Inculcate Hate
Fr Tim has a couple of interesting posts about encouraging your children to seek out vocations in the church. His most recent post has two points that concern me:
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.
Whatever you do, keep the world so far away that it will shock them and terrify them when they first meet it. And for God’s sake, don’t let them think people who are different are valued, loved or cared for. ESPECIALLY if those different people are in the family, ostracise them totally. Cut them off. Teach hate from the get go, that way when they get old enough to join the ministry they can teach hate all the way.
They shall be most like the man who ate with drunkards and sinners that way.
Yup.
For what it’s worth, I know this isn’t only a problem in the Roman ecclesial community.
Category: uberfrum
Discussion: You came too late to this party
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Well, yeah. If all Christian communities were called to be separate from the world, it might do us good to craft leaders who are separate from the world.
Someone said somewhere that we are to be in the world…just not of it. We must teach wisdom and not fear.
But I speak out of turn. Thanks for the link, Huw.
I don’t think so, Tripp: I posted therefore it was your turn!
I’m down with “in the world but not of it”. But when I was at a Tiny Christian College in upstate NY, my freshman year, I met a lot of kids who never met the world until our first Saturday excursion to NYC. It was deadly. I don’t think you can learn discernment until you know what you’re discerning.
Then there’s the issue of Christian hospitality…
(Raises hand) Can I be for point 1 and against point 2?
There are some good sociological studies coming out now about the relationship between the amount of time spent watching the boob tube, the type of violence (or sex,etc.) watched, and future anti-social behaviors.
Anti-social is too strong a term, per se, since some of the acting out does not fully reach the anti-social level, but you get the idea.
If that family takes their children to museums, plays for children, the library, reads out loud together, gets involved in sports, etc., that is certainly much better than the mass media all the time non-stop.
I grew up in one of those households and guess what? It works about as well as prohibition helped make our country more moral and upright!
Push down on those springs as hard as you want, but as soon as your finger gets tired or slips a bit….that spring is flying out of control.
My kids watch TV, play video games, go to movies, dance, listen to the radio, hang out with friends, doing all the things I could never do when I was a kid and you know what? They’re much better kids than I ever was, than any of brothers or sisters ever were! And I don’t have to worry about what they’re getting in to every time my back is turned. As they grow up I give them more freedom, more choices, so that they will be able to function once they’re on their own rather than going wild with that new found freedom.
My family tried pretty hard to dis this Jewish aunt and make sure no kids thought it admirable my conversion to Judaism. The first chance she gets one of my nieces tells me she wants to convert to Judaism as well. She’s seen all the crap piled on me but sees my kids and I happy with our lives and who we are. That guy can teach people to throw rocks all they want, but he forgets, kids aren’t stupid either. They’ll admire the lesbian aunt way more than they’ll admire the disdainful, paranoid father.
Um… is this serious?
How is #2 at all Christlike? Do people actually believe this crap? I can get the whole “love the sinner, hate the sin” thing, even though it’s BS, but “separate yourself completely from all sinners”? Has the writer of the above read the gospels, or does he listen to them when he preaches them?
Ernesto, you can be for 1 and against 2.
In fact, i’m kind of reading 1 through my filter for 2. I generally avoid TV save for a very few shows caught on the recorder. My idea of “popular music” is the Glen Miller band. But from #2 I got the sense that #1 was an eternal thing as well. If you can’t have “friendly regard” for those who might be different, then I doubt you’d ever be allowed to even see the movin pikchurs.
All #1 requires is a discerning family who cares about the qulity of what the kids watch and *talks to them* about it. Limit the time, yes! But don’t ignore/avoid/fear it.
To be quite honest, I can understand both the points. I do agree that mass media is “infecting” our value-systems, so to speak. And I am concerned about the influences we expose children to. It’s only in the modern age that we think that those we disagree with still have an automatic right to influence impressionable minds. Naturally, I am not for totalitarianism, but I do see some wisdom in the “no, you’re not to speak to him; he’s odd” rationale of generations gone by.
I think some people might be missing the point that the guy on Fr. Tim’s blog is talking about: the influences to which we expose our kids. It says nothing about teaching the kids to hate the people who propagate those influences.
Put it this way: If you think the guy who wrote this is hateful, would you want your kids exposed to his influence? Maybe some would. But to those who would not: would that mean you would teach your kids to hate the guy?
Teaching kids to hate someone, and avoiding exposing your kids to someone’s influence, are entirely different things. You can disagree with someone without hating him, and you can try to exclude what you consider bad influences from your child’s life without teaching your child to hate anyone.
I think the line, “Afford no opportunity for the children to develop friendly regard…” to be antithetical to the Gospel of Love.
Is that better than “hate”?
I authored the post in question.
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?
When the child asks “why is Uncle so and so never here at Christmas?” or “why does Auntie so and so not come to her nephew’s school play?”
What will you say?
PS: Sorry, Lee: I thought Fr Tim had written the post. I didn’t mean to misquote or incorrectly credit anyone.
Huw: The phrase used is “friendly regard *and* admiration”.
Again this doesn’t mean teaching kids not to be friendly. It means avoiding opportunities for them to develop friendly regard *and* admiration for a person whom the parent considers a bad example.
Anyway, I appreciate the fact that you do seem to understand Lee’s point. You don’t display the knee-jerk reaction that any Christian who considers homosexuality a sin is automatically hateful.
Huw asks
When the child asks:
“why is Uncle so and so never here at Christmas?†or “why does Auntie so and so not come to her nephew’s school play?â€
What will you say?
My response: The real difficulty is in explaining why we will not go to the large family gatherings at Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving and so forth. These are held in the homes of persons who have left the faith and live in open disregard of the teaching of the Church.
The reasons given are that my parents raised us along different lines altogether and to go there would betray them and my siblings as well, and that by giving tacit approval to their apostasy and deviance I would betray Jesus Christ and the Church, Western Civilization, Natural Law, normality, humanity, sex.
Then there is the fact that we need the blessing and approval of God for many reasons- for example to have our prayers answered. But one does not gain the approval and the blessing of God by bringing ones children into a scandalous atmosphere. In fact, it is forbidden.
My principle is this, that I am perfectly happy to meet with any of my siblings any time, but not in circumstances where approval of a forbidden relationship is implied. On that basis we have been able to go to the odd family gathering together with the children, or have family over-those that are practicing, or who at least have not made themselves apostles of darkness.
Interesting.
As you wish to raise your kids, so be it, of course. It is at least consistent. I feel sorry for your kids not having a large family to gather with: seems rather like the Pharisees to me.
I was raised with 65 + at Thanksgiving, Christmas, Memorial day, Labour day, birthdays weddings. In fact I know that some attitudes against certain family members were laid aside for such events just so we could all be together.
I’m sure you’d disapprove as I do of your methods.
Here’s to a peaceful new year for both of us.