criticized. It was not that the guy’s stance against the sexual impurity and the celebration of marriage was wrong but rather his arrogance, hauteur and anger toward the fallen: “It’s no good claiming you’re speaking the truth when the truth gets hidden behind your own arrogance and pride.”
September 20th, 2012 | 9:52 am
Maybe we can check back with the author of the other article in ten years and see how things are going.
David Alexander,
This was one of my first thoughts. There was something in the author’s enthusiasm for his own choices (“in-your-face joyfulness,” as I called it in a comment that I either neglected to send or that didn’t make it through) that was off-putting. Perhaps he protested too much. It made me think of things I have read by Catholics who are committed to, and practice, NFP devoutly wishing that other Catholics trying to promote NFP would not make such extravagant claims about how glorious the experience was, how it brought husband and wife together, how it made sex so much more meaningful, and on, and on. Good for them if that’s their own experience, but as they say on television commercials, “results may vary.” If virtue were a guarantee of unalloyed pleasure and happiness, and if doing the right thing was not often a struggle, we’d have a world full of saints. Steven Crowder, it seems to me, is preaching a kind of sexual prosperity gospel.
September 20th, 2012 | 11:36 am
Hmmm. This made me think. It seems to me that Crowder’s article would specifically sidestep people in Calah’s situation… Namely, repentant seekers of the fullness of sacramental marriage in spite of–or even because of–their mistakes. The gloating tone is directed towards those who mock or belittle such repentance and sincere desire to rebuild a broken history.
Understandable as her comments may be, I think she has unnecessarily taken offense and would find Crowder much more sympathetic than her remarks make him out to be.
September 20th, 2012 | 12:04 pm
“Steven Crowder, it seems to me, is preaching a kind of sexual prosperity gospel.”
Though I often disagree with Mr. Nickol, I think he nailed it this time. Virtue is, in effect, its own reward, when I hear those who preach virtuous choices as guaranteeing much future happiness, well, I just want to find my own rusty spork.
I have had similar disappointments along the way in the area of parenting, and after 33 years I can preach that results certainly are not guaranteed.
September 20th, 2012 | 4:54 pm
I wish that everyone–single/married, gay/straight–would never talk about whether they are or are not having sex, unless it’s with a counselor/pastor/doctor.
September 21st, 2012 | 4:05 pm
I agree with Mr. Nickol. I don’t know if I agree with Nick, because I agree with Mr. Nickol. It seems Crowder is one of those people who made life harder for Alexander than Christian charity called for. Now Alexander is at a point Crowder didn’t touch on.
Here’s my additional 2 cents: Waiting’s not hard. Plenty of people are like Connie, and I say that as a 20-something with plenty of a-religious friends in the San Francisco Bay Area. You only get all the remarks Crowder dealt with if you make an issue of your abstinence.
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