If you’re looking for something low-key with a little bit of a community aspect, I’d love it if you’d join me in reading my newest book this Lent.
Pray for Us tells the stories of 75+ Saints who had real struggles and brokenness and found God in the midst of their ordinary (or shockingly adventurous lives). It’s chock full of Saints you’ve never heard of—but need to. And it deals with issues of abuse and chronic illness and infertility and dysfunctional relationships and all sorts of hard things that are perfect to take to prayer in Lent (or any time). It’s also full of stories of redemption and mercy and joy, to fix your eyes on Easter Sunday during the long, slow trudge to Calvary.
Here’s what you have to do to be in the book club:
-decide you’re in the book club
Here’s what you really should do:
-get a copy of the book
Here’s what you can do:
-check out the discussion questions I’ll be sharing each week
-get a book club together
-journal your answers
-write a public post using that week’s hashtag and tagging @avemariapress to get free downloadable prayer cards!
-write a public post each week using that week’s hashtag and tagging @avemariapress to enter to win a copy! (7 total winners) You can answer the questions, reflect on the reading, or ask questions to be answered in my weekly lives
-tune in for Instagram lives each weekend where I chat about the reading and answer your questions. You can even say, “That was cool, but what Saint can you give me for xyz?” Free Saint ninjaing!
This can be as low-key as you want. You can even just scroll the hashtag and see other people’s reflections or join me for the lives. I just want y’all to know Jesus better through these Saints.
You can download the discussion guide here or tune in on Instagram and Facebook each Sunday to see the questions for the week. Here’s our reading schedule:
After a year like this if you need a super low-key Advent, I absolutely get that! But if you feel as though what you need right now is to seek silence and stillness, to make space in your heart for the Christ Child in a very focused way, this Advent Boot Camp might be just the thing. Read the intro here or just dive right in.
This “Advent Boot Camp” is a guideline, not a foolproof plan. Feel free to substitute anything. What’s essential is that you’re spending time in silent prayer–not just prayer but silent prayer–and that you’re easing into it.
Each day’s prayer starts with a 5 minute warmup. It’s hard just to snap from all the noise of the world into prayer, so take some time to slow down, talk to the Lord about what’s weighing on you, and get quiet. Then see what God has to say to you through his Word, his Saints, and the prayers of his Church. Finally, spend some good time in silence, either processing what you’ve read, talking to God, or trying to be still in his presence. If your prayer life has consisted solely of grace before meals and Mass on Sunday, this might be tough. But it will get easier. And what better time to seek silence than in the mad bustle leading up to Christmas?
Week 1: Begin each day with 5 minutes of prayer, make one chapel visit
Day 1: 5 minute warmup; Isaiah 40; 5 minutes silence
Day 2: 5 minute warmup; Isaiah 9:1-6; one decade of the rosary, 5 minutes silence
Day 3: 5 minute warmup;Luke 1:26-38; 10 minutes silence
Day 4: 5 minute warmup; Catechism 522-526; one decade of the rosary; 5 minutes silence
Day 18: 5 minute warmup; Isaiah 61-62; 15 minutes silence
Day 19: 5 minute warmup; full rosary (joyful mysteries); 5 minutes silence
Day 20:
5 minute warmup; make a good examination of conscience, asking God to cast light into all the areas of sin in your life and to make you truly repentant and grateful for his love and mercy; go to confession; 15 minutes silence
I’ve compiled the non-Biblical readings here if you want to print them in advance: Advent Boot Camp readings
This is going to max you out at 30-35 minutes of prayer at one time. If you feel like you can do more than that, go for it. If you’re a beginner when it comes to non-liturgical prayer, though, this might be a good way to get started. Whether you’re interested in this approach or not, do spend some time praying about how you’re going to try to grow closer to the Lord this Advent. But don’t stress about it–it’s supposed to be a time of preparation and peace, not frantic anxiety, despite what the mall might do to you this time of year. You might consider starting to read the Bible through in a year using this schedule. Or read Caryll Houselander’s The Reed of God. Just be sure you do something more than bake and shop to prepare for Christmas this year. The Christ Child is coming, after all. Offer him your heart.
This has been a miserable year for just about the whole world, so if you need a super low-key Advent, I absolutely get that! But if you feel as though what you need right now is to seek silence and stillness, to make space in your heart for the Christ Child in a very focused way, this Advent Boot Camp might be just the thing. Read the intro here or just dive right in.
This “Advent Boot Camp” is a guideline, not a foolproof plan. Feel free to substitute anything. What’s essential is that you’re spending time in silent prayer–not just prayer but silent prayer–and that you’re easing into it.
Each day’s prayer starts with a 5 minute warmup. It’s hard just to snap from all the noise of the world into prayer, so take some time to slow down, talk to the Lord about what’s weighing on you, and get quiet. Then see what God has to say to you through his Word, his Saints, and the prayers of his Church. Finally, spend some good time in silence, either processing what you’ve read, talking to God, or trying to be still in his presence. If your prayer life has consisted solely of grace before meals and Mass on Sunday, this might be tough. But it will get easier. And what better time to seek silence than in the mad bustle leading up to Christmas?
Week 1: Begin each day with 5 minutes of prayer, make one chapel visit
Day 1: 5 minute warmup; Isaiah 40; 5 minutes silence
Day 2: 5 minute warmup; Isaiah 9:1-6; one decade of the rosary, 5 minutes silence
Day 3: 5 minute warmup;Luke 1:26-38; 10 minutes silence
Day 4: 5 minute warmup; Catechism 522-526; one decade of the rosary; 5 minutes silence
Day 5: 5 minute warmup; the Office of Readings (on your iBreviary app or click here for the second reading from today’s memorial); 5 minutes silence
Day 21: 5 minute warmup; make a good examination of conscience, asking God to cast light into all the areas of sin in your life and to make you truly repentant and grateful for his love and mercy; go to confession; 15 minutes silence
Week 4: Begin and end each day with 5 minutes of prayer, make two chapel visits
Day 22: 5 minute warmup; memorize Isaiah 9:5 (“A child is born to us…”); 10 minutes silence
Day 23: 5 minute warmup; Jeremiah 31; 15 minutes silence
Day 24: 5 minute warmup; 15 minutes journaling on why you need the incarnation; 10 minutes silence
I’ve compiled the non-Biblical readings here if you want to print them in advance: Advent Boot Camp readings
This is going to max you out at 30-35 minutes of prayer at one time. If you feel like you can do more than that, go for it. If you’re a beginner when it comes to non-liturgical prayer, though, this might be a good way to get started. Whether you’re interested in this approach or not, do spend some time praying about how you’re going to try to grow closer to the Lord this Advent. But don’t stress about it–it’s supposed to be a time of preparation and peace, not frantic anxiety, despite what the mall might do to you this time of year. You might consider starting to read the Bible through in a year using this schedule. Or read Caryll Houselander’s The Reed of God. Just be sure you do something more than bake and shop to prepare for Christmas this year. The Christ Child is coming, after all. Offer him your heart.
I was in a discussion recently
about the fear of the Lord and it became clear that most people present could
view this gift of the Holy Spirit only as a negative, a servile fear or, at
best, the fear a child has for his beloved but distant father. And I’m sure
that’s the experience many people have of the God who holds galaxies in the
palms of his hands and holds us in existence. God, they’ve been told, is a
vengeful judge, a Father who is always disappointed in you, a magical yet
spiteful being who spies on your petty sins in order to punish you in this
world and the next.
Compared to that, the image of
God as innocuous buddy is a relief. But while it’s certainly better for people
not to be terrified of the Lord, God as neighbor-you-chat-with-occasionally-who-can-be-relied-on-to-jump-start-your-car
is just as inaccurate. A god who inspires no fear is an impotent creature,
incapable of true love.
Fear is, after all, a part of falling
in love. That thrill of fear that tinges the edge of romance, the trepidation
that surrounds all true vulnerability. The fear of the Lord at its worst is the
terror of a slave before his callous master; at its best, it’s the nerves of a
bride on her wedding night.
This is the fear of the Lord
that is the beginning of all wisdom, as Proverbs tells us: the fear of a God
who is good but never safe, of a lover who insists that we hold nothing back.
We’ve all felt it at one moment or another, not just reverence before a God who
is—quite literally—awesome, but apprehension when the God we want so badly to
trust seems to be asking more of us than we think we can give.
But what about the times that
God feels distant, less lover and more acquaintance? When we can’t excite any
holy fear of the Lord in ourselves and our spiritual life feels flat? What
then?
Now, faith is not feelings.
It’s essential that we remind ourselves of this, that prayer is good even when
it’s dry and our hearts can belong to the Lord even when we don’t feel him.
Still, we owe it to our tender
and almighty God to seek to know him as he truly is and not as he is most
comfortable to us. So might I suggest, as a way of recovering a healthy fear of
the Lord, a spiritual practice that might be decidedly uncomfortable for many
of us?
It was the standard practice in
the West for many centuries, of course, which means that the vast majority of
Saints received this way. But receiving on the tongue has more to recommend it
than just being traditional.
Namely, it’s awkward,
excessively intimate, and decidedly uncomfortable. Just the thing.
If you (like me) were raised
making of your hands a throne for the Body of Christ, it can be more than a
little off-putting to imagine approaching a priest and sticking your tongue out
at him (at which point he’s as likely as not to misjudge his target and give
you a good taste of his finger).
But what better time to open
yourself up to discomfort than at the moment you receive a God made defenseless
for you? How better to present yourself to your bridegroom than in holy
helplessness, receiving him in a way that leaves you entirely vulnerable to his
will? There is something in this mode of receiving the body, blood, soul, and
divinity of Christ that forms our heart to receive his will this way:
abandoned, with no illusion of control or power.
If nothing else, receiving
communion on the tongue makes it so much more evident what this act of
communion is: an embrace between lovers, the bridegroom’s kiss on the lips of
his beloved. This is no less true when the Eucharist is received in the hand,
but so much harder to ignore when we present ourselves before the Lord to be
kissed.
Now there are any number of reasons that a person might choose to receive in the hand, and far be it from me to bind what Rome has loosed, but if you’ve found that your experience of the Lord has become sterile or servile or harmless and platonic, maybe this is the way to open your heart to the fear of the Lord once more.
Imagine that you’re an American man in 1946 who was unable to serve in World War II because of some unseen medical condition. Your friends and brothers fought. Many were killed. Others will never recover from physical and mental trauma. Meanwhile, you’re healthy and generally happy, but for the guilt and the shame. You would gladly have gone in their place, died in their place. You wonder if you’re less of a man because you didn’t fight.
And then you go to Mass on Veteran’s Day and the priest (unimaginable in the Traditional Latin Mass, but let’s pretend) asks all veterans to stand. All the men your age stand. Your father’s generation stands. Your grandfather’s generation stands. And the congregation applauds them and hands them flowers while you shrink into your seat, wondering what people think of you and whether you should just stand anyway so they stop staring. And maybe nobody’s thinking about you at all, but it feels like a twist of the knife. You know it shouldn’t. You smile and applaud. You’re so proud of the men standing all around you, so grateful to them. But it hurts.
It’s not the same, of course. All analogies limp. But I’ve been trying to think of a parallel situation to the “All mothers please stand and get a gift” custom that’s sprung up in recent years. For the many, many people for whom Mother’s Day isn’t hard, it can be very difficult to understand just how painful these paraliturgical celebrations can be, as it feels like a spotlight is shining down on you and declaring to the world that this deep wound of your heart makes you fundamentally inferior.
I don’t hate Mother’s Day. I genuinely don’t. I happily call my mother and text my sister and often field messages throughout the day from my godchildren and former students. I think Mother’s Day is lovely.
But in recent years, I’ve seen Mother’s Day being celebrated at Mass in ways that cause a lot of suffering. Women who’ve lost children and don’t know whether or not to stand for the mothers’ blessing, women who’ve placed children for adoption, women who struggle with infertility or who long to be married but find themselves alone as their biological clocks tick down, women whose children haven’t called them, will never call them again. And then there are the men who love those women and the people who have painful relationships with their own mothers. It all adds up to a secular holiday that causes people a lot of pain at Mass, prompting far more women than you’d expect just to skip Mass on Mother’s Day weekend.
If our observance of a secular celebration is driving people to sin, that’s an enormous problem.
If our observance of a secular celebration is causing untold pain in the body of Christ, that’s an enormous problem.
Now, I know that people feel very strongly about this. I know that because when I’ve shared my own deep suffering in relationship to this I’ve been attacked like you would not believe. And while I remain unconvinced that secular holidays ought to be celebrated in the liturgy at all, I understand that it’s important to many people. So despite my misgivings, I’ll concede the point and assume that Mother’s Day ought to be celebrated at church.
But we don’t have to single people out. We don’t have to make Mother’s Day the theme of the Mass. We don’t have to force grieving women to decide whether or not they’re “mother enough” to stand. Here are some other options:
Have a Mothers’ Mass. Rather than celebrating Mothers’ Day at every Mass, publicize a midmorning Mass as the Mothers’ Mass. At the beginning of earlier Masses, announce that those who were hoping to receive a special Mother’s blessing may return for the 10am Mass or see Father in the narthex afterward. At the beginning of the Mothers’ Mass, announce that those for whom Mothers’ Day is difficult may want to return for a later Mass that will not be geared toward mothers.
Have a Mass for those who grieve. Like St. Anne in Detroit, offer one Mass (ideally the latest in the day) where Mothers’ Day isn’t discussed. Publicize it beforehand and announce at the beginning of each Mass (and on posters outside) that there will be a Mass specifically for those for whom Mothers’ Day is difficult.
Try something like this: “We recognize that this might be a difficult day for some. If Mother’s Day is hard for you, for whatever reason, you’re very welcome to come back for our 11:30 Mass instead.”
Have a petition for mothers in the prayers of the faithful. And that’s it. The prayers of the faithful are the perfect time for this kind of thing.
“For all mothers, that they would be strengthened by the model and intercession of the Mother of God to seek the Lord with their lives and draw their children deeper into his heart, we pray to the Lord….”
Invite people to enroll mothers in their lives in a Mothers’ Day Novena. Discuss it prior to Mothers’ Day, have cards people can give their loved ones, and have the list (or basket) of names brought forward during the offertory. Then just pray, “For all those enrolled in our Mothers’ Day novena, we pray to the Lord….”
Ask all women to stand for a blessing. Explain spiritual motherhood, that women are mothers in many ways, as godmothers and teachers and aunts and friends. In the blessing, pray specifically for physical mothers but also for all women who are mothers in some way.
“Heavenly Father, send your Spirit down upon these women who bear fruit in so many ways. Bless them in their motherhood. Give them patience and compassion. Console them in their grief and strengthen them in difficulty. May they be an image of your love to the world as they seek to follow you in all things, and may Mary, the Mother of God and our mother, enfold them in her love now and always.”
Do the mothers’ blessing while everyone is standing. Rather than asking women to decide whether or not to stand, or to feel singled out for not standing, do the blessing just before the closing blessing, when everyone’s standing anyway. Or do it while everyone’s sitting.
Focus on Mary. It’s always appropriate to talk about the Mother of God. Maybe give a homily on Mary (and, you know, Jesus and the readings) and let that be enough about motherhood.
Have a special reception afterward. Instead of celebrating Mothers’ Day during the Mass, announce at the end that everyone is welcome to come to the activity center after Mass for cake and a special mothers’ blessing. It’s much easier just to slip out the side exit than to sit alone in the pew as every other woman stands for her blessing.
Friends, I am a mother in so many ways and I am a bride to the perfect bridegroom. I’m not at all sure that God’s calling me to marriage and motherhood and I’m profoundly aware of how fruitful my life is in ways that would be impossible if I were married with children. And STILL Mothers’ Day is hard for me. If it’s not hard for you, I’m delighted! But there are a lot of people who suffer terribly every second Sunday in May, most especially at church. You don’t have to understand it. But we have got to figure out a way to ease it.
I put out an Advent Boot Camp four years ago and the response was great, so it’s become an annual thing. Just a little tweaking since Christmas isn’t always the same day of the week. Read the intro here or just dive right in and prepare for the Spirit to pump you up.1
This “Advent Boot Camp” is a guideline, not a foolproof plan. Feel free to substitute anything. What’s essential is that you’re spending time in silent prayer–not just prayer but silent prayer–and that you’re easing into it.
Each day’s prayer starts with a 5 minute warmup. It’s hard just to snap from all the noise of the world into prayer, so take some time to slow down, talk to the Lord about what’s weighing on you, and get quiet. Then see what God has to say to you through his Word, his Saints, and the prayers of his Church. Finally, spend some good time in silence, either processing what you’ve read, talking to God, or trying to be still in his presence. If your prayer life has consisted solely of grace before meals and Mass on Sunday, this might be tough. But it will get easier. And what better time to seek silence than in the mad bustle leading up to Christmas?
Week 1: Begin each day with 5 minutes of prayer, make one chapel visit
Day 1: 5 minute warmup; Isaiah 40; 5 minutes silence
Day 2: 5 minute warmup; Isaiah 9:1-6; one decade of the rosary, 5 minutes silence
Day 3: 5 minute warmup; Luke 1:26-38; 10 minutes silence
Day 4: 5 minute warmup; Catechism 522-526; one decade of the rosary; 5 minutes silence
Day 12: 5 minute warmup; 15 minutes journaling on why you need the incarnation; 5 minutes silence
Day 13: 5 minute warmup; Stations of the Cross
Day 14: 5 minute warmup; make a good examination of conscience, asking God to cast light into all the areas of sin in your life and to make you truly repentant and grateful for his love and mercy; go to confession; 15 minutes silence
Week 3: Begin and end each day with 5 minutes of prayer, attend two extra Masses
I’ve compiled the non-Biblical readings here if you want to print them in advance: Advent Boot Camp readings
This is going to max you out at 30-35 minutes of prayer at one time. If you feel like you can do more than that, go for it. If you’re a beginner when it comes to non-liturgical prayer, though, this might be a good way to get started. Whether you’re interested in this approach or not, do spend some time praying about how you’re going to try to grow closer to the Lord this Advent. But don’t stress about it–it’s supposed to be a time of preparation and peace, not frantic anxiety, despite what the mall might do to you this time of year. You might consider starting to read the Bible through in a year using this schedule. Or read Caryll Houselander’s The Reed of God. Just be sure you do something more than bake and shop to prepare for Christmas this year. The Christ Child is coming, after all. Offer him your heart.
Ten points if you read that in your Hans and Franz voice. [↩]
Click “Office of Readings” on the left side of the page [↩]
It occurred to me today that some of you, having given up Facebook for Lent, may have missed the announcement of my Lenten project (mostly because I decided to do it on Ash Wednesday). So for those who haven’t been following along on Facebook but get email notifications, here’s what I’ve been up to.
Every day, I’ve been recording some reflections on the day’s readings. Sometimes this is a lead-in to a particular topic, sometimes it’s line-by-line exegesis, sometimes I hit all the readings, sometimes it’s just one, sometimes it’s exhortation, sometimes apologetics. Always there are ridiculous faces and remarkable screen shots:
So if you want some more Scripture in your life this Lent or just 15 minutes a day of me babbling, click on over to my Youtube channel and join me!
It’s taken me years, but I’m really learning to love St. Joseph. Part of it has probably been praying this novena, but a bigger part is art. I’m sorry, but I just can’t get that excited about an old guy with a lily.
But with all the traveling I’ve done, I’ve seen a lot of images of St. Joseph that have shown me that this is a tender, fierce, joyful, protector of a man, the man who taught curly-haired, gap-toothed Jesus how to hold a hammer and speak to ladies and go back to sleep after a nightmare. That’s a Saint worth loving. So here are some of my favorite images of Joseph, strong, sweet, and silly as he was.
Watching over Mary during the Visitation. It never occurred to me that he might have traveled with her, but of course he would have wanted to protect her!
Loving on his bride.
Not just teaching little Jesus but learning from him, too.
Standing behind Mary and Jesus with his staff, ready to take on any brigand, ruffian, or trained soldier who might threaten his beloveds.
Mary’s looking at Jesus and Jesus is looking at the Father but Joseph is looking at the audience as if to say, “You GUYS! Do you believe they let me hang out with them??”
Look at the way they love each other! Jesus is looking at Joseph like, “Dad you did a really good job making that horse! One time I made all the horses and it was really cool. But I really like your horse!”
In the cold of the stable or the uncertainty of the flight into Egypt, Joseph was their rock, the one who (in the image of the Father) made everything okay. Whether cold or frightened or just exhausted, Jesus and Mary knew Joseph would hold them. Mary was without sin but Joseph was the one ordained by God to be the leader of their Holy Family and he gave every moment of his life to serve them.
Oh, his humble smile holding the sweet little foot of toddler Jesus who asked his Papa for a shoulder ride!
I’m a sucker for non-Western images of Mary, but you hardly ever see any of Joseph. Here’s a lovely Korean one to remedy that.
Baby Jesus shoulder ride!
I adore this one. At first you think Jesus is just little and fell asleep playing but then you see the way he’s holding his hand and wonder. I think he was hammering a nail, the echoes of the crucifixion overcame him, and he was broken with grief at what he would have to suffer. Before Gethsemane, I imagine he prayed that prayer–thy will be done–a thousand times. And Joseph is there speaking to the Father on behalf of the Son, asking that he would have the strength and courage to suffer for love of men. Sigh.
Oh, the love in those eyes. Many of you get to see this in the way your husbands love your babies. If this picture makes you think of your husband, go give him a nice long kiss. You got a good one.
There’s a pain in his eyes despite the smile on Jesus’ face. Who knows what he was worrying about or regretting. See how he drops to Jesus’ level and hangs on so tight? Would that we ran to Jesus like that.
Even as the traditional old man, Joseph is on his feet, staff in hand, willing to fight.
Goodness, he looks like a giddy 20-year-old on his wedding day. The look on his face, like, “Have you seen this woman? Have you seen this baby? This is MY family! How did that even happen?”
St. Joseph is patron of the universal Church, terror of demons, and patron of a happy death. But above all, I think, he’s the patron of husbands and fathers. So here’s to St. Joseph and to the men who (in his image) love and serve and protect and tickle and delight and adore. Thank you for being men after the heart of St. Joseph. Good St. Joseph, pray for us!
Edit: many thanks to Mary Ellen Fosso for this incredible image of St. Joseph from the cathedral in Wichita:
Look at the arms on that carpenter! God sure didn’t find a weak, passive man to take care of his son and his mother.
If you’ve been around Christian circles for very long, you’ve probably heard some variation of the line, “There’s no such thing as a solitary Christian.” And while St. Simeon the Stylite and other holy hermits might disagree, the maxim stands for most of us. We need others to encourage us, to challenge us, and to correct us, loving us all the while. Those of you who are raising families and living in intentional communities know this–it’s the people around you who help you grow in holiness.
This Lent, why don’t you use that community to help you live Lent more fully? Instead of walking through Lent alone, talk with your family or your community about what you’ll be doing. Ask them if there’s a particular habit of yours that they think you might have an addiction to, a particular way of serving that might push you in just the right ways. Often you’ll find your kids know you better than you know yourself, as they point out your addiction to Netflix or your obsession with your phone. And only your wife would suggest that you offer to do all the midnight sheet changes for your mostly-potty-trained 3-year-old.
It might seem counter-intuitive to discuss your penitential practices–just showing off, some might say–but it also means if you fail there’s someone to call you out on it. And it might just challenge you to do something truly meaningful.
Case in point: the family of St. Basil: (left to right, first row) St. Peter of Sebaste, St. Basil the Great, St. Basil, St. Gregory, (second row) St. Theosevia, St. Naukratios, St. Emmelia, (top) St. Macrina. (via) Be like this family!
Then there’s the fact that your community exists to make saints out of the lot of you. What better way to do that than to work together to grow in holiness? What if you picked something to do together–a family fast or a weekly community prayer time? Maybe Lent could be more than a diet, instead becoming a season where you all grow closer to one another and to the Lord?
So here’s my suggestion: print out this worksheet and go over it together. Give them out to your Sunday School class, your youth group, your high school students, your RCIA candidates, your catechists–anybody you know with a family. Or give it to the other teachers in your department, the people in your Bible study, the volunteers serving alongside you–anything that constitutes a community. Then brainstorm together. Talk through the list, add your own ideas, tweak the ones you find. Discuss what might be best for each individual and for the group as a whole. Take some time to pray–ten minutes or a few days–then come back with a commitment. Write out who’s doing what. Maybe even pray together over it and then sign it. And post it somewhere obvious with the understanding that you’re consenting not only to correct others (gently) when you see them fall short but also to be corrected.
Obviously, people can do more than what they write on this worksheet. And nobody has to do anything. Maybe some people won’t feel comfortable signing on to the group penance. Take what you can get. But I think that when you decide to work toward holiness together you’ll find that your experience of Lent will be much more powerful.You may also be interested in my Lenten Boot Camp, which will help you work from 20 minutes of prayer a day to an hour of prayer a day over the course of Lent, and this fantastic family Lenten practices calendar, which has a different thing for your family to do each day of Lent.
It’s entirely possible that somebody else has had this idea and it’s been shot out of the water and I’m completely unaware that this has happened.
I don’t really have any idea why I’m posting this except that it’s come up a few times recently so I figured why not?
That being said, let me make a suggestion:
Ugh. Wildflowers are literally the worst.
I’m always hearing people say, “I don’t want my taxes to fund war,” or “I don’t want my taxes to fund abortion,” or “I don’t want my taxes to fund wildflowers planted on the side of the road,” or whatever it is that you’re taking a stand against. I’ve heard this frequently with the HHS debate: “Why bother fighting the mandate? Your taxes already pay for contraceptive services.”
And while there is a distinct moral difference, I think it introduces a good question: is there a way that we can avoid funding immoral programs while still paying taxes?
What if it were possible for us to choose directly what our taxes fund (or don’t fund) as opposed to just electing people to office who make certain promises about policies that they’ll enact? Let’s be honest, there are very, very few politicians that a Christian can support on every single issue. I don’t actually know of any–not at the national level, anyway. And even if I could find a politician who would always vote my way, the system isn’t really set up to allow one honest politician to accomplish much.
But what if instead of just voting we were able to choose to opt out of funding certain things with our taxes? I’m not saying that anybody would get to choose to pay less in taxes. I’m saying that when I sit down to pay my taxes, there’s a section on my federal income tax forms where I can choose to opt out of my tax money going to certain things, such as the development of nuclear weapons, embryonic stem cell research, abortion services, or anything related to the Patriot Act. Whatever I opt out of, I still pay the full amount that I owe, I just have a little more control over my money.
Republicans don’t have a corner on pro-life issues.
These issues would be added to the income tax “opt-out” section based on a referendum. So you get however many thousand signatures on your petition saying, “I think you ought to be able to opt out of funding schools. [Everybody hates schools, right?] I really, as a Libertarian,1 believe that government funding of schools is indoctrinating America’s children in the capitalist-democratic propaganda and that it does a disservice to America’s children and that is immoral for my tax dollars to go towards schools and also weed should be legal.”
Can’t you just smell the oppression?
So you go out and you find 10,000 of your closest Libertarian friends, they all sign this petition, and it’s introduced onto the ballot in the next general election. Then the voters are able to vote for this to be an option for people to opt out of on their taxes. And maybe there’s a threshold, say 50% of voters have to think it’s a reasonable thing for people to want to opt out of paying for schools. They’re not saying that they don’t want to pay for schools, just that they believe that funding schools isn’t necessarily part of the social contract that we all enter into by being citizens. If you reach that 50% threshold, then the next time tax forms come out, it will be added to the list. Along with abortion funding and nuclear research, you’re able to opt out of your taxes going to fund schools.
Then you go to this form in your giant stack of tax paperwork, a form that the majority of Americans won’t even notice, and you as a Libertarian choose to opt out of funding schools. So of the $3000 that you’re paying, maybe $90 was going to go to fund schools. If you opt out of paying for schools, that $90 is then reallocated in the percentage that your taxes are normally distributed:
Why, no, I’m not a cynic. Why do you ask?
The 3% of your $3,000 that no longer goes to schools then gets split up along these lines (with the $2.70 that was supposed to go to schools being thrown into the non-controversial area of greatest need?). You’ve paid the same amount of money, but because you find government funding of schools morally abhorrent, your money doesn’t go towards schools.
Let’s imagine (and, God help us, it doesn’t require much imagination) that the government decides to provide abortions free for all government employees. We encourage our representatives to vote against this, but it passes anyway. Now it seems to me that eventually, if enough people are opposed to this and enough people opt out of funding abortion services, there would no longer be enough money for the government to provide them. The policy would have to be changed.
It’s very difficult to get policy changed by marching on Washington, writing to your senator, or voting for people who you think are going to do what they say they are going to do in their campaign promises. So let’s put our money where our mouth is. Let’s say, “Our money will not go to this” and see what happens to the policies.
We’re not going to see a time in our country where you just don’t pay taxes or where you get to choose exactly what the government is spending its money on, but if you are able to say “My money will not be used to fund these things,” if that becomes an option for us, then it seems to me that our “representative democracy” will become much more representative of the people’s actual desires.
In a country as ill-educated and self-serving as ours, maybe that’s not a great thing, but I think it’s an experiment worth trying.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, but please be gentle–I’m not an economist, I’m not a political theorist. Maybe I’m just an idiot, but I’d like to introduce the idea and let those better informed hash it out and run with it. Is the whole thing ridiculous? Would we need congressional restrictions on what could be opted out of (defense and education being off-limits, for example)? Can you get more specific on number of signatures and percentage of the vote needed? Should the opt-out issues have to be voted on annually–or maybe every four years? Where should that awkward fraction left over go? Is it impossible to have the kind of transparency it would take to break your tax dollars down into percents? Would we have to deal in general categories (healthcare) as opposed to specific services (abortion)? What else am I missing?
