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‘Splain This To Me

zuzu

So, here we have an op-ed by a member of Opus Dei, who is a professor of English at the University of Houston, taking the view that The DaVinci Code is actually good for Opus Dei because it gets people curious, and he can then answer questions and do a little recruiting.

And yes, he wears a cilice.

All fine and good, but then he starts in with the whole “I got a job as a conservative in liberal academia and I just knew they weren’t going to accept me” thing, concluding with, “but they did.” Yeah, nothing we’ve haven’t heard before from the “liberal professors scary!” crowd. But then he says this:

Curiously, I have found that liberals — perhaps more than conservatives — often get the idea of mortification. They understand that merely giving money to help the needy is inadequate and patronizing. One key element behind corporal mortification is to feel solidarity with the poor and the suffering, denying oneself some comfort, whether it be by fasting or wearing a cilice.

Um…what?

Is he seriously equating actually doing work to help the needy with mortification of the flesh?

I’m sorry, but if I were at a soup kitchen, I’d rather get a bowl of soup funded by someone who did no more than write a check than have someone tell me that he knows just how I feel because he wears a spiked strap around his thigh a few hours a day. And get no soup.

“I feel your pain” don’t feed the bulldog, you know?

WTF?

11 thoughts on ‘Splain This To Me

  1. I agree that plain old charity is insufficient. Government and charitable organizations should be focused on helping people rise out of poverty, not just on keeping them from starving. However, there’s no doubt that mortification is more patronizing than charity.

  2. I don’t think he’s saying that giving money and mortification are mutually exclusive. Hey, I think mortification is weird. But I do agree with the premise that people often engage in charity for selfish reasons. For him, I guess mortification is a way to experience “true” sacrifice in a way that giving or volunteering doesn’t provide.

    How often do people volunteer or raise money for other than purely altruistic reasons? I get sick of getting requests from friends to give money so they can go on a walk/run/bike ride so they feel good about themselves and show their friends what awesome people they are.

    You can say a lot of bad things about Catholics, but I do admire the catholic tradition of serving the needy. You don’t see Protestants as committed to living a life of charity.

    And I actually give the author props for keeping an open mind about “liberal academia”.

  3. Jason, giving money and “mortification” not only aren’t mutually exclusive, they have absolutely nothing to do with each other. The weirdness here is thinking that they have. Do people need or want help, or a sort of secondhand pornography: Hey look, I’m bleeeeding for you! Who cares except vampires? If a cilice does anybody any good, it’s the wearer… and here’s where we stumble across the second graf, hm?

    A person’s motivation for doing good doesn’t matter except to that person, especially in a matter like, oh, funding, where there’s a separation between the deed and its good result. You can posit that a good motive will predispose toward more good deeds, but that’s speculation unless you can back it up with evidence. If you demand “good” motives, you’re not talking about doing good; you’re talking about some self-development scheme, some kind of spitritual benchpressing. All very well but hardly a matter for applause or even tax breaks.

    I’d hesitate to make that sweeping generalization about “Protestants” too. Most reckonings would include the Church of the Brethren (Heifer Int’l’s sponsor) and the Mennonites in that, and they do lots of good without either displaying tins of wealth or giving orders to the rest of the world. And those are just two that occur to me off the top of my head.

    The world isn’t really divided between Catholics and Protestants, you know. To some of uis, they’re just all Christians, and none the better for it.

    Charity? Justice would eliminate the need for quite a lot of it, but may be a bigger challenge.

  4. this gave me a GREAT idea for a fundraiser: Whip an Opus Dei freak for Charity!

    i bet the line would go out the door & down the block, 24-7

  5. … but I do admire the catholic tradition of serving the needy

    you mean serving them big helpings of pie-in-the-sky while they sport designer italian shoes?

    what’s that old saying? oh yeah: hypocrisy is the greatest luxury…raise the double standard!

  6. Hmm…In the second to last paragraph, the author says

    I have explained what a relief it is to make my life uncomfortable, how liberating it is to unplug from the consumerist, instant-gratification culture that dominates us. Without the cilice, I find my life as an American consumer unbearably comfortable.

    So the cilice’s (vocabulary word of the day!) real purpose is to make the wearer feel better. Doesn’t that turn it from a sacrifice into an indulgence?

  8. Doesn’t that turn it from a sacrifice into an indulgence?

    Well, when I do pain play, I view it as an indulgence. But then, when I indulge my kinks, I have never felt the need to hide from myself what it is that I’m doing. I wonder, honestly, how many of these folks get aroused when they engage in these mortification rituals?

  9. jam Says:
    June 2nd, 2006 at 2:55 pm

    this gave me a GREAT idea for a fundraiser: Whip an Opus Dei freak for Charity!

    i bet the line would go out the door & down the block, 24-7

    G*R*E*A*T I*D*E*A !!!!!
    I would TOTALLY pay like $20 to whip an Opus Dei freak !! Can we make them watch the Da Vinci Code while we whip them? (That way there will be even more pain!)

  10. The only good Catholics are masochists. There’s no nobility in misery and suffering. Those who enjoy it try to convince everyone else there is to justify their own addiction.

  11. I wonder, honestly, how many of these folks get aroused when they engage in these mortification rituals?

    In the case of cilices, who knows? On the other hand, the most common form of Christian mortification is fasting, which is pretty counter-arousal (though it has its secular equivalent in crash dieting).

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