The Catholic Church: ADHD Treatment Pioneer

After a recent Sunday Mass, I overheard two elderly ladies talking and had an instant flashback to the heydays of post Second Vatican Council. The one lady was saying, with an air of authority, that “the Gospel is, after all, supposed to be proclaimed, not read!”

I was not privy to the rest of the conversation, and I wasn’t about to intrude. I mention it only because it got me thinking about the state of the Church and the rampant narrative clichés that seem to have held center stage since then. Their conversation struck a chord with me because I am a person who reads the Mass readings before Mass, time permitting, and also reads along as they are being read during Mass. Why?

Because I am much more a visual learner than an auditory learner and because two senses engaged are more powerful than one. In fact, it can surely be said that the focus of the Church is formed after the focus of Christ, and that focus is most obviously the reintegration of the human person.

The trouble with short, clever narratives is that they are, most often, the headline to a contextual vacuum. There has been much discussion about the crimes against beauty that were instigated by certain elements in the Church post Vatican II. I simply want to revisit the narratives to place things in perspective to what has been forgotten and is now being relearned.

The narrative went like this: the central focus of the Mass is the Eucharist, all else is distraction. Narratives of the same period insisted that we become not merely individual Catholics worshipping God, each in his or her own separate way, but worshipping as an interacting community. Thus, the “sign of peace.” The Mass is an eternal celebration, a perpetual heavenly fiesta celebrated by the angels and saints; yet our 20th-century forebearers in the Faith saw fit to remove any visual vestige of their heavenly participation in the Mass.

The case was made that the monastic life, a life of simplicity, created great saints. And yet, the saint with a cell of bare walls, save a single crucifix, did not celebrate the Mass in his cell, and one would certainly not find the same austerity of beauty in the chapels of the monasteries. While it is true that they were not dazzling cathedrals, it is also true that they were nonetheless beautiful and inclusive of the saints and angels.

There are brain scientists who are, of late, rethinking the knee-jerk tendency to diagnose folks with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). These doctors insist that while the extremes of this tendency can be debilitating, it is nonetheless true that none of our brains truly work exactly the same; each of us has proclivities that fall somewhere on a spectrum.

If I may be allowed to opine, it seems that at least a small bit of ADHD is an integral part of fallen human nature. Our relative inability to stay focused on more than our next meal was handed on to us by Adam and Eve and is now our general lot, something Jesus noted when he shamed the crowds for following Him around just because they remembered the feeding of the 5,000 and were looking for more free bread.

For me, it brings to mind an episode of The Simpsons. The long-running TV series has Homer Simpson as its main character. Homer is a simple man, a mostly well-intentioned clown who goes to work to support his family and is true to his wife but has an abundance of personality issues, not the least of which is his inability to stay focused on much more than his next jelly donut. In the episode I have in mind, an advertising company decides to build a sales campaign around Homer’s character, declaring him to be an “everyman.” Perhaps he is.

The Church has always understood this tendency in spades. That is why the Church is constantly fascinated with the concept of body/soul integration. If you were to ask many people what Pope St. John Paul II’s Theology of the Body is about, I would not be surprised if many of them answered “sex,” and yet, while sexuality is certainly in the thick of the discussion, the work’s focus is, wholistically speaking, body/soul integration.

That is the reason we express our worship and reverence by kneeling, genuflecting, standing, and making the sign of the cross—with holy water. It is why we bless and use physical objects like water, oil, salt, ashes, rosaries, and medals. It’s why we track the sacred mysteries of the Rosary with our fingers on beads, contemplating, reciting, and touching sacramentals simultaneously. It is why we bless and wear wedding rings; why our priests wear blessed, beautiful garments; why the altar is draped in beautiful, clean cloth; and why we attempt to physically play beautiful music on real instruments.

To conquer our ADHD, some of us also read the Gospel while it is being proclaimed, and some of us, can it be denied, are distracted, perhaps captivated, by the beautiful stained-glass windows. Our minds wander off, contemplating the mystery of the faith the window enshrines rather than contemplating the player lineup for tomorrow’s little league game or Monday’s big meeting with the boss. The stained-glass windows win. If we are to be distracted, and we are to be distracted—it is our inheritance—may it be the beauty of the Faith that does the distracting.

Many Catholic homes used to have walls covered with nicely framed sacred art, along with blessed statues of Our Lord, the Blessed Mother, and the saints. That sanctuary of the home is all but a dead concept. Did we remove the beauty there so that we would not be distracted during the Mass? What is the postconciliar narrative for that abrupt change? Are our walls plain so that our constant connection with the Almighty might not endure distraction?

No. Our walls are not plain. They are well-covered, mostly with family photos and mementos, with landscapes and still lifes, inspiring the same—still life—in our souls. Instead of statues we have whatnots and knickknacks. Instead of holy water fonts we have holy nothing—or the ever-popular grinning, fat Buddha.

In a parable, Christ tells us about the Pharisee who thanks God that he is not like other men—specifically, not like the “everyman” in front of him who is beating his breast and begging God’s forgiveness. The Pharisee in the parable goes on and on listing all the wonderful things he does that make him acceptable to the Almighty. 

St. Francis of Assisi is often quoted as having said, “Preach the Gospel at all times; when necessary, use words,” an attribution that doesn’t stand up under historical scrutiny. He did write in his first rule, “Let all the brothers, however, preach by their deeds.” That “however” is an important caveat to the “when necessary, use words,” which is apparently an invention from the 20th century. It is similar, in that respect, to the so-called “Prayer of St. Francis,” which did not appear until 1912 and was not authored by the saint.

In historical context, Francis is talking about the relationship between the friar’s preaching and the friar’s life. His point is, essentially, that the friars must not contradict their preaching by their behavior. It isn’t an argument that verbal proclamation of the Gospel is ordinarily unnecessary or perhaps even inferior to social work.

Indeed, the latter interpretation would be rather peculiar coming from Francis because Francis was an enthusiastic preacher. His early biographer, Thomas of Celano, describes him traveling extensively precisely to spread the Word of God. And while Francis refused ordination to the priesthood because he felt himself unworthy, he agreed to being ordained into the deaconate so that he would have his bishop’s blessing for his extensive preaching ministry.

And what could be more attention-deficit/hyper-activity prone than postconciliar spirituality, with its frantic focus on doing rather than praying. The implication is that prayer—an act of the will, the implementation of thought, word, and liturgical practice—is not action. If action is prayer, and it sincerely can be, then prayer is certainly action. 

In the end, I thank God that I am an everyman; to be such is the lot of mankind. And with the help of the immense beauty of the Faith, I shall continue the battle with the great distractor and our common ADHD heritage for as long as I am able to draw breath.