Behold you stand at the door and knock

The actual biblical quote, from the book of Revelation, is ‘Behold I stand at the door, and knock’ (Rev 3: 20) but in the current climate it is we who are, metaphorically, knocking at the doors of our churches begging to be let in to ‘sup with him’.

What are we to do to get the church doors opened once again to Christ’s disciples? I would propose the following 6 point plan:

1   Pray. No surprise there really. Let us ask God our Lord, through the intercession of Our Lady, especially in this month of May, to bring to an end this time of trial and purification. Praying the Pope’s two prayers (Pope Francis, Letter 25 April 2020) will help. Those of us in Scotland can also go to the special intercession of St Margaret of Scotland and the Venerable Margaret Sinclair.

2  Offer something up. We need to put some skin in the game to show that we are serious and to motivate us to pray more. Giving up sweets or alcohol or cakes or a favorite TV programme would be the typical sort of thing.

3  Go and pray outside the church. Social distanced of course from anyone else there. We can spend just a few minutes praying that the church doors be opened. In the twenty-fifth chapter of St Matthew’s Gospel, our Lord tells the parable of the sheep and the goats. One of the differences between them is that the sheep visited those in prison. It is our Lord who is now in prison, in the church, and we can go and visit him. We can’t get in to see him but we can be outside and he knows that we are there.

4  Following on from the previous point, why not set up a rota at you parish so that our Lord is accompanied for as much of the day as possible in accordance with any restrictions laid down by the civil authorities.

5  This may be the hardest one. Promise yourself that you will never complain about the  Mass (homily, hymns, length,…) ever again. Constructive and positive criticism is still allowed.

6  Also promise yourself to attend and promote Eucharistic devotions in your parishes: Benedictions, 40 hours, vigils, visits to the Blessed Sacrament, spending some time in thanksgiving after receiving or Lord in Holy Communion.

And even if these don’t seem to bring forward that happy day when we can enter our churches, following the above steps will do us a lot of good anyway. And meanwhile,  let’s look forward with hope to that day when we can say in the words of Psalm 122: I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord!”

Footprints in the Snow

One hundred years ago, in early 1918, when he was just 16, Josemaria Escriva saw the bare footprints of a monk in the snow in Logrono, Spain. Others may have passed by without a second thought but those prints made a deep and lasting impression on the soul of that young man. The sign of the sacrifice that monk was prepared to make stimulated the generosity of Josemaria who asked himself what was he doing and what was he prepared to do for his God. Reflecting on this event years later, Josemaria said

Our Lord was preparing me in spite of myself, using apparently innocuous things to instill a divine restlessness in my soul. Thus I came to understand very well the love, so human and so divine, that moved Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus when, leafing through the pages of a book, she suddenly came upon a picture of one of the Redeemer’s wounded hands. Things like that happened to me too — things that moved me and led me to daily Communion, to purification, to confession, and to penance.

I began to have intimations of Love, to realize that my heart was asking for something great, and that it was love. I didn’t know what God wanted of me, but it was evident that I had been chosen for something.

These “intimations of Love” would, 10 years later on 2 October 1928, be fulfilled when God ‘showed’ Josemaria Opus Dei, the institution he was to found. A cartoon depicting this event is available here

Pope Francis also had an experience in his youth which led him to join the Jesuits. In 1953, on the feast of Saint Matthew, the young Jorge Bergoglio (Pope Francis), at the age of 17, experienced, in a very special and intimate way, the loving presence of God in his life. He went to confession and felt his heart touched by the mercy of God. It changed his life.

How many people, especially young people, don’t notice Christ passing by them. This may be due to being too distracted with material things or not giving enough or any time to prayer, silence and reflection. It is interesting that the subtitle of Cardinal Sarah’s book The Power of Silence is ‘Against the Dictatorship of Noise’. Maybe they are waiting for something more dramatic than footprints or a feeling of the loving presence of God. But if say an angel came down and wrote on a wall they might simply take a photo and share it on instagram!

The 2018 Synod of Bishops is dedicated to ‘Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment’. This could therefore be a year to really pray hard for vocations and to encourage them among all of the young people we know; not forcing them in the slightest but at least getting them to seriously think and, more importantly, to pray about it, remembering too that marriage is also a divine vocation. This will also need parents to be very supportive of the vocational choice of their children. St Josemaria (as Josemaria Escriva would become)  wrote in point 18 of The Forge:

Please echo these words for me: it is no “sacrifice” for parents when God asks them for their children. Neither, for those he calls, is it a sacrifice to follow him.

It is, on the contrary, an immense honour, a reason for a great and holy pride, a mark of predilection, a very special affection that God has shown at a particular time, but which has been in his mind from all eternity.

At the start of a New Year one resolution we could make is to pray every day for vocations in the Church.

 

Why people leave their faith and how we can stop them

Christmas time

This year I bought my Christmas cards from a Christian bookshop in Glasgow.  As a free gift with my purchases I was given a copy of a magazine called ‘Christianity’ which included an article entitled “When your children don’t follow you into the Christian faith”. The article described the pain felt by Christian parents whose children, in spite of them having done everything they could, are not followers of Jesus Christ. This can be particularly painful at times such as Christmas when the family, united around the dinner table, is not united around the table of the Lord. Such is the experience of many parents.

The article rightly suggests that blaming oneself is not always the best response. After all, many Christian parents have done all that they could to provide a loving, religious upbringing only to see one or more child fall away from their religious practice, at least temporarily. Individual freedom and influences outside of the home will also be to blame for where children end up. As Chesterton wrote in his book Orthodoxy: According to Christianity, in making [the world], He set it free. God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage managers, who had since made a great mess of it. Parents also planned perfect lives for their children but, like God, have to leave space for their little ones to make a great mess of it. Parents in these situations must continue loving their children unconditionally and praying for them night and day.

Some statistics

A UK survey showed that only 30% of Sunday School attendees in 1985 were still connected with their church 20 years later. In the US, the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) issued a report in September 2016 entitled “Exodus: Why Americans are Leaving Religion—and Why They’re Unlikely to Come Back”. Although the US and the UK are very different (“two countries separated by a common language” to quote George Bernard Shaw) some of the findings in this report will feel familiar this side of the Pond.

In 1991, only 6% of Americans identified their religious affiliation as “none,” and that number had not moved much since the early 1970s. By the end of the 1990s, however, 14% of the public claimed no religious affiliation. The rate of religious change accelerated further during the late 2000s and early 2010s, reaching 20% by 2012. Today, one-quarter of Americans claim no formal religious identity, making this group the single largest “religious group” in the US; significantly larger than Catholics, for example. Meanwhile, similar but more striking trends have been identified in UK surveys. In 1983, 31% of adults had no religious affiliation (the UK therefore being way ahead of the US in this regard). By 2014 this had increased to 49%.

These averages mask wide differences by age. In the US, nearly 40% of young adults (18 – 29) have no religion while for those over 65 the rate is just 13%.

These trends are, not yet, due simply to Americans being brought up in non-religious households as only 9% of Americans reported being raised in such households. However, as the number of non-religious grows and reaches parenthood, this will undoubtedly change and more and more children will be brought up in non-religious households.

One of the reasons secularists use for not wanting to allow children to be brought up in a formal religion is that they claim it restricts their freedom. This is, though, given the lie by statistics from the PRRI report that, while nearly one in five Americans switched from their childhood religious identity to become unaffiliated as adults, very few (only 3%) Americans who were raised unaffiliated have joined a religious tradition. It would therefore seem easier to switch out of a religion than into one.

The report shows that of the main Christian denominations, it seems to be the Catholics who are finding it hardest to keep hold of their youngsters. About 30% of Americans reported being raised in a Catholic household, but only about 20% currently identify as Catholic a loss of 10%. 13% of Americans report being former Catholics while only about 2% of Americans have left their religious tradition to become Catholic. However, there are still some 100,000 people become Catholic (baptisms and receptions combined) in the US each year.

Those who left their original religious filiation, reported doing so when still quite young. According to IPPR, more than 60% religiously unaffiliated Americans who were raised in a religion say they abandoned their childhood religion before they turned 18. They may not have abandoned the outward practice of the religion until later but internally they had already disengaged with the practice of the Faith or it held little meaning for them.

The reasons why people give for having stopped practicing their Faith are many and varied and may contain a certain amount of post-event rationalisation. The most common reasons given in the US are that they stopped believing in the religion’s teaching; their family was never that religious and their experience of negative religious teachings about or treatment of gay and lesbian people.

These reasons should make us pause to reflect a little. One should not be surprised if people stop practicing a religion they no longer believe in but this really begs the question as to why they no longer believe. Is it that the beliefs no longer seem true in today’s society? Perhaps they were not taught properly in the first place. If they see some of the teachings of the Church, on gays and lesbians or anything else for that matter, as negative, on what basis are they making that judgement? Where the reasons are more around the fact that their household was not that religious (on the other hand we have probably come across friends who say they gave up because their home was too religious so it seems that getting it right is a tricky balance) this reminds me of the story of the priest giving marriage instruction to a young couple. He asked them if they went to Mass. They say yes although not every week, perhaps about half the time. The priest then asked them about their parents. They said that their parents went to Mass every week without fail. The priest then commented: your parents 100%, you about 50%, your children? Probably 0%.

Hope springs eternal

This may seem like a negative topic on which to end the year. However, it is important to realise what is really happening in the world if we are to have a chance to turning it around, which of course we can with the help of God. After the end of the Year of Mercy, Pope Francis started a series in his weekly audiences on the virtue of Christian hope. At the start of the fist one he said It is very important, because hope never disappoints. Optimism disappoints, but hope does not! We have such need, in these times which appear dark, in which we sometimes feel disoriented at the evil and violence which surrounds us, at the distress of so many of our brothers and sisters. We need hope! We feel disoriented and even rather discouraged, because we are powerless and it seems this darkness will never end.

As we look for ways to keep young Catholics from abandoning their Faith and of attracting those that have, back to the Church; not only do we need to keep hoping, we have to teach them to hope. The Pope said in the second of his audiences on hope: And we too are urged to awake a little, like Jerusalem, according to the invitation of the prophet; we are called to become men and women of hope, cooperating in the coming of this Kingdom made of light and destined for all, men and women of hope. How bad is it when we find a Christian who has lost hope! “But, I don’t hope in anything; everything is finished for me”: thus says a Christian who is incapable of looking to the horizons of hope, and before whose heart there is only a wall. However, God destroys such walls with forgiveness! And for this reason we must pray, that each day God may give us hope and give it to everyone: that hope which arises when we see God in the crib in Bethlehem. The message of the Good News entrusted to us is urgent. We too must run like the messenger on the mountains, because the world cannot wait, humanity is hungry and thirsty for justice, truth, peace.

Spirit-filled evangelizers

Along with hope will come joy, supernatural joy. St Josemaria wrote in Furrow (point 60): The cheerfulness of a man of God, of a woman of God, has to overflow: it has to be calm, contagious, attractive…; in a few words, it has to be so supernatural, and natural, so infectious that it may bring others to follow Christian ways. Re-reading Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium on the Gospel of Joy, especially chapter 5 on ‘Spirit-filled Evangelizers’ will not only bring hope to our hearts and a smile to our lips but also provide us with many ideas of how to go about spreading the Gospel to those around us, starting with those of our own family.

Mercy and hope

End of the Year of Mercy

The Year of Mercy came to an end on Sunday 20 November, the Solemnity of Christ the King. Pope Francis issued a document Misericordia et Misera to throw light on the conclusion of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, but also to point out the path that we are called to follow in the future. In this document the Pope wrote, concerning families, that:

At a time like our own, marked by many crises, including that of the family, it is important to offer a word of comfort and strength to our families. The gift of matrimony is a great calling to which spouses, with the grace of Christ, respond with a love that is generous, faithful and patient. The beauty of the family endures unchanged, despite so many problems and alternative proposals: “The joy of love experienced by families is also the joy of the Church”.[Amoris Laetitia,1] The journey of life that leads a man and a woman to meet one other, to love one another and to promise mutual fidelity before God, is often interrupted by suffering, betrayal and loneliness. Joy at the gift of children is accompanied by concern about their growth and education and their prospects for happiness and fulfilment in life.

The grace of the sacrament of marriage not only strengthens the family as a privileged place for practising mercy, but also commits the Christian community and all its pastoral activity to uphold the great positive value of the family. This Jubilee Year cannot overlook the complexity of the current realities of family life. The experience of mercy enables us to regard all human problems from the standpoint of God’s love, which never tires of welcoming and accompanying.

The Pope reminds us that the Church, and therefore all of us who form part of it, have to do what we can to support and strengthen the family. This can be, for example, at two levels.

The first is the social and political level, though trying to ensure that the messages given through the law, the education system, the media, including TV and the internet, reflect a sound understanding of what marriage and the family ought to be.

The second level is the personal level; helping individual families we know to deal with the various problems and challenges they have to face. This will provide many opportunities to exercise works for mercy, corporal and spiritual, with our relatives, friends and neighbours, especially when they are experiencing difficulties in their marriage. While many voices in society would promote divorce as the answer to marital problems, this will, in fact, usually only make matters worse; for the spouses and any children involved. We therefore have to exercise mercy and help spouses overcome their differences and be reconciled. A lot of prayer is required in these situations. In Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis wrote: Couples will gain from receiving help in facing crises, meeting challenges and acknowledging them as part of family life … Each crisis has a lesson to teach us; we need to learn how to listen for it with the ear of the heart.

What is also needed is suitable marriage preparation so that spouses enter marriage knowing that it will not be a bed of roses for life and so are able to deal with whatever problems arise. As Pope Francis wrote in Amoris Laetitia: In such situations, some have the maturity needed to reaffirm their choice of the other as their partner on life’s journey, despite the limitations of the relationship. They realistically accept that the other cannot fulfil all their cherished dreams. Persons like this avoid thinking of themselves as martyrs; they make the most of whatever possibilities family life gives them and they work patiently at strengthening the marriage bond. They realize, after all, that every crisis can be a new “yes”, enabling love to be renewed, deepened and inwardly strengthened. When crises come, they are unafraid to get to the root of it, to renegotiate basic terms, to achieve a new equilibrium and to move forward together. With this kind of constant openness they are able to face any number of difficult situations.

This maturity comes primarily from their own experience of family life when growing up and from the example of their parents. Where this is lacking it needs to be supplied by the example of other family members and friends.

Teaching hope

In his message at the end of the Year of Mercy the Pope wrote: In a culture often dominated by technology; sadness and loneliness appear to be on the rise, not least among young people. The future seems prey to an uncertainty that does not make for stability. This often gives rise to depression, sadness and boredom, which can gradually lead to despair. We need witnesses to hope and true joy if we are to dispel the illusions that promise quick and easy happiness through artificial paradises. The profound sense of emptiness felt by so many people can be overcome by the hope we bear in our hearts and by the joy that it gives. We need to acknowledge the joy that rises up in a heart touched by mercy. Let us keep in mind, then, the words of the Apostle: “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil 4:4; cf. 1 Thess 5:16)

Hope can be the forgotten theological virtue and yet is so important in the life of a Christian for, without it, we can easily fall into despair or presumption; neither of which are particularly pleasant places to be.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit. “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

We received the theological virtue of hope when we were baptised but we have to exercise this virtue in order for it to grow although we can also ask God to increase our hope. The virtue perfects our will so that it can more strongly desire reaching heaven. We can teach children how to practice hope by helping them remain calm in the face of difficulties. Thus, for instance, when a child suffers a disappointment or an illness, that’s a good opportunity to help them to offer up the situation and see the hand of God behind it. This is not always easy but if they have been prepared through their early years to pray and think about others it will be easier. The example of seeing their parents practice hope will also be important to help them grow in hope: smiling when upset; being optimistic even when the situation looks bad; taking a supernatural view of things that happen; in a word, accepting, generously, the various crosses that come our way without complaining. St Josemaria, in his homily on hope in Friends of God wrote: The true Christian, who acts according to his faith, always has his sights set on God. His outlook is supernatural. He works in this world of ours, which he loves passionately; he is involved in all its challenges, but all the while his eyes are fixed on Heaven. St Paul brings this out very clearly: quae sursum sunt quaerite; ‘seek the things that are above, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God. Savour the things of Heaven, not the things that are upon the earth. For you are dead’, to worldliness, through Baptism, ‘and your life is hidden with Christ in God.’

During the Year of Mercy, Pope Francis said to a meeting with young people: Yours is a time of life which is full of amazing changes.  Everything seems possible and impossible all at once.  I repeat what I said to some of your friends: “Remain steadfast in the journey of faith, with firm hope in the Lord.  This is the secret of our journey!  He gives us the courage to swim against the tide.  Pay attention, my young friends: to go against the current; this is good for the heart, but we need courage to swim against the tide.  Jesus gives us this courage! … With him we can do great things; he will give us the joy of being his disciples, his witnesses.  Commit yourselves to great ideals, to the most important things.  We Christians were not chosen by the Lord for little things; push onwards toward the highest principles.  Stake your lives on noble ideals”

This setting in front of them noble ideals, ideals worth giving one’s life for, will help young people rise up to the challenge of being Christians in today’s world. And, speaking particularly to young people in difficult and dangerous situations he also said:

Here I cannot forget those of you who are living in situations of war, extreme poverty, daily troubles and loneliness.  Don’t ever lose hope!  The Lord has a great dream which, with your help, he wants to come true!  Your friends, young people your age living in less trying conditions than your own, have not forgotten you; they are working for peace and justice for everyone everywhere.  Don’t be taken in by the messages of hatred or terror all around us.  Instead, make new friends.  Give of your time and always show concern for those who ask your help.  Be brave and go against the tide; be friends of Jesus, who is the Prince of Peace (cf. Is 9:6).  “Everything in him speaks of mercy.  Nothing in him is devoid of compassion”

Experiencing mercy leads us to want to share this mercy with others. In Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict spoke about St Josephine Bakhita, who discovered Christ in Italy after having been sold into slavery from her home in Sudan. After becoming a Catholic she became a nun and spent some of her time travelling around Italy promoting the missions because the hope born in her which had “redeemed” her she could not keep to herself; this hope had to reach many, to reach everybody.

Catechism in the family

The Second Vatican Council in its document Lumen Gentium (section 11) said: From the wedlock of Christians there comes the family, in which new citizens of human society are born, who by the grace of the Holy Spirit received in baptism are made children of God, thus perpetuating the people of God through the centuries. The family is, so to speak, the domestic church. In it, parents should, by their word and example, be the first preachers of the faith to their children; they should encourage them in the vocation which is proper to each of them, fostering with special care vocation to a sacred state.

This was then explained further in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 2226): Education in the faith by the parents should begin in the child’s earliest years. This already happens when family members help one another to grow in faith by the witness of a Christian life in keeping with the Gospel. Family catechesis precedes, accompanies, and enriches other forms of instruction in the faith. Parents have the mission of teaching their children to pray and to discover their vocation as children of God.

Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia reminded parents of their responsibilities in some of the earliest paragraphs (n. 16 and 17) of that document:

The Bible also presents the family as the place where children are brought up in the faith. This is evident from the description of the Passover celebration (cf. Ex 12:26-27; Deut 6:20-25) and it later appears explicitly in the Jewish haggadah, the dialogue accompanying the rite of the Passover meal. One of the Psalms celebrates the proclamation of faith within families: “All that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us, we will not hide from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might, and the wonders which he has wrought. He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children; that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children” (Ps 78:3-6). The family is thus the place where parents become their children’s first teachers in the faith. They learn this “trade”, passing it down from one person to another: “When in time to come your son asks you… You shall say to him…” (

Ex 13:14). Thus succeeding generations can raise their song to the Lord: “young men and maidens together, old and young together!”(Ps 148:12).

Parents have a serious responsibility for this work of education, as the Biblical sages often remind us.

The Pope then referenced a number of verses from the Book of Proverbs, for example:

My son, keep your father’s commandment,
and forsake not your mother’s teaching.
Bind them upon your heart always;
tie them about your neck.
When you walk, they will lead you;
when you lie down, they will watch over you;
and when you awake, they will talk with you.

(Proverbs 6 20-22)

Parents cannot escape from their responsibility for the moral and faith formation of their children. Especially as we enter times of possibly greater uncertainty (at least perhaps compared to more recent decades) children need to be well formed so that they don’t get lost or shipwrecked. Schools and parishes can provide a great support but parents are ultimately the ones who need to ensure that their children are really learning the Faith. As St Paul says: until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; (Eph 4: 13).

But perhaps many parents feel that they are not up to the task of teaching their children religion. But that maybe because they are thinking of the school subject of religion or of theology rather than catechesis which is the instruction of the basic knowledge and practice of the Faith, which after all Catholic parents should already know. St Pater wrote: but in your hearts reverence Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to make a defence to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence; (1 Pet 3: 15). To cover the basic topics of the content of the Creed, the sacraments, the 10 commandments and the Christian life of prayer is much easier and more enjoyable than many people imagine. And there is a lot of help available. At one level there is the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Compendium which provide clear explanations of the Church’s teaching. Then there is a lot of catechetical material available in print and on-line. Obviously parents will need to ensure that whatever material they are using is completely faithful to the Church’s teaching.

Philip and Teresa Crabtree have been teaching the catechism to their own and other children for many years and, out of that experience, they have produced a book called “The Illustrated Catechism”, a textbook and workbook of around 100 pages. This book explains the Faith for children between the ages of around 7 to Holy Communion and beyond. The content essentially covers everything you would expect your child to know about the Faith before they make their first Holy Communion. It is a mixture of doctrine and exercises/questions to test knowledge, with puzzles and drawing to keep the child interested while learning. It costs £10 plus postage. To get a copy you can call Philip or Teresa on 07814 009039 or 01727 839898

Parents who are keen to catechise their children could also think about offering to help teach other children as well. Pope Francis wrote:

The work of handing on the faith to children, in the sense of facilitating its expression and growth, helps the whole family in its evangelizing mission. It naturally begins to spread the faith to all around them, even outside of the family circle. (Amoris Laetitia 289)

And as one commentator wrote:

We are awash in a broader culture of banality, ugliness, and stupidity, and we have several generations of disciples who are completely incapable of coping with it because of their double ignorance of their faith. Double ignorance, from Plato, means they don’t know, and they don’t know that they don’t know.

If we are to reverse the tide of secularisation and materialism we will need to reach out beyond our own families to, as Pope Francis constantly reminds us to the peripheries remembering that instructing the ignorant is one of the spiritual works of mercy which provides a reminder that the Year of Mercy will shortly be coming to an end.

Another challenge to catechising children is that they may not be receptive. This is why it is important to start when they are young; very young. First of all, this will be way of example, the choice of bedtime reading and also by teaching them simple prayers. As they grow older they will be ready for more. Precisely as they become intellectually more curious they should be helped to realise that the Catholic Faith is rich and deep and has so much more to offer than what is available in the current culture.

Pope Francis “get’s it” that passing on the Faith is no easy task: This is made difficult by current lifestyles, work schedules and the complexity of today’s world, where many people keep up a frenetic pace just to survive. (Amoris Laetitia 287) But he still expects parents to do what they can to pass on the Faith: Even so, the home must continue to be the place where we learn to appreciate the meaning and beauty of the faith, to pray and to serve our neighbour…“couples and parents should be properly appreciated as active agents in catechesis…Family catechesis is of great assistance as an effective method in training young parents to be aware of their mission as the evangelizers of their own family.” (Amoris Laetitia 287)
Passing on the Faith is like passing on a family heirloom. It is something that we are guarding for the next generation so that they in turn can pass it on to the following generation.

A family that takes its catechetical mission seriously is a family that will be living the Gospel as our Lord wants it to be lived and will be an oasis of peace and joy in the world. As Pope Francis said in his general audience on 2 September 2015:

Indeed, the family’s covenant with God is called today to counteract the community desertification of the modern city. But the lack of love and smiling has turned our cities into deserts. So much entertainment, so many things for wasting time, for making laughter, but love is lacking. The smile of a family can overcome this desertification of our cities. This is the victory of family love. No economic and political engineering can substitute this contribution of families. The Babel project builds lifeless skyscrapers. The Spirit of God instead makes the desert fruitful (cf. Is 32:15). We must come out of the towers and from the armoured vaults of the elite, to again spend time in the homes and open spaces of the multitudes, open to the love of families.

The communion of charisms — those bestowed in the Sacrament of Marriage and those granted at consecration through the Kingdom of God — is intended to transform the Church into a fully familial place through the encounter with God. Let us go forth on this path, let us not lose hope. Wherever there is a loving family, that family with its witness of love is capable of warming the heart of an entire city.

August 2016 – named persons

Named persons

I am taking a slightly different topic for this month’s newsletter, although still within the broad area of passing on the Faith. This topic gets to the heart of the issue that, it is parents who are primarily responsible for the raising of their children, rather than the state or other authority.

Named person legislation was recently introduced in Scotland and so may be felt to be a relatively local issue. However, it is one of those developments that, once implemented in one place, can soon get copied in many other places.

The aim of the named person legislation was to appoint, for each child up to the age of 18, someone who “…can monitor what children and young people need, within the context of their professional responsibilities, link with the relevant services that can help them, and be a single point of contact for services that children and families can use, if they wish. The named person is in a position to intervene early to prevent difficulties escalating. The role offers a way for children and young people to make sense of a complicated service environment as well as a way to prevent any problems or challenges they are facing in their lives remaining unaddressed due to professional service boundaries.”

Although this legislation had the laudable aim of trying to identify situations where a child was at risk early on and preventing actual harm being done, it started from the basic assumption that parents could not be trusted and that the state ought to take overall responsibility for children. The reference to “services that children and families can use, if they wish” was undermined by associated guidance which implied that if parents did not heed the advice of the named person that could, in itself, justify intervention in their family life.

The Scottish government was taken to court by the Christian Institute and others who wanted to stop the implementation of the law. It went all the way to the UK Supreme Court who decided that the information sharing requirements of the law infringed upon the rights of children, young persons and parents under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

The Scottish Government now needs to think about how, if possible, it can make the legislation compatible with the ECHR given that information sharing was one of the key features of the policy.

It may feel that the Supreme Court’s judgement, while welcome, focused on a technical issue rather than the substantive issue of who has primary responsibility for the upbringing of children. However, the information sharing requirements under the law were potentially undermining the role of parents. For example, information would be shared with the consent of “in all but exceptional situations, the child or young person, and, as appropriate, the parents.”

Nonetheless, the Supreme Court did consider a wider range of issues relating to the responsibilities of parents, quoting various declarations and judgements:

“the family, as the fundamental group of society and the natural environment for the growth and well being of all its members and particularly children, should be afforded the necessary protection and assistance so that it can fully assume its responsibilities within the community.” (United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, UNCRC)

“[t]he mutual enjoyment by parent and child of each other’s company constitutes a fundamental element of family life” Olsson v Sweden (No 1) (1988) 11 EHRR 259. Family life also encompasses a broad range of parental rights and responsibilities with regard to the care and upbringing of minor children, enabling parents to take important decisions on their behalf, and article 8 protects the rights of parents to exercise such parental authority: Nielsen v Denmark (1988) 11 EHRR 175, Para 61

The Supreme Court also referred to article 27(2) of the UNCRC:

“The parent(s) or others responsible for the child have the primary responsibility to secure, within their abilities and financial capacities, the conditions of living necessary for the child’s development.”

Article 27(3) then refers to the role of the state: “States Parties, in accordance with national conditions and within their means, shall take appropriate measures to assist parents and others responsible for the child to implement this right and shall in case of need provide material assistance and support programmes, particularly with regard to nutrition, clothing and housing.”(emphasis added)

The Supreme Court then went on to say that:

“The first thing that a totalitarian regime tries to do is to get at the children, to distance them from the subversive, varied influences of their families, and indoctrinate them in their rulers’ view of the world. Within limits, families must be left to bring up their children in their own way.” And quoted approvingly a judgement in the USA from 1925: “The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

The ideas contained in the Supreme Court’s judgement should come as no surprise to Catholics as they are a fundamental part of the Church’s teaching about the role of parents. The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains the following points:

A man and a woman united in marriage, together with their children, form a family. This institution is prior to any recognition by public authority, which has an obligation to recognise it. It should be considered the normal reference point by which different forms of family relationship are to be evaluated. (2202) and The family must be helped and defended by appropriate social measures. Where families cannot fulfil their responsibilities, other social bodies have the duty of helping them and of supporting the institution of the family. Following the principle of subsidiarity, larger communities should take care not to usurp the family’s prerogatives or interfere in its life. (2209)

Pope Francis said in Amoris Laetitia: Parents rely on schools to ensure the basic instruction of their children, but can never completely delegate the moral formation of their children to others. (263)

Pope St John Paul II in paragraph 3 and 4 of Familiaris Consortio highlighted the dangers facing families: At a moment of history in which the family is the object of numerous forces that seek to destroy it or in some way to deform it, and aware that the well-being of society and her own good are intimately tied to the good of the family, the Church perceives in a more urgent and compelling way her mission of proclaiming to all people the plan of God for marriage and the family, ensuring their full vitality and human and Christian development, and thus contributing to the renewal of society and of the People of God.

Not infrequently ideas and solutions which are very appealing but which obscure in varying degrees the truth and the dignity of the human person, are offered to the men and women of today, in their sincere and deep search for a response to the important daily problems that affect their married and family life. These views are often supported by the powerful and pervasive organization of the means of social communication, which subtly endanger freedom and the capacity for objective judgment.

An earlier Pope, Pius XI, wrote the following to parents in Germany when the Nazi regime was doing exactly what the Supreme Court said all totalitarian regimes tried to do: none can free you from the responsibility God has placed on you over your children. None of your oppressors, who pretend to relieve you of your duties can answer for you to the eternal Judge, when he will ask: “Where are those I confided to you?” May every one of you be able to answer: “Of them whom thou hast given me, I have not lost any one”

When society at large puts obstacles in the way of parents bringing up their children in the Faith then parents need to rely on the grace of the sacrament of matrimony to have the strength and courage to go against the grain of what society wants. But, as Jesus said “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” (Matt 10: 16). Part of this wisdom is to be gained by having a deep understanding of the Church’s teaching on matters relating to marriage, the family and education. It also includes the possibility of getting together with like-minded families to support each other and even try and influence authorities; including at times those in schools, so that they promote healthy family life.

But the best way is to strive to have families that attract others to be like them, echoing the exclamation of the pagans about the early Christians: “See how they love each other.” If Catholic families continue to be beacons of light in spite of the difficulties this will be a great witness of the power of Gospel acting through the lives of the parents and the wider family.

Amoris Laetitia (Part IV)

My final commentary on Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation covers the sections in Chapter 7 (Towards a better education of children) dealing with passing on the Faith (numbers 287 to 290).

The Pope starts this section pointing out that the orderly handing on of the Faith is part and parcel of raising children, in spite of the difficulties occasioned by current lifestyles, work schedules and the complexity of today’s world. Children need to learn, at home, to appreciate the meaning and beauty of the faith, to pray and to serve our neighbour. Parents are the first heralds of the Gospel for their children.

It all starts with Baptism which should not be delayed. The Code of Canon Law (n. 867) states that “Parents are obliged to see that their infants are baptised within the first few weeks. As soon as possible after birth, indeed even before it, they are to approach the parish priest to ask for the sacrament for their child and to be themselves duly prepared for it.” As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says (n. 1250) “Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in Baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God, to which all men are called. The sheer gratuitousness of the grace of salvation is particularly manifest in infant Baptism. The Church and parents would deny a child the priceless gift of becoming a child of God were they not to confer Baptism shortly after birth.”

Parents, in bringing their newborn child to Baptism are taking one of the first steps in their partnership with God in helping their child to grow in the Faith. Faith is a gift of God but parents are the means that God uses for it to grow and develop.  Parents cannot though give what they don’t have. To pass on the Faith, to be instruments in this transmission, they have to be men and women of faith and trust in God be themselves seeking him and sense their need for him. Parents therefore need to keep developing their own spiritual life with regular reception of the sacraments (Eucharist and Confession), attending recollections and retreats and receiving regular spiritual direction. In this way they will cooperate in a creative way with God’s plans for their children. Thus the small mustard seed of Faith sown at baptism will become a great tree. Parents have to rely a lot on prayer, praying that God acts in the hearts of their children, in places where they cannot reach.

The Synod had concluded that “couples and parents should be properly appreciated as active agents in catechesis… Family catechesis is of great assistance as an effective method in training young parents to be aware of their mission as the evangelizers of their own family”. Family catechesis precedes, accompanies and enriches other forms of instruction in the Faith. This includes teaching their children to pray, starting with simple prayers and gestures. As the Pope says: “it is beautiful when mothers teach their little children to blow a kiss to Jesus or to Our Lady. How much love there is in that! At that moment the child’s heart becomes a place of prayer.”

Educating children in the Faith has to take into account the character, age and aptitude of each child. Parents know that spiritual experience is not imposed but freely proposed. One child likes to hear stories while another prefers to read. One can’t sit still for 5 minutes while another, typical of adolescents, has issues with authority and rules. In the case of teenagers the Pope says that it is best to encourage their own experience of faith and to provide them with attractive testimonies that win them over by their sheer beauty. They are also influenced by their friends and the culture around them so they have to be helped to overcome temptations to abandon the Faith in order to “fit in”.

The parents’ own life of piety is important not only so that they have the necessary strength for the task of passing on the Faith, which no one says is easy, but also so that their children see that prayer is important for their parents. How good it is to make the effort to get to Mass a few minutes early so that you can be recollected before Mass starts and to stay afterwards for 5 to 10 minutes to give thanks to God who is really inside of you.

The Pope points out that moments of family prayer and acts of devotion can be more powerful for evangelization than any catechism class or sermon.

The Pope also praises those mothers who pray, like St Monica, for their wayward children. A writer describing St Augustine said that “Whatever treasures of virtue and worth that the life of faith, even of a soul not trained by scientific culture, can bestow, were set before him in the example of his pious mother.”

Raising one’s own children in the Faith has consequences outside of the family. The work of handing on the faith to children, in the sense of facilitating its expression and growth, helps the whole family in its evangelizing mission. It naturally begins to spread the faith to all around them, even outside of the family circle. Children who grew up in missionary families often become missionaries themselves; growing up in warm and friendly families, they learn to relate to the world in this way, without giving up their faith or their convictions.

Children brought up with a great love for the Jesus, his Mother, the Pope and the Church along with a deep grounding in the doctrine of the Faith will be able to move confidently in society without compromising their Faith, just as our Lord and the apostles did. As the Pope comments: the same was true of his apostles, who did not look down on others, or cluster together in small and elite groups, cut off from the life of their people. Although the authorities harassed them, they nonetheless enjoyed the favour “of all the people”.

The Synod and the Pope encourage families to practice the corporal works of mercy as part of their evangelizing mission: The family is thus an agent of pastoral activity through its explicit proclamation of the Gospel and its legacy of varied forms of witness, namely solidarity with the poor, openness to a diversity of people, the protection of creation, moral and material solidarity with other families, including those most in need, commitment to the promotion of the common good and the transformation of unjust social structures, beginning in the territory in which the family lives,

The Pope places a lot of hope in the response that families will make to the need for them to become missionary: Only on the basis of this experience (namely that through our life in our families “We come to believe in the love that God has for us”) will the Church’s pastoral care for families enable them to be both domestic churches and a leaven of evangelization in society. He hopes that in all families the Good News will resound, in good times and in bad, as a source of light along the way.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church has a number of things to say about the role and responsibilities of parents in handing on the Faith, mainly in the section dealing with the fourth commandment (2221 to 2233). The Catechism reminds parents that they cannot be satisfied with simply bringing children into the world but they also have to take responsibility for their moral and spiritual education. If they do not do this then it is almost impossible to find a substitute. Their right and duty to educate their children are ‘primordial and inalienable’, something that parents need to remind those in authority about from time to time.

Parents, the Catechism says, bear witness to their responsibility to raise their children in the Faith by first of all creating a home where “tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity and disinterested services are the rule.” Parent should aim to educate their children in virtues including self-denial, sound judgement and self-mastery which will help them to be truly free. They should teach them to put the spiritual dimension of their lives before the material ones. Parents will obviously need to give good example in all of this including knowing how to acknowledge their own failings to their children.

Parents need to regard their children as first and foremost children of God and that family ties are not absolute. As the child grows to maturity and human and spiritual autonomy so their unique divine vocation tends to show itself, perhaps dramatically or perhaps less so. Parents need to be alert to the signs of the vocation that their child is receiving (which can include the vocation to marriage) and encourage them to freely follow it. The first vocation of all Christians is to follow Jesus: ‘He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.’ Parents should particularly welcome with joy and thanksgiving the Lord’s call to one or more of their children to follow him more closely through a call to celibacy for the sake of the kingdom. St Josemaria wrote in Furrow (n 22) I would like to speak into the ear of so many men and women: giving up one’s children to the service of God is not a sacrifice: it is an honour and a joy.

A wholesome family life can foster interior dispositions that are a genuine preparation for a living faith and remain a support for it for the whole of one’s life.

Amoris Laetitia (Part III)

Following on from last two newsletters, in this one I cover the relationship between parents and schools in the education of children and also sex education.

Schools

The Pope clearly states the Catholic teaching that parents are ultimately responsible for the education of their children. At the same time I feel it important to reiterate that the overall education of children is a ‘most serious duty’ and at the same time a ‘primary right’ of parents. This is not just a task or a burden, but an essential and inalienable right that parents are called to defend and of which no one may claim to deprive them. The State offers educational programmes in a subsidiary way, supporting the parents in their indeclinable role; parents themselves enjoy the right to choose freely the kind of education – accessible and of good quality – which they wish to give their children in accordance with their convictions. Schools do not replace parents, but complement them. This is a basic principle: ‘all other participants in the process of education are only able to carry out their responsibilities in the name of the parents, with their consent and, to a certain degree, with their authorization’. Still, ‘a rift has opened up between the family and society, between family and the school; the educational pact today has been broken and thus the educational alliance between society and the family is in crisis.’ and Parents rely on schools to ensure the basic instruction of their children, but can never completely delegate the moral formation of their children to others.

Parents, aware of their responsibilities, need to engage with schools and when necessary other organs of the State to ensure that their children are being educated in accordance with their wishes. This will not always be confrontational; many schools really do support families and help them grow as the Pope acknowledged: The Synod wanted to emphasize the importance of Catholic schools which ‘play a vital role in assisting parents in their duty to raise their children…Catholic schools should be encouraged in their mission to help pupils grow into mature adults who can view the world with the love of Jesus and who can understand life as a call to serve God’. For this reason, ‘the Church strongly affirms her freedom to set forth her teaching and the right of conscientious objection on the part of educators’.

It is important not to take the availability of State funded Catholic education for granted. There may well be attempts to constrain schools in what they can teach, especially in areas such as family, marriage and sex education.

Pope Benedict gave a wonderful vision for Catholic schools at his meeting with pupils during his visit to the UK in 2010: In your Catholic schools, there is always a bigger picture over and above the individual subjects you study, the different skills you learn. All the work you do is placed in the context of growing in friendship with God, and all that flows from that friendship. So you learn not just to be good students, but good citizens, good people. As you move higher up the school, you have to make choices regarding the subjects you study, you begin to specialize with a view to what you are going to do later on in life. That is right and proper. But always remember that every subject you study is part of a bigger picture. Never allow yourselves to become narrow. The world needs good scientists, but a scientific outlook becomes dangerously narrow if it ignores the religious or ethical dimension of life, just as religion becomes narrow if it rejects the legitimate contribution of science to our understanding of the world. We need good historians and philosophers and economists, but if the account they give of human life within their particular field is too narrowly focused, they can lead us seriously astray.

A good school provides a rounded education for the whole person. And a good Catholic school, over and above this, should help all its students to become saints. I know that there are many non-Catholics studying in the Catholic schools in Great Britain, and I wish to include all of you in my words today. I pray that you too will feel encouraged to practise virtue and to grow in knowledge and friendship with God alongside your Catholic classmates. You are a reminder to them of the bigger picture that exists outside the school, and indeed, it is only right that respect and friendship for members of other religious traditions should be among the virtues learned in a Catholic school. I hope too that you will want to share with everyone you meet the values and insights you have learned through the Christian education you have received.

Sex education

The Second Vatican Council had already spoken of the need for children to receive a positive and prudent sex education as they get older. In Amoris Laetitia the Pope points out some of the problems with many forms of sex education currently being provided to children, not helped, of course, by a society where sexuality has become trivialised and impoverished. Particular problems that the Pope points out, and we may all be aware of similar deficiencies in the sex education programmes that we have come across, include:

• Overloading children with data without helping them to develop the ability to deal with it and cope with the flood of pornography and social media pressures such as ‘sexting’.
• Limiting sex education to how to prevent disease and pregnancy as if an eventual child were an enemy to be protected against.
• Encouraging children, whether teenagers or younger, to play with their bodies.
• A separation of sexual union from conjugal love and, as a result, prolonging the immaturity in the way that young people express love.

On the other hand the Pope describes what a true and authentic sex education would look like and that it should be provided within a much broader context of an education for love and mutual self-giving. This will prepare children for an integral and generous gift of self that will be expressed, following a public commitment, in the gift of their bodies. Sexual union in marriage will thus appear as a sign of an all-inclusive commitment, enriched by everything that has preceded it.

Children should be helped to direct their sexual urge through a process of self-knowledge and self-control rather than as many would have it, giving it free rein. They should be helped to recognize and to seek out positive influences, while shunning the things that cripple their capacity for love.

The important thing is to teach children sensitivity to different expressions of love, mutual concern and care, loving respect and deeply meaningful communication. All of these prepare them for an integral and generous gift of self that will be expressed, following a public commitment, in the gift of their bodies. Sexual union in marriage will thus appear as a sign of an all-inclusive commitment, enriched by everything that has preceded it.

Children also have to be helped to respect and appreciate differences, as a way of helping them overcome their self-absorption and to be open and accepting of others

The Pope addresses the issue of gender identity making it clear that we have to accept our own bodies as it has been created. He quotes from his Encyclical Laudato Si saying that an appreciation of our body as male or female is also necessary for our own self-awareness in an encounter with others different from ourselves. In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment. The Pope goes on to say that only by losing the fear of being different, can we be freed of self-centredness and self-absorption. Sex education should help young people to accept their own bodies and to avoid the pretension “to cancel out sexual difference because one no longer knows how to deal with it”.

The Pope, though, makes it clear that not all cultural views of what it means to be a man or a woman are correct. For example, if a man takes on domestic chores or some aspects of raising his children, this does not make any less masculine or imply failure. What is important is to recognise and appreciate the genuine reciprocity incarnate in the real conditions of matrimony.

Being able to transmit the beauty of the Church’s teaching on marriage, family and sexuality may require parents to learn a new language, one that meets the demands of children growing up today. But while the language may be new the ideas are not. For example, the Pope laments that, while some people nowadays consider modesty a relic of a bygone age, it is nonetheless of immense value, especially in a culture that extols exhibitionism and sharing of even one’s most intimate thoughts and feelings.

But then, as the Pope complains who speaks of these things today? Who is capable of taking young people seriously? Who helps them to prepare seriously for a great and generous love? Where sex education is concerned, much is at stake.

There is indeed much at stake and parents are at the forefront of ensuring that the sex education received by their children is appropriate.

Amoris Laetita (part 1)

No doubt you’ll have heard about and perhaps already read Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, ‘The Joy of Love’. Even if you have not read it, you may have read commentaries or summaries, most of which, as far as I can see, have focused on a few of the hotly debated topics. I am not going to add to the word count on these issues; rather I am going to take a look at Chapter 7, ‘Towards a Better Education of Children’. In this chapter the Pope describes the goal of education, the parent’s role and then addresses some specific challenges facing parents in fulfilling their responsibilities. He also describes the psychology of moral education which can be helpful for parents as they guide their children in developing good habits.

As the Pope covers quite a lot of ground and criss-crosses over the subject matter I will provide a summary over the coming two or three months.

The purpose of education

The Pope stresses that the education of children should fundamentally be an ‘education for freedom’ and a moral or ethical education.  The Pope refers to freedom over 20 times in this chapter.

Education is required because human maturity is not something built into our DNA which just needs feeding and watering. Prudence and common sense are developed primarily “at the very core of our freedom” which is itself a great gift and a sign that our very lives are in our own hands. However, “situated freedom, real freedom, is limited and conditioned. It is not simply the ability to choose what is good with complete spontaneity.” It is dealing with this tension between freedom and constraint that moral education seeks to prepare young people for.

Moral education

Moral education is about “shaping the will and fostering good habits and a natural inclination to goodness in their children” and developing “those stable interior principles that lead spontaneously to doing good” which sounds like the Pope’s giving an implicit plug for ‘7 habits of highly effective teens’!

The moral education of a child seeks to build a “steadfast inner principle of operation” that enables him or her to exercise true freedom and avoid becoming a “slave of dehumanizing and antisocial inclinations.” It aims at fostering good behaviours rather than simply imparting knowledge. It is not enough for children to know what is right, just as it is not enough for adults either. They need to have a deep seated desire to do the right thing because it is for their own benefit and they need to understand what those benefits are. The Pope gives the example of foregoing an immediate pleasure with the benefit that this leads to a more orderly life in common. The approach taken to developing this desire to do good needs to be sensitive to the capabilities and age of each child and will ideally enable the child to grasp the importance of the values being taught rather than simply seeing them as impositions; especially when friends of theirs are being brought up with different and possibly very limited sets of values.

The Pope explains that “moral education has to do with cultivating freedom through ideas, incentives, practical applications, stimuli, rewards, examples, models, symbols, reflections, encouragement, dialogue and a constant rethinking of our way of doing things.” There is no “one size fits all”. Every child, every family is different and, almost on a daily basis, there are new situations and experiences to respond to. Parents need to be constantly on the look-out for ways to help their children; having a clear idea of what sort of person they want their children to grow up to be and where they currently are.

To achieve the right sort of moral education parents should seek to inculcate in their children trust and loving respect based on their sense that, for all their faults, “they are important to their parents and…that their parents are sincerely concerned about them.”

The process of moral education is a patient one and takes place over many years; in fact it never stops. Parents need to avoid demanding too much or only making demands from time to time. Better to propose small steps on a continuous basis, steps which the child can understand, accept and appreciate. The Pope suggests pointing young people towards the example of exemplary persons. This could include encouraging them to read the lives of saints. However, these need to be well written and relevant for young people today. As Dom Eugene Boylan wrote in ‘This Tremendous Lover’ (a book well worth reading and available in pdf on the Internet): “Of some of these lives of the saints it is hard to write without apparent irreverence. Sometimes one is tempted to say that half of them should be publicly burned as obstacles to holiness. That, of course, would be an exaggeration; but like all exaggerations, it expresses a truth.”

The Pope is no naïve idealist, thinking that children are perfect and never in need of correction. Far from it; although it should not be overdone and he quotes St Paul “Parents, do not provoke your children” (Eph 6:4; cf. Col 3:21). He says that it “is also essential to help children and adolescents to realize that misbehaviour has consequences” and that punishments are at times required for certain behaviours. According to the Pope the “absence” of parents, by which he means a lack of concern and affection even if they are physically present can create “greater hurt than any scolding which a child may receive for doing something wrong.”

Children need to be taught to seek forgiveness and to repair any harm done by their actions. In time children will come to appreciate “that it was good to grow up in a family and even to put up with the demands that every process of formation makes.”

The process of correction can itself be educational. Parents can show that they are not being carried away by anger or by the thought that a misbehaving child is some kind of enemy or “an object on which to take out one’s own frustrations.” Some types of bad behaviour are the results of “frailty and limitations typical of youth” rather than wilful wrongdoing and the response by parents needs to take this into account, realising that they themselves are far from perfect and have “humbly to acknowledge their own limitations and make efforts to improve.”

As moral education is about building interior criteria, the Pope explains that family discipline has to be “a constructive limit placed on a child’s actions rather than a barrier standing in the way of his or her growth.” The former helps the child develop the right sense of rights and duties while the latter can lead the child to be overwhelmed by a sense of duty and having to do what they are told. Just as bad would be having no discipline at all but rather making everything revolve around the child’s desires. This can cause children to grow up “with a sense of their rights but not their responsibilities.”

With the simplicity which is one of the hallmarks of Pope Francis he reminds parents of the importance of training children to say “Please”, “Thank you” and “Sorry”, not simply to conform to social conventions but as a way of strengthening the will through the repetition of these acts as “without the conscious, free and valued repetition of certain patterns of good behaviour, moral education does not take place. Mere desire, or an attraction to a certain value, is not enough to instil a virtue in the absence of those properly motivated acts.”

The role of parents

Pope Francis encourages parents to carry out their role “consciously, enthusiastically, reasonably and appropriately.”  He appreciates that it is an increasingly complex role but one which parents can’t shirk as they can’t avoid influencing their children, for better or worse. While parents may rely on schools and other organisations to provide the basic instruction they cannot delegate the moral formation of their children.

Changes in the social and technological environment mean that parents have to rethink their methods and look for new sources of support and help in their task. What may have been helpful for them in their youth may no longer ‘cut the mustard’ with their own children. This though does not imply that everything old has to be jettisoned. As St Paul says “but test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thess 5, 21).

Parents have to strike a difficult balance between shielding their children from harm on the one hand and, on the other, not allowing them to mature. “Time is greater than space” the Pope says, returning to a phrase he used and explained is more detail in Evangelium Gaudium. In this context he means that parents should not domineer over their children, seeking to know where they are at all times and controlling their movements, as this is to ‘dominate space’. Rather they should aim to help them “grow in freedom, maturity, overall discipline and real autonomy. Only in this way will children come to possess the wherewithal needed to fend for themselves and to act intelligently and prudently whenever they meet with difficulties.” The Pope does not suggest that parents should not care where their children are but that more importantly than where they are physically, parents should know where their soul is. By this the Pope means that parents should closely accompany their children along their journey to adulthood and maturity, becoming ready to face the challenges that life will throw at them.

Handing on the Faith March 2016

Year of mercy

Pope Francis has laid down quite a challenge to us for this Year of Mercy: It is my burning desire that, during this Jubilee, the Christian people may reflect on the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. It will be a way to reawaken our conscience, too often grown dull in the face of poverty.

It may be difficult to know exactly what to do and be faced by formidable obstacles in trying to help out. However, parents have many opportunities to carry out many if not all of these works of mercy through their daily care and concern for their children.

The corporal works of mercy at home

Parents’ constant efforts to look after their families materially are a sign of their love for their spouse and children, and often other family members, and a great opportunity to forget about themselves. The daily toil that this entails – going to work to earn money, cooking, cleaning, shopping, ironing and so on – can at times seem trivial and pointless. But the truth is very different. Since Jesus Christ became man precisely within a family, and sanctified daily tasks and duties, alongside his mother and St Joseph, all those tasks that fall to us to carry out day after day can also be sanctified and sanctifying, both of us and others. And family life is also, let’s not forget, a great source of joy and peace. This year, then, is a wonderful opportunity to be even more generous in how we look after the sick in our own families, especially the elderly, and in how we visit those imprisoned, which will include not only those family members who have had the misfortune to get into trouble but also those who have got themselves caught up in other prisons such as drug and alcohol addictions. Parents can carry out the corporal work of mercy of welcoming strangers by welcoming back into the fold of the family those who have in the past perhaps turned their own back on the family. There could be no greater imitation of the attitude of the father in the parable of the prodigal son than this. The parents’ response to the death of family members and friends will also provide a good example to their children. At times unexpected deaths of loved ones can be hard to accept. St Josemaria recorded his reaction when facing the death of his sister Carmen:

When Alvaro told me that the doctor gave my sister Carmen no more than two months to live, I was filled with sorrow. For the first ones and for me, Carmen had come to represent twenty-five long years of sufferings and joys in Opus Dei.

After accepting God’s will with tears, I decided to launch a campaign of prayer to the Lord; I prayed and got everyone else to pray. And I continued to weep bitterly, although at times I thought that if the others noticed I might be setting a bad example this way. But I immediately rejected that thought, since we are children of God, and he did give us a heart.

Some days went by, and after seeing Carmen’s marvellous readiness to go and enjoy heaven, and the admirable serenity she showed, I understood – and told her – that the logic of our Lord God has no reason to accommodate itself to our poor human logic.

The moment arrived to give my sister the last sacraments. Then came the long agony – almost two days, because of the oxygen and injections. Even then I kept asking for Carmen’s recovery through Isidoro’s intercession, until, at the end, fully accepting God’s Most Holy Will, I slowly prayed the prayer that gives peace: “Fiat, adimpleatur…” [“May the most just and most lovable Will of God be done, be fulfilled, be praised, be eternally exalted above all things for ever. Amen. Amen.”]

The spiritual works of mercy at home

If the corporal works of mercy are important, the spiritual ones are even more so. Parents, as the first educators of their children, have a responsibility to try and ensure that they grow up as virtuous men and women and know and love their Catholic Faith.

Parents have to take upon themselves the responsibility for ensuring that their children have a knowledge of their Faith appropriate to their age. They have to be available to instruct and advise their children and, when necessary, to comfort them. Some months ago Pope Francis lamented:

In our day, the problem no longer seems to be the invasive presence of the father so much as his absence, his inaction. Fathers are sometimes so concentrated on themselves and on their work and, at times, on their career that they even forget about the family. And they leave the little ones and the young ones to themselves… They are orphaned in the family, because their fathers are often absent, also physically, from the home, but above all because, when they are present, they don’t behave like fathers. They don’t talk with their children. They don’t fulfil their role as educators. They don’t set their children a good example with their words, principles, values, those rules of life which they need like bread. The educative quality of the time the father spends raising the child is all the more necessary when he’s forced to stay away from home because of work. Sometimes it seems that fathers don’t know what their role in the family is, or how to raise their children. So, in doubt, they abstain, they retreat and neglect their responsibilities, perhaps taking refuge in the unlikely relationship as “equals” with their children. It’s true that you have to be a “companion” to your child, but without forgetting that you’re the father! If you only behave as a peer to your child, it will do him or her no good.

In his letter for March 2016, the Prelate of Opus Dei commented on some of the spiritual works of mercy:

I advise everyone who wants to benefit from this spirit, whether or not they are faithful of the Work, to make an effort to remedy the spiritual needs of the people they are habitually in contact with, or meet by chance. Be welcoming; show that you are always ready to listen to their worries, offering them appropriate advice if they ask for it; console those who are suffering because of their own or someone else’s illness, or the death of someone they love, or for other reasons such as unemployment in the current economic crisis in many countries. Sometimes it won’t be possible to offer any suggestions, but what should never be lacking is our friendly attitude, together with our prayer and solidarity, sharing their sorrows and difficulties.

And he quoted from Blessed Alvaro del Portillo:

You have to make a great store of peace in your own hearts. In that way, out of your abundance you will be able to give to others, starting with those who are closest to you: your relatives, friends, companions and acquaintances.

No child is born perfect or grows up untainted by original sin (except our Lady, of course). Therefore they need to be trained in virtue and corrected when they go wrong. Such correction – or, as it appears in the list of spiritual works of mercy, such admonition of sinners – can at times be difficult. It can be easier, or at least appear easier, to let it go. Exhortation, encouragement and example are the best tools to use but at times strong words and looks, and suitable punishments, are required. Encouraging, with one’s own example, the practice of regular confession by children will help to refine their soul and their behaviour. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says:

Without being strictly necessary, confession of everyday faults (venial sins) is nevertheless strongly recommended by the Church. Indeed the regular confession of our venial sins helps us form our conscience, fight against evil tendencies, let ourselves be healed by Christ and progress in the life of the Spirit. By receiving more frequently through this sacrament the gift of the Father’s mercy, we are spurred to be merciful as he is merciful. (n. 1458)

Another of Pope Francis’ desires for this Year of Mercy is that confession should become fashionable again:

So many people, including young people, are returning to the Sacrament of Reconciliation; through this experience they are rediscovering a path back to the Lord, living a moment of intense prayer and finding meaning in their lives. Let’s place the Sacrament of Reconciliation at the centre once more, in such a way that it will enable people to touch the grandeur of God’s mercy with their own hands. For every penitent it will be a source of true interior peace.

Family life, and particularly the relationship between parents and children, provides many opportunities for exercising the last three spiritual works of mercy: forgiving offences, bearing patiently those who do us ill, and praying for the living and the dead. A few weeks ago, Pope Francis said:

There is another way of doing justice, which the Bible presents to us as the royal road to take. It’s a process that avoids recourse to the tribunal and allows the victim to face the culprit directly and invite him or her to conversion, helping the person to understand that they are doing evil, thus appealing to their conscience. In this way, by finally repenting and acknowledging their wrong, they can open themselves to the forgiveness that the injured party is offering them. And this is beautiful: after being persuaded that what was done was wrong, the heart opens to the forgiveness being offered to it. This is the way to resolve conflicts in the family, in relationships between spouses or between parents and children, where the offended party loves the guilty one and wishes to save the bond that unites them. Don’t sever that bond, that relationship.