"...It is a terrible thing that the worst of all vices can smuggle itself into the very centre of our religious life."� C.S. Lewis

Historical events and the emotions that accompany them have a way of etching themselves into our memory. On Tuesday, April 19, 2005, I was sitting in my cubicle when the news came across the Internet that white smoke had appeared from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. We had a pope. I rushed excitedly to the company cafeteria where CNN was on. Here in Tallahassee, Catholics are a minority. This is Baptist country. So I don�t know which scene was more spectacular�the drama that was unfolding before me on television, or the sight of my Protestant co-workers with their eyes glued to the set.

With a wicked smile, I whispered under my breath, �You lose.�

I remember Cardinal Estévez stepping up to the microphone and addressing the crowd in Latin. �Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum�habemus Papam.� A woman sitting behind me said to her friend in a deep Southern drawl, �I�ve never seen anything in the world like this.� I smirked with condescending pride. Here was the splendor and majesty of the Catholic Church, my Church, on display for the entire world to see. Would CNN ever carry live coverage of �her� church, whatever it was called�the Anointed Tabernacle Church of Praise Jesus Alleluia. I doubt it.

My attention returned to the screen. Who would it be? Maybe Arinze? Please God, not some liberal, though I reassured myself that even if that happened the Holy Spirit would  prevent him from actually teaching error. Cardinal Estévez continued with the announcement: �Josephum Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem�� He paused briefly as the world held its breath, and then I heard the words that brought joy to my ears. �Ratzinger!�

I wish I could say that my joy was pure, but it wasn�t. There was a dark side to it. It was the attitude that �my side� had won. I can still recall a scene from CNN of a German tourist in the crowd at St. Peter�s. As she listened to the announcement, her hands were clasped in anticipation. But at the name of Ratzinger, her hope died like wind lost from a sail. I savored the look of disappointment on her face. Obviously she was one of those German Catholic dissenters the media had been talking about. With a wicked smile, I whispered under my breath, �You lose.�

How did I turn into this type of person? Why did Pentecostal faith evoke such contempt within me, and why did Catholic dissenters make my blood boil so much? Furthermore, what was the source of my arrogance and hostility? Was my Catholicism to blame, or was there something deeper involved? Most importantly, how could I get out of this spiritual hole I�d dug myself into?

Spotting liturgical abuse became such a hobby, I was spending more time counting mistakes than I was participating in the Mass.

It�s a cliché that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future. I hope to be a saint one day, and I definitely have a past. When I got married, I had a big chip on my shoulder against the Church, particularly in the area of sexuality. During our engagement, my fiancée and I learned Natural Family Planning (NFP), but it was purely for health reasons. It certainly wasn�t because of anything the Church taught. In fact, I was quite hostile to idea of the Church interfering in my bedroom.

But God is merciful, and he showed it by allowing me to fall flat on my face. If you want the full story, you can read about it in �My Tallahassee Purgatory�. Shortly after my conversion experience, I went from being a nominal Catholic with an attitude to a scapular wearing, Rosary praying, almost daily communicant. This stage of my spiritual journey felt like a honeymoon, because I finally saw the Church as the true bride of Christ. Or at least the bride I thought she should be. I began to read books and listen to audio tapes about the Catholic faith, as many as I could get my hands on. It was as if I were catching up on lost time.

However, all of that knowledge came with a danger, and it was the danger of pride, of turning into a Pharisee.

It began innocently enough when I started to pay more attention to the rubrics of the Mass. By itself, that�s a good thing. But spotting liturgical abuse became such a hobby, that I was spending more time keeping count of the mistakes than I was participating in the Mass. Over time, my radius of criticism grew wider, and I began looking at my fellow parishioners with disdain. Why? Because I knew it was a safe bet that most of them didn�t follow the Church�s teaching about contraception. For me, Humanae Vitae, the Church�s encyclical that explained why birth control was wrong, became the sine qua non of my relations with fellow Catholics. This attitude morphed to the point where I regarded NFP Catholics as the only true Catholics. We were a Band of Brothers, the Airborne Rangers of the Catholic Church. Everyone else was a scrub.

I was in desperate need of a reality check, and it came in the form of a men�s retreat called Christ Renews His Parish, a weekend experience designed to build a sense of community between the parishioners. For many of the men who attended, it was their first time being on a religious retreat. This was my second. I had attended another one that was organized by the men of Regnum Christi, a lay movement that is known for its orthodoxy and fidelity to the Church. So my expectations going into this retreat were low. After all, what could any of my fellow parishioners teach me that I didn�t know already?

I saw myself as the avenger of my parents� destroyed marriage.

But when I listened to the personal testimonies of these men, I was deeply affected by the amount of hurt that they carried from their past. For several of them, it was a miracle that they had found their way back to the Church at all. Here were men I had seen every Sunday, but who until then I had known nothing about. That hadn�t stopped me from judging them though. Many times at Mass while I knelt in the pew, I�d watch them and their wives go up for Communion and I�d think to myself, �Contraceptors.� That�s a warped attitude to have, and I�m ashamed of it. Hearing these men�s stories helped me to finally stop seeing them as enemies and to start seeing them as people who were struggling to live out the faith just as much as I was. Hearing their stories also got me to thinking about my own emotional baggage.

Looking back on my childhood and young adult life, it�s easy for me to connect the dots on how I turned into an NFP tyrant. Growing up the oldest of three children of divorced parents, I took it upon myself to be the male authority figure. What happened was that I turned into a bossy know-it-all toward my sisters. I wore my responsibility on my sleeve like sergeant�s stripes and treated them like privates. The only thing that changed from age 13 to 33 was that now my chevrons were papal yellow and white. That, and instead of bullying my sisters outright, I became a master of passive aggression. �Oh�you don�t want to go to Mass with the rest of the family?� That coldness nearly cost me my relationship with one of them. Jesus said that people would know we are his disciples by the love we have for one another. (John 13:35) But by the way I was acting, if this was the love Jesus was talking about, my sisters would have preferred I keep it to myself.

There�s another way in which my parents� divorce influenced my religious views. I�ve never been angry at my mom and dad for separating. Instead, I saw them as casualties of the Sexual Revolution. One of the reasons why I began teaching NFP was to strike back against the lies of that era. I saw myself as the avenger of my parents� destroyed marriage. I envisioned the Sexual Revolution as Count Rugen from the 1987 movie The Princess Bride and I as the swashbuckling Inigo Montoya. �Hello. My name is Brian Pessaro. You killed my family. Prepare to die.�

But righteous anger gave way to wrath, and I began to act more like Anakin Skywalker than Señor Montoya. �If you�re not with me, you�re my enemy.� For me, the enemy was anyone who didn�t uphold the teachings of the Church in matters pertaining to marriage and sexuality�cafeteria Catholics, ex-Catholics, liberals, even Protestants. They were all the same to me. They were traitors who had told God in one way or another, �Non serviam� (I will not serve). I told myself that they were the ones to blame for the Sexual Revolution that destroyed my family, and I wanted them to suffer.

I was in desperate need of a reality check, and it came in the form of a men�s retreat...

So how am I climbing out of this spiritual hole? Slowly. I�m a work in progress. The rats are still in the cellar, as C.S. Lewis used to say. To shine a light on these rats, I began seeing a priest friend of mine for spiritual direction. Meeting with him has helped me to uncover the emotions I described above. He�s helped me to see that as important as orthodoxy is, charity is just as important, if not more so. As St. Paul said, ��if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing� (1 Corinthians, 13:2).

We�re all working out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12). My spiritual director has helped me realize that the future of the Catholic Church doesn�t depend on me being its self-appointed bouncer. He�s also taught me to hate my own sins more than I hate the sins of others. Lust may be one of the seven deadly sins, but so is pride and wrath. Woe to me if I stood before God at my judgment thinking He owed me something because I used NFP only to be shown my place in hell because of my lack of humility and meekness.

But the most important thing I learned is that, in the end, people are  not the enemy�not even the ones who choose to do evil. That�s because �we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places� (Eph. 6:12). These are the real enemies.