One of the problems for the homeless is the psychological state of "loss of identity". Because, as humans, we are body and soul, our identity is not merely based on the soul, the mind and the imagination, which are somewhat intangible, but on our surroundings.
Loss of identity can happen through individual homelessness, or dislocation, but also thro,ugh the evils of tyrants, such as the mass deportation of persons for the purpose of genocide. The Holocaust and the pogroms give us intense examples of tyranny's efforts to cause people to lose their identities. In those two cases, in Germany and in Russia, the effort was to destroy the identity of not only individual identities, but corporate identities. The effort aimed at destroying the Jews both as individuals and as a people.
There are political groupings, some based on religion, which attempt today to wipe out entire peoples through violence in order to destroy their identity in history, in civilizations. Such is the goal of any organized genocide.
There is at least one religion which has at its roots the desire and goal to eliminate both Jews and Catholics from the earth.
Prisons can be set-up like concentration camps in order to cause people to purposefully lose identities.
The loss of identity can happen when a person is forced into circumstances which are so different to one's own construction, that the identity disappears and the person flounders in a state of crisis.
If the external circumstances prove difficult or persuasive enough, that loss of identity may never be found.
Families can destroy identity, especially when parents do not pray to know their children and impose their own dreams on those children instead of nurturing what God has given naturally.
Incest is an extreme form of enforced loss of identity, whether physical incest or emotional incest. The perpetrator imposes his or her devious designs on a younger person and destroys a natural relationship of mother to son or father to daughter and son on.
To help a person come out of the loss of identity caused by incest demands involvement of a Catholic psychologist and even, perhaps, an exorcist, if demonic control took over the person's core of being.
Sometimes we meet people who have no sense of identity. Brit Ekland stated of the great actor Peter Sellers that he lacked a sense of who Peter Sellers actually was, which enable him to adapt to other characters with such success. Some actors do experience this loss of identity, at least temporarily, when adopting another character. If the actor does not have a core of being, this adoption of various roles seems natural, even good.
However, loss of identity most likely comes when people rely on external things for their identity more than the strength of internal things. But, external structures are important and cannot be totally ignored.
For the homeless, especially the veteran, who may have lost some identity in the army or in war, the way back to normalcy is denied to them. Living as itinreants, they have no control over their external life and, therefore, cannot be themselves.
Think of this-the inablity to be one's true self as created by God.
Most people have this ability to fin out who they are and to live out a life with identity. Peter Pan men have been thwarted, as I have written in many posts and have a hard time coming into their own identities as grown-up men. The same can happen with "daddy's little girls", who have been smothered by the over protection or overpowering of a father, who cannot see his girls as needing to grow into adults. I have met some women, more in the past than now, who fell into that category of thwarted womanly growth.
For the Catholic, identity must include the formation internally as well as externally to become a Catholic.
Catholic identity is not merely internal or not merely external.
To become a Catholic truly, to conform one's mind to the mind of Christ, demands discipline and structure from little on. Formation of the child to be a saint is the main duty of parents, again, as I have written on this blog.
But, like the homeless, a Catholic might miss out on proper formation and wander through the world looking for other things with which to identify. Such are the actions of concupiscence and sin.
Adam and Eve lost their identities in Eden, but Christ gave these identities of true man and true woman back to mankind on the Cross. He re-formed us into His image and likeness by giving us grace, opening the door to heaven where we all were locked out, except for a chosen few, and by making us again, through baptism children of God and heirs of heaven.
To experience a loss of Catholic identity actually is another name for hell.
Some people have nervous breakdowns because they have either been forced to deny or denies themselves a chance for their true identity. To follow the vocation to which God calls each one of us is to find ourselves and to be the person God created us to be.
When lay men refuse to marry or when women refuse to have children, they exhibit a serious loss of identity. when priests are not obedient to Rome and when nuns set aside their rule, they experience a loss of identity.
Or worse, these people create a false identity, founded on sin. Such people risk going to hell, as God gave them an identity they have spurned.
Many of us have written how Ireland has lost her identity as she is no longer Catholic. Here are some statistics for the homeless in Ireland.
I am going to state that a nation which has lost its identity allows a homeless population to grow, as if saying subconsciously, "We are all without our true home now."
The most recent statistics on homelessness in Ireland are from the Special Census report on homeless persons in Ireland. Of the 4.5million persons in Ireland on Census night (10th April 2011), 3,808 were in accommodation providing shelter for homeless persons or were sleeping rough. 62% (or 2,375) were living in Dublin on Census night, and 644 (17%) were under the age of 20. 15% or 553 people were non-Irish, compared to 12% of the total population. Almost one-third of homeless persons had health which was ‘Fair’, ‘Bad’ or ‘Very bad’, compared with 10% of the general population.
The number of people sleeping rough in Dublin is counted each year in April and November. 87 people were observed sleeping rough in November 2012. Found here.
Last year, once in a while, I fed a homeless man who sat in two or three different places in downtown Dublin. I shall call him Mark, not his real name. I always remembered to call him by name. He appreciated this, as few saw him as an individual. He had a name, he had an identity but it was lost.
To call him by name was my small attempt to give him back his identity....
We must call people by their names. We must engage the homeless in helping them seek and find their lost identities. But, they are not the only ones who have lost the idea of who they are.
To be continued later today....