In which I apologize to Dave Armstrong (and others).

ere is a pic­ture of far too many morn­ings. It’s 9:00, because I’ve stayed up until three, argu­ing with the clock and fight­ing the clock. I hate the clock because it’s always wrong. How can it be mid­night? It was only just now 9 p.m.! Lies! Noth­ing but lies every­where I look. But now it’s morn­ing, and I’ve slept six hours, which I also refuse to believe, no mat­ter that my cell phone alarm is scream­ing at me. “Alright,” I say. “Alright.” And I shut it off and I’m still tired and I look at it as though if I stare at it hard enough it will tell me the truth and it will be four in the morn­ing again and I can go back to sleep. But no.

It is in this state of mind that I real­ize, as long as I have my phone in my hand, I may as well get on Face­book and read what peo­ple are say­ing. And I read, and then I go to Twit­ter, and I say to myself, “I won­der what blas­phe­mous out­rage Smith is say­ing now.” And I check, and sure enough, there’s blas­phe­mous out­rage, and I’m out­raged. And I find that the out­rage has worked like caf­feine and I’m awake, and I burst out of bed and run into the next room to find my wife, and I say, “Lis­ten to what Smith has said now,” and she lis­tens, and polite­ly she gets out­raged with me, and now we’re both out­raged, and the adren­a­line rush of anger has woke me up and start­ed my day, and I can chase it with a very large and very strong cup of cof­fee while I get on Face­book and exclaim: “I’m out­raged.”

This has gone on for years.

What I don’t do when I wake up in the morn­ing is pray.

•••

I have been angry for sev­en years. I don’t like to get per­son­al but I must. Anger, like any oth­er drug, is incred­i­bly addic­tive and destruc­tive. Right­eous anger is a thing; Christ got angry; but you have to be incred­i­bly holy for it not to destroy you. Christ knows: I’m not any­where near that holy.

But the thing is, I have time. I don’t know how much; none of us know. I’m going to be 54 lat­er this year—my grand­fa­ther was my age when he died. I don’t know how much time is left me. Maybe as many as twen­ty or thir­ty years, with grace and luck, but I’m old enough to be aware that it’s lim­it­ed. I don’t want to spend the time I have left angry. I don’t want to spend any more time slow­ly destroy­ing my life, slow­ly killing myself. Or wound­ing oth­ers who don’t deserve that.

I say this in pub­lic because I’ve done this in pub­lic.

And sad to say, I’ve let my anger keep me away from con­fes­sion and away from Mass for a long time. The mer­its don’t matter—whether my anger is just or unjust. God can sort that out. I have been wrong to use my anger as a weapon against my spir­i­tu­al life. When it gets that bad, it’s time to say a Rosary and let it go, and go to Con­fes­sion and go to Mass.

Eas­i­er said than done. Pray for me.

•••

Any­way … about Dave Arm­strong. A few years back the two of us, who were friends (he and his wife even came to my wed­ding), had a huge pub­lic fight. The mer­its of that fight, who was right and wrong on the sub­stance, don’t mat­ter. No one cares. In anger I said intem­per­ate things. In anger I said things I did­n’t even mean. I don’t agree with Dave about every­thing, but so what? He real­ly is one of the best Catholic apol­o­gists around. And I was unfair to him. I apol­o­gize.

Pride is as destruc­tive as anger, and I am guilty also of exces­sive pride. I don’t much mind when peo­ple dis­agree with me, but I do mind great­ly when I’m not tak­en seri­ous­ly and, even more, when I think I’m being mis­rep­re­sent­ed. I need to care about all that a lot less than I do.

Dave has not been the only tar­get, how­ev­er, of my harsh and intem­per­ate and frankly sin­ful words. Many peo­ple have. I can’t name every­one. But if I’ve said any­thing that’s been hurt­ful to any­one read­ing this, then I apol­o­gize for it.

Mea max­i­ma cul­pa.

I am going to Con­fes­sion and Mass and will say a Rosary for Dave Arm­strong and any­one else I’ve spo­ken ill of.

Pray for me.