Your parents forced you to wash before you went out in the morning. Those cruel tyrants made sure that you cleaned your teeth before you went to bed. They dragged you kicking and screaming to school so that you could learn to read - and the teachers collaborated by forcing you to learn the alphabet and put the words together.
To top it all, after looking after your physical needs, they had the temerity to exercise their authority by looking after your spiritual needs and taking you to Mass on Sunday.
If they had neglected to see that you were clean, had suitable clothes, ate some sort of nourishing food, got some education and crossed the road safely, they would have been visited by social services and given a care plan so that you could be healthy and safe.
And you are complaining because they took responsibility for your eternal life?
In this context, it is relevant to quote again the classic:
Ten reasons why I never wash
- I was forced to as a child.
- People who wash are hypocrites - they think they are cleaner than everybody else.
- There are so many different kinds of soap, I can't decide which one is best.
- I used to wash, but I got bored and stopped.
- I wash only on special occasions, like Christmas and Easter.
- None of my friends wash.
- I'll start washing when I get older and dirtier.
- I can't spare the time.
- The bathroom is never warm enough in winter or cool enough in summer.
- People who make soap are only after your money.
22 comments:
Boy do I wish my parents made me go. But they considered themselves alternately too dirty or too clean to bother with soap themselves.
Consequently I had a lot of scrubbing to do when I converted in college. Thank God I am using the most effective soap, as soiled as it often appears on the outside!
LOL! I'd never seen that before, Fr Tim. I'm going to save it, print it and pass it around.
'A soap salesman was very insensitive to me once.'
Maybe it's just a polite way of saying "I don't really believe that stuff."
Father,
I realize you post this in jest but I can assure you I work with and know well quite a few folks in my age cohort (early 30s) for whom the above is not humor.
They really don't wash and will often espouse the reasons stated.
Further, they are all materialists, so there is no "taking care of one's soul" that going to church could possibly do -- they reject the possibility of the existence of the soul.
Yes, things really are that bad.
And science has proved that there is no such thing as "clean"
Father Tim,
even compared to your always excellent standard, this here is truly outstanding.
Mundabor
I love this post! Yep, I'm one of those moms who has to enforce all those rules and even drag the boys to Mass.
I think that the sort of excuse where young people blame their parents for forcing religion on them is in fact a witness to the harm and division that modern life's obligatory school/work/social patterns causes us all. If children didn't go to school, and parents based all their work decisions around the wellbeing and home education of their children, then there would be no complaint. The complaint comes because by offering up/'sacrificing' their children to the 'system', a system the child neither comprehends or trusts, the parents have 'lost' their children for good. The big act of faith involved is not towards handing on the faith, or even handing on an education (as it is their duty to do), but in an idolatrous act of worship (even if with misgivings) to 'the system' i.e. school/work/'social activities'/peer pressure/fashion. The child may be seeking an education but all they really learn is that they too must bow before this system, as must their children, as must their children's children, and in their heart, even the least revolutionary, even those least equipped with the ability to express themselves, know it to be a false god, this 'system of obligation'. Bowing before God on a Sunday therefore becomes for most slaves to this system an act of hypocrisy and playacting. They may even feel this system is true in its utmost depth, but all human choices and behaviour at other times seem to point elsewhere.
To illustrate what I'm saying, look at the rise of home educated Catholic families and you rarely see this 'they forced me to go to church' attitude, in fact these families are, when you encounter them, the only hope.
I think young people today are in a no win situation when they are slaves to this system and the Church must extricate itself from being part of the problem, to seizing the opportunity to set people free from slavery, and to lead them to the promised land.
Excellent!
I translated it into Italian, it is a wonderful and impressive comparison, thank you Father!
I was forced to write "thank you" letters which took the shine off Christmas and why I never accept gifts. Ahem.
The cult of victimhood has a lot to answer for. It's always someone else's fault and a convenient cover for abdicating from the responsibilities of adulthood.
and they should be able see the soap working on those who wash daily and weekly, their parents, teachers and priests.
Happy Christmastide to you, Fr Finigan, and all who read this.
In caritate Xp.,
Bryan
Father,
excellent post. This is exactly the argument I use when people tell me it is not fair to raise children in faith, without them making that choice. I say that children need their parents to teach them about life, which includes eating healthy food, going to school, taking baths on regular basis, as well as going to church.
Bunny,
I completely agree with your comment. Parents must not allow the system to brainwash their children into believing that the states has the divine right to control education. The problem is that many parents believe that and are thus not capable of teaching their children how to be critical of the system. I've had this conversation with many 'free-thinking liberals' who are shocked to hear that I question these things and consider to have rights over my children that override those of the state.
Hail Mary!
Great text! How about putting a translator on his blog to facilitate the reading of other languages?
Have a blessed 2011.
Stay with God!
Very funny, Father. I am linking to this.
Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!
Thanks for this post, Father. I'm another of those pesky mothers who "forces" my children to attend mass. As far as I'm concerned it's the most important thing I can do for them.
I also have no truck with all this nonsense about children "choosing" what to believe when they grow up. What they grow up with is profound ignorance of the world around them and a gnawing hunger for something "else", without knowing what.
A Happy New Year to you! (Rant over...)
Brilliant!
With apologies to our ordained host, the stupid excuse I hear most often is that some priest or other was "mean to me," or some such.
My retort is always that I know "just how you feel, my science teacher was mean to me, so I don't believe the Periodic Table, and I won't use gravity."
(Save the Liturgy, Save the World)
I think it's content like this that turns people off to the 'Church/Christianity' these days.
Waving what you believe to be ridiculous in the face of people who are challenged by modern Christianity is not a way to make your point. The excuse maybe crap, but you are making a strong judgment of an excuse that can be built on life experience that you dont understand.
This blog post only validates reason #2.
Ha! Excellent! I had a recent discussion with one Mom who told me that her twenty-something son doesn't go to Church any more because she forced him to go when he was a teenager. She told me that right on the heels of telling me that her son was a perennial student who could not decide on a career path so he continued pursuing degrees instead. I laughed, "Well, it's a good thing you never forced him to get up and go to school when he was a teenager, he might have developed a dislike for his studies!"
love this, Father!
I am old enough to have seen several versions of this over the years...however in reading some of the other posts about this topic I just wanted to relate a little story. I teach music in a private Catholic School. Parents have a variety of reasons for choosing our school and it is always curious to me that there are people who are staunch non-believers and non-church goers who entrust their children to us.
We are preparing for First Reconciliation next week with our Second Grade classes. As we were practicing and talking about this step into adult accountability one little person raised her hand and very happily stated that she was going to be baptized this Sunday. She then said that her parents didn't want to force anything on them and wanted them to choose. So she wanted to make First Reconciliation with her class and asked for Baptism.
The Word offers to come to anyone who will have him daily, but the responsibility of choosing (even if our parents made us attend Mass and/or Religious Education) still remains ours and ours alone.
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