Tigers Eat Their Young

I am privileged to be sober and to be Catholic.

Like many people, I chose to pursue my sobriety through a 12 Step program.  I have been in the middle of that life boat for over a ¼ or a century and I am grateful for every aspect of it, every step and tradition and concept.  I am grateful to those who walked the path before me and I am grateful to those who stay put in the rooms, sharing their experience, their strength and their hope with me and others so that I can stay the course.

Like so many people I know, I returned to the Catholic Church once I had been sober for a short period of time.  The joke among so many of us for whom this has been the path, we became sober and suddenly we wanted the Truth...and dang it if that did not lead us right back to the Catholic Church.

I stay close to both these groups despite the antics and behavior of myself and other members.  Seriously, if I stayed in my home group only if every person who shows up there is honest and friendly and pursuing God I would be home by myself a lot.....and if I went to Mass only if everyone in the pew was  practicing our beautiful and misunderstood religion with perfection I would never leave the house.

Because my country is so polarized today, and because both sides of the aisle seem to believe in clever name calling and horrific characterizations, this insistance on behaving like 11 year old girls on meth has crept into both the organizations that give me life.  I see it every day on the internet.

"This priest so-and-so is a grifter who calls me names and hates the Holy Father."

"This so-called Catholic Spokesperson is not really Catholic because they don't like Father So-and-So."

"That meeting is a REAL meeting - they only read from one pamphlet and do it exactly like the first 100 did it."

"Those people are not really sober - they control everyone around them and want to be the leader of everything."

What I see in this type of behavior is concupiscence.

All of us, due to our fallen nature, have a tendency to sin.  Pride is one of the seven deadly sins and this pops up in the thinking and behavior I am seeing among my people right now.  It always disguises itself - rationalization is amazing - and both sides are absolutely convinced they are right.  The inability to step back and say, "Wait, what are they hearing me say that makes them think such and such" never occurs to us because, well, that means we have to entertain the possibility that we are the problem.

Every time there is a disturbance in my life, I have to consider the possibility that I am the cause.  I am the reason my mother is mad at me or my sister won't talk to me.  What have I done to set the ball rolling in whatever uproar is happening in my life?

Now, is it possible to be completely innocent in a situation?  Maybe.  I can't say because that has never been my experience with the exception of when I was assaulted.  And while I will never take responsibility for another person's criminal behavior I do acknowledge that the lifestyle I was leading at that time put me in far greater danger than the average woman.  I was the victim of an assault.  If I had not lived the way I lived, there is a really good chance what happened to me would not have occurred.

So, is it possible to be completely innocent?  I don't know...what I do know is that watching grown people act like children on social media is just embarrassing.  The fact that none of them seem to want to knock it off is humiliating.

I have no power over the antics I am seeing play out on FaceBook right now.  It is so sad....so very, very sad....because people do not care about the group or the fellowship or the Church.   They only care about being right.

My heart hurts.  I feel so very sad.

The most I can hope for is that someone comes to their senses and stops the madness.