John Waters

‘For more than a hundred days I have been ill with a condition called Ramsay Hunt Syndrome, a rare and unpleasant viral thing—dormant chicken pox that reactivates in a hapless few, years after being forgotten.’

This opens an article [in full at link below] on the First Things website by John Waters about recently falling ill with a life-threatening neurological  condition.

Awaiting the results of a CAT scan, he writes:

[my] symptoms seemed to be a physiological dimension of the condition itself. My body was rebelling against my being, and I was cast between the two, unable to stand, speak, hear, or see properly. The dizziness was a kind of disintegration of my self, and the result seemed to be that no previously existing principle, conviction, theory, value, or belief had stability within me.

I could not help feeling that these reactions bespoke a diminution of faith, which had seemed strong when I was strong, but now was dissolving with my strength. The substance of my beliefs remained but, with my reason shot to pieces, could no longer find traction. In this new and unfamiliar place,

I felt spiritually alone; marooned, without an external source of support. I had lost my spiritual equilibrium. My illness made it clear that something had shifted in me, without my knowing, to render my steps on the spiritual path less sure-footed. Sometimes, doubt and unease can remain as undetected as a latent virus.

For a long time (to take an example in a different category), I had held that Catholics who claimed to have lost their faith because of clerical sex abuse were hiding behind an alibi with little basis in reason. Why should the sinfulness of others weaken one’s faith in God?

But more recently, I have felt sympathy with such people, realizing that such a fundamental breach of trust by someone who has spent years studying the vital questions of faith is not an incidental matter, but affects the core of belief.

By the same token—and this may have been a factor in my own case—when we see the elders of Christ’s Church engaging in behavior that denigrates the Church’s most fundamental teachings, can we be surprised if we find ourselves doubting first of all their faith and, perhaps, the reliability of our own?

This had not occurred to me before my Ramsay Hunt nightmare, but I have since come to believe there may be something in it. {more below]

The Terror Of Goodbye (John Waters, First Things)