More on families and vocations
It is a little late and I have to be up early in the morning as we have a 7am Mass before I go on my monthly Day of Recollection. Thankfully, Lee Gilbert has posted this excellent advice in the combox in response to my post on Priestly Vocations and Catholic Families. I think it deserves to be given more prominence:
Families can do a lot to promote vocations:
A. "Nothing impure in the home"
1. Keep mainstream mass media out of the home, period. This will go a long way toward creating a prayerful, peaceful, joyful home.
2. Afford no opportunity for the children to develop friendly regard and admiration for atheist uncles, lesbian aunts and the like. Keep all such far, far away, period.
B. "Whatever things are true...honorable...just...holy, etc..think on these things.
1. Lives of the saints. Read these to the children from their earliest years. Many lives of saints begin, "When Johnny was a little boy his mother used to read to him from the gospels and the lives of the saints." So began the life of the Cure of Ars, patron of priests.
2. Read other good, uplifting literature that "baptizes" the imagination, esp the Chronicles of Narnia and the like.
3. Children have a phenomenal memory and want to learn much earlier than we think. From age four work with the catechism 20 minutes per day. From this the children will learn that you value the faith very highly. They will also come to have a love of learning and desire for God and a respect for their own accomplishments.
C. "Pray always..."
1. Pray often but briefly with the children, for example before they go out to play put your arm around them and pray for their physical and moral safety, but also that the Lord will bless them today and every day of their lives. With our children that scene was replayed three times a day or so till they were nine or ten. It was the most natural thing to hear, "Dad, will you pray with me? I want to go out and play!"
2. Pray often for the children, especially that the Lord will keep them from everything harmful, but also that He will lead them into His highest and best for their lives.
3. Have a prayer life yourself, and ratchet it up as the years go on. Dad pacing the hall with a rosary in hand should be the most natural thing in the world.
D. Also,
1.Visit old churches with beautiful stainglass windows, and let the beauty of the place catechize and inspire your children.
2. Encourage your son to serve Mass.
3. Sit right up front with your children so they can see what is going on at Mass, rather than making it a tedious experience of their staring at the back of someone's overcoat for 45 minutes.
4. Speak well of the priests.
5. Encourage a spirit of self-sacrifice in your children ala Louis and Zellie Martin.
6. As a couple, read out loud "The Story of a Family- the Home of St. Therese of Lisieux" by Fr. Piat.
7. When your son is a little older, take him on retreat with you.
8. Let it be known that you are very open to your children pursuing religious life or the priesthood and would feel greatly blessed if they pursued such a life, but for pity's sake avoid all semblance of nagging or propaganda.
34 comments:
Fr. Tim,
Lee has got some really good ideas.
I would add one more: inculcate reverence for the Blessed Sacrament. Make sure the kids always genuflect in church and face the front, explain that Jesus is "in the tabernacle," teach them to pray "My Lord and my God" at the consecration, help them to understand that Jesus is truly present in the host - and that the priest is the man who brings this about. And also teach the kids to approach the altar as if they are doing something extremely important and special - not just queueing up for a circular wafer.
All you bishops and priests out there - you need to do your bit too to help us parents...starting with giving serious consideration to reintroducing kneeling at communion and receiving on the tongue. Then people's body language at communion will correspond once again with what the Catholic Church teaches about the Real Presence. Is this really too difficult or objectionable? If so, why?
These are very good overall, as is the original post. I appreciate it as a mother of three children who wants to maintain an environment where they can hear and discern whatever is each one's vocation.
But, in friendly spirit--the one about keeping away from atheist uncles and lesbian aunts, etc? We don't actually have that problem, but wouldn't a better way to handle it be, as a parent, to be forthright about your disagreements with these folks and to love them anyway?
Curious about reaction out there--
thanks!
Thank you for this, Father. And I hope you have a good day of Recollection.
I am particularly touched by the point about reading the lives of the Saints. Though we did not possess such things when I was little, my mother would always respond to me asking about Saints (and I must have been unceasing, as little children are!).
Though, regarding mass media, I am wondering what to do about the Internet!
Excellent.
The suggestion of the Chronicles of Narnia raises an issue I have been facing (and apologies if you have treated this before).
As a Godfather, what books would you recommend are must have gifts to develop the spiritual life of my godchildren?
Thanks and keep up the good work.
Handel
One thing I would definitely recommend is giving your children cassettes with readings from the Bible on them. My parents had no time to read to me be did that so by about 12 I was fully familiar with all the main Bible stories. You will find the children like listening to them of their own accord so it also means they will never feel Christianity has been forced upon them.
On the side I w8ould also recommend you by cassettes (if you have no time to read to them) of Ancient Myths and Brothers Grimm fairy tales. Though not directly christian a familiarity with these great stories will mean your children have a good understanding and respect for the history, culture and ethics of western civilisation. This wards off leftism, hippie-ism and many other evils that might develop latter in life.
Me and my brothers had this and now I am becoming a priest and both my brothers, though of no outstanding religiosity, have a great respect and reverence for their civilisation and religion.
'The home is not a convent.' Quoted in 'The Spiritual Maxims of St Francis de Sales', ed by C. F. Kelly, Longmans, 1954, p96.
Well thankfully i know quite a lot of very large families who do that as a matter of course..but i suppose it does no harm to be reminded...
Tante grazie, Padre! Thank you very much indeed for the accorded prominence.
To that list could be added, I think:
E. Penance
1. After First Confession bring them with you to Confession every week. The likely result is that they will go weekly or biweekly from childhood on. “As the twig is bent…” This constant renewal of their innocence will make their hearts much more available to the Holy Spirit.
2. The life of Zellie and Louis Martin shows an incredible spirit of penance in all kinds of little denials of self, a spirit with which they imbued their daughters by many clever stratagems.
F. Do the things that bring down God’s blessing on your entire household.
1. Keep the Sabbath: No shopping or servile work. The Martins were rigid about this.
2. Tithe.
3. Give alms. Again, Louis Martin was a paragon of this, and made his daughters his almoners as they encountered beggars in Alencon and Lisieux.
4. Accept the setbacks, bereavements and tragedies of life as expressions of the will of God, without railing at Him, and without resentment. If Zellie Martin had not known how to do this from her heart, the vocations of her five saintly daughters could well have been swamped by maternal grief, anger, depression, lassitude and great disorder in the household.
You have to get up early??? I have to get up and drive to Mass!!!
;-)
(and very beautiful it was too... there's something soooo special about Mass which starts before dawn!)
Personally I think its over the top and such a regime is just as liable to produce a child who leaves home at 18 and abruptly converts into a catholic hating atheist.
to be fair - I would clarify that - some of it is over the top.
Other parts are quite sensible.
FYI, Sarx is giving you a lot of flak for nos 1 and 2. I know what you're on about, but I'm unsure they do.
What about if their lesbian aunt is a holy Catholic who abides by ALL church teaching..shall we tell them to get lost too?
i'm sorry but it really is too patronising for words!
Whilst in agreement with most of this advice, I take exception to point A2. As the (Catholic) father of two pre-school children, at what stage in their development should I send my atheist and gay friends packing "far, far away"? When they learn to talk? Age of reason? Should we advertise for only straight, Christian lodgers? (I can hear the black helicopters already...)
Of course I am not going to let an atheist friend talk religion to my children (though I hardly think this would do more harm than what is taught in many Catholic schools nowadays). But I have no reason to believe that any friend of mine would not extend the same courtesy and sensitivity regarding religious matters to my children as he would do to me, regardless of his beliefs. To be honest, I have far more trouble with several devout but outspoken Catholic friends who frequently raise unsuitable subjects such as contraception and abortion in the presence of my children.
A2 seems to have hit a sore point, certainly. But reading this all again (and Sarx) I have to say that I agree with Lee. Not a convent, certainly - a spiritual battleground in the world. Rebellion? I have seen plenty of this "rebellion" and it is usually against imagined stereotypes propagated by the mainstream media and nothing to do with what actually happens in the home.
This regime is fine on paper and much good is recommended but to bring up children in such a claustrophobic setting is asking for trouble. How will they cope at school, even a Catholic school where many children do not come from practicing Catholic families? How will they cope in the world where they will be seen as freaks? I am interested in the quote from St Francis de Sales. If he said that when most of Europe consisted of believers what would he say now?
Edward Nash is right to complain about ill-considered conversation by professional Catholics who enjoy mounting soapboxes. The best Catholic parents bring their children up to see the Faith as a natural part of life. This can be done without shoveling precious religiosity into their lives that does not prepare them to encounter what they will find outside the home. The home life of St Therese is as remote from the present as thumbscrews.
I'm sorry Fr Tim, but point A2 as written is a mistake, and needs to be rectified. The Church does not ask me to stop my children talking about non-religious or non-sexual matters to friends and relations who might be atheist or gay on the grounds that they might come to admire some other aspect of their characters. This is not the same thing as families being required to object to such ideas in the classroom, a far more realistic scenario common in many (UK) schools which the (US) author of this post doesn't even mention. I'm afraid this is just paranoia.
I don't want to sound obsessed with this point, but it goes a long way to undermining the other very good ones in this post, as it begs the question as to how much of all this is really based on Church teaching as opposed to personal preference/prejudice. (Your original post, by the way, was excellent.)
Jackie,the reason why this approach grates and "is too patronizing for words," seems patently obvious to me. We are no longer living in a milieu that produces vocations. If we were, the whole list would seem a very prosaic rehearsal of the obvious.
Zelie Martin is a favourite of mine like Lee's. Mine because she had 7 daughters & 2 sons & i 8 daughters & 2 sons. She had terrible trouble for years with Leonie in their own home. They didn't even know that the maid had a hold over her...& that was with all their prayers,devotions Masses etc. naturally in the end Leonie converted after many years of heart-ache. So i think Zelie had her fair share of heart-ache with her rebellious child & we must remember they were no stranger to depression,anxiety,apostasy & the like.
ok let me "fisk" the parts that trouble me:
"1.Keep mainstream mass media out of the home, period. This will go a long way toward creating a prayerful, peaceful, joyful home."
Totally disagree. The mass media is ubiquitous and they will see it if they want too. Far better they see it at home with me where they can ask me questions and receive suitable answers than elsewhere where they will view it with others who are not catholic or hostile to catholicism be it schoolfriends or when they leave home.
If they think its forbidden fruit they will treat it like forbidden fruit. That dosent mean I will be letting them watch pornography, but it does mean I will be letting them watch things other than EWTN, even to the extent of watching amoral crap like Eastenders, because if I ban them they will get ostracised from their peer group who are all watching it and resent me - or watch it round their friends houses behind my back, whereas if I let them watch it I can talk about it with them and deconstruct it, and hopefully they will lose interest in favour of something on the other 999 channels. Having only 1 TV in the house helps.
"2. Afford no opportunity for the children to develop friendly regard and admiration for atheist uncles, lesbian aunts and the like. Keep all such far, far away, period."
This is silly. Atheists and Lesbians are human beings too and there is much good in them. If they are MILITANT lesbians or atheists that is a different matter, but keeping them away from their maiden aunt because you think her friend is a bit close to her is basically cruel to both the kids and the Aunt.
Again far better for them to learn about atheists and lesbians while they are still at home and you can educate them a catholic perspective. Also if your teenage child thinks they have Homosexual tendencies (and quite a lot of teenagers have these transiently with only some keeping them permanently), if you have made your lesbian aunt persona non grata, they are highly unlikely to discuss these feelings with you.
"From age four work with the catechism 20 minutes per day"
I can't think of a better way of putting them off the cathecism and catholicsm for life than force feeding a weighty grave tome for 20 minutes a day at the age of four which is a massive length of time for a child of that age.
"Pray often but briefly with the children, for example before they go out to play put your arm around them and pray for their physical and moral safety, but also that the Lord will bless them today and every day of their lives. With our children that scene was replayed three times a day or so till they were nine or ten. It was the most natural thing to hear, "Dad, will you pray with me? I want to go out and play!""
I think that is overpraying in the sense of exaggerating the dangers they will come into when going out and praying. Personally I think evening prayers (eg decade of rosary) before bed, grace at meals and occasional morning prayers are quite enough for young children.
"Let it be known that you are very open to your children pursuing religious life or the priesthood and would feel greatly blessed if they pursued such a life, but for pity's sake avoid all semblance of nagging or propaganda."
I would want to be VERY sure that they really wanted the religious life before I encouraged this for the simple reason that it is hard and is going to get harder, and they will probably face legal persecution in their lifetime.
Its not something I would want them doing unless they were really sure and had the strength of character in which case they would get full support.
The rest of the points I broadly agree with although there seems to be little left for anything that is not associated with religion when you look at all those activities, which I fear could be unhealthy for their long term spiritual health once they discover the big wide world. Its a home, not a junior seminary!
Regarding love vs hate, as a father who wants to pass on the faith and form his children in virtue, how is it loving of me to bring the witty, atheist uncle into the home and have him chatting with my oldest son over in a corner holiday after holiday? What is he saying? Could it be that he is preaching the death of God? How does it make sense to knock my brains out sending my son to the toughest Catholic school in the city, only to have that teaching undermined in my own living room? How is that loving toward my son, exactly?
Why should I allow the lesbian aunt into the house, thus conveying the idea that queer is normal, that the sexual ethics of the Church is a matter of little import? The gay/lesbian community has very successfully been marketing the idea that queer is normal, but that notion, besides being completely insane (a logical and biological contradiction) is one that it is uncharitable to allow into a Christian home. The children are in a formative stage and homosexuality should not be implicitly presented as a pleasant, innocuous option.
Of course, it is painful for the adults involved, but the over-riding concern of a Catholic father is the formation of his children, a concern which makes any one else’s feelings very small potatoes indeed.
Jesus Christ ate and drank with sinners, it is true, and when he did so, he often had some very stern things to say to them.
And as I recall, too, he had some very stern, hair-raising things to say about those who scandalize little children. On that score it is a loving thing to deprive atheists etc of the opportunity to do anything of the kind. Nor would I be off the hook myself if I allowed my children to be scandalized in my own home. What are fathers for if not to protect their children from evils of every kind?
We raised our two children in just such a fashion. It was far from claustrophobic, and of course *outside the home* they were exposed to everything the world could throw at them. But the home was a safe, prayerful, peaceful, joyful harbor...as it should be.
There was no shovelling religion at them, but they did grow up in what was often a heavenly atmosphere.
When the children reached college age, the went to the University Of Dallas' Rome campus, and from there travelled all over Europe on two ten day sessions with a few friends. My daughter was 18 at the time and I hadn't the least fear that she would be overwhelmed by her freedom or by the forces of evil, since we had taken the greatest care possible in her formation.
The explanations bout the missing relatives have been difficult. On the other hand, I have two very strong, balanced, apostolic, well instructed daily communicants, one of them becoming Carmelite nun.
And, that, remember was the point of the discussion, to lay out a program that will very likely produce vocations. It is very similar to the Zellie and Louis Martin's program, a way of life that produced five vocations- in an era not notable for thumbscrews, by the way.
In rejecting it, and I think most Catholics would, we are in effect rejecting the sacraments down the line, because priestly vocations are not going to come- except in extraordinary dispensations of grace- from homes where the father considers himself not the gatekeeper against the world, but its welcoming host.
In the past one of the most deleterious influences on Catholic boys was from mothers who thought they had a vocation to be a mother of a priest. Time and time again this led to disasters and many of the mass defections from the priesthood in the mid-sixties were due to this emotional pressure that was little different from blackmail.
On a different topic, one of the main reasons for the dearth of vocations, male and female, is the decision of Catholic parents to have small families. Ignoring the teaching of Humanae Vitae has led to this problem. The reality is that there are not enough young people to respond. They simply don't exist. When a budding vocation is discerned, many parents overreact and do everything possible to oppose it. This turns to another form of blackmail on the basis of 'Look at what we have sacrificed to give you a good home and education, have you no gratitude?' Parental coercion leaves little freedom for young adults to make choices beyond seeking highly-paid employment.
Paul.South Midlands makes some excellent points. The subjects he emphasizes are ones that could well have a devastating effect on a child's spiritual development. As for lesbian and gay aunts and uncles, how many children would even know about these things? Or, if they do, what evil parents they have to fill their heads with prejudices they don't have the emotional maturity to understand.
If any influence is destined to lead to an over-sexualized future it is this.
Paul of South Midlands writes re principle A-1, No mass media in the home:
“Totally disagree. The mass media is ubiquitous.”
My response: Actually, it isn’t. We don’t have it in our house. It is a mass media free zone, you'll recall :) Of course, I too was worried at about what they might see at the homes of friends and realized that I could place them and myself in an untenable position by forbidding them to watch TV at a friend’s home. My experience has been remarkable, I think, even miraculous, because I arrived at the conclusion that if I do all in my power to keep the children from evil in my own home, then *God will do His part* and protect them when they are out of my sight and supervision. He did that. If I had not, neither would have He.
Frankly, I think you are very naïve in thinking you can explain it all for your children. I remember as a 16 year old watching late night TV with my parents and wincing because it was talking over their heads and making them look like chumps. TV is “with it” and your kids are “with it,” but I doubt very much that parents have time to be “with it.” At this point I regard TV as something akin to a ouija board, an instrument of the powers of darkness, who have considerably more wit than we do.
If you think that is ridiculous, here is the acid rest. Next time you are watching mainstream TV with your children, my guess is that within the first half hour, and certainly within an hour, something will come into your home that is slightly, but only very slightly more foul, vulgar, sensual, blasphemous or sinful than you have ever seen before. Your God-given spiritual radar will sense it. You will regret the moment and wish it had never happened. The thought of getting up and turning off the TV will cross your mind, but that would seem too prudish given the very slight increment in the foulness to which you are already habituated. And so it has been going for the past fifty-five years, the constant walkdown of our morals. It has made the unspeakable ubiquitous.
"From age four work with the catechism 20 minutes per day"
Regarding this Paul of South Midlands writes:
"I can't think of a better way of putting them off the cathecism and catholicsm for life than force feeding a weighty grave tome for 20 minutes a day at the age of four which is a massive length of time for a child of that age."
My response:
First of all, we discovered more or less accidentally that children that age love to memorize things. See Dorothy Sayer's Essay "The Lost Tools of Learning" regarding what she calls the Poll-parrot stage, when the children are very young.
Of course, alienating the children from the faith would be a real danger if we were force feeding them, but they actually begged us to study catechism. Remember, too, that they had an unusually long attention span, because television had not been fracturing it day after day from infancy. It was not a massive amount of time for them, and we made it as enjoyable as possible.
These are my notes from 1986:
"You may wonder how in the world we get them to study catechism at all, but amazingly the fact is that they beg us to study catechism. “Please, please, please can’t we stay up and study catechism?” When they first said that to us, I thought they were pulling our legs. No, the trick is in the timing.
"Of course, when we first started our evening sessions, we positioned catechism study first, since it is the most important, but they were very restive and wanted to get into the next part of The Swiss Family Robinson or whatever story we were reading at the time. Next came the life of whatever saint we were reading at the time. Eventually we discovered that if we positioned catechism last, they would beg us to study it just so they could get to stay up late. Anything to stay up late, even catechism.
"Now, going into the first grade [ six yrs old ]my little Stephanie knows the Ten Commandments, the Precepts of the Church, the Apostle’s Creed, the 15 Mysteries of the Rosary and the Hail Holy Queen. She also knows the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be in English and Latin. She knows the prayer to her angel, the Act of Contrition. In fact, since we have been doing this together as a family, she knows everything that my son had to learn (according to me) to make his First Confession and first Holy Communion, including 18 questions and answers on the Mass as a sacrifice. She can tell you why we make the sign of the cross, what a sacramental is, what faith, hope and charity are. She even knows why God made her, which is more than can be said for a great many college graduates. She also knows the Shield of St. Patrick, Psalm 1, Psalm 20, Psalm 26. And she knows tons more than this. It is amazing what can be accomplished in fifteen minutes per night over the course of the school year."
Again, see Dorothy Sayer's essay. I think it is pretty much the bible for much of the homeschooling movement here in the US.
The children were very proud of these accomplishments. Also, btw, they never once asked us as they came into their teens, "Do we have to go to Mass?" or, "Why do we have to go to Mass" They knew why, through and through.
Totally agree with Paul of the South Midlands. i'm West Midlands BTW!
My eldest is 3rd year medical stuudent will qualify as a doctor in just over 2 years & is discerning a call to be a Missionary Doctor in Miles Jesu.
We provided the environment & she is an exemplary Catholic.We were told off for going OTT at times with our children..i think that is the danger.
A healthy, happy prayer life & example of loving parents is all that is necessary.
The large family of course is an even better witness because it says it all without words.
1.8 children sends out a different message.
We invite our Priests regularly to our home..indeed they are part of the family..so we don't really need to do the talk we just 'walk' the 'walk'.
Oh our sons are more influenced by the 'Sacristans' at the moment & if you ask them what they want to be when they grow up they say Sacristans!
Regarding the mass media:
My parents decided from the beginning of their marriage not to have a TV. We often discussed in the family about the pros and cons (even when I was eight or so). We children never pushed very hard. We watched TV at our friend's home and never found it so desirable as you seem to find it. So there was never a fight about the topic as far as I can remember.
The point was that we discussed it so it was a real decision (of course lead by the parents like in all good families).
The problem with your concept are less the concept than a certain mindset which is behind it. You describe the Catholic family as a fortress with closed doors. The time for doing this is - esp. in European countries - over. When the children leave such families they are lost. I know quite a few young men who are in that situation.
A catholic family today has provide tools how to live in the world without being worldly not tools how to exclude from the world.
Because priests are for God but also for the world, bringing the redemption, the teaching and the love of Christ into it.
Lee gilbert wrote
"Frankly, I think you are very naïve in thinking you can explain it all for your children. I remember as a 16 year old watching late night TV....(snipped for brevity)"
I probably won't be able to explain it all to them but my fundamental difference in opinion with you does not stem from this.
You take the view that if you stop them watching something on TV that is popular with their schoolfiends in your home they won't watch it.
I think this is a little naive.
I take the view that if I stop them watching something in TV popular with their schoolfriends they will go somewhere else and watch it behind my back.
ie: I am starting from the position that it is impossible to stop them watching it, so its better to have them watch it in my house where I can deconstruct what they are watching.
I would probably veto the odd programme that I really didn't like but would not apply that as a general policy.
Re the catechism issue. My main gripe is with the 20 minutes. I think 20 minutes of anything weighty every day is excessive for a four year old.
Lee,
I didn't fully read your first paragraph.
I dont think these days getting rid of the TV removes the mass media, whereas even five years ago it would have.
I can now watch TV programmes on mobile phones, watch TV on the internet at home work or anywhere else [the BBC tried to force anyone with a computer to get a TV licence a while back], some trains have been fitted with TV screens that show TV programmes, you can watch DVDs on laptop computers. In shops you have TV screens playing constantly with adverts and promotional material, underground stations are being fitted with multiple screens so you can watch TV as you go down the escalator, street billboards are increasingly electronic and explicit etc. etc.
Technology is racing so far ahead so fast that more and more means of accessing the mass media present themselves every day.
My eldest child is five and she is growing up in a very different world to yours.
The saving grace is that technology is making it much much easier for individuals to "broadcast" so the days where the media is a pyramid where the few impose their views on the many are, thank goodness, coming to an end.
Just a brief reply to some of the above posts:
1. If the world is awash in mainstream media, all the more reason why a child’s home should be a refuge from it.
2. And this not only on moral grounds, but on psychological ones as well. The children need and deserve some peace and quiet.
3. Issuing the one command early in the marriage, “No mass media in this house,” paradoxically will save a parent from coming off as censorious.
4. The selective ad hoc “Don’t watch this, don’t watch that,” drives teenagers to rebellion.
5. We had no blanket prohibition against watching TV outside our home, so any such watching was not done behind our back.
6. The absence of mainstream media makes many other wonderful things possible in the home: reading out loud together in the evening, playing board games, family and personal prayer, an atmosphere conducive to study, often recorded classical music playing in the backround etc.
7. All of the above constitutes a culture of vocation,
8. Any personal listening to rock music was done with headphones. That music I could not have countermanded without utter disaster. I tried. The painful thing was that I had no idea what the lyrics were to which my son was listening, but since he was about fourteen at that point and had been raised on the lives of the saints, the catechism, and was going to a very solid Catholic high school, I reasoned the time had come to trust him and the formation I had given him. Never in him or his sister have I seen even the whisper of anything untoward- and they are almost 30.
9. He became in addition a very accomplished heavy metal guitarist known to his friends as “Sweet hand.” His practice pretty well shattered the seminary silence, though, I have to admit..
10. To appreciate this last bit, you have to understand that we have always been impecunious and the children were probably in the bottom ten per cent of their class economically, and arrived at school in old beat up cars. Anyway, a few months ago before his sister went off to the convent, my son took her out for coffee and in the course of the conversation said to her most earnestly, “Stephanie, we had everything.” Hearing of that conversation was sufficient recompense for whatever trouble we took, believe me. And I in turn am very grateful to God for all the chastisements, teachings and graces that led to the life that we have lived over the past 30 yrs. We did not choose to create a culture of vocation, we pretty much stumbled and bumbled into it, but that such a way of living produces vocations in a Catholic family I have no doubt.
11. For that reason I heartily wish Church authorities would initiate a full throttle campaign against msm in the Catholic home.
12. And at the same time foster, promote and encourage Family Evenings Together, where good literature and the lives of the saints are read and the Catechism studied. That would be the end of the vocations crisis right there. With only five per cent of our families responding, the Church would be overwhelmed with terrific vocations in about fifteen years.
Lee - I think what you are advocating is not to have the TV in the home.
We have one, until a couple of years ago all it spat out was 4 mainstream channels.
Then we got satellite and there are now about 1000, everything from EWTN to Legal TV!
This on its own is crowding out the mainstream channels, which is a good thing as the days when half the population watched the same programme on the same channel and anyone who did not was somewhat excluded are coming to an end. In particular I almost NEVER watch TV news anymore. I use the net and blogs.
I would argue that you do actually have the mainstream media in your home - as you would not be able to write your comments otherwise - I would include the net as mainstream media, but I understand the point you are trying to make :-)
The picture you paint in the last post is very different from the first impressions in your earlier post.
From the few short years I have had kids (4 in 5 years oldest one five) I have already come to the conclusion that having a large family helps a lot to make them balanced and makes them far more resistant to peer pressure as they have their own peer group at home and learn to give and take (and fight) very quickly.
Jackie, dont know how you manage with 10but the kids must be very well adjusted!
I too would disagree with putting a blanket ban on the atheist uncle or lesbian aunt. It's one thing if they are actively touting the benefits of a gay lifestyle or actively encouraging non belief in God. If your child has a good Catholic upbringing in the home and has good schooling, somehow a 10 minute talk about fishing with uncle Harold is going to make the kid a rabid iconoclast? What does it say about us as Catholics if we push all our gay/lesbian relatives out of the family circle, thus making them more marginalized and likely to go deeper and deeper into that culture. Psychologically, it is often said that being gay/lesbian masks some other real problem. Is it nature? Nurture? Combination? But I think we forget our own Catholic teachings which say to hate the sin and not the sinner. By further isolating them from the family are they pushed into the subculture which may drag them down. Remember...people can't help their feelings. Feelings aren't something you will. Now what you DO about those feelings....
Lee, what about Uncle Straight who cheated on his wife 5 years ago. Does he get banned from the house too? Sooner or later no matter how you wrap kids in cotton they are going to come into contact with a much wider range of life than what is in the home.
Paul from South Midlands writes:
"I would argue that you do actually have the mainstream media in your home - as you would not be able to write your comments otherwise - I would include the net as mainstream media, but I understand the point you are trying to make :-)"
It's worse than that. When Pope John Paul died, I went out and bought a TV so that we could watch the ensuing ceremonies. With our youngest being 27 yrs we figured it was probably safe :) We got the satellite service so that I could watch RAI and improve my Italian. However, there was a real oil and water conflict between it and the spirit of our home. As a result, we almost never watched, not even EWTN, and about six months ago we had service discontinued.
As the father of young children, I think you are making a catastophic mistake in thinking that morality is the fundamental issue here. I'd strongly urge to get hold of The Plug-in Drug by Marie Winn.
Television came into our home in the mid-fifties when I was about ten, so I am in the vanguard of the first generation raised on TV. That generation's coming of age coincided exactly with the riots of 1968, Woodstock, Haight-Ashbury, the hippies, the explosion of the drug culture, but the programming we had watched was innocuous by and large from a moral standpoint.
Moreover, I can remember the congregation at St. Petronille's in Glen Ellyn (Illinois) being harangued by the assistant pastor because we were not giving vocations to the Church. The vocations crisis had already begun, because the culture of distraction had already overwhelmed the Catholic family. We weren't conversing, playing board games together, reading aloud to one another, or praying the family rosary together. We were watching, watching, watching, night after night. God was being tuned out. The happy, holy Catholic family was being suffocated by interior and exterior noise and images. God could not get a word in edgewise. Nor can He yet.
Moreover and most importantly for you, there is the question of preserving your children's attention span. Television will annihilate it and this will serve their studies poorly. They also run a notable risk of developing ADD.
Paul from South Midlands,
You had mentioned earlier watching TV with your son and deconstructing the programs.
Every now and then some child psychologist will show up in one of the local papers advocating that parents do just that. When that happens, I pull out the following letter from my files, make the necessary adjustments and send if off to the editor:
Dear Editor,
I see that Dr Childbane spoke recently at the St. Joan of Arc Mother's Club advocating that we watch televsion with our children and explain it to them. At our house the conversation would go something like this:
"Son, before we turn on the TV, isn't this a beautiful evening? You and I could go for a walk and get to know one another better. You could read to me from the McGuffey Reader or we could toss the ball around in the park.
"Instead, let's do the least demanding, the least human thing of all. Let's turn on the TV. It will do our talking and our story telling for us, our thinking and even our exercise.
"For example, here is a televised football game. These guys have worked very hard so that you can sit here eating potato chips. See that guy running down the field? Get one thing straight in your head- that is not you. He is running, you are sitting. Look son, if you like sports, then play sports. The rest is nonsense.
"Here is the news. It is astounding how few new facts you will learn from the news. Think of it as institutionalized worry. Forget it. If anything important happens, your playmates will tell you about it. Using this technique I once went through an entire recession without knowing it. Didn't hurt me a bit and I probably saved some money at the drugstore besides.
"Here is a commercial. The whole point of television is deliver as much audience to the advertiser as possible. That is why they not only aim at the lowest common denominator, but actually try to dumb down the smarter people. A few years of watching TV and you'll have the attention span of a fruit fly. This will hurt your studies and your life.
"Besides being an incredible time waster, TV is an entry level drug and entry level pornography.
"So give me a hand hauling it out to the curb, grab your mit and let's head over to the park."
"Sounds good to me, Dad."
Yours sincerely,
Lee Gilbert
Gemoftheocean,
"They went forth from us, but they were not of us. If they had been of us, with us they would have stayed." In other words, who is rejecting whom exactly? When a family member rejects his upbringing, the teaching of the Church, denies the Lord and breaks with the Communion, not inviting him to family functions is merely to recognize and respect the decision he has made.
Should we pretend that he never made the decision or that it doesn't matter? Really, I think that becomes a kind of denial of the faith on our part. Saying that it matters hugely by leaving him out in the cold may well bring him to his senses by limning out in his mind a trajectory of eternal isolation. I believe St. Paul suggests that tack.
Moreover, he has become an enemy by his own volition, is in the enemy camp, and is a tool of the enemy. If that sounds medieval or even ancient, it's just one of those little things we've lost sight of in the past few hundred years. That is why it would be madness to put an atheist teacher even of mathematics in front of a classroom of Catholic students. The spirits to which he has handed himself over will find a way to use him to advance the kingdom of darkness. So also in my living room.
Frankly, while in the process of raising my children I have zero interest how decisions taken on behalf of their eternal wellbeing impact the feelings of adults who have decided to commit sexual suicide. Their over-regard for their own feelings is what led them over the cliff in the first place. Maybe the daring assertion that there is some other compass- such as truth- may eventually help them to find their way back.
Meanwhile, stay away! Though, of course, I'd be happy to meet them for tea any time.
While my children's minds and hearts and personalities are still plastic, to the extent of my abilities I am not going to let forces inimical to their formation as Catholic Christians have any part in their formation, least of all a friendly relationship renewed on all the holidays.
Btw, atheist uncles do not talk about fishing nor lesbian aunts about the price of gasoline. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks," and the longer the conversation goes on the more it circles closer and closer to the moment when their animosity against God, the teaching and the policy of the Church finds full tongue. The ancient enemy vents his spleen. Not in my house, thank you very much.
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