On Hypocrisy vs Imperfection: An indirect look at Loyalty Oaths

There are times when I struggle with eremitical life. Sometimes I just don't live it as well as I feel called to do. Sometimes I am not as generous, not as loving, not as faithful to my daily praxis and Rule as I am obligated to be by my profession. And yet I wear a habit which signals publicly that I am a hermit (for most it just says I am a nun) and I write about eremitical life here and elsewhere; I have even given interviews on the life as well a talk or two about it here and there --- and will likely do so again somewhere in the future. So, does this make me a hypocrite? Do I live a life of pretense while I show the face of fidelity to the world around me? I have certainly struggled with THAT piece of things as well!

But this year I also came to a bone deep, heart-level realization (I have been working on this for some time and, in a moment of profound healing, what I knew intellectually finally "clicked" in a deep-down way) that there is a profound difference between hypocrisy and imperfection. I am an imperfect hermit, an imperfect religious, an imperfect Christian who struggles to live fully the Gospel of God within the context of eremitical life, but I am not a hypocrite. As far as I can tell, struggle is part of my very vocation, just as it is, I think, with ANY really serious attempt to live out a divine call with integrity.

Similarly, I strive to believe what the Church teaches; as a theologian I work hard to wrap my mind and heart around every doctrine. I sometimes have struggled to give an assent of faith when that is required and I struggle to give "religious submission of mind and will" where that is required (which is a good thing since, among others, obsequium carries the senses of willingness to assent and struggle to assent). I struggle to believe that the episcopacy has a clear charism of truth in days when members of the episcopacy have made themselves incredible to me in any number of ways, and I struggle to see where Christ's church really is; I struggle, that is, to see where the Church that remains indefectible in the power of the Gospel of freedom really abides today in season and out.

I struggle with that especially in these days of "loyalty oaths" which conflate matters of faith with others that are not, which blur the critical boundaries between internal and external forums and imply (or state explicitly) that some of us are incapable of ministering to fellow Catholics because we are not "Catholic" enough or are deemed hypocritical because we wrestle with many things in today's church including the fundamental offensiveness of loyalty oaths themselves. I struggle in these days when women religious are misrepresented, demeaned and punished while members of the hierarchy commit heinous criminal acts and are rewarded anyway; I struggle in these times when it has become acceptable for the self-righteous to be happy with, indeed, to sometimes slaver over the prospect of a "leaner, purer church" while others they call "brother" and "sister" are forced, in good conscience, to leave the church for ecclesial communities where they can be genuinely respected and nourished in their faith,

I am not, however, a hypocrite. I am a Christian, a Catholic Christian whose faith is imperfect just as was the faith of Peter, or Thomas, or Mary of Magdala, or James and his group, or the disciples on the road to Emmaus. I am a Catholic Christian as imperfect as any Catholic Christian ever was or is who is set on maturing in their faith. I am a Catholic Christian who recalls that some have sometimes translated the word "perfect" in the evangelical counsel "Be you perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect," as "whole" or "mature" or "fully alive" or "holy." And, like the Church herself --- the entire Pilgrim People of God --- I am therefore "always in need of reform," always called to conversion, always summoned to a fuller understanding and embrace of the faith Christ has entrusted to me and to the whole Church.

I have no doubt that some in the Church would like to simply stamp out or force me to abjure those dark, yet-to-be illuminated areas of my mind and heart that do not yet reflect the light of Christ or the power of the Holy Spirit. I am sure that some in the Church would say that because of these imperfections I am unworthy to minister, or to do theology, or to be a canonical hermit who lives out her life in the name of the Church. After all, I am an imperfect Catholic Christian who struggles in these and other ways as well. But perhaps these folks should reread the admonition that one deal with the beam in one's own eye before blindly and recklessly plucking at the splinter in another's. Perhaps they should reread the parables of patience, faith, and quiet growth --- where, admitting their own inability to do anything more, farmers (and indeed, Popes like John XXIII who once prayed, " Lord, I am going to bed, the Church is yours,") do indeed go to bed and trust that God is doing in the depths and darkness what only God can do.

You see, I was taught --- indeed the Holy Spirit taught me, Christ himself patiently taught me, the one I call Abba gently taught me over the space of many years --- that I am part of the Church where the imperfect are called to belong, to be, and to be made whole; it is the Church of wounded healers, the communion of those with troublesome thorns in their sides and lance holes in their hearts. I was taught, not least by the Church Council called Vatican II, that she desired my full and active participation in the "work of the people" --- a full and active participation that includes ministry to one another (EEM, cantor, lector, acolyte, sacristan, lay presider, chorister, musician, etc. --- I have done them all) as an integral part of my act of worship. This, Vatican II reminded me, was my privileged right and responsibility as baptized --- with training, yes --- but without additional public acts of faith or manifestations of conscience beyond my profession of the Church's creeds.

The lesson I learned at the level of heart this year was one the Church hierarchy could do well to remind themselves of. It is one that the self-righteous minority of orthodoxy police would do well to learn themselves. We are imperfect, all of us, but this does not mean we are hypocrites. I struggle as my own faith grows and matures, but I am called to do so and can only do so within the Communion of the Church, not outside it. Within my mind and heart grow weeds and wheat together. Only the truly foolhardy would try to uproot the weeds while thinking they will not also harm the tender wheat that grows there too. Only the pastorally naive would ask me to show the wheat and not expect there also to be weeds interspersed.

But, imperfect as my faith may be, what is there for anyone with eyes to see is a life which nourishes the faith of others nonetheless, a life which, through the grace of God, ministers in season and out, in weakness and in strength. Even I, the once-consummate perfectionist can see that! In any case, I am a Catholic not because my faith is perfect, but because with the grace of God and (his) People's assistance I struggle towards the day it will be; I am Catholic --- and an effective minister of the Gospel I have given my life to and for --- not in spite of my struggle but because of it! I am imperfect in all the ways any serious, faithful, Catholic Christian is imperfect -- and probably more as well. But I am not a hypocrite. I am surer about that today than ever.