Sack Cloth and ashes--updated!

I am not sure what to think about this article that was linked to on Open Book today. It was written by an Opus Dei priest and originally published in Crisis. The article is about penitential physical mortification. Yes, sack cloth, ashes, hairshirts and the Discipline ( a cat-of-nine-tails for religious folks)--all of that. The way Fr. Giesler presents a very reasoned argument for the relevance of such physical penance in today's world is interesting. He lists out some very modern concepts of suffering for expected gain, like athletes and people that work out to the point of physical pain for a certain outcome. Or hunger strikers for a political cause.
But even with those examples, he celebrates exactly what you think of when you think of mortification--St. Catherine of Siena, St. Therese--people that actually whipped themselves for God.
For many people the first reaction is EW or OUCH. I'm right there. But then I got to thinking, who am I to condemn this practice? When you get tattoos or a body piercing, one of the first things people who don't have any ask you is "Did it hurt?" This question is so common that at a tattoo convention I went to (to see an out-of-town friend of mine) I saw T-Shirts for sale that said, "OF COURSE IT HURT" on the front with "BUT IT WAS WORTH IT" on the back. Similar thing with having a baby. It hurts, and as the new mommy is describing to her friends all the unspeakable horrors of pregnancy and childbirth that you didn't learn about in health class, she inevitably snuggles the little newborn and nuzzles it with a big, "but it was worth it." "IT"'s worth is defined by the material or physical evidence of your suffering (and with the baby a whole lot more benefits).
So, being a person who has experienced some varieties of voluntary pain of the non-penitential kind, why do I still look at the practice as, well sick. I mean, if there is redemptive suffering to be borne by the hard-core mortification practices, why do I still feel weird about it?
In this House of Brede has a scene about the Discipline, and Godden treats the subject so well and sensitively. She makes it clear that the nuns are watched closely to make sure that their desire for the Discipline does not venture into truly sick psychology. The order's superiors have to be sure that it is used sparingly. In fact, there is one scene when one character asks to take the Discipline, though her Reverend Mother refuses her because there are sometimes mortifications much greater than the physical stripes. In this case it was something the nun had to do and wanted to avoid. The book also touches on nuns who might develop an unhealthy attachment to the Discipline, as their only way of feeling physical anything, and how her superiors would have to watch for that and not allow her to become a slave to her discipline.
And I guess the other thing that makes me uncomfortable about this article's enthusiasm for mortification is because it is written by an Opus Dei priest. Rumors about endorsed mortification by Opus Dei have circulated for years ( I first heard about them within the coverage of Robert Hanssen) ; I guess they have even made it into the daVinci Code, or so I am told, not actually having read the book (my defense of my not reading it is my usual defense against runaway best sellers--if that many people like it that much, there must be something wrong with it). This is what the Opus Dei website says about mortification

Myth: Opus Dei makes its members practice dangerous corporal mortifications.
Fact: Each Lent, the Church reminds people that sacrifice is part of the spiritual life. To help its members follow this teaching, Opus Dei encourages them to make small sacrifices, such as persevering in their work or listening to those in need. The Catholic tradition also includes other penances, such as fasting and the use of a cilice or discipline, as means for deepening one's union with Christ. Many saints, including Opus Dei's founder, St. Josemaria Escriva, have practiced such penances in a heroic way. Some celibate members of Opus Dei and of other Church institutions freely follow some of these customs, though in a mitigated way. They do so subject to the advice of their spiritual director and in a way that is never harmful to their health, completely unlike The Da Vinci Code's distorted representation. These kinds of sacrifices are certainly not a focus in Opus Dei, which emphasizes integrating faith with the activities of everyday life.

So even after writing this post, I still don't know what to think about it. In the Open Book thread, one commenter posted something that I don't even know if she was serious or not. She declared that if more people modelled their mortifications after certain saints (which if you did I think your family would have grounds to haveyou forcebly committed), there would be be more holy people in the world. A lot of us go through pain and suffering for some sort of temporal gain--tattoos, rock-hard abs, tongue ring--and that is now considered fairly normal, and wanting those things without the pain ups your wussie factor. But tell people you are going to spend some time tonight scourging yourself to share in the Blessed Mystery of the Passion and the Cross, and people will be wondering whether your lithium precription has run out.
I just wish I could understand it better.

ADDENDUM:
I got an email from someone who read this post who didn't want to post in the comments beacuse they thought this subject was a little close to them. Wow, I never got to do one of the real blogger's things and say, "a reader writes..." but now I guess I do. I took this from the email to re-emphasize how rare the Discipline and other mortifications really are and under what circumstances it is "okay," meaning not twisted. Anything self-adminstered outside this framework is probably not redemtive but rather just plain sick. A reader writes:

I think the important thing to remember is that acts of physical
mortification are only supposed to be undertaken under the guidance of a spiritual director or confessor. You're supposed to have permission before you do things like flagellation or wearing a hair shirt -- and permission is very rarely given, for precisely the reasons that Godden worked into her story. Of course the psychological reasons and dangers, first and foremost.
But also spiritually speaking, it's tempting for us to fashion our own
extravagant penances in order to avoid precisely the things we ought be doing but don't want to...It's better to work on really picking up the cross He's given [you] rather than try to fashion [your] own cross, so to speak.