Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Overcoming Hypersensitivity
In a column last month titled Moral Intelligence, Fr. Ron Rolheiser explained how we become "deep".
That we feel slights and insults is the cause, depth of character is the effect.
Or is it the other way around? In this column that ran in last week's Catholic Herald, he says,
What brought us depth and character are the very things we are often ashamed to talk about, namely, our inferiorities - getting picked last on the school team, being bullied on the playground, some physical inadequacy, our mother's weight problem, our dad's alcoholism, an abuse inflicted upon us that we were powerless to stop, a slow-wittedness that perpetually left us out of the inner circle, our failure to achieve what we'd like to in life, a pain about our sexual orientation, an addiction we can't master, and many, many other small and big wounds and bruises that helped shape our souls.
That we feel slights and insults is the cause, depth of character is the effect.
Or is it the other way around? In this column that ran in last week's Catholic Herald, he says,
We feel slights and insults deeply precisely because we are deep.¶ 4/04/2007 07:59:00 AM
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Haven't Catholics always known this? We fight against our passions and besetting sins, get beat and battered, sometimes lose but by God's grace conquer more and more often, and in that way through hard work attain to holiness, But, the holier one gets, the more one becomes aware of one's own sinfulness (and less conscious of other people's faults). Until one can pray with no hesitation at all, "for all sinners, of whom I am the chief."
Huh? Our sins are one thing, but Fr. Fluffy says nothing about them. What he does seem to spend an inordinate amount of time dwelling on is how being sinned against is the source of all virtue. He must've been a real treat when he was in grade school. The bloody noses he should have come home with (but didn't get because his classmates were too charitable) from school every day for being an insufferable little prig didn't lead him to sanctity. They made him a whiner. My money for sainthood goes with the kids who had to put up with this little self-described martyr.
There's no virtue in trumpeting the slights that have been done to you by others. Kind of a "beam in your own eye" problem.
There's no virtue in trumpeting the slights that have been done to you by others. Kind of a "beam in your own eye" problem.
# posted by 
: 9:32 PM
: 9:32 PM
"What brought us depth and character are the very things we are often ashamed to talk about, namely, our inferiorities - ... an abuse inflicted upon us that we were powerless to stop ..."
Seems an odd sentiment when written by a priest and published in the archdiocesan newspaper. Maybe it's supposed to be the silver lining in the terrible storm clouds of California.
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Seems an odd sentiment when written by a priest and published in the archdiocesan newspaper. Maybe it's supposed to be the silver lining in the terrible storm clouds of California.
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