We are all sinners we are told. How different people handle the skeltons in their cupboards differs from person to person. Today's commentary is a thought-provoking reflection by Dr Kania looking at this difficult issue of the things from our past that embarrass us and we want to keep hidden from view. When push comes to shove though we live in the knowledge that we cannot hide anything from our own conscience, nor from God. In some ways, and as an extension of this commentary, one could argue that if God did not exist there are some powerful arguments here as to why human beings might have to invent him, or her. All of us need some place of "Ultimate Truth". A place where we can see ourselves warts and all! A wonderful Scriptural reflection that sits well with all of this is Psalm 139 — an online version of the full 24 verses can be found on the USCCB website HERE.

The plot of a motion picture…

In the 2005 motion picture, A History of Violence, Edie Stall is a school teacher living in a small country town, married to Tom, a café owner. Together they have two children. Edie wants for nothing – her husband is a passionate lover, a thoroughly devoted husband, and a perfect father.

Maria Bello as "Edie Stall" with husband "Tom Stall" (Viggo Mortensen) in New Line Cinema's thriller A History of Violence.

One day, at the time that the café would normally close, Tom, a quiet and gentle man is confronted by two strangers, one who drawing a gun on him, demands as well as service, all his takings for the day. Quite literally staring down the barrel of a gun, Tom in an instant throws the kettle filled with hot water over the face of the man pointing the gun, leaps the counter and before the two robbers can react has killed them both – execution style. Not a sound can be heard in the café – as Tom's staff gape in disbelief at the scene of carnage caused by a man who they have known for close to two decades as being ever so meek.

Tom's heroics become nationwide news, and although Edie and the children are in stunned admiration of 'Hubby' and 'Pa', the media attention draws to Edie's door a man in a suit, Carl Fogarty, complete with scar down his face, a man representing the interests of the Philadelphia Irish mafia.

Fogarty proceeds to inform Edie, that her husband is not Tom Stall, but is really Joey Cusack, a person who twenty years previously had given Fogarty his scar, a person who was a mafia hitman in his youth – and who suddenly disappeared from the 'scene', leaving Joey's brother, Richie, now a crime boss, 'broken-hearted' at not being able to fully reconcile with his little brother over a number of 'hits' that left Richie compromised with rival gangs.

Edie refuses to believe Fogarty the first time they meet, but soon she begins to question how a small town country boy could have had the skill to act as he did that evening in the café. Slowly, the truth begins to dawn in her psyche, that the man that she has slept beside, eaten with, and cherished; the man who has fathered her children, is in fact – Joey Cusack, the same man who is from all reports, an aggressive, cold-blooded killer. He has never ever been violent in her presence, he has never raised his voice, he has never been anything but the man of her dreams, but now as the movie closes, Tom, having gone to Philadelphia to settle old scores, returns to Millbrook, to find his wife and children sitting down to begin dinner. Edie does not look up from the table, Tom searches to make eye-contact, his daughter stares at the empty plate in front — only his son rises from the table to hand Tom a plate. Not a word passes – but Tom sits staring sorrowfully at Edie – longing to make contact – but failing. The viewer is left to determine what will happen in the future to this family.

Now the the lessons from the story…

The one time Primate of the Catholic Church in England, Cardinal Basil Hume (1923-1999), wrote: "Many of us have a story, or part of one at any rate, about which we have never been able to speak to anyone. Fear of being misunderstood, inability to understand ourselves, ignorance of the darker side of our hidden lives, or just shame, make it very difficult for many people. Our true story is not told, or only half of it is." Suffice to say that we do not need recourse to Edie Stall's plight nor Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge, nor Hugo's Les Miserables to understand the truth about what Cardinal Hume was intimating.

We all keep secrets…

Being human, every one of us is prone to error, some minor, some quite major — but according to our particular audience, and the impression that we seek to make on this audience, the degree to which we reveal our true selves varies. We may be a politician, who seeking the highest office in the land, is willing to pay millions in order to buy the silence of those who have the desire and knowledge to reveal our philandering; we may be faced with the girl of our dreams, who would not continue the relationship if she knew that in reality we had been charged and convicted of a drink-driving offence; we may be seated for a job interview, not wanting the fact to be revealed that three jobs ago we had been dismissed for theft. Yet in all cases what we choose not to reveal always remains within us as a seed of fear, shrouded each day in the hope that some stir will not expose it so that our entire life built on top of it will come tumbling down. Too often though, despite our best efforts, the illusion is shattered. If there are truly only a few degrees of separation between us all, then time is the greatest detective for searching out our past misdemeanours — time and the fact that few sins bear no witness of their action.

What we choose to expose to others about our past — is for us alone to determine, but in both case scenarios, to divulge or not — we must obey our consciences and take full responsibility for the consequences. By non-disclosure, we also must prepare ourselves for inflicting hurt, such as in the case of Edie Stall, who believed herself to be committed to a particular individual, only to find herself feeling slighted and cheated for having been 'duped' into a relationship based on the non-disclosure of some integral facts regarding the life of her spouse.

St Augustine — a "saint" with a past!

Learning from our dark side — a 'hidden temple' within all of us…

Being creatures caught in time, we own our past, live our present and hope for our future. Yet we can never hope to escape the Truth about what we were, for it has determined who we are, and perhaps for this reason, some of the greatest saints of the Catholic Church, have, far from hiding their past, learned from it, and drawn from it to become Saintly; men and women, such as: the murderer, St. Paul of Tarsus, the brothel frequenter, St. Augustine, and the extortionist, St. Matthew the Evangelist. The list of their crimes is legendary, but their virtue, by life's closure, far outweighed their sin.

Many of us have secret recesses of our memory which are forced closed, or at least we attempt to force closed; many of us have repented from past lives that now flicker faintly back at us on some lonely evening. There is a hidden temple within all of us, which only God through His gift of conscience can penetrate. God knows each one of us, better than we understand ourselves — this is evident from the Gospels where Christ, knows that Judas is the one who will betray Him, He knows that Peter will deny Him, and He knows who Bartholomew is as a man, even before he opens up a conversation with his prospective Disciple.

God knows us — what we choose to reveal to others, as well as what we choose to conceal to others. He knows the totality of our being — He is the only one who in fact knows anyone, for we all only understand each other in piecemeal. A man married to a woman for sixty years, will know more about his wife than when they were newly-weds, but there would be still an infinitesimal amount that is still and will always remain a mystery. Further, if by some foible of Creation, humanity was given the gift of complete knowledge of a person's past by just glimpsing at them — would any of us, really want to know the next person, or would the abject humility of such complete disclosure, give us a greater sense of our own personal sinfulness, and a refusal to so harshly judge our neighbour, for our own sins are now perfectly disclosed, disallowing a place for self-righteousness and hypocrisy?

A further question remains: should we reject a person for being honest with us with regard to who they are? The answer probably lies somewhere in between the right of each one of us to freely choose to live lives according to those values which we hold as dear, as well as being careful never to fall into the trap of choosing to fornicate with a beautiful lie, rather than be chastely married to an ugly Truth; because at the close, all that a lie gives, no matter how much we are enamoured with its veneer — is emptiness.

Image Credits: The headline background image is a photograph by Alex Abreu (London, England) sourced from stock.xchng. Click the other images for the original sources.

©2008 Dr Andrew Thomas Kania

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