The Thanatos Syndrome

even more than non-ex-religious couples.
    Here is a sample:
    Debbie: The trouble with you is you’re still a closet Jesuit. Even though you’ve taken up transcendental meditation and teach it to the salespeople at your little ashram and play tapes of the Bhagwan and the Maharishi, supposedly to increase their selling potential, what you’re really running is a closet-Jesuit retreat. Next you’ll have them saying the rosary and making the stations of the cross. You don’t want to sell Oldsmobiles, you want to convert people. And the truth is, like the Bhagwan and most Orientals—and most Jesuits—you have contempt for women.
    Kev: The trouble with you is you’ve turned into the worst kind of man-eating bitchy feminist. You’re known as the Bella Abzug of the LADA (Louisiana Automobile Dealers Association). You pretend you’re the belle of the ball at the C. of C., but deep down you hate men. And if you want to know the truth, that’s the reason you and all the other nuns quit, not because of politics or the Church, but because you don’t know who in the hell you are and you copped out, and so you take it out on men from the pope on down. You still hate their guts and you still don’t know who in the hell you are or what you are doing.
    Debbie: Speak for yourself.
    Kev: Doc, you wouldn’t believe what she’s into now.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWicca.”
    â€œWicker?” I’m thinking, Good, she’s doing handcrafts.
    â€œWitchcraft.”
    Debbie: Don’t bad-mouth what you don’t understand. Wicca bears no relation to your stereotypical witchcraft, witches on brooms. It is extremely positive and loving, because it is the old nature religion, a nonsexist pre-Judeo-Christian belief. No guilt trips. It is nothing less than becoming one with nature and with yourself.
    Kev: Plus a little hex here and there.
    And so on.
    To tell the truth, at the time I didn’t have much use for either of them, though they were my friends and my patients. I confess certain sardonic feelings toward both of them. There was Kev’s faddish Hinduism, his new voice, which has suddenly become hushed and melodious like the Maharishi’s, his casual but mysterious allusions to his siddhi. What’s a siddhi? I asked. A spiritual gift. Like what? Like levitation, no big deal, he said. Yes, during meditation he was often six inches off the floor. And there was Debbie’s new lingo, her everlasting talk about dialoguing, creativity, community, intersubjectivity, centeredness (her favorite word, centeredness ). And her new word, empowerment.
    What would happen, I wonder, if I asked them what they thought about God and sin?
    I thought they did better, looked better, felt better as Father Kev and Sister Thérèse in the old days, as priest and nun, than as siddha Kev in his new soft Maharishi voice and a NOW Wicca Debbie in her stretch pants. If you set out to be a priest and a nun, then be a priest and a nun, instead of a fake Hindu or a big-assed lady Olds dealer who is into Wicca—this from me, who had not had two thoughts about God for years, let alone sin. Sin?
    That meeting was before I went to prison. Prison works wonders for vanity in general and for the secret sardonic derisiveness of doctors in particular. All doctors should spend two years in prison. They’d treat their patients better, as fellow flawed humans. In a word, prison restored my humanity if not my faith. I still don’t know what to make of God, don’t give Him, Her, It a second thought, but I make a good deal of people, give them considerable thought. Not because I’m more virtuous, but because I’m more curious. I listen to them carefully, amazed at the trouble they get into and how few quit. People are braver than one might expect.
    This was three years ago.
    Anyhow, after listening to this marital warfare for a few weeks, I had an idea which might help them. I made a semiserious suggestion. Yes, I confess it, my suggestion had its origins both in a wish to help them and in a certain derisiveness and a desire to be rid of them. Yet it worked! Why not, I asked them, why not put your talents to better use? After all, you’ve both had extensive experience in counseling. You both have superior—er—intersubjective and social skills (they used words like that, worse than shrinks). Why don’t you start your own counseling center, perhaps