We are happy. I guess my only worry is that this happiness can’t last forever. We grow old and we die. I need to do some further thinking on the meaning of suffering and death. My father will be 68 in a couple of days and he’s not that well. I just phoned my mother. How does she look at what’s happening? Jan. 21, 1972 I never spoke with my mother about her feelings. It was both that I was too wrapped up in my own family issues to spend “quality time” with her and also that she was too stoic to express her feelings. Perhaps it is characteristic of the Irish, but my parents rarely shared feelings and I have inherited a similar reluctance to share what’s in my heart. Some revealing of feelings does take place on the pages of my journal. Now, after several decades, I discover that things are written there which reflect issues about which I had not spoken to anyone. Although I remain uneasy about expressing feelings, perhaps I can at least dip my toe in the waters of self- revelation. One sensitive issue was the place of women in the church. I was so committed to promoting the right of priests – male priests -- to marry that I didn’t want to complicate the issue by pushing for women priests. As popular as that idea is today among liberal Catholics, it was a novelty in the 1970s. However, feminist energy was emerging in our liturgy groups. Women began to challenge the male clerical leadership. We may have been functioning without the approval of bishops, but those of us who had been ordained continued to believe that we were the (only) legitimate leaders in matters religious. At a March 1972 meeting in the Bayside home of one of the liturgy group families, tensions emerged, not just about the role of women, but about church, about faith. We had moved from the exhilaration of feeling liberated to uncertainty as to what to do with our freedom. Thirty of us were present, all of us family people in our thirties, all with deep commitment to Catholicism. But there were cracks in that once solid wall. The initial euphoria of being trailblazers into what we saw, at least vaguely, as a different kind of church, gave way to disillusionment. The vigorous small communities of the late Sixties and early Seventies were fragmenting. Some members returned to the “legitimate” parishes. Some abandoned the church completely. Others, myself included, not wanting to rupture the lifelong relationship to the church, straddled the vague line between orthodoxy and schism. To some extent, our bodies remained anchored to the institution while our minds moved to the margins. We were in the choir, but singing off key. Thus, two years into my reconstructed life, the “honeymoon” was coming to an end. It is clear from a long and convoluted journal entry that I was wrestling with a tangle of “identity” issues. …my dilemma is how to reconstruct a self that is capable of coping with the polarization that has entered the male/female relationships in our social group. I am hit by feminist slogans and charges in my classes as well. Does every social problem have to lead to revolution? Maybe it does, at least today when unhappy people seem to need extreme causes in order to give some meaning to their lives….I don’t feel that this situation – from a personal point of view – is critical, or should I say fatal? I’ve grown wary of people. This is but another example of how ideas can separate people and even lead them to rip each other apart. If I can’t trust people, then where do I turn? Some turn to the occult or to religion. One can attempt to escape into the recesses of the mind. I have done that in the past. It works for a while but leaves me lonely. Another option is to seek new relationships, but that is difficult and dangerous. It takes time to establish trust and communication. It is painful as well as slow. And it is likely to be but a house of cards, tumbling down as soon as it reaches a certain height. Yet another choice is to compromise or even surrender. When the pressure mounts and the challenge to self looms large – accept less than an honest or heart-felt identity. This tempts me. Perhaps survival is the only solution, not totality. My basic problem may be idealism: I want happiness; I want harmony. Another choice is to substitute work for relationships. This option appeals to me and I have a ready-made task in the form of the dissertation research. I’ve been putting it off and saying that I wasn’t motivated sufficiently – relationships were distracting me from work. I was experiencing more satisfaction in being with people than in being with books. I told myself that living was more important than working; that loving counted more than achievement. I had crawled out of my security blanket just far enough to be frightened back in. A little voice says ‘see, you shouldn’t trust anyone.’… Aug. 6, 1972
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