The Holdout

by Gracjan Kraszewski

  She showed me how to understand the love of God the Father, the endless love God has for me. So much that He sent His only Son to die for my sins. I tell you, Rhett, I’m not a sentimental or fantastical person, looking for miracles and signs under every rock. But the rosary saved my life. Our Lady saved me by brining me to her Son, my Savior, and I was able to make it through to where I am now. To make it to a point where I have forgiven my parents and pray for them every day. And because of my terrible childhood I think I’m a better priest. I think I give an intentional effort to be not just a good priest but a good father, even though just in a spiritual sense, to all those whom I serve. This probably wouldn’t be possible without the cross of my childhood. But, you see, there is purpose in suffering. We don’t see it at the time but God has a plan.

  You’re going to get through everything you’re going through, now,” he says to me, giving me a strong pat on the shoulder, a man to man encouragement type pat, “just don’t stop praying. I know you pray the rosary daily. Amen. Don’t stop. Don’t stop praying don’t stop bring everything to God. If you’re doing that there’s nothing more you can do. Okay?”

  I nod.

  “Here’s what I want you to do in regards to the situation now,” he says, “pray everyday for your friend Brent and for the woman who’s carrying his child, pray that they choose life. You’ve told him how you feel. He knows how you feel. All you can do now is pray. Pray everyday for him and for the woman and their child that, by God’s grace, they choose life. Pray daily for life in general. Pray that the hearts of those on the side of abortion be converted and that those in the pro-life movement, those heroes who defend the unborn, be strengthened in this sacred mission.

  Let me tell you something about abortion, Rhett. Don’t let anyone ever tell you that this is some kind of issue amongst many. Don’t let anyone tell you that abortion is bad but, you know, so are problems with immigration, and poverty, and, God forbid, the environment. It’s true that we keep to the seamless garment—,” Father Will pauses. “You know what I’m talking about?”

  I nod.

  “Okay. It’s true we have the seamless garment of life and that all life issues are important. All life is sacred, all life, the unborn and the born, the old and young, the firm and infirm, equally sacred. This is true but, at the same time, abortion is in a category all of its own. Abortion is our society’s slavery. Let me give you an example, historian that you are. What was the issue at stake with slavery, let’s say the Dred Scott case, for example?”

  I know all about slavery and Dred Scott, but I don’t say anything. I don’t feel like saying anything for a month, at least. Father Will keeps talking.

  “Personhood. It was always a question of personhood. It didn’t matter that Dred Scott was living above the thirty-six thirty parallel, outside of Missouri, and therefore outside the slavery sphere. No, didn’t matter at all. Because, according to the Supreme Court, a black man wasn’t and never could be a citizen of the United States. That’s what the Chief justice, Taney, said in the majority opinion, a Catholic!, just as racist and bigoted and shortsighted as so many then. The bastard, God have mercy on him.

  But why, Rhett, why couldn’t a black man be a citizen of the United States? Why not? The only explanation would be that black people weren’t really human; they were some type of semi-human, sub-humans, maybe three-fifths human, but certainly not human. That was in fact the whole justification for slavery, was it not? Certainly it would be wrong, unchristian, to own a person. But something less than a person? Sure, why not? And, hey, you can always pull out that white patriarchy card and claim that anything, even chattel slavery, beats the barbaric wilds of Africa. Slavery is good for these three-fifths sub-humans is it not? They’re better off here, better off with us. Better off for everyone in the long run.

  Now look at abortion in comparison. Just as the slave-owner dehumanized the African—this human, this child of God, with the same two hands, two feet, one heart, and one precious priceless soul—in order to justify making him his property, making owning him in fact a ‘right,’ a ‘right’ protected by the Constitution, so too do abortion advocates dehumanize the pre-born child—this human, this child of God, with the same two hands, two feet, one heart, and one precious priceless soul—calling him not a three-fifths sub-human but a fetus, in order to justify making this baby someone’s property, someone’s ‘choice,’ and indeed the gravest of choices, between life and death, with the ‘right’ to decide this innocent’s fate protected too, as Dred Scott was, by our own infallible, despicable, beloved and blighted Supreme Court and Constitution.

  And what of those so called ‘Catholic’ politicians who are ‘personally opposed’ to abortion yet do all they can to advance, support, and defend it? To call them hypocrites is far too nice. ‘I don’t want to impose my morality on others’ they say. So if I told them that I want to round up mentally challenged people in wheelchairs and set them on fire, you think they’d say they are ‘personally opposed to it’ but will let it go on because they don’t want to ‘impose their morality?’ Hey, why is that baby in the womb not a baby—because it can’t take care of itself, can’t think or reason?—sounds a lot like that mentally challenged person in the wheelchair.

  Hypocrites. Evil hypocrites. Don’t want to impose their morality. What would have happened if people took that approach to slavery? Hey, I’m against it, but…hypocrites. They make me sick. The most important thing to do when facing any evil, no, the only thing, is to impose your morality.

  These ‘Catholic’ politicians. You know what I’d do if I was pope? I’d make them choose. I’d be all about ‘choice,’ how’s that for you? Two weeks. You have two weeks to decide. Are you are real Catholic or is your true religion your political party? It’s not enough to deny them Holy Communion, that’s obvious, but I’d also make them choose. If you support abortion, you’re excommunicated. Period. You’re cut off from the Church. You want to come back, you repent, make amends—and let me tell you I’d make the penances epic, hair shirts would look like child’s play—and become firmly and solidly pro-life. You want to support abortion? You’re not a Catholic.

  The hypocrisy of our modern society knows no boundaries and were it not so serious, and tragic, it would be comical. Do you know that even Rome, bloodthirsty gladiatorial and infanticidal Rome, recognized that you could not execute a pregnant woman for you would be sentencing two people to death? That was why Saint Felicity was allowed to give birth first before she was put to death. And guess what? America recognizes this common sense fact too. If a man murders a pregnant woman he is charged with double-murder. As he should be, for he has taken not one life and another potential life, not killed a person and a fetus, but he has killed two people.

  But, if a woman decides she wants to exercise her ‘choice’ to ‘terminate’ her pregnancy, all of a sudden the double-murder two-person logic is gone. Now it’s no longer a baby but something else. This is the best example of relativism run amok. How can it be possible that a baby is or is not a baby depending on a circumstance? How can the same twenty-eight week, or seventeen-week, baby in utero be a person in one case and not in another? I can’t wrap my mind around these paradoxes. Something is something or it is not. I can’t just tell you, when you ask me if the earth is flat or round, that I’ll get back to you when I decide how I feel in a particular circumstance. Got it: it’s flat when it snows, round otherwise. The murder and the abortion do nothing, by themselves, to change the baby in utero. The baby remains exactly the same and dies the same and yet one is the murder of a person and the other the convenient, Constitutionally protected, right and freely exercised choice to sanitarily dispose of unwanted tissue.”

  Father Will exhales. He’s starting to sweat a little. Sweat forms on the top of his right eyebrow. “Pray, Rhett. Pray for an end to abortion. And remember who the real enemy is in all this. It’s not the directors and workers of the abortion mills, the women who make these choices, whether freely or
coerced, the scores of men who stand idly by or run away from their responsibilities and allow this genocide to go on. These men…cowards every one of them. The real enemy is the Enemy himself. You think he cares about another child cut up, vacuumed out, and thrown in the trash? No. That’s a small victory. What he cares about is making murders out of the people who keep this cycle going—all those poor souls hoodwinked into thinking they’re liberated, or free, or God knows what while all the while they serve not God and not even themselves, not even their own sexual license, but principalities and powers. Pray to Saint Michael, Rhett.

  You acted heroically with Shannon. Most guys would have given in. I—I don’t mind telling you this—I gave in more than a few times before I became a priest. I’m not proud of it, I wish I hadn’t. But I did. You didn’t. Regardless of how terrible you feel, how much you struggle with lust, and I know how much you struggle with it, you didn’t give in. I have no idea if God is calling you to marriage, but if he is you’ll see the great fruits of this victory on your wedding day; that you didn’t give in. You’ll see that blossom in full on that day but for now, regardless of how awful you feel and how this doesn’t feel like a victory, it is that.

  Pray for Shannon. If you truly love her, and your feelings are not just lust, you’ll want what’s best for her. Pray for her that she finds happiness and peace.

  Pray for your committee members. Take the Benedictine approach, ora et labora. So simple yet so profound: prayer and work. There is nothing more you can do but to pray for God’s grace to bless your work, to pray that God blesses your committee, and then to do all you can, all humanly possible, to make your dissertation as good as it can be. Leave the rest to God. Trust in God.”

  Silence.

  I nod.

  I ask Father Will if I can go to confession now.

  Of course, he says, his face almost coming to a full-on smile, the irony and humor or this, of what just happened: he, in some kind of way, confessing to me, spilling his cares and worries out to me. Now, my turn, a return to the natural order of things.

  And so I confess.

  Father Will grants me absolution and I finally make it to the Adoration chapel. I just sit there and look at Jesus. Like some nameless famous peasant once told the Curé of Ars, “I look at Him and He looks at me.” There is nothing else to do. Nothing else that can be done.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Watched a very interesting interview last night, a re-run from some years ago. I was up at 2:12 AM battling insomnia and, well, this was on some channel.

  One of those late night talk shows that bring on celebrity guests. This particular guest was an actor I have never heard of. He was probably about forty years old. White. Black hair and glasses, medium, normal build. His entire interview was one great spiel on why Western whites are the worst human beings ever to walk the face of the earth. A Catiline oration against the Caucasian race. He, a new Cicero, whites a collective symbol of the infamous Roman Senator, Lucius Sergius Catilina; the latter not now threatening the overthrow of Republicanism, no not even fomenting a plot, rather they themselves are the plot, their very presence the conspiracy and one planned not in shadows but in the open air of daily life.

  These diatribes have become a great indulgence, a new favorite pastime, of white liberal elites. And they seem, by and large, the white elites I mean, to feast on this treat, the white self-bashing, the way kids rummage a Halloween bag weeks into November; coming back for more again and again, turning the bag over to spill the candy out onto the floor. There’s got to be more down there. There’s got to be more I can say, some statement of obloquy I can make. How academic of him, I think, for a celebrity.

  “So to what?” the host asks, himself white, smiling.

  “Anything,” the celebrity says, meaning he would rather be anything but white, would rather exchange his whiteness for anything else. Anything but this most despicable hue.

  “But to any other race in particular?”

  “How about all of them?” The crowd laughs heartily. “Look,” the celebrity says, “I’m mean who would disagree that the world would be better with one less white person, right?” He appeals to the audience with his hands raised. They eat it up. Raucous applause. He continues,

  “Most wars: fault of white people. All the hate in the world: the fault of white people. The reason behind greed and poverty: yes, once again.”

  “But,” the host tries to reel him in a little bit, tries to be fair, I guess, “you will admit that the culture you’re criticizing, and is it fair to frame it broadly as Western European?”

  The celebrity scrunches his mouth. I don’t know, yeah, ah, okay, yes, yes that’s fair he says without words, nodding, finally coming to an affirmation, this great philosopher.

  “Okay,” the host says, “so you will admit that for all the things you hate about Western European culture and especially the white people who’ve largely been in charge of that culture from its beginnings until roughly what? the first half of the past century?, and still so in many cases, largely so still today, you will admit that this culture has some merits, too, right? The Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, the advancement of women, popular democracy. I, like you, find much to criticize in this tradition as well. I’ve made no bones about my, uh, ‘far-left views,’ as a few papers have called them. But there are some high points wouldn’t you say?”

  The celebrity shakes his head. “If I could get de-whitified today I wouldn’t waste a second.”

  “De-whitified?” the host asks.

  “Yeah, I’m actually working on a little project, a novel.” Oh boy, I can’t wait to read this. An actor turned novelist? How can it go wrong? “It’s a dystopian futuristic thing,” the celebrity says, “ a post apocalyptic America where everyone wakes up in a wasteland but no one can find out what happened. They’re walking around dumbstruck like medicated zombies, like really zonked with amnesia. And then my protagonist steps in. You’ll love this guy and I think the readers will too. Doctor W.E.M. King-Obama—

  “W.E.M. King-Obama?” the host asks.

  “Yes,” says the celebrity. “He’s a mix of all of my personal heroes. W.E.B. Dubois, Martin Luther King Jr., and of course our fearless leader, Mister President himself.”

  Crowd loves it. Heavy applause. The celebrity continues,

  “Doctor King-Obama, an African-American, along with the help of his partner, Eleanor Roosevelt Suzuki, a nouvelle-progressive woman of the world—

  “Nouvelle Progressive?” the host asks.

  “Yes,” the celebrity says. “She combines the best of progressive politics and avant-garde art represented in the feminism of the Seneca Falls Conference, post-Enlightenment Paris, in particular La Belle Époque, and the Marxist inspired liberation theology of South America.”

  “But,” the host asks, “don’t you find that hypocritical? At least contradictory to your thesis?”

  “How so?”

  “Well, the Seneca Falls Conference, if I remember correctly, was led by a group of white people, no? Women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott—

  “Yes, but white women don’t count as white people.”

  “Really?” the host asks, slumping back in his chair.

  “No. No by ‘whites’ I mean white men, really. The people we all can agree to hate. Right?” he gestures to the audience. The crowd is with him.

  “Okay,” the host says, “let’s say that I agree with that. I don’t, but hypothetically let’s pretend that white women, because they’re not white men, don’t count as ‘white.’ Still what you mention above: the progressivism of post-Enlightenment Paris, and Marxism, both came out of the white, white male led, Western European tradition. I’m afraid, sir, that this point is not debatable.”

  “Well, actually, I don’t agree. Marx, if you remember, was not really white. He was a German secular Jew ex-pat living in England. That’s not exactly what I’d call white, you know? And as for Paris. Well, and follow this connection
, okay? The Parisians aren’t really white, either. See Marx talked about religion as the opiate of the people and look at what the French stand for. Atheism. Atheistic Existentialism. They have rejected the opiate and have become good, rational, secular and scientific citoyens. I’d argue that their whiteness has fallen from them like a snake shedding skin.”

  “But atheism, rationalism, secularism, science, all these things come from the one and same white Western European Tradition!” the host says, either mad or exasperated, I can’t tell which. “It’s not just Christendom, as it once was called, that defined Europe and came from that Tradition. But the very things you claim to be outside this Tradition and that challenge it, in your view, came from this same root. How can you deny this?”

  “I’m not trying to deny anything,” the celebrity says. “I don’t believe in keeping your feelings bottled up. My father kept his anger inside and developed Crohn’s disease so I try to do yoga and breathing exercises—

  “I think we’re getting a little far afield here,” the host says. “Let’s get back to your novel. You’ve told us about Doctor King-Obama. His partner, what is her story?”

  “Yes. Eleanor Roosevelt Suzuki, a nouvelle-progressive woman of the world, from Brooklyn and born to a Japanese father and a Native American and Icelandic mother—both of her parents committed left-wing Democrats, very politically active—they, she and Doctor King-Obama, figure it out.”

  “Figure it out?”

  “The problem. The zombie amnesia that’s ruining America and the world.”

  “It’s the white people’s fault,” the host says, sarcastically.