Parents Caught Raising Well-Rounded Daughter

UPDATE: (Long as JDM has caught me goofing off again, I might as well do it right): Brad Warthen is on topic.  Check out the video he links, hilarious.  So true.

(Said by a fellow LLL grad who has not only CD’d, but hung them out to dry on the line. Then again, my 2nd-born’s first food was Tiramisu.  My credentials are doubtful.)

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The Livesay’s on their daughter with the “weirdest life ever”.

I link because the whole parenting-police theme is central to that homeschooling book I’m reportedly writing.  (Yes I am in fact writing it.  Slowly.)  We live in a bizarre society where one of the national pastimes is getting all huffy because someone else’s life isn’t one long giant defense of your own personal decisions.

The really funniest one is when some lady (yes, usually a lady), says something along the lines of, “Sure, nobody’s perfect, but how can that family possibly homeschool, when their children’s socks don’t even match!”  [This is ironic, because of course if sock-matching were the measure of educational success, it would be so much easier to assess the schools.]

I kid not.  People — registered voters with college degrees, even — truly do say this stuff.   Lately I mostly hear it about those horrible horrible parents like the Livesays, who send their children to school, but the method can be used  against any parenting decision anytime anywhere, so long as you pick your audience properly.  The formula is this:

a)  Insist that of course you aren’t setting up impossible standards

b)  Choose someone or something you don’t like

c)  Randomly choose some criteria that you have decided should be the central measure of human worth.

d) Make sure it is something that you excel at, and your target does not.  Also, make sure the person to whom your are speaking manages well enough at the proposed criteria.

e)  Use a tone that suggests the parents are feeding the children excrement or mating them with livestock,  as you point out your target doesn’t meet your made-up requirement.

f)  Chortle triumphantly at your brilliant proof that your target should give it up and just come to you for lessons in proper living.

You think I exaggerate.  No I do not. People do this.  And it makes life a nightmare for parents who are genuinely trying to figure out the best way to rear their children under difficult circumstances.  So lay off the parents.  That’s my Friday sermon:  Lay off.

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BTW if you aren’t feeling chastised (or smug) enough, Ruth at Wheelie catholic has more cautionary tales of employee horror.  Because the utter cluelessness of mankind knows no bounds. Go read. Be warned.  Amend your ways.  Find yourself rocketing to Employee of the Year.  It’s all good.

Lent-o-rama and other quick notes

I made the Aggie Catholic Guide to Lent (thank you Mark Shea) it’s own special category in the sidebar.  Am going to maybe build the category up a bit.  Send suggestions.  Thanks.

And yes,  yes, I know I am behind on updating the sidebar with other great blogs I’ve recently started reading and recommending.  Pester me if yours isn’t up on the list by Monday.

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Please pray for a special intention for some missionaries in difficulty.  Thanks.

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Brad Warthen posts Clark Whelton’s What Happens in Vagueness Stays in Vagueness.  Let it be a warning to us all.

Mr. Magundi on Beggars.

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And how to cut to the chase with your friendly but inexperienced evangelical door-to-door missionary:

Kind and earnest missionary asks, “If you died tomorrow, where would you go?”

Reflect.  Give honest answer: “Purgatory.”

Silence.  “Um, here, have one of these.”  Hands over tract, quickly retreats to next door.

Perfectly nice kids, by the way, and nothing anti-catholic in the tract.  Basic model plan-of-salvation, baptist version.   Refreshing, really.  Catholics could learn a thing or two.

 

 

New-to-me good blog.

Wow, this one has lots of stuff for the junior-intellectual to chew on: Siris.  Deserves to be better known.

Thanks for the tip, Mrs. Darwin!

Meekness

I was pleased to see that in addition to Chelsea Zimmerman (put me in a paragraph with her any day), John Hathaway is on the undecided couch.  He ponders here and here, and then finally takes action in this letter.  This is one thing that I admire about John, even when it terrifies me: the man is not shy.  Just not.

But I’m definitely leaning toward the Tollefsen-Shea camp, not a surprise.  It fits too well.

Am I so meek?  I wish.  My specialty is doing things exactly the wrong way (even when I know better), and I’ve failed out of Meekness 101 more times than I care to count. Despite this, I have been wanting to write about Meekness for a while now, because if you’re a poly-sci/history type, you eventually figure out that the meek really do inherit the earth.

Here’s the tough part in making sense of it: In your brain when you hear the word “meek”, do you just swap in “weak” and think it means the same thing?  And maybe something about “shy as a mouse”, since mice are small and the word “mouse” starts with “m”?

[And maybe you add in something about being a peasant or something, because you think “humble” = “poor”.  Doesn’t work.  St. Thomas More was meek.  Wealthy, opinionated, but ultimately meek.]

What it really means is “mild of temper” (that’s not me) “long-suffering” (more not) and “patient under injuries” (nope, not that either).  And then we think of the Amish, who are famously meek.  So we think, oh, okay, meek = pacifist?  Maybe sometimes.  But a really good soldier is massively meek.  How else do you hold up under confusing orders, dangerous conditions, constant hardship, and just do what is asked no matter the personal cost?  That’s meek.

Public, peaceful resistance to brutal dictatorships?  That’s hardcore meekness.  (And not forgetting that yes there is a time and place to bear arms.  But remember those just war criteria?  “Some chance of success”?  Though it is just as bloody, sometimes peaceful resistance is the only moral option.  But much harder.  All the pain and suffering, maybe more, and none of the gratification of sticking it to your enemy, no matter how futile the effort.)

Anyhow, saying all that, the way I think it ties in to the recent internet excitement, is that maybe shy, weak, pro-lifers like myself need to work on our meekness a little more?  Not the fake-meekness that means ‘doing nothing’, but the real kind, which is doing what is right and what is necessary, no matter the cost.

I hate it when I post things like this.

 

Tollefsen Reply Discussion Thread

Chris Tollefsen’s reply is up, over at Public Discourse. Note about the reading level: I didn’t have to look up any words in the dictionary, which is pretty noteworthy.  But the crux paragraphs do require you to slow down and read carefully.  So don’t try to skim, you’ll just end up feeling really dumb or really resentful, depending on your disposition.

(Why yes, I did know he was going to link to this blog, he warned me a few days ago.  No, I did not know about any of the other contents of the reply until I read it this morning, other than that he promised to address the Nazi at the Door problem.  Which he does.)

So this is the thread for discussing the state of the debate as it stands today, if there’s anyone left who isn’t thoroughly bored or disgusted with the topic by now.  (And who has free time.  I’m fascinated by the problem, but I have other problems, such as long division, calling me today.)  I have not done a check for new posts elsewhere this morning, so by all means link to anything fresh that you think moves forward the discussion.

 

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Note to any new readers here: 1) Welcome! 2) Your first post or two gets automatically held for moderation.  I will try to check in periodically, and keep the spam folder empty as well, but we are actually having school today, so you take 2nd place to my darling children.  You knew that.  If your post is submerged in the ether for an unexpected amount of time, don’t assume it was due to any fault of your own.

Fr. L. on the gambling industry.

More yes.  This is all true.   Over the past dozen years I’ve spent a lot of time in Vegas.  I’m familiar with the city, inside and out.  (Surprise: I prefer “out”.  Red Rocks, to be precise.)

To Fr. Longenecker’s comments I’ll add that gambling generates no wealth.  It doesn’t feed, clothe or shelter any better than my sitting on the porch playing 3-men’s morris does so.  (Except, in that case, I get to spend time with my child, teach some strategy, get my rear whipped by a 4-year-old . . . yes, there is all that.  The bulk of casino gambling doesn’t even pretend to give us that much.)

Gambling does redistribute wealth.  If you need a method to get cash from the hands of wealthy private-jet owners into the hands of waitresses, well, yes, that is one way.  But what Fr. L says about the industry is absolutely true, including the addiction and family-destroying and saving-depleting bits.

He didn’t mention the associated crime, but you can count on that too.  When you take a whole bunch of people who want something for nothing and stick them all together in one place, it’s not exactly a surprise that greed crosses legal lines here and there.

–> This isn’t some fundamentalist getting his rear in a wad because you like to play poker with your friends.  It’s not about whether games of chance are somehow evil.

But when you pray that prayer about “lead me not into temptation”? It implies a responsibility to avoid leading your neighbor into temptation either.

You want investment?  Build a farm, or a factory.  A school even.  (Or, go crazy, send a guy to seminary.  That’s an investment.)  The gambling “industry” is not industry at all.  And you go there to spend your money, and end up spending yourself as well.

historians on the mount

Bearing has a short post on, revenge, meekness, historians, the ancient Greeks and the service of truth. Most interesting. My favorite bit is the call of the historian to impartiality.  Yes.  Yes!  Thank you, Greeks.  Thank you.

Should we argue about Live Action?

John McNichol, whose opinions I respect immensely, says lay off the criticism.  Peter Kreeft, not exactly a lightweight in the catholic moral thinking department, says you have to be pretty stupid not to recognize that what Live Action did was okay.  Francis Beckwith argues that while all lying is wrong, not all falsehoods are lies, as not all killing is murder.  Rahab is becoming a household name in the process.

I think Beckwith is on to the pivotal question.  But I don’t think the answer is obvious, and I think the firestorm in the catholic blogosphere is Exhibit A in proving my point.  When a whole host of professional catholics — intelligent, educated people who are in the business of explaining the catholic faith in their various ways —  cannot agree on a question, that tells me the answer is not yet clearly defined by the church.  And for that reason, it deserves debate.

Exhibit B is the stunning silence of the Catechism.  The church has managed to figure out two things for certain:

1) Lying is wrong.

2) You don’t have to tell everybody everything.

And that’s it.  Take a look at, say, murder or contraception, and you get lots of in’s and out’s.  This _____ is sinful, this ______ is not.   This ______ is horribly tempting but you mustn’t do it no matter what, even though you really really want to and we understand that it isn’t easy to resist.  The church is quite good about knowing all the crazy stuff we’ll think up, and heading off at the pass as many scenarios as possible.

–> It is no secret that people wonder how to handle all the situations where you might reasonably think lying is a legitimate solution.  And yet the church provides astonishingly little guidance.  The 8th commandment is apparently just not that well understood.

Which is par for the course.   Our understanding of the moral life develops over time.   Meanwhile, we argue.

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There are a few arguments being thrown around though, that I think are a distraction.

You just know what the right thing to do is. This is Kreeft’s argugment, and an awful lot of people were no doubt thrilled to hear him say it.  I don’t think it holds.   In the face of tremendous danger in extreme situations (literally: the Nazi scenario), sincere Christians have followed their intuition and come to different answers.  Intuition is helpful, yes.  But firm moral principles are developed by starting with intuition, and seeing where it leads.  Not by sitting in the starting gate.

Lying is the only workable solution in certain situations. This is an argument about tactics.   Well, we can have a debate about tactics, but only after we know which are admissible and which are not.  If we know that lying is acceptable in ______ situation, we can proceed to the discussion of whether or not to use that particular tool.  Should I run or stand and fight?  It’s a discussion I can only have once I know that both running and fighting are legitimate choices.

Bible Heroes and Great Saints did it. People who don’t read the Bible talk about what a great collection of moral tales it contains.  So when I first started reading it, I was very confused.  Here’s what: Biography is not morality.  Biography tells me who did what.  It does not tell me whether everything my heroes ever did was in fact morally sound. Including the way they foiled the enemy this time or that.  We canonize saints without thereby proclaiming that their every action was objectively sinless.

But if you didn’t lie, horrible things would happen. I think this is where Beckwith and Tollefsen (who disagree with one another) are on the right track.  There are situations in the moral life where the only moral choice is the “no-win” — the one with disastrous consequences.  Is lying like apostasy?  Must we tell the truth at all cost, the way we must be willing to witness to Christ at all cost?  Or is lying like killing, where there are situations where it is an acceptable option?

–> The fact that horrible things will likely happen if you don’t lie, does not prove that lying is permitted.  (It does drastically lessen any potential culpability.)

[Kreeft agrees, by the way, that there are certain situations in which you must permit horrible things to happen to the people you ought to be protecting, because apostasy is worse than allowing that horrible suffering.  He doesn’t think lying ranks with apostasy.]

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I was pretty happy with the Live Action videos when I saw them.  Horrified by what they uncovered, and thrilled that Live Action had the courage and cleverness to bring to light the evil going on.  It did not occur to me to question the methods — seemed, as many are saying, like a variation on the police tactics that catholics have not been questioning.  (Again, the silence of the Catechism is deafening.  And for my own part, in the ‘legitimate authority’ debate, when in doubt I tend to err on the side of giving rights to private citizens.)

And I agree with John McNichol that Lila Rose certainly doesn’t deserve to be singled out.  But I think this not only because, as JDM observes, she has more guts than all the internet critics combined, but also because it isn’t obvious that she’s doing anything wrong at all.  The church, it appears to me, is still way up in the air on this one.

And for that reason, I think we should argue.

Safety & Christianity

Nice essay here, thanks to the Rollings in Haiti.  Not long, either.  Nice pre-lenten warm-up.

3 more quick takes for today

Finishing up all I’m going to manage in the Sts. C&M lovefest:

Entropy reminds me to post this, which she wrote last week and I really really liked:

. . . When you’re mired in mortal sin because you’re a weak little weakling and yet you believe that what the Church teaches us is true, even though you seem unable to follow it (hypocrite!), you might latch onto another teaching of the Church that is more doable for you. Something you can follow and hope that by following that you can make up a little bit for being such a total and utter failure at being good. You might think that you’re at least not adding more sins on top of the ones you’ve already got and why haven’t I gone to confession yet? . . .

It’s an important distinction: You can insist that sin is not sin.  Understandable if you haven’t heard of forgiveness.  Who wants to be condemmned?  I remember shortly before I returned to the church, desperately justifying myself to the office secretary one morning, because I couldn’t accept the reality that *I* had done something wrong, even so small as forgetting to give her whatever form it was I owed her.  And she kept saying “I forgive you, I forgive you . . .”, and I had *no idea* what she was talking about.  The idea that you could do something bad, and someone would just . . . let it go?  Incomprehensible to me then.

Entropy uncovers something more beautiful:  Sinning and knowing you’re sinning, and trying to at least hold onto what moral territory you can, even though it feels like complete holiness is beyond your ability.

Well it is.  That’s why we have forgiveness.  A God who isn’t out to condemn us.  He lets us know we’re in the mire, because He’s there to give us a hand out of it.

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On the topic of forgiveness and people who know how to forgive, here is my friend Charity’s blog.  It’s  a normal-person blog, kind of like Paris Daily Photo only it’s western Kansas captured by phone-camera.  Just normal life.  4-H, kids playing basketball, cats on the couch.

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Which is why this post by Eric Sammons is perfect for today:

I was recently reading an account of Game Six and I was struck by a quote from Fisk regarding this home run:

Other than being the father of two children, this was the greatest thrill of my life.

Think about what Fisk said for a moment. He just compared something that only 14 men have ever done – end a World Series game with a home run – with something that millions of men throughout history have done. Hitting a walk-off World Series home run takes a unique combination of skill, hard work and luck; having a child takes no special skill or ability. Just about every boy dreams about hitting a home run to win a World Series game – and Fisk did it in one of the most thrilling situations – yet the Red Sox catcher said that one of the most common activities known to man – having children – was more thrilling. So what does that tell us about parenthood?