THE ZIG OF THEORY AND THE ZAG OF FACT ~ 7

 

                                      Theories according to the dictionary are suppositions intended to explain something, so they are not facts. Facts are things that are known to be true.

A very simple example of theory and fact: In university I had a philosophy professor who argued that things only exist because we believe they exist, his proof being, pointing out the window to a tall, steel, piece of modern art claiming it existed because we all agreed it did, but should we all agree it did not it would vanish. A wag in the class got up and asked the professor if that applied to everything and everyone. The professor assured us it did. The wag lit his lighter and moved it towards the professor’s hand. The professor jumped away from the flame and the wag.

The professor had a theory, the wag a flame, it is a fact fire burns.

We live in an age where we are drowning in conspiracy theories to the extent even provable facts are doubted by many, many people. The result is we live in an age so dangerously filled with anger, violence, confusion, and distorted historical and personal memories, rather than look at the so-called nuclear clock for how close we are to another global war we should be reading all the signs of the times and our own hearts.

In this modern swamp of the diluting of facts with conspiracy theories, the deculturizing of history with selective memories, intemperate re-telling of the past – we do this often with our personal story as well, both regular and social media have become cesspools of gossip: conversations reporting on other people containing details not verified as being factual. Like the proverbial holes in Swiss cheese lies dominate gossip, carving out the truth, deceiving those who listen to the gossip, murdering the good name of the one gossiped about. Satan, the father of lies and the great deceiver, uses gossip to erode relationships between ourselves and God, and our neighbours – proximate as members of our family or as friends - and at the same time erodes confidence and causes discord within society in general, within parishes, within nations and between nations.

Most of us become targets and victims of gossip in junior high and high school, made much worse these days by use of social media to spread the poison. When I was in high school a close friend, as soon as he got his licence to drive, borrowed the family car and drove himself off a cliff. No need here to reference the gossip but it was vile and patently untrue. The clique which originated the lie tried to appear nonplussed, but their eyes betrayed them.

By then for me too high school had become just too much to endure. Bad enough that the turbulence of family life had me prone to massive, sometimes 24/7 intense panic attacks, interluded with constant anxiety, worse there was no one I could confide in, the one priest I did trust was killed in a car crash. So, while I went through the motions of external faith, serving Holy Mass for example, internally my faith was eroding rapidly and my constant knocking at the door which Jesus promises would be opened to us [Mt.7.7] was about as effective as smashing my fist into a brick wall. So, not untypical of brutalized and hopeless adolescents I contemplated suicide and, having left both high school and home and gone to work on a farm – I was 15 – dangled from the rafters at the top of the barn ready to drop to the concrete floor below when my fevered brain pointed out to me it would hurt. Trembling so much I almost lost my footing, which triggered a panic attack but did shatter the blackness within me.

Obviously in that instant my prior prayer-cries for help, before I lost my faith, where answered in that moment.

Almost instinctively I knew I needed serious mental health help, but this was in the days before universal medical care, and I could not afford it. When it did become available I was 22 years old and the first psychiatrist I saw was, frankly, nuts. It would be some twenty plus years before I was referred to one who was wise, compassionate, helpful.

By that time, I was pastor of three northern parishes with two missions, however, to make the appointment meant a day’s drive there, and after the session, another day’s drive back. I could not take that much time off. So, there was another gap, this time only of six years, before I was granted by the bishop to retire and become an urban hermit. Within a year I found the best therapist grace could grant me and continue to this day.

It is a sadly common human thing, learned early in life, to deflect, excuse, justify our foibles, mistakes, even sins. In those late teen and early adult years, with my own variations on the theme, I was certainly rationalizing, denying, blaming like broken Edmund from King Lear: This is the excellent foppery of the world; that when we are sick in fortune – often the surfeit of our own behaviours – we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treacherers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence, and all that we are evil in by a divine thrusting on. [1]

I would be in my late twenties before enough healing would occur, by grace not my own efforts, I would begin to have a sense of faith, then renewed faith, then a return to Catholic praxis.

Through the labyrinthine journeys, experiences, of those years, I gradually begin to trust I had the ability to make free-will choices, the self rejection started to lessen enough, choices became more human, in the sense of proper love of self, thus in relationships, while most were ephemeral, I was starting to learn to trust again.

Know now, with immense gratitude, though at the time I had no idea, grace was being granted because others – like all those who pray for the conversion of sinners – were interceding on my behalf such that all the time I thought I was heading towards the horizon, upright walking if not very sure about which horizon it was or what lay beyond, in fact I was like the woman with a hemorrhage in the Gospel who crawled on her belly to touch the cloak of Jesus who had, in the depths of her heart, already embraced her. [Mk. 5. 25-34]

The sympathetic, all-comprehending heart of Jesus Christ is stronger than pain……He sees the mystery of suffering much more profoundly – deep at the root of human existence, and inseparable from sin and estrangement from God. He knows it to be the door in the soul that leads to God, or that at least can lead to Him; result of sin but also means of purification and return. [2]

It was good for me to be afflicted, in order to learn Your statutes. [Ps. 119: 71]

 

[1] THE HISTORY OF KING LEAR, Scene 2, by William Shakespeare; p. 914; THE OXFORD SHAKESPEARE, THE COMPLETE WORKS; Oxford University Press, 1988

[2] THE LORD; by Romano Guardini; pp. 49 & 51;; Henry Regnery Company, 1954

 

© 2021 Fr. Arthur Joseph