On the Catholic Propensity, in Literature, to Glorify Pain

Getting Dressed

It is my failure to get dressed in the morning… and even if I get dressed, to prepare my hair; and even if I prepare my hair, to put on clothes;  and even if I put on clothes, to bind my chest for support….

So that, in the end, when all had been accomplished, I stand before the mirror shivering with fatigue, and find myself quickly, painfully, undoing the beautiful work of the past hour, only to fall upon my bed, and lose myself to the world for an hour.

Then, when I rise, I am less dressed than when I began.

It is for this reason that I have often neglected to dress at all. The reason not being that no one new might lay eyes upon me (it is enough to dress for God, myself, and family). The reason not being that I sit in hopelessness regarding the efficacy of dressing (although that often comes on, after the attempt has failed). The sole and only reason being that dressing is exhausting—

And yet, I do not give it up.

Even if it should all come off afterward; even if I must lie in bed with no one to see my beauty; even if my face puffs up and my eyes turn red, and my breasts sag low beneath my shirt, there is a great benefit to making the effort every morning.

There is hope there.

Flannery O’Connor - The Catholic Obsessed with Pain

When I first read Flannery O’Connor, I thought, “This woman, a Catholic? But she’s so obsessed with pain.”

Then I read her again, and my friend explained that that very pain itself was the Catholicism inwardly contained.

How we Catholics are obsessed with pain!

Not only did the Mother of God experience seven Piercings in her Heart, but she asked for them. Not only did she ask for them, but she suffered the agony of the cross, and the pain of the moment, through foreknowledge before, and knowledge ever after. How bleakly like a Russian novel, we think.

But if we Catholics are obsessed with suffering, it is no more than society at large… only our suffering looks a little different.

How O’Connor’s characters seem to suffer needlessly, and when they oughtn’t to! And all of it, like my dressing in the morning, appears self-inflicted.

Parker, in her short story “Parker’s Back,” is not suffering because his wife hates him, and in the end, locks him out of the house. He suffers on account of his inner world, and because of the tattoo he puts on his back, and finally, on account of his willingness to stare into the eyes of Christ. His suffering is self-inflicted.

And I think that’s the difference. Any Great Novel will show you the same.

The Great Literature

It is the entire point of the great Russian novel, The Brothers Karamazov, that the oldest brother suffers not because he is accused of murder, but on account of his desire for a woman, and his inability to commit to her as he yearns to do. And the youngest suffers not because of his brother’s murder trial or social faux pas, but on account of his brother’s, and his father’s, and his neighbor’s, sins. Inner, not outer, suffering.

But such, you argue, are the themes in Hemmingway, Steinbeck, Hawthorne, and Fitzgerald, and none of these were Catholic. They presented their characters as inwardly tormented, not the victims of external circumstance, so how can I say that Catholics treat it differently?

Yes, I say to you, yes - these authors, and many others, have had great insight into the human condition, and correctly portray inner turmoil as the worst of human torments. But here is the key difference: that they see inner turmoil as a tragedy, and not redemption. They see it as a sort of winding bypath, an obstacle thrown in the way of their Hero’s Journey, which disrupts his progress, and prevents him from reaching the end. Or, at best, distracts him from his promise of happiness.

The Redemption

O’Connor does not see pain as a distraction or obstacle - no.

She saw it as redemption. The redemption that arises from suffering is the glory of suffering, it is the point that makes such a subject worth the telling!

We naive Catholics do not tell about suffering to learn how to avoid it, or to commiserate with tragedy. We tell of suffering - that beautiful, communal equalizer - that thing which belongs to you no matter who you are: man or woman, queer or straight, child or grown, Christian or atheist, Russian, American, or Jewish… the list goes on, the divisions separate ad infinitum, and in the end, only suffering remains….

We Catholics, honest almost to a fault, we tell of suffering not to avoid it, but to embrace it.

I have spoken narrowly up to now: I don’t quite mean only Catholics embrace pain. I’d like to broaden my category to Russians and Greeks: those dark, sinister, truthful, and mystical children of the Orthodox line. Do they not, also, look at suffering as self-inflicted, and at that self-infliction, that embracing, as redemptive?

Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky do, indeed, tell of suffering beyond recognition, and promise strange, unworldy redemption, in the very midst of hopelessness.

Unfortunately, we often do them a disservice, as I did to O’Connor. In reading them, we dismiss and bypass their greatest redeemers: for example, Levin (Anna Karenina) and Alyosha (The Brothers Karamazov). I watched a film once that flagrantly boasted itself as The Brothers Karamazov, and what should I find but that the very main character, Alexy Alexandrovich, (Alyosha to his friends), who faces pain and embraces it like a gift from God, had been relegated to all of two scenes. His brother, the accused Dimitri - the drunken, dissolute brother, who views himself as a tragic victim - was all that remained of the plot.

And that’s to say nothing of the black-and-white Wuthering Heights film I watched the other day, which ends after only Part 1, leaving off half of the book, as if the redemption and happy ending of the rest of the story were irrelevant. Who can say Catholics are obsessed with suffering, when the very joy of the journey is denied to the audience by conventional storytellers? Emily Bronte tells of pain in her epic, and portrays redemption through the unusual virtue of a willingness to look that pain in the face, and embrace it.

We have lost that virtue.

Reclaiming the Virtue

Is this why, today, we glorify love lost - as if to lose love is a greater accolade on one’s character than to love through long life? I believe so. I believe we glorify lost love because true love - which lasts until death - is suffering. There’s no way around that. Pain and tribulation are part of man’s parcel, but they come as a boon. Yes, a boon; which - according to Catholics - will act as the very vehicle to drive men into Heaven.

What is Hell but eternal pain, without the chance at redemption? And what is life on earth, but continual suffering; until redemption suffuses us, and transforms our pain - transforms it into Heaven on earth, because it was faced, fought, and defeated. Pain does not depart, but neither does it rule. Pain is the common denominator, and love the available fruit of our battle. It is ripe for the picking, for those who fight.

Will you face the pain, and fight with me?

I will continue to get up and get dressed in the morning. And who knows what love, or what joy, or what redemption, will spring from this path of hopeful pain, which I, like O’Connor, Alyosha, and Emily Brontë, embrace?