Practicing Hope, Keeping Secrets, SSPX Masses, and Boycotting Businesses

It’s Friday…but not all that happy of a one because Chris will be gone all day and all night. Pray for me.

In other news, we have one week to go on our study of Spe Salvi. I plan on posting that on the morning of June 1, then disappearing from the face of the earth for a couple weeks (actually, we’re just going to Quebec, but I am deleting all apps from my phone and planning on being completely offline and inaccessible to everyone but family). Once we’re back and Chris is on summer vacation, I’ll be working on my next children’s book with Scott Hahn and a big, amazing secret project, which full subscribers will find out about as soon as I can announce it. For the remainder of the summer, you’ll hear from me every other week; each month, one free newsletter will go out to everyone and one essay will go out to full subscribers. Then, in September, we’ll embark on our final Benedict encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, and I will most likely return to the weekly newsletters.

If you don’t want to miss anything this summer—awesome essays, pictures from Quebec, exciting announcements—and want to tell me in the nicest possible way that the studies I’m writing and questions I’m answering here are bearing fruit and worth continuing, I would love it if you would join the other full subscribers who make these free newsletters possible. Supporting this newsletters costs less than a grande coffee at Starbucks and is definitely better for your blood sugar. You should do it. 😉

Spe Salvi Study, Week 5

Read: Sections 32-40

Reflection

“Man was created for greatness—for God himself; he was created to be filled by God. But his heart is too small for the greatness to which it is destined. It must be stretched,” Pope Benedict XVI, 33).

If you want to hope, you cannot do it alone. If there is any common thread in Pope Benedict’s practical tips for hope, it’s that. Hope is not a one man show. It’s a community effort.

First, we have to talk to God. We also have to listen to Him. We have to engage in a real conversation about who He is and who we are, about where we struggle and about the life to which He is calling us.

When we find ourselves without the words to pray—when grief, exhaustion, confusion, and doubt overwhelm us—we need to rely on the words of others. We need to pray the prayer Jesus taught us, and we need to pray the prayers of the saints, the Church, and Jesus’ mother.

When we feel we can’t go on, that God is asking too much of us or that our present trials are too much to bear, we need to look to those who also have faced the seemingly impossible and held fast: our faithful friends, both those in this world and the next. Not only do we need to draw inspiration from their witness, but we need to call on them for their prayers. Those who have stared into the bleakest and blackest of this world and did not despair, will never say no to those pleas for help.

And when all else fails, we need to go to Calvary. In our hearts, we need to kneel at the wounded feet of Christ, bow our heads, and rest with Him there, joining our pain to His in a perpetual act of love.

That’s how hope endures. That’s also how it grows. We can’t enlarge our hearts on our own. We have to let God and His angels and saints do it for us. As they do, we’ll find the impossible somehow becomes possible. With help, we can hang on. With help, we can hope.

We’ll also find, because of the help of others that we can be a help to others, praying with and for them, suffering with and for them. When we don’t walk alone, hope spreads. It shoots its roots out, creating a network of compassion from which all of us can draw support and strength.

That’s the Communion of Saints. That’s the Body of Christ. And for all of us struggling to hope, it’s always there. Always.

Reflection Questions

1. When you are struggling to hope, what do you do? Is your first instinct to rely on God and the Communion of Saints or is it to rely on yourself and the things of this world?

2. Who has been a great witness to hope in your life? How have they inspired you? What have they taught you?

3. Suffering in the present can often feel like a threat to our hope; it can seem to make hope difficult. But when we look back on past sufferings, we can often find that they increased our hope by drawing us closer to Christ and enlarging our hearts. Has this been the case in your life? If so, how? How can that past experience change the way you deal with your present crosses?

Next Week

Next week we’ll conclude our study of Spe Salvi, reading sections 41-50.

Question Box

I’ve been told two different secrets by two different people. They are too heavy to carry alone. Is it okay to tell my husband?

Years ago, a wise older woman I know told me that she and her husband never kept secrets from one another, not even other people’s secrets. They had learned the hard way that such secrets put up a wall between them, and even small walls could become corrosive to their marriage bond. So, whenever friends outside the marriage would start to tell one of them a secret, they would say, “I need you to know my spouse and I don’t keep any secrets from one another. If you tell me this, you need to be okay with me sharing it with him.” This didn’t mean she told her husband every little thing her friends told her. But it prevented her from being in the situation you are presently in. It gave her the option to share with her husband what she needed to share.

This couple applied the same standard when sharing their own secrets with friends, making it clear up front that they were fine with their friends sharing it with their spouses. They didn’t want to be the cause of division in other marriages any more than they wanted to experience division in their own marriage.

When I was single, I saw the wisdom in my friend’s policy, and never asked my friends to keep my secrets from their husbands. I just accepted that anything I told them would be shared with their spouses. Now that I’m married, I still don’t expect my friends to keep my secrets from their husbands (or fiancées), and I also make it clear to people that Chris and I don’t keep secrets from one another. At least not big ones. I’m not telling him what he’s getting for Father’s Day and he doesn’t always tell me what he’s planning for date night, but we always share with each other the serious and heavy stuff.

All of which is to say, I think you can share whatever heavy secrets you are carrying with your husband. Unless we’re talking about national security secrets, it’s unjust for someone to ever ask one spouse to keep a serious secret from the other. In the future, though, definitely make it clear upfront to your friends that they are always welcome to share their secrets with you, but that also means, in effect, that they’re sharing them with your husband, too.

Can I attend Mass at an SSPX Chapel?

For those not familiar with SSPX, those initials refer to the Society of St. Pius X, a traditionalist order of priests who, among other things, are dedicated to the celebration and preservation of the Tridentine Rite. They have been in an irregular canonical status with the Church for decades, and the situation is exceedingly complex. The Internet and all the people who feel passionately about the Society, for good and for ill, don’t make understanding the situation any easier.

I’m not a regular listener of Matt Fradd’s Podcast, Pints with Aquinas (because who has four hours to listen to one podcast?), but several months ago, I did listen to his interview with John Salza about SSPX, and it was very helpful, confirming my understanding that most SSPX Masses are valid (because validly ordained priests offer them), but not generally licit (because Society priests do not have permission to say Mass from their lawful superiors in the Catholic Church). Which means unless you have literally no other options for Mass within a reasonable drive (and reasonable options include valid Novus Ordos), no you should not attend an illicit Mass at an SSPX chapel.

If you have a long road trip coming up, I recommend listening to the Fradd podcast to get a fuller and clearer understanding of the Society’s history and status. If time is short, though, this brief essay from Canon Law Made Easy is also very helpful and directly answers your question.

How do you deal with buying from companies that support things the Church does not (abortion, LTBTQ+, etc.)?

This is one of those areas where I am so grateful for the Church’s teachings on different types of “cooperation” with evil. It helps me both acknowledge the complexity of our modern economy and make good decisions for my family, while also recognizing that other people of good will can make different decisions for their family, and that’s okay.

So, what are those teachings?

According to the Catholic Church, there are two basic types of cooperation with evil: formal and material. Formal cooperation is when you intentionally help an evil take place. You assist in the wrong doing, and you will the wrongdoing. You think the evil is a good. You want it to happen. So, the employees of an abortion clinic who support abortion rights are guilty of formal cooperation with evil. Someone who drives a woman to get an abortion (and supports her doing so), a legislator who votes in support of abortion, or a person who donates money to Planned Parenthood are all guilty of the same. This type of willed and wanted cooperation with evil is always a sin, and nobody should do it.

Material cooperation is different. This occurs when someone unintentionally helps an evil take place. A person’s actions, in some way, assist in wrongdoing, but the person doesn’t will it. They don’t want to advance the evil end. They don’t think the evil is good. The pro-life janitor who cleans in a hospital where abortions are performed would be materially cooperating with evil. So would the pro-life consumer who shops at a business which donates to Planned Parenthood or the pro-life plumber who fixes the pipes at a business which donates to Planned Parenthood or the pro-life taxpayer who pays taxes to a government which subsidizes abortion. In other words, almost every person who has ever lived (including Jesus, who paid taxes to the Roman Empire) materially cooperates in evil. In a sinful world, it is unavoidable.

It is especially unavoidable in our sinful world, where large corporations which do very evil things dominate our economic landscape. The cobalt in the battery powering the phone in your hand was likely mined by a child slave in the Congo. The Internet server which delivers this newsletter to you also delivers porn to the pedophile across town. The credit card you use to subscribe to my newsletter is owned by a bank, which just gave its CEO a multi-million dollar bonus the day before it laid off the single mom in middle management. The company in which you work has a health care plan that provides contraception to your co-workers. The grocery store in which you shop dispenses the Morning After Pill in its pharmacy. And the barista you tipped this morning at the coffee shop, plans on donating that money to an organization which advocates for children receiving hormone blockers.

In other words, our whole modern economy is a twisted, knotted ugly mess of sin. There is no escaping it. Even the companies who seem to align with your values on some things, won’t on others. Or they’ll use your money to pay the salaries of sinful people who will do sinful things with their salary. Almost every single company you do business with will, in some way, use your money to do something that the Church considers mortally sinful. It’s overwhelming to think about. And most of us don’t think about it. We hyper-focus on a few issues and ignore all the other really awful, horrible, sinful things businesses do in the name of making a profit. Which is one way sin spreads. Our apathy facilitates it.

On the other hand, most companies aren’t sinful to the core. Plenty of businesses which do awful things also do good things. They make good products or provide good services and pay good people who also do good things with their money. Most businesses serve as well as exploit. And trying to weigh out the good and the evil done by every single business with which we interact—to research it, compare it, calculate which is greater—and then decide where we’re going to choose to spend our money is an overwhelming task. It’s not even humanly possible at this point in human history. Our corrupt, corporate, globalized economy doesn’t allow for it.  

This is why the Church does not consider it sinful for people to materially cooperate in evil simply by shopping at businesses that support sinful things. If you are shopping at the business which donates to Planned Parenthood because they champion abortion rights, that’s formal cooperation and wrong. If you’re shopping at the business that donates to Planned Parenthood because they make the only shoes that don’t make your bunions ache, that’s just remote material cooperation and not a sin at all.

Can you boycott certain companies who do certain things? Absolutely. Just because you can’t can’t change the whole rotten system doesn’t mean you shouldn’t follow your conscience if it dictates avoiding certain companies. We should aim to do what we can when we can. But is your neighbor who shares your values sinning if they choose to shop at the same companies you’re boycotting? No. The Church doesn’t put that burden on us, so we shouldn’t put it on one another.

What the Church does ask us to do, is work against evil in the areas where we have the most influence. She asks us to know our faith and proclaim our faith and be leaven in the world, helping lead people to the true, the good, and the beautiful wherever we are. She asks us to not be apathetic about evil—to not ignore it or condone it or be complicit in it through our silence. This is where Christians have been falling down left, right, and center for decades now. Especially at work. This type of apathy is another form of material cooperation. And unlike shopping at Target because the diapers are cheap there, it does have the potential to be sinful.

In the places where we work, too many of us check our faith at the door. Not all of us. But many of us. We don’t push back against how our company treats other employees or exploits the land or cuts corners on safety in the name of profit. We don’t push back against corporate efforts to support evil ideologies. We facilitate, through our silence, injustice. And that is a problem. This is why our corporate world is such an awful mess. Because Christians haven’t done the hard work in our own corners of the world, the corners where we have real influence. Sometimes, we are complicit out of fear or self-interest. Sometimes, we’re complicit because we don’t know any better.

Either way, as a Church, we need to do a better job of evangelization and formation—helping people to know the truth and love the truth. And, as individuals, we need to start living our faith more fully, joyfully, and boldly where we work, being as innocent as doves but as shrewd as serpents in how we push back against all manners of evil. That’s how we really can make a difference. Not quickly. Not overnight. We’re fighting against a tidal wave. But Christians checking their faith at the office door is largely how our economy became the sinful mess that it is. Christians refusing to do that any longer must happen if we’re going to find a way out of the mess.

So, that’s how my family handles these things. We focus on fighting injustice in our own workplaces, where we have the most influence—both the secular one and the Catholic ones (because the Catholic ones do things contrary to Church teaching, too). And then, for the most part, we shop where we feel we can get the best products for the best price, trying our best to avoid the worst actors (like the Satanic coffee shop on the way to Toby’s school), but also recognizing that for every business with problems we avoid, we’re still patronizing 50 more. So are you. So is everyone. And the only way to change that is to change hearts, which is a much more complicated and involved process than not shopping at Target.

We received hard news about our baby we’re expecting later this summer. She most likely won’t survive long after birth. We trust in God’s plan, but don’t know how we will make it through these next months. Can you recommend any books that might help.

I am so, so sorry you and your husband are carrying this cross right now. I will absolutely be praying for all of you. Besides getting to Mass and adoration as much as possible, I would recommend Abandonment to Divine Providence by Jean-Pierre de Caussade. It’s a very old book, written by an eighteenth century Jesuit priest, but it’s one of the greatest works ever on trusting God’s love in the midst of suffering. Read it slowly. It’s not the kind of book to be rushed through. But it has been such a help to me when I’m struggling to see God’s goodness in hard times. I hope it brings you some comfort and strength.

Five Things I’m Loving

1. We’re years away from giving the kids formal lessons in American history, but you can bet when we finally get there, we’ll be drawing on the stories and lessons from African Founders, which is perhaps the most meticulously researched book ever written on the contributions to this nation made by African-Americans. It’s one of the fattest books we own—like, literally huge—and it’s authored by the renowned historian David Hackett Fischer. This article from First Things does a fantastic job of explaining why you need this book in your library, too.

2. If you want to learn more about the newest Republican presidential hopeful, Senator Tim Scott, his interview with Bari Weiss from 2022, is a good place to start.

3. Late last summer, I traded in my Birkenstock sandles for Haflinger sandles. The Haflingers are currently the only summer shoe I own, so they are getting a ton of wear, and my feet are so happy. Lots of support, reasonably cute, and my bunions aren’t bothering me a bit. (Okay, now you tell me your age without telling me your age.) They run true to size.

4. It’s Memorial Day Weekend, so Beautycounter is running a fantastic promotion. If you place an order of $125 or more between now and Monday night, you get a free $75 gift. You can choose from either the Renew Your Body Duo (which includes the magical tightening serum I raved about all winter) or the Multi-Masker Set (which includes their two top selling masks: an exfoliating mask and detoxifying mask). Spend $19 more for a Rewards membership, and you’ll also get a free $65 gift (the Glow First Priming Serum), plus free shipping and ten percent product credit. So, for $144, you can get $150+ worth of free gifts. This is a great chance to try the Counterman products (for men), stock up on skincare basics, or switch out your makeup for summer (and add one of the new lipsticks). Feel free to email me with any questions anytime before May 31. (Remember, after June 1, I’ll be taking a little break from Beautycounter and everything for a bit.)

5. I owe you a potato salad recipe. This is a “traditional” potato salad that I cobbled together a few weeks back and will forever and ever hereafter be the dish I bring to summer cookouts. Chris ate five—yes five—servings the first time I made it. I’m going to start posting the recipes again on my old blog to make it easier to find. Here you go.

   

Thanks, as always, for spending some of your Friday with me. Besides becoming a full subscriber, a wonderful way to support these newsletters is to share them with your friends. Feel free to email them along, or share them on social media using the button below.

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