Marriage Matters to Kids!

Friends of ours participated in a video project on marriage. It's very well done:

A group of dear local San Francisco Friends worked on a video to address the current debate on Marriage on facts, that is, on its essential and natural intent separate from current ideological and political rhetoric. To me what makes this video a successful narrative is that it elaborates marriage from the necessary and natural preference of what is best for children. I ask myself, if all things are equal, what is best for children. Ideas are formed by culture and deconstructed by counter culture movements. This is a historical and sociological fact. --Martin Ford

www.MarriageMattersToKids.org

Pope Benedict XVI on Vocations

We pray also that there be an increasing number of those who decide to radically live the Gospel through the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience -- men and women who have a primary role in evangelization. Some of them dedicate themselves to contemplation and prayer, others to a multifaceted educational and charitable work. All of them, nevertheless, are united in the same objective: to give witness to the primacy of God over all and to spread his Kingdom in every sphere of society.

Many of them, as the Servant of God Paul VI wrote, "are enterprising and their apostolate is often marked by an originality, by a genius that demands admiration. They are generous: Often they are found at the outposts of the mission, and they take the greatest of risks for their health and their very lives."

Finally, it mustn't be forgotten that Christian marriage is also a missionary vocation: The couple, in fact, is called to live the Gospel in the family, in the workplace and in parish and civil communities. In certain cases, moreover, they offer their valuable contribution to the missions "ad gentes."

World Day of Vocations, Good Shepherd Sunday, 4/13/08

Welcoming Families Association

Paper Clippings highlighted the results of a marriage survey yesterday:

The Pew Research Center survey on marriage and parenting found that children had fallen to eighth out of nine on a list of factors that people associate with successful marriages well behind "sharing household chores," "good housing," "adequate income," a "happy sexual relationship" and "faithfulness."

In a 1990 World Values Survey, children ranked third in importance among the same items, with 65 percent saying children were very important to a good marriage. Just 41 percent said so in the new Pew survey.

Key to a good marriage? Share housework. - Yahoo! News

The idea that we make our own happiness is entrenched in the current mentality. Children are turned into tools for the quest of self-fulfillment.

The Welcoming Families Association in Italy, a group started by members of Communion and Liberation which helps guide families who adopt and offer foster care, has a different view. Alda Vanoni is quoted in the article "Passion for Human Destiny" in the May 2007 issue of Traces:

The point is no longer, "I want a child", but "What is the good for my life, and the good for that child?" Only in this way can you take into consideration that the other is different from you, and there is where his richness lies. It is impossible to enter into relationship with somebody without welcoming his diversity, otherwise the other is reduced to a satellite in your desire's system. A child needs and lives a relationship that exists first of all between father and mother, in their own diversity. This is the reason why family is so important. A child grows in a relationship that qualifies as important for me first, meaning that it defines me: this happens only if I engage it responsible and permanently. You welcome a child as he is and for ever.

Two years ago I attended the Rimini Meeting and met a woman from the Association who could speak English. Teresa (I think her name was) told of how she had been asked to take in a young single mother at a time when she was quite busy with her own kids, but she didn't refuse the invitation. She saw her role as staying with the mother in friendship, assisting both mother and child and rather than taking over to help the mother learn her role. The young lady has matured in time, moved out on her own, and they continue to have a good relationship.

The Freedom of Obedience

There's an excellent series in the May issue of Traces on the question of obedience. The treatment of the problem reminds me of a text I read a few months ago from political philosopher Hannah Arendt, "What Was Authority?" (1959), where she discusses the scope of the crisis. First, she deals with the common misconception about obedience, that it is as equated with coercion.

Since authority always demands obedience, it is commonly mistaken for some form of power or violence. Yet authority precludes the use of external means of coercion; where force is used, authority itself has failed. Authority, on the other hand, is incompatible with persuasion, which presupposes equality and works through a process of argumentation. Where arguments are used, authority is left in abeyance.... Historically, we may say that the loss of authority is merely the final, though decisive, phase of a development which for centuries undermined primarily religion and tradition.

And why isn't persuasion sufficient? Arendt explains:

Authority, resting on a foundation in the past as its unshaken cornerstone, gave the world the permanence and durability which human beings need precisely because they are mortals--the most unstable and futile beings we know of. Its loss is tantamount to the loss of the groundwork of the world, which indeed since then has begun to shift, to change and transform itself with ever-increasing rapidity from one shape into another, as though we were living and struggling with a Protean universe where everything at any moment can become almost anything else.

This problem of obedience and authority is addressed in these Traces articles very well from the Christian perspective.

Close-up
Obedience
A Matter for Reasonable Men
by Davide Perillo

For obedience is very closely connected to reason. Even more: it is the primary factor that preserves it, enabling it to light up and to breathe. Just think about it. The first act of reason is to recognize reality, to bow before the data of the real; in a word, to obey. Without this start-up, reason only revs its engine, failing to engage its gears, and certainly doesn’t move forward. It will always remain a few yards short of the truth, which, said Saint Thomas, is adaequatio rei et intellectus, conforming the intellect to reality. Conforming, that is, obeying.

> The Family
by Stefano Andrini

Today, Leoni stresses, “it is difficult to find within families a position of reciprocal obedience between spouses. It seems to me that one of the gravest problems is the absence of a real recognition of the authority of the one toward the other, man or woman–authority, meaning, power to interfere in and influence my life; recognition that the good for me is not given by myself; that without reciprocal obedience there is no sharing, and thus one experiences a substantial solitude.”

> School
edited by Paolo Perego

There’s no obedience without freedom, nor without a goal; obedience is functional to an objective. If there’s no goal, if you’re not trying to get anywhere, obedience has no meaning. This is a primary aspect of the educative paralysis immobilizing our schools. By dint of preaching neutrality, theorizing the absence of absolute values, a teacher can’t then demand obedience. The “neutral school” isn’t capable of proposing a goal, educating, and at this point it also becomes impossible to exert compulsion, as we’ve all seen in recent episodes.

> Vocation
edited by Paola Bergamini
> Politcs edited by Alberto Savorana

Technorati Tags: obedience, authority, education, family, society, politics, religion, Catholic

Traces May 2007

The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On by Dawn Eden

I finished this new release by Dawn Eden a few weeks ago, and it's quite powerful.

First, let me preface that this is a book about chastity aimed especially at twenty-something women who have previously fallen for the "casual sex" dating game. In other words, this isn't one to hand to your young teenage daughter unsupervised.

If you want to receive the love for which you hunger, the first step is to admit to yourself that you have that hunger, with everything it entails - weakness, vulnerability, the feeling of an empty space inside. To tell yourself simply, "I'll be happy once I have a boyfriend," is to deny the depth and seriousness of your longing. It turns the hunger into a superficial desire for flesh and blood when what we really want is someone to share divine love with us - to be for us God with skin on. (pg. 28)

With grace, good humor and a surprisingly upbeat style, Dawn, a 30-something Catholic convert and New York journalist, shares the story of her conversion to chastity and her vision of the liberating power of the faith.

I spent many years of my life being single. I have nothing to show for it except the ability to toss my hair fetchingly and a mental catalog of a thousand banal things to say to fill the awkward, unbearably lonely moments between having sex and putting my clothes back on. You never see those moments in TV or movies, because they strike to the heart of the black hole that casual sex can never fill. (pg. 25)

She presents a compelling (and quite readable) account of the shortcomings of modern dating and the fulfilment to be found in a chaste lifestyle.

The idea of love as a presence and not a passion is tantalizingly similar to the definition of faith given to us in Hebrews: "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen". It gives love a tangibility and a certainty that we normally do not feel in everyday life, save for the moments when we contemplate those dearest to us. More than that, love as a presence suggests something that's inescapable, without form - something that could conceivably fill everything. (pg. 90)

So what if you're not a woman in your 20s and you have lived chastely? Is this book for anyone other than this particular category?

I would say yes and for very particular reasons. Whether you're interested in better understanding those who fall into traps of modern culture (in order to help them) or you want to pass good attitudes about sex and marriage on to your children, this book is a great read.

First of all, naturally, she's "been there" - she offers amazing insights into the insecure and often depressing world of the "modern" single woman. Her answers aren't preachy, they draw from her experience and her faith in a loving and gentle way.

Taking my complaint very seriously, Mom advised me to read up on what Christians call spiritual warfare - especially Paul's words in 2 Corinthians, where he distinguishes between physical enemies and spiritual enemies: "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ."

Bringing every thought into captivity means being the master of one's thoughts and passions instead of being mastered by them. It made sense to me; that was what I needed to do. If Paul knew what he was talking about, then I needed help - because I was locked, however unwillingly, in a spiritual battle. (pgs. 171-172)

The other piece, though, is that she goes way beyond arguing against this unhealthy lifestyle and a sense of opposing what is wrong. She opens up a complete vision of what is good and how to go about living "the good" in the modern world.

Instead of passive resignation, one must commit to active resolution: the determination to never miss an opportunity to share His grace with others.

This is something that can be done every minute of every day. God's grace may be found in every experience, whether it's a happy or painful one. We discover His grace by stepping out in faith - realizing our dependence on the Lord, and allowing ourselves to risk disappointment, so that we might be open to every blessing He has in store for us. (pg. 195)

Though this isn't for young teens, there's so much good in it, that I plan on sharing it with my daughters some day. Perhaps we'll read it together before they go off to college.

If your light shines through everything you do, from the greatest thing to the smallest, then it will be impossible for anyone to miss it. This is why the self-advertisement encouraged by the singles industry is counterproductive. When you focus the spotlight on yourself, no one can see how beautifully your light illuminates those around you.

It took me years to learn that lesson. (pg. 108)

Available from your local bookstore.
W Publishing Group, 212 pages, softcover, copyight 2006