The Foster Children of Orthodoxy

I recently heard the story of a six-year-old boy who was taken in by foster parents. One of the parents found their son one day eating a block of dried ramen noodles at the kitchen table. When asked what he was doing, he replied, “I wanted to eat something I used to eat a lot with my old family.”

He retold the story of his absent biological parents neglecting to feed him and his two younger siblings and spending all their money on their habits rather than food. He would go into the family van and find change and then walk to the corner store and use it to buy packets of ramen noodles. Since he didn’t know how to boil water, he would just eat it dry and break it up for his siblings. He would also try to make bottles for the baby.

The point of the story was not that the boy was sad he wasn’t with his old family anymore; it was that he liked to remember “how strong he needed to be” to meet the demands of life.

This story resonated with me but not because I had suffered similar traumas as a child. In fact, I grew up in a middle class, intact family. In many ways, it’s hard to understand how children could suffer so much neglect at the hands of people who brought them into the world, the very people who have responsibility to care for their needs and shelter them from harm.

I’ll admit, though, in the past few years I have felt like that foster child, a “foster Catholic”, if you will. I have been the one breaking up the dry ramen to feed my brothers and sisters in the faith. At other times I have been the one fed because, in my experience, those who have been entrusted to feed us with the Deposit of Faith–our ecclesial authorities, from the top down–have been negligent in doing so.

Parenting traps

Some parents fall into the trap of parenting by way of showering gifts on their kids. Those who have grown up poor, or who have immigrated, may desire to “give their kids everything they never had growing up.” As a result of this well-intentioned sacrificing for material well-being, their children grow up never knowing need or want or having to work hard for anything. Put simply, the kids just grow up spoiled.

Other parents fall into the “activity trap”. They shuttle their children to and from soccer matches or gymnastics or music lessons, packing their schedule with things “to do” leaving little white space available on the calendar. Maybe they themselves fell short of being a star athlete or a top-level performer and want to make sure their kids get pushed to perform and have opportunities to achieve that they never had. Again, this may be well-intentioned, but it sets the stage for a Martha-esqe spirit of “doing”, with precious little space left for just “being”.

What children really want and need is not material abundance or constant activity or programming, but love, attention, protection, boundaries (yes, boundaries), and knowing their parents are there for them. Sometimes these can be the hardest things to give because the desire to provide these comes from within, not from outside one’s self.

Heroic orthodoxy

When you start trending towards orthodoxy in your faith, it becomes clear that you must leave a lot behind. Like parenting, you have to figure out how to live in the world as a Catholic when it is hostile towards you. As Servant of God, Father John Hardon, once said, “Ordinary Catholics will not survive this age. Only heroic Catholics will survive.”

When I think of that spirit of innocent openness and dependence on being fed like an infant, I recall the encounter of Philip with the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts. The eunuch is reading the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, and when Philip is sent to him, he asks the eunuch, “Do you understand what you are reading?” The eunuch replies, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” (Acts 8:30-31). Philip then sits down with him and explains the scriptures to him.

Like the foster boy in the story, I have had to go looking for the spare change in the van. I have sometimes used this to buy orthodox spiritual food wherever I could find it.  I’ve also told others where to go buy it or have fed it to them myself. This role is the inverse of the tired “We Are Church” empowerment of the laity post-Vatican II, as many have felt hungry and malnourished by well-intentioned pre-packaged parish programming or have been starved of truth due to silence from the pulpit on issues of faith and morals that really matter.

We have not been challenged to rip and rebuild our spiritual muscles. Rather, we’ve been placated with a comfortable “lowest common denominator” message of safe lukewarmness and spiritual laxity from our clergy and hierarchy. This is why traditional orders and parishes are growing; spiritually starving people who need faith to live go searching for it.

We find pockets of orthodoxy among other believers and develop networks to connect us with it. We may find that connection in a particular parish, but more often than not it extends beyond diocesan and state boundaries.

Social media has been a curse in many ways, but in one respect, it has been an invaluable tool for connecting orthodox Catholics (remember, orthodox means “right belief”) who may foster those initial connections online but move from them to real-life encounters. They strengthen and encourage one another while living amidst a hostile culture, flaccid episcopacies, and a pontificate that does not give “strong meat” leading to spiritual fortitude and courage, but often confusing and ambiguous assertions that seem indistinguishable from a kind of secular humanism.

Bad clergy

I heard an old Catholic man, a convert from Judaism, who has lived through many popes and many decades say, “You may have a bad father…but he’s still your father.” But is “bad” in this sense a subjective or objective term?

When we say, “My father beats me, ignores me, abuses me, neglects me,” would you say so-and-so is the son of a good father or a bad father? The latter. But no one disputes that that man really is one’s father. We don’t pretend he’s not.

As Catholics, we recognize that we are the Body of the Christ, His bride, but that we are also sons and daughters of the Church….for better or worse. Protestants–with no spiritual head to guide their church (small “c”), and no universal church to speak of, no sacraments and no priests, no apostolic authority among their pastors and no dogma to live by–have only the bible, their faith and each other. And in that respect, many of them know its value.

As Catholics, we have these resources too, but we often forget, that is, until we meet times of crisis, how much we really need our siblings in the faith, those with “right belief” to feed us when we are hungry, both corporally and spiritually. We may be pining for a real spiritual father rather than one who seems incapable of feeding his children with orthodoxy and passing on the Deposit of Faith in a fitting manner. For Catholics, this is an innate desire. We can often feel disillusioned and hungry when we are not fed–but we still need to eat, or the spirit dies.

Food for the soul

Thankfully, the Eucharistic bread feeds our souls ex opere operato (Latin term for “automatically”), regardless of the worthiness of the minister consecrating it. Our corporal bodies, too, need bread–food–to live as well.

But this third area–the food not just for the spirit or the body, but the synthesis of both–has for me at least, been at the hands of my siblings in the faith, orthodox believers who know something’s missing. They long ago figured out that if we are not being fed at the hands of those responsible for us, we must go looking for it in faith. Sometimes, tragically, people in such desperate spiritual hunger find food in dumpsters that makes them sick.

That is why we need to be rooted in prayer and must listen to the Holy Spirit while being tempered by the authentic Tradition and teachings of the Church, which belong to the Holy Spirit and are guided by right authority, so we do not fall into error. I’ll admit, it can be difficult at times to know who to trust and who to give ear to. This is why we need prayer and the sacraments and to live the virtues so that we remain in a state of grace. Such graces can be darkened in our souls, or stamped out.

In the early centuries of the Church, when seekers would search out the Desert Fathers, they would often say to the holy men, “Give me a word.” They were hungry for wisdom and examples of heroic virtue and asceticism. Those who followed John the Baptist, as well, into the desert found a prophet willing to dish out the hard words of repentance and preparation to those who would listen. They did not necessarily become Essenes or devotees, but they got the spiritual food they came for.

Staying true

For Catholics inclined towards the tradition of the Fathers, reverent liturgy, and a commitment to living out a more rigorous orthopraxis, to be accused of being “self-absorbed promethean neo-pelagians” or having an “ostentatious preoccupation for the liturgy, for doctrine and for the Church’s prestige”…well, it’s not only confusing, it stings.

Everyone knows the words of one’s father carry weight by virtue of his inherent authority, and so we begin to doubt ourselves: “Maybe I am a ‘Pharisee.’  Maybe I am a ‘moralistic quibbler.’” And so we do what any brother or sister would do on the receiving end of such words directed towards them as they sit listening at the bottom of the stairs–we turn to our brothers and sisters and lean on them.

During these confusing times, not only in the world but in one’s very own home–the Church—true Catholics want nothing more than to give their whole heart to God in worship and to live as free children gathering within firmly-established fences which keep them from the edge (as G.K. Chesterton wrote).

We desire these blessings, but we are foster children of orthodoxy. We find ourselves, instead, hunting for pockets of change, venturing out and buying what little we can to survive, and breaking up the blocks of dry ramen to feed ourselves and our brothers and sisters who we lean on. Just to survive.