Below, Ellyn von Huben, with her signature wit and probing spiritual insight, reviews the newly published Bad Catholic's Guide to the Seven Deadly Sins.
A Guide for Travelers in the Christ-forgetting Christ-haunted death-dealing world.
I like to laugh, which is pretty much a blessing. [Except for those pubescent years when laughter was illogical, uncontrollable and would leave me absolutely cataplectic. Some of my teachers may have been tempted to despair. My mother was driven to rely on a sharp stiletto heel squarely applied to my instep to quell laughing spells at church. Desperately discreet; and not particularly cruel.] And, what a blessing it has been. There have been some wretched times in which the ability to laugh has been a life preserver thrown by a loving God. The rest of the time? It’s the frosting on the cake. Truth is not always easy to handle. I think I speak for a lot of people who find that humor is the vehicle which makes it all so much easier to absorb. Laughter is much better than a spoonful of sugar to make much medicine go down. Not everyone can have the straight forward transformative conversion of an Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross) simply by picking up a biography of Teresa of Avila. Some of us need the help of “stealth catechesis:” teachable moments with the added psyscho-physiological benefits of laughter. This is not to say that we always have to be entertained, but that humor’s effects go far below the surface appearance of mere entertainment.
Two books that I have recommended to many people - and like enough to have given as gifts - are the first two of “The Bad Catholic’s Guides:” “The Bad Catholic’s Guide to Good Living” and “The Bad Catholic’s Guide to Wine, Whiskey and Song,” written by John Zmirak, easily one of the funniest writers alive. Not just funny - funny, smart, well-grounded in his Catholic faith and not hesitant to share it.
So, I was very pleased to see the release of The Bad Catholic’s Guide to the Seven Deadly Sins.
Languishing for months on an Amazon.com waiting list, I did not lose hope. Finally... in stock. And, worth all of the waiting. This is literally deadly serious stuff, folks. Zmirak does his specialty: he attacks the subject matter with the best of his doctrinally sound depth of knowledge and relays it with maximum humor. [Comparing his work to Dante’s Inferno: “Next to that, my illustrative stories of sinners and scandals are a game of Chutes and Ladders played by Pollyanna, Tintin, and Little Lord Fauntleroy in Eloise’s suite at the Plaza.” (p. xxvii)]
Constructed with a nod toward Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos *- Zmirak has a PhD in English focused on Southern literature with a particular emphasis on Percy’s work - we are given a super self-help book for identifying the operation of the seven deadly sins in our lives and exercises for developing their Contrary Virtues without overreaching past virtue into neurosis. For example, the vice of Lust calls for the cultivation of the virtue of Chastity, not Frigidity.
The book contains numerous essays, quizzes, and "thought experiments" designed to satirize conventional self-help texts (and modeled on the tests in “Lost in the Cosmos” by Zmirak’s much admired Percy, who receives a tribute in the form of the “Bad Catholic’s” title) while provoking readers to undertake a thoughtful contemplation of their existential situations and the search for spiritual meaning and purpose that could derive from such reflections.
There are the real meanings of virtues which by 2011 have been commonly misinterpreted and therefore get a bad rap....charity, temperance, humility...and they are clarified and expanded upon. But, of course, with sharp humor that kept me clamoring for more. Regarding the development of temperance “...the virile mastery over the fleeting impulses shipped up to our frontal cortex by our coiled reptilian brain. Now, staying alive means answering basic needs of our mortal bodies: I feed my reptilian brain a rat every couple of days. But I don’t want it climbing out of the tank and rewriting my resume or swallowing one of my pets.” [p. 89]
The traps of misdirected virtue are spelled out in strong words. “What is more, St. Thomas teaches that it’s wrong for us to practice humility when it tempts others to sin. That means that accepting abuse and resigning yourself needlessly to suffering or injustice might, in fact, be un-Christian. Nowadays we call it “enabling.” [p. 221] In fact, Zmirak takes a moderate amount of umbrage with the well circulated Litany of Humility of Cardinal Merry del Val:
O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed,
Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved...
From the desire of being extolled ...
From the desire of being honored ...
From the desire of being praised ...etc.
He raises a point that I had never considered though I have been of the same mind that the Litany of Humility may not be beneficial for certain persons, such as the abused or depressed (“Just reading the thing, I can feel the serotonin draining out of my head.” [p. 221]) He proposes that “If it’s good to wish all these things for one’s self, then one should equally wish them for one’s children. I challenge the reader to go through the earlier litany and substitute for “I” the words “my son” or “my daughter. Hence “that other may be loved more than my son, Jesus grant me the grace to desire it.” That kind of takes the red paint right off the Schwinn bike, now doesn’t it?” [p. 222]
Instead, he points out that the “Church encouraged martyrs to be steadfast; she steadfastly discouraged people from seeking martyrdom. There was a whole school of heretics in the early Church called the Circumcellions, who made their name by rushing out and taunting Roman officials until they got themselves fed to the lions. Happily, this kind of heresy tends to persecute itself.” {222-23]
This book is not just abstract edifying entertainment. I find it becomes quite...personal. How did he know about my envy, both material and spiritual? “I’ve known married, orthodox Catholics with large families who compensate for the fact that they drive a battered, crap-brown minivan crammed with squabbling toddlers by speculating about the contraceptive habits - and spiritual state - of rich folks with fewer kids. These pious folks mutter, “That Prius should read, ‘I ♥ the Culture of Death.” “ Uh, yeah. Only ours wasn’t a minivan - it was a used full size 12 seater. But battered and, yes, brown, so this is the perfect place to recommend the discussion of spiritual pride. You should read it. I should reread it - often.
The book moves on to a discussion of the dangers ahead for those of us who may have a good handle on the “straightforward sins” and are then vulnerable to Satan’s attacks through our virtues. ‘Misguided Compassion’ is given an endorsement as “The Reigning Vice of Our Time." [p. 266] He uses the British film “Longford” for a discussion of presumptuous pity mixed with a lack of the virtue of Prudence. Haven’t seen “Longford?” The author and I both urge you to watch it. In fact, Zmirak intends to watch it each Lent. He goes in to some detail about why he thinks he is in need of some penitential time contemplating this fine film. And I am reminded that I should watch it again; the first viewing not having affected me enough to jog my prudence and rein in my pity on that night last summer when I allowed a rather strange woman to jump into my car at the train station and direct me to drive her to a very sketchy location. Her convoluted story, in the end, appeared to be true and she even tried to push a handful of dollar bills for gas into my hand as we reached our destination. Startling lack of prudence on my part. A lack that is described as able to “overwhelm rational judgment, blind you to contrary evidence, numb the self-protective instinct, shunt aside prudent counsels to “avoid evil company,” and end up in scandal and squalor.” [p. 268] Or shanked and left for dead behind a crack house in Waukegan, while my family assumes that I have taken off on an impulse trip to Target.
Read this stealth catechesis. (Why not read all three of the Guides?) Take the quizzes, and do the activities. Read it and laugh, even at the places where you will also weep. John Zmirak is a very able and hilarious guide for all of us Bad Catholics.
Oh, and don’t forget to check out The Amazing Catholic BS Generator™ on page 245!
* Not familiar with “Lost in the Cosmos?” Put it on your ‘to read’ list. The best brief description I can offer is from Walker Percy’s Weirdest Book written by Tom Bartlett for The Chronicle of Higher Education:
“Easily the strangest book he wrote was “Lost in the Cosmos,” which is shelved among the nonfiction but is actually an indescribable concoction of hard facts and wild imagination, a parody of self-help books (sort of), a philosophy textbook (kind of), and a collection of short stories, quizzes, diagrams, thought experiments, mathematical formulas, made-up dialogue, ridiculously long chapter titles, and a few David Foster Wallace-worthy footnotes.”
Ellyn von Huben is a regular contributor to the Word on Fire Blog. She also moderates her own blog, Oblique House.