Don't Cry. It's a Waste of Good Suffering.

Over at GetReligion, Jeremy Lott joins the hubbub over William F. Buckley's recent column, in which the National Review founder wishes that His Holiness John Paul II would just die already. Says Lott:

I was not surprised that Buckley wrote this column or that it generated a lot of debate. Buckley has been dropping broad hints lately that old age is closing in on him. This has affected the way he thinks about this world and whatever comes next…

(Special bonus: Only three comments in, one of Lott's readers notes that libertarians just don't GET something.)

My guess: Buckley's touching a nerve because he's forcing attention on the Catholic Church's belief in the redemptive power of suffering, something most people are aware of at a general level but don't recognize as being absolutely central to Catholicism. I suspect I'm not the only one who was taught as a callow youth that literally any pain you endure—even down to jamming your toe*—can be "offered up to God" as a good work of sorts. Just as mortification of the flesh has passed out of fashion in the West, it's hard for secular Americans to respect the idea that it's good for the Pope to be suffering like this, not because it shows his strength or tests his character but because suffering, in and of itself, is good. (Peggy Noonan, who's always willing to share the pain, gets at this a bit in her own Pope column.)

Same thing with Lenten sacrifices, which get misinterpreted as a device to remind you that the life of the spirit is superior to the life of the body—both a cultural error and a theological one, since in fact your soul and glorified body will be reunited on the Last Day. Giving something up for Lent is solely about deprivation; that's why you're specifically advised not just to give up smoking or eating sweets or anything else you'd give up as a New Year's resolution, but to give up something that you will miss and that isn't harmful to you. (Harmful stuff like yanking it you're supposed to have permanently given up anyway.)

In the long run, the real divisions over The Passion of the Christ probably weren't about anti-Semitism or violence or anything like that: They were about suffering, and how the glorification of suffering seems so weird to so many. Almost without exception, you could measure how deeply a person had absorbed the abstract traditions of Protestantism by how shocking they found the movie. (I realize this seems counterintuitive given how many non-Catholic Christians liked the movie, but I think what really eats Protestants is their suspicion that deep down the Catholics are right.)

* Yes, I know, jamming your toe hurts like a bitch, but it doesn't really have the majesty of terminal illness.

Comments

[Curious]

"yanking it"

Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

Does it mean Europeans call it "euroing it"?

[Lowdog]

So Protestants are into the suffering or is it Catholics? I got myself out of the church early enough to not know all these nuances.

But it doesn't surprise me the Chritianity might glorify suffering in some way. A lot of the gnostics had a real hard time with the physical world, and so making your wordly self suffer to give more strength to your spiritual self would make sense to me.

[Lord Duppy]

Disgusting. Maybe the objectivists are right about more than a few things.

[Brian]

I did find it weird how many protestant evangelicals grooved on the Passion. The traces of residual protestantism I have makes me find all that suffering stuff distasteful . . . porny even, and not in a good porn sort of way.

Even though I'm not a christian I think churches should be white on the inside with no gory stuff. Almost in the DNA or something.

[jack]

I remember when the priest told me to offer my migraines up to Jesus.

I've found that offering them up to Vicodin works much better.

[Bry M.]

For lack of a better term, amen. My dad's been telling me for years, "if most casual Catholics actually read the bible and church doctrine, and understood what it really meant, they'd run screaming from the pews." Ironically he's also the one who recommended a Jesuit high school as an escape from the public juvenile detention facility of my town. At least *they* actually taught the doctrine and said "this is our faith, love it or leave it".

[Gary Gunnels]

The Buddha rejected this sort of thinking.

[c]

Buckley better be careful what he wishes for ... american conservatives who have tried so hard to make everything into a contest between the faithful and the godless do not want to hear a younger, more outspoken Pope reminding the world that Catholicism doesn't approve of war, the death penalty, torture, or stinginess towards the poor. Let's keep in mind that the new guy's going to be, first and foremost, a European bureaucrat.

To add some extra culture war dissonance, there's at least a passing chance that the new pope is going to be a black dude. South Boston is going to need a lot more hard liquor.

[gaius marius]

i don't think *pointless* suffering has much backing in traditional catholicism, actually. but it's the modern concept of noble suffering that is the issue.

They were about suffering, and how the glorification of suffering seems so weird to so many.

does it really? what is the united states doing in iraq if it isn't undertaking a passion play?

let's face it -- the vanity of promethean suffering is in! you yourselves noted the resurgence of schiller on the stage.

i think the reason the film resonated so hard is that it was for many a graphic manifestation in a popular medium of a kind of elevated endurance in the cause of noble love that byron would have adored and probably was jealous of. the painful passion is a completely romantic notion, and the abject fixation on christ's pain is a feature of post-romantic culture. and we've undergone nothing more in america and britain in the last thirty years than a wholesale adoption of abject romantic idealism.

the crucifixion has been a christian symbol par excellence since roman times, of course, but in symbolism. but the idea of envisioning and emphasizing graphically the real suffering of the lonely christ is something else again.

[gaius marius]

South Boston is going to need a lot more hard liquor.

odds are still about 99 in 100 that the guy will be italian -- but if it is arinze, so much the better. catholicism is rapidly becoming a third-world religion as the west comes apart. he could go great good.

[Maurkov]

Jack,

Are you suggesting that opiates are the religion of the masses?

[Gary Gunnels]

This sort of thinking reminds me of the bi-polar people I know* who think there is something "romantic" or "significant" or "important" in being, well, nuts. Romanticizing suffering or pain or trauma is common it seems.

*I'm one of those people.

[Gary Gunnels]

Correction:*I used to be one of those people.

[c]

wow ... I heard those polar swings could happen quickly, but I had no idea.

[SPD]

Religion (noun): Mass mental illness, best defined as a shared paranoia that we will all suffer horribly for things we haven't done yet.

My name is SPD, and I'm a recovering Cathoholic.

[Gary Gunnels]

c,

Ha ha ha. 🙂

[Henry]

Did Nietzche have these Christain fuckers pegged or what?

Thank Christ I busted out of the Catholic Church just before my confirmation.

[c]

See, for bonus humor, you could have followed up your 3:19 post with a 3:20 post consisting entirely of "Boo hoo hoo hoo."

g.m. I'm sure that Arinze would be a huge hit, here and everywhere else. Also, I think that his ascendence would cause the least amount of American conservative hand-wringing (not least because they'd read it as a sign that our nationwide penance for our history of racial sins had ended). However, he's not the odds on favorite. Last I hear, it's probably the Parisian Jean-Marie Lustiger. Imagine Dubya travelling to Europe to kiss a frenchman's ring? I can see "vomiting on foreign dignitaries" becoming a family tradition.

[Rimfax]

"yanking it"

Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

Does it mean Europeans call it "euroing it"?

only if you touch it more than twice while European.

[Tim Cavanaugh]

But it doesn't surprise me the Chritianity might glorify suffering in some way. A lot of the gnostics had a real hard time with the physical world, and so making your wordly self suffer to give more strength to your spiritual self would make sense to me.

If you precisely reverse that, you'll have it. The mind/spirit split you're talking about is not something the RCC endorses; in fact, it's the reason the gnostics were considered heretics. Unlike the mainstream church, they considered mind and spirit separate, to the point that (and this is where the heresy lay) they denied the "two natures" of Christ. (He was, you see, a little bit country and a little bit rock 'n' roll.) You see the same thing today in the Pope's objections to Buddhism (the only major world religion he can't find a good word for). On the face of it, it would seem the Buddhism and Catholicism have plenty in common, both being pleasure-hating disciplines. But Buddhist austerity comes from contempt for the physical world, Catholic abnegation comes from refusal to deny the physical world.

I know it sounds insane, but that's because it is insane.

Disgusting. Maybe the objectivists are right about more than a few things.

They're right about this one. Whatever Ayn Rand's faults as a writer and a human being, her essay "Of Living Death" is a bullseye.

I did find it weird how many protestant evangelicals grooved on the Passion. The traces of residual protestantism I have makes me find all that suffering stuff distasteful . . . porny even, and not in a good porn sort of way.

The faultlines on The Passion were all over the place, but I suspect there was a high church/low church split going on, with the institutional Protestants generally frowning on the film while Evangelicals, Pentecostalists, etc. lapped it up.

That having been said, I liked The Passion a lot. It's the ultimate Catholic movie.

[Sourav]

How about making your pain an offering to yourself?

Yes, Nietzsche did have these fuckers pegged.

[c]

What's the official line on offering up someone else's suffering to God?

[smacky]

i think the reason the film resonated so hard is that it was for many a graphic manifestation in a popular medium of a kind of elevated endurance in the cause of noble love that byron would have adored and probably was jealous of.

gaius marius wins today's award for 'most prepositional phrases used in a sentence' on H&R.

[Tim Cavanaugh]

They really do give awards for everything these days.

[Ken Shultz]

"I did find it weird how many protestant evangelicals grooved on the Passion."

Many Evangelical Christians, I suspect, "grooved" because they felt like they were stickin' it to "Hollywood", which they perceive as their natural enemy.

See "Hollywood"? If you would just make more movies like this, you could have oodles more money! See Hollywood, you don't have to use foul language and hot chicks! Boy, we really stuck it to "Hollywood"!

...That's the idea.

[dhex]

[in 1920s professor voice]

"so you see, hollywood - if that is your real name, harrumph - all you really need is go-to, can-do, gusto and a tre-mendous amount of fake blood"

[Lowdog]

Tim - yeah, I know all about the fact that the gnostics were heretics, which is why I mentioned it at all. Basically, I figure that some of that thinking would creep into the Catholic church, regardless of what was considered heretical. The rest I didn't know about, so thanks.

[Gary Gunnels]

When I think of the Christian desire to elevate suffering to something a kin to a holy quest I think of the early Christian "pole sitters" and the common habit amongst Christians of self-flagellation.

Tim Cavanaugh,

Doesn't the Pope also dislike Buddhism because its an "atheistic" religion? BTW, Buddhists don't "hate" pleasure, they just see it as illusory (such hatred would get in the way of enlightenment after all).

[Henry]

Hollywood has never gone broke peddling popular fairy tales.

[Russ D]

Speaking as a recovering Cathoholic...

The flak towards Buckley is that he doesn't sound very compassionate toward the pope as an individual and seems to be more concerened with the fact that the papal business is being slowed down because a realy sick guy is in the seat of power. If someone wants to bash that kind of libertarianism, I'm all for it; the Catholic Church ain't no federalist outfit, the less papal business the better

[zeroentitlement]

Does Reason come in a Braille edition, for those of us who've been "yanking it" long-term?

Same sh*t different day with the evangelicals and fundamentalists. Violent entertainment good, sex bad. Extreme, blood-saturated ostentations of violence are perfectly kosher as long as there isn't a single sympathetic gay character anywhere in sight. (Unfortunately for that guy who played the apostle Paul.)

[DnB]

Is this what John Mellencamp means when he sings "Hurts So Good"?

[Jennifer]

I've always wondered if the Church's "pain is good" wasn't just their attempt to make the best of a bad situation. In the medieval era, pain was a constant part of almost everyone's life, what with poor health, rotten teeth, flea bites and other such problems modern folk generally don't have to deal with. Maybe the Church was saying, in effect, "We don't have the ability to lessen your pain, but we can at least tell you that your current pain will bring spiritual rewards later."

[Stevo Darkly]

Jennifer, I think that is mostly it. I believe this is the source of the admonition to "Offer up your pain to God [since you can't do anything else about it]" -- turning a bad thing into a benefit.

But I think there is also an element of suffering conveying a good in itself. Like the guys who used to go around in the Middle Ages flagellating themselves. At that time it was also common for people to take vows of devotion like, "I will wear no coat in the winter," or "I will sleep on a bare slab with no padding," etc.

I think this is a combination of "suffering builds character" plus maybe "it's training for a time when you may have to suffer for your faith." I think the latter component is the reason for Lenten practices. Like, "Would you be willing to die for your faith? Well, how can you be tough enough for that if you can't even give up meat on Fridays for a few weeks?"

[kevrob]

The flip side of "offering up suffering" is that the Church promulgated the Corporal Acts of Mercy.* It is all very well for you to give your pain to "god", but soothing the hurt of your neighbor is supposed to be more important. Now that we live in an era where it is much easier to actually do something about suffering, the tendency is to focus on it as a species of injustice to be overcome. Believers go over the top when they try to write their vision of Social Justice into law, IMNSHO.

Buckley's column is a bit awkward. If he had emphasized his hope that the Pope's suffering would soon be ended by attainment of his Eternal Reward, I think most Catholics would be less put off. Praying for his release from his mortal coil in order to clear the decks for new leadership is just tacky.

As for euthanasia, you will find no more stalwart opponent of it than the NR crowd, who are always eager to point out the sleazy nexus between state-funded medicine and medicide in the Netherlands. I think they are wrong to oppose ethical suicide that doesn't involve the state, though.

Kevin
(ex-Catholic, but an excellent Catechism student)
N.B. I took a Constitutional History class from the late Virgil Blum, S. J. the founder of the Catholic League.

*1. To feed the hungry
2. To give drink to the thirsty
3. To clothe the naked
4. To visit the imprisoned
5. To shelter the homeless
6. To visit the sick
7. To bury the dead

[raymond]

Why a modern Catholic might think suffering should be embraced:

1. Jesus suffered.