Why I stay (well sort of stay!). (Main Forum)

by Enda, Eastwood, Australia, Monday, July 23, 2012, 14:24 (305 days ago)

Brian has joined the 86% and I sympathise with his position but do not quite share it (yet?). I have a number of close friends who at the last census put “No religion” for the first time. Before that they had always put “Catholic”. For the time being I am not ready to join them though writing this I have concluded that I am not sure why. This is only the first chapter of something.

My staying might be a sign of codependence (see below - I am extremely loyal, remaining in harmful situations too long) or it might be just me trying to hold on and see what happens. I will try here to explain to myself why I am not joining the 86% at present.

To do that I need to talk about dysfunctional families.

One definition of a dysfunctional family is this, taken from Wikipedia:

A dysfunctional family is a family in which conflict, misbehaviour, and often child neglect or abuse by one or both parents occur continually and regularly, leading other members to accommodate such actions. Children sometimes grow up in such families with the understanding that such an arrangement is normal (my emphasis).

Dysfunctional families feel chaotic. It is a dangerous place CHAOS because if we are living in it we are tempted to adapt to it. To adapt to chaos though is to sell your soul.

Children who grow up in dysfunctional homes grow up believing that chaos and dysfunction are normal. They develop ways of coping that help them survive childhood but these ways of coping become dysfunctional as they become adults. For example they become compulsive peacemakers, compulsive helpers, compulsive controllers, or compulsive rebels. Adults who become aware they are dysfunctional and set out to do something about it find these compulsions difficult to overcome. It can be and often is a life’s work.

Some people resist chaos and tell those around them what is actually going on. Artists and poets do this. They find relationships in apparent chaos. That is why we need art. Saints do it too. Real saints I mean. Real saints tend to get harassed and even persecuted by the authorities. Jesus was or is the main saint in Christianity. As Daniel Berrigan said, “If you are thinking of following Jesus first ask yourself ‘Do I look good on wood?’” I am suspicious of ‘saints’ whom the authorities praise and canonise, especially if they canonise them quickly. It makes me wonder what they are trying to hide. That is a personal bias and if you wildly disagree that is okay.

The Wikipedia article of dysfunctional families says that these features occur in most dysfunctional families:

• Lack of empathy, understanding, and sensitivity towards certain family members, while expressing extreme empathy towards one or more members (or even pets) who have real or perceived "special needs". In other words, one family member continuously receives far more than he or she deserves, while another is marginalized.
• Denial (refusal to acknowledge abusive behaviour, possibly believing that the situation is normal or even beneficial; also known as the "elephant in the room.")
• Inadequate or missing boundaries for self (e.g., tolerating inappropriate treatment from others, failing to express what is acceptable and unacceptable treatment, tolerance of physical, emotional or sexual abuse.)
• Disrespect of others' boundaries (e.g. physical contact that other person dislikes; breaking important promises without just cause; purposefully violating a boundary another person has expressed)
• Extremes in conflict (either too much fighting or insufficient peaceful arguing between family members)
• Unequal or unfair treatment of one or more family members due to their birth order, gender, age, family role (mother, etc.), abilities, race, caste, etc. (may include frequent appeasement of one member at the expense of others, or an uneven enforcement of rules).

As you read these you might find yourself saying “Ah Yes!” as some of the Church’s responses to various issues come to your mind. That term “the elephant in the room” might sound familiar. Of course it has become common in the media. In Column Eight in the Sydney Morning Herald a few years ago (it was 2007)people were asked to name other possible phrases for this phenomenon and I suggested “the cardinal in the corner”. This caused some amusement as several readers thought it had some application to current events.

Dysfunctional families are caused by codependent people.

Wikipedia again defines codependence as:

A psychological condition or a relationship in which a person is controlled or manipulated by another who is affected with a pathological condition (as in an addiction to alcohol or heroin); and in broader terms, it refers to the dependence on the needs of or control of another. It also often involves placing a lower priority on one's own needs, while being excessively preoccupied with the needs of others.

Codependent people, especially parents and religious superiors then create more codependent people because children growing up in dysfunctional families or religious orders or seminaries think codependence is normal.

There is a short article on co dependence in Wikipedia.

Some of the effects of growing up in a dysfunctional family are listed there. The following are just some:

I compromise my own values and integrity to avoid rejection or others' anger.
I am very sensitive to how others are feeling and feel the same.
I am extremely loyal, remaining in harmful situations too long.
I value others' opinions and feelings more than my own and am afraid to express differing opinions and feelings of my own.
I put aside my own interests and hobbies in order to do what others want.
I am afraid to express my beliefs, opinions, and feelings when they differ from those of others.
I give up my truth to gain the approval of others or to avoid change.
I am embarrassed to receive recognition and praise or gifts.
I do not ask others to meet my needs or desires.
I value others' approval of my thinking, feelings and behaviour over my own.
I have difficulty getting started, meeting deadlines, and completing projects.

The list of effects is much longer than this and no one has all of them. I chose these because they feel most familiar to me. If you read the Wikipedia article you might make up a different list if you grew up in a place that was to some extent dysfunctional.

I do not think my family was more than usually dysfunctional but I think my father’s was. Dysfunction affects generations until someone decides “This is going to stop with me”. My father knew no psychology but he had a load of common sense and he worked on some of the chaos he grew up in. About a number of things he said, “This stops here” for which I am eternally grateful.

Some writers have claimed the Catholic Church displays many of the hallmarks of a dysfunctional family. The American Franciscan Father Michael Crosby is one of these. His book The Dysfunctional Church explains his position and it is available on Amazon. It is some years since I read Crosby and I cannot remember much of what he says except that I thought he got a lot of it right. I gave away my copy of the book so I cannot check up on it at present.

One sign of dysfunction or maybe it is codependence is that those affected by it dump their anxieties on their children or on those they are training. This is where I suggest the Church shows signs of dysfunction. In the days when novitiates and seminaries were full too many of the people put in charge of training young people had not worked out their own codependence and had not addressed their own dysfunction. They then proceeded to load their anxieties and fears onto those they were meant to be helping grow into adults.

All people brought up in dysfunctional homes are vulnerable. Quite a lot of them entered religious life and seminaries. All members of religious orders, all priests should be aware and enlightened adults. Or they should be working towards this state.

But this has not always been the case. Too often seminaries, juniorates and novitiates tended to prey on young people’s vulnerabilities and manipulated them. Instead of helping people to grow they encouraged them to develop their neuroses.

Compulsive helpers for example were encouraged to be even more compulsive. Anxious people were encouraged to be scrupulous (especially about sex). In some cases compulsive controllers were put in charge of young people and were encouraged to deepen their own codependence and impose it on others. Often what passed for formation was simply pandering to the neurotic needs of the person whose job it was to get young people into the novitiate or seminary, or it was meeting the needs of the person in charge.

Of course there were enlightened men and women, there were people who often despite the system were working themselves out. There were those who said, “This nonsense stops with me. I am not passing it on.”

But the system made it too easy for abused people to abuse others, to recreate the trauma they grew up in, because it was dysfunctional. Some religious orders, one at least disbanded by a local bishop, were highly and obviously dysfunctional. Too many others were dysfunctional enough to do harm, a lot in some cases, and still keep going.

The main reason I suggest that so many good people left the priesthood and religious life in from the 1960s onward, and why so few have entered since is that somehow they caught on to this. Often they thought or felt that there was something wrong with them and leaving was extremely painful. I was one of those.

But some of the more insightful just realised that the system was shot. I think they were right and it is still shot.

Lifeboats anyone?