Soldiers Breastfeeding in Public

UPDATE: In the combox, Larry L. explains the mysteries of military rules that civilians tend to miss.  This story explains it well:

Reference on uniforms and the idea of changing clothes…. True story and a friendlier than most of my military stories…. During lunch I run down to the bank to deposit some cash(in uniform). I get stopped walking into the bank.(navy federal) and get told I am not allowed to go into a civilian location in working uniform. I go back to my ship and no kidding…. you are not allowed to wear your working uniform anywhere but to military locations. If stopping to get a soda at the local 7-11 you can’t do it in “working” uniform. “Dress” uniform perfectly allowed though.

Thanks, Larry L.  Makes perfect sense.  In that special military way.

***

Original Post:

Since I was so pointed in my criticism of  Time Magazine’s pornesque breastfeeding cover photo, I wanted to observe that this photo that showed up in Yahoo news this morning is just a plain old breastfeeding photo, nothing to get freaked out about.  The mom with twins is not so discreet,  which I don’t care for.  I wouldn’t stick it on a billboard, any more than I’d post a mom doing wholesome mom things but wearing a dress or swim suit with similar amounts of cleavage showing.

(I would put that picture in a brochure for new mothers, which would be an appropriate place for a little technical instruction.  I’ve noticed in the past that sometimes formula companies will issue “breastfeeding guides” in which the explanations and images of breastfeeding positions are so uncomfortable and impractical that if you tried them, you’d be sure to give up and switch to formula.)

–> Even for nursing in public, I am far more inclined to give a pass to the breastfeeding mom-o-twins than any of the other 10,000 utterly avoidable situations where women not feeding children decide to create a temptation for hungry babies everywhere.  On that day when every other woman in the US manages to cover it up?  We can have a talk with the moms of multiples about whether there’s a more discrete way to do the one thing those breasts were actually made to do.

Bad journalism in an effort to stir up controversy:

“Also forbidden while in uniform: eating, drinking, . . .”

Er . . . no.  I imagine they meant to say something that was true.  But they didn’t.  Maybe, if I read the whole sentence and guess about how it’s punctuated, what they mean is “eating while walking” and “drinking while walking”.  Maybe?

Anyhow, I’m not military and so my thoughts on what soldiers do in uniform counts for very little, except that sheesh, yes, mothers need to feed their children.  If you’re going to have soldiers who are mothers of babies and toddlers, this is all part of the package.

Breastfeeding your baby is not some optional thing that ought to be saved for leisure hours.  It’s the normal way of feeding a baby.  It’s wonderful that safe, healthy alternatives exist for moms who can’t do it the usual way.  But it would be mighty bizarre to insist that every mother do the artificial work-around to solve a non-existent problem, just because someone’s got it in their head that normal isn’t normal.

3.5 Time Outs: Busy Beavers

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who is also taking it easy today.  Post-holiday light blogging.  But scroll down he’s got some interesting stuff there — Where is the Daddy War? caught my attention.  I’ll come back to serious topics a different week.

Click and be amazed.

1.

This morning I emerged from the bedroom, and found an assortment of children in PJ’s huddled around Sesame Street.  Not surprising.  An odd collection of blankets and pillows and trash paper spread about the coffee table.  Not surprising.  My five-year-old sitting there with paper in her mouth.  *That*  I had never seen before.

2.

“Why do you have paper in your mouth?” I inquired.

“We’re beavers.”

Ah.  Beaver teeth. I had heard rumors of bunny teeth being made last week; after a weekend playing at the river, beaver teeth is the next logical thing.

I looked again at the coffee table.  Everything covering the table was brown.  Around it on the floor?  Blue. And the bits of crumpled up tissue paper were either rocks or whitewater, depending on who you ask.  The kindergartener crawled over to a length of 4″ PVC pipe with a green t-shirt top, made a buzzing noise as she chewed with her paper beaver teeth, and felled the tree.  They only have one tree to chew, so they re-erect it after each meal.

3.

This is why I homeschool*.  Because every now and then I can borrow Rocky Mountain Beaver Pond from the library, and all the kids abandon their regular school work in order to watch, even though they saw it already when they were in K5 or 1st or 2nd grade and in theory the big guys should find it boring by now, but they don’t.

And then instead of telling thirty kids, “Make a diorama about Beavers,” my kids build a live-action diorama in the living room when I thought they were just goofing off being edu-tained.

3.5

What is the proper place for the pink bunny and the purple hippos and the real live family cat, in a living room Beaver pond?  The negotiations are fascinating.

 

***

Well that’s all for today.   I’m catching up on the plugged-in life after the long weekend, so be patient with me as I work through the inbox.  I noticed over at CWG there’s a nice set of Memorial Day posts from today on back through Saturday, go take a look.

Tuesday is Link Day for all topics, not beavers only.  Help yourself if you are so inclined.   Post as many as you want, but only one per comment or the spam dragon will eat you up and I’ll never even know.  Have a great week!

 

*Other people have more impressive reasons for their educational choices.  But seriously.  I’m in it for the beaver pond.

About that picnic . . .

From the blog that’s Memorial Day all century long:

Early last week I got an e-mail from one of the Veterans Collaborative coordinators asking if I would be willing to speak to the staff of  her agency about Memorial Day.  One of their missions is to support military families and she had been surprised and a little horrified to find that many of her colleagues did not know the meaning of Memorial Day.

Read the whole post here.  And subscribe.  There’s always something excellent chez Lee Ann.

3.5 Time Outs: Teen Boy Chastity Bleg, Part 2

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, this bringing old meaning to Man, you’re sick.

Dozens of takes, 3.5 at a time.

1.

The reason I’m asking internet strangers, instead of my dearly beloved, for advice on teen boy chastity, is this:  The SuperHusband has ample experience with “Teen Boy”, but neither he nor I had much exposure to the whole “Chastity” thing until well after our teen years.  So while we can tell you all about the Marriage-NFP Experience, if we were to draw on our own high school experiences for guidance on how to parent our boy, well, that would not be the most successful method.

And since this is the AoA 3.5 Takes, the Man Event to exceed all Man Events, I’m going to keep on asking.

2.

Here’s the round-up of answers so far:

Darwin wrote from his own experience: Avoid Porn, Develop Aesthetics.  That was very encouraging — we have both the porn-free household and the collection of art books (really just two or three, but it’s a start).  And I never would have considered the topic this way.  I’m really glad I asked!

Christian LeBlanc (this one) writes:

I’d tell my boys that all the trash you see on the net or movies or mags has nothing to do with real men, real woman, and real sex. It’s just a way to get money out of morons. In fact it’s the opposite of those real things, and only idiots waste time on it and screw up any chance of meeting and loving a real woman like my wife, who as my children know is The Most Glorious and Beautiful Woman God Ever Created.

August from Contra Niche say:

If you teach young men to value their first born, they will get in the habit of thinking about whether or not they’d want whoever it is they are looking at (and attracted to) to be their kids mom. It is very effective, especially if you imagine a smart little five year old berating you for your lack of foresight.

Valuable reminders, and it is so helpful to hear this from a man’s perspective.  Larry D.  assures me he has a post in the works (give him time, he’s got the plague), and I’m looking forward to that.

3.

So here’s a two-part question I still need you guys to answer for me:

• How should a boy deal with the, shall we say, overwhelming physical urges, that are known to afflict young men?

• And how does a mother, or father, provide these bits of practical advice without making the boy die from embarrassment?

The going advice in popular culture is not so helpful, since it tends to run exactly counter to CCC 2352 and 2396.

So guys, you know how ladies fill magazines with practical tips on cutting calories and avoiding over-eating at holiday parties?  We need the pocket guide to keeping it in the pocket.  I’m going to temporarily open this blog up to anonymous comments, and as long as they are Catholic* and on-topic, I’ll let them through the moderation queue.   What works?

Please tell.

3.5

 . . . Anna knew right away: Slugs.  If you ever need a cheap date, invite a slug.

Well that’s all for today.  Tuesday is Link Day for all topics, not just chastity and garden pests.  Help yourself if you are so inclined.   Post as many as you want, but only one per comment or the spam dragon will eat you up and I’ll never even know**.

*By “Catholic” I mean “all that is true and good”.  Your own faith or lack thereof is not the question.  A commitment to purity suffices.

** If your perfectly good comment gets stuck in spam, please TELL ME.  My e-mail in the sidebar works.  I get too much spam to check the spam folder post by post, but I will happily go fish out your misfiled comment if you let me know it’s in there.

 

QUICK UPDATE: I’ve turned off the anonymous comment feature (6/7/2012).  Amazing how much spam this one post generated — apparently hit all the right keywords.  I don’t *think* any honest humans were caught in spam (yes, I read it all), but you are always welcome to e-mail me if your comment gets eaten by the spam dragon, and I’ll rescue you.  Thank you to everyone who answered, here or elsewhere.  I’ll do a round-up post soon.

3.5 Time Outs: Assorted Measures

Thanks once again to our host Larry D. at Acts of the Apostasy, who’s got all your Apocalypse needs covered.  Especially Robot Apocalypse.

Click and be amazed.

1.

Yesterday was our 17th Anniversary.  We had dinner on the screen porch — steak, tater tots, spinach, cantaloupe, champagne.  Even the kids were full before dessert.  I can’t remember when it started, but we’ve taken to having a family dinner for our anniversary, and pointing out to the kids that it marks the founding of our family.  Which makes it their holiday, too.  After the kids went to bed, parents finished the champagne and got into the cheesecake.

2.

Best Water Meter Ever. It takes several layers of those cheap all-paper plates from Aldi if you’re serving steak.  Why paper?  Because the septic system is old enough to run for president, which in septic-years is much more than a little stately silver around the ears.  We’re avoiding all excess water usage until we can get a new drain field cut in sometime next week.  And so the SuperHusband installed one of these on the back patio:

It’s connected to the hose for a water-supply, and underneath, instead of drainpipe there’s a one-gallon bucket.  It’s fascinating seeing exactly how much water you use to wash hands or brush teeth.  Major incentive to conserve water so you don’t have to keep hauling the bucket off to some suitable corner of lawn.  Can I count this as school?

3.

Bleg: Boys, Porn, and Chastity. Had a friend in for tea Sunday afternoon, and she gave me a timely head’s up on the reality of tweenage boys and the very rapid transition into Exceedingly Immature Manhood that is somewhere on the horizon for our boy.  (Right now, the only girl he likes is the dog.)  Since I know that at least a few of my readers are:

1. Men.
2. Fathers of teens boys and former teen boys.
3. Catholic of the Chastity is Good, Sin is Bad type.
4. Remember what it was like to live inside the body of a teenage boy.

or:

1. Are married to such a person.

or:

1. Are the grown son of such a person.

Want to offer any advice?  Practical.  Links, comments, a post of your own and link it back here.  I’m all ears.  Anything helpful.  Thanks!

3.5

On Saturday I bought an 18-pack of Busch Light.  I tasted some, warm.  It’s kind of sweet — sort of a malty fruity seltzer product.  Interesting.  But it’s not for me.  It’s for

***

Well that’s all for today.  Tuesday is Link Day for all topics, not just beer, chastity, and laundry tubs.  Help yourself if you are so inclined.   Post as many as you want, but only one per comment or the spam dragon will eat you up and I’ll never even know.

Rant-o-rama: The Pornification of Everything

Brad Warthen posted a photo of the controversial Time Magazine cover over at his blog.  I won’t here, though I suppose you’ve seen it.  I’ll describe it in a minute. 

Time poses as a respectable newsweekly, and so it’s supposed to be reporting about real issues.  The topic at hand is delayed weaning, and we are supposed to be upset that a three-year-old might still be nursing.  Difficult to get upset about that, unless you can somehow stage it as a sexual issue.  Keep in mind that typically a three-year-old still needs help with bathing, toileting, and often may need diapers changed.  Can a child be sexually abused as part of all that?  Sure.  Would there be any reason to suspect a dysfunctional or abusive relationship merely because a parent looked after a child’s hygiene?  No.

I’m going to describe the photo, and what’s noteworthy is that there is nothing unusual about this.  I can be pretty sure that if I draw the right readership, I’ll be told I’m an uptight prude for calling the mom’s outfit immodest.  These are the clothes young women wear to serve in ministry at church, for example.  It’s all so normal.

Mom:

Mom’s wearing ballet flats — nothing tiltating there.  Which also make her as short at possible.  Important in a minute.

Mom’s wearing tight jeans — technically, these are tights.  Wonder of spandex, we can now have “pants” that fit like something which, a decade ago, went under a skirt to keep your legs warm in winter.

Mom’s wearing a camisole.  Remember camisoles?  They used to go under your clothes.

And that’s it.

We, as a culture, think this is normal.  Girls dress this way at church.  Well you know what?  It’s not normal.  It’s underwear.   And when you pose someone in her underwear on the cover of a magazine . . . it’s that type of magazine.

Now I know your daughter who dresses this way is sweet and pure and innocent, because I’ve met her or a girl just like her, and in addition she’s delightful, polite, intelligent, and devoted to her faith.  I don’t question her motives.  She’s just wearing what they sell.  But still.  She’s walking around in her underwear.  And doesn’t know it, because everyone else is too.  The empress has no outerwear.

So.  On the cover of Time, we have a woman in her underwear.  A young, beautiful woman.  Her eyes and her posture say, “I dare you.”  Or, perhaps, “Come and get it.”  We’ll go with “I dare you.”

Now for her boy:

He’s three, but he’s a little taller than a typical three year-old.

He’s dressed like a little GI – camo pants, grey knit shirt, running shoes.  Grown-up hair cut.

He’s standing on a chair, which though you know doesn’t make him taller, really, your eyes see that head way up by her shoulder, and your brain thinks “twelve years old.”

The clothing, the relative heights — this preschooler has been done up to look like a pre-teen boy.  In an age when grown men do their best to look like pre-teen boys.

Recap: A woman in her underwear, with a child made up to look like a grown-up, doing what grown-up men do in their bedroom with their wives during intercourse.  That’s child porn.

It’s not about breastfeeding.

Allow me to hurt your brain a little more.  Make that boy pose like a GI caught with his pants down.  Have mom kneel down, same outfit, same “I dare-you-eyes” as she reaches up with a baby-wipe to clean that bottom . . . child porn.

It’s not about breastfeeding.

It’s about the fact that our culture is sex-obsessed.

It’s about the fact that if you even mention modesty, you must be some kind of Victorian prude (I’m not so impressed with the Victorians, but apparently some people are).   Even among Catholics, the hot thing is to declare modesty is context-dependent, and more about a state of mind, and anyway here’s a picture of someone, somewhere, dressing this way fifty years ago, so that makes it modest.  Also, look at this piece of classic art.  We all know artists were protected from impurity until 1957.  And then it degenerates into the Burka argument, since neither Nazis nor pedophile priests can be brought into the discussion so easily.

Our culture hears the word “breast” and thinks “sex”, since sex is what everything is about, all the time.  We worry about three-year-olds nursing, because we know that by five the girls will be dressed like little prostitutes — surely that boy must be getting warmed up for his kindergarten girlfriend.

I edited out the last paragraph because the SuperHusband said it exceeded even the bounds of Rant-o-Rama.  For those who feel shortchanged, I point you to this excellent, charitable, and informative post on modesty over at Aggie Catholics.  Where they are kind, and hip, and not at all ranty like your cranky hostess here.

7 Quick Takes: Mother’s Day. Liquor Store Edition.

1.

In my family growing up we had a set of Mother’s Day rituals — taking Mom out to breakfast, going to the garden center to buy flowers to plant for her, sometimes even exchanging of gifts and cards.  When the Boy was born, I expected SuperHusband to just know what to do.  After all, my family’s traditions were hardly secret — you see that kind of stuff on TV.  I assumed everyone just knew.

Except that he didn’t.  Tears ensued.  Until I discovered one year that actually, there is a much, much better way:

2.

Making my own breakfast.  Why not have a day a year devoted to eating exactly what I want, prepared the way I like it, and you other people please just stay in bed and give the mother an hour of quiet to enjoy it?  It really is better.

3.

But I did tell the poor man what I wanted this year:  For him to please get repaired the watch he gave me a different year.  It needs a new battery and a new clasp, and yes I could take it to be repaired myself, but you know, he’s a mechanical engineer.  What a great way to show his love, driving to the store himself to oversee the repair of a tiny metal mechanical device?

Luckily there’s no deadline, except that I’d really love for it to be fixed by the end of August, when I go to the Catholic Blogger Foretaste of Heaven Conference.  Where our lovely 7-takes hostess will be speaking, no less.  I am wildly excited.

4.

Last year for Mother’s day, SuperHusband gave me a reprint of this book:

Which taught me how to make my own vinegar.  Seriously easy and you feel so crunchy-granola, and also it uses up wine ends.  And it is better than anything you can buy.

Small hitch: The cloth-covered Famous Grouse bottle serving as miniature vinegar barrel reminded the SuperHusband he wanted to resume homebrewing.  He’d been on a long toddler-rearing hiatus.  So he did.  Causing us to stop buying wine.  But I did the calculation, and it is cheaper to buy a bottle of Aldi wine and make vinegar out of it, than it is to buy Publix-brand red wine vinegar.  So that’s what I do.

5.

Speaking of famous grice: The SuperHusband was in the doghouse the other week, and to demonstrate the sincerity of his love, he came home with a bottle of Laphroaig for me.  Which was a tiny bit strange, because I had not been grousing about a lack of single-malt.  And the stuff is expensive.  But in a moment of virtually Therese-like holiness, I figured: Hey, this is good!  Might as well enjoy it!

He really does love me, you know.

6.

A prayer for Allie Hathaway is prayer for her mom, too.  You can’t go wrong.

7.

The American Frugal Housewife was not the first historic housekeeping title on my shelves.  The previous Christmas the SuperMother-In-Law, who knows me well, gave me this one:

Mrs. Beeton’s is much heftier than the Frugal Housewife, and addressed more towards homes with servants, and our servants are mostly the electric type anymore.  But I came across this eminently reassuring and useful* bit of advice about the rigors of breastfeeding and the avoidance of colic:

The nine or twelve months a woman usually suckles must be, to some extent, to most mothers, a period of privation and penance, and unless she is deaf to the cries of her baby, and insensible to its kicks and plunges, and will not see in such muscular evidences the griping pains that rack her child, she will avoid every article that can remotely affect the little being who draws its sustenance from her.  She will see that the babe is acutely affected by all that in any way influences her, and willingly curtail her own enjoyments, rather than see her infant rendered feverish, irritable, and uncomfortable.  As the best tonic, then, and the most efficacious indirect stimulant that a mother can take at such times, there is no potation equal to porter and stout, or what is better still, and equal part of porter and stout.

And with that, I bid you a Happy Mother’s Day.

*Do not use this advice. Or if you do and then need sue someone, sue Mrs. Beeton.  Her idea not mine.

Why Believe this Jesus-Pope-Church Stuff is Really Real?

Faced with so many Catholics, even the leaders of many Catholic institutions, openly rejecting the teaching of the Church, I had to ask myself last week: Why shouldn’t I go the same way?  If Georgetown and Notre Dame are allowed to call themselves Catholic, why should I feel compelled to avoid their purported errors?  If you can be Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden and not be excommunicated . . . maybe they are the ones who are right after all.  Maybe the Catholic Faith is about our finding our own path, and each doing what he feels is right, and the Catechism is just so many suggestions, helpful to some, not required for all.  Maybe.

Having entertained that thought experiment, what convinces me to persist in my catechism-slinging?  Here’s my list:

1. Jesus was crucified.  If Jesus just wants people to go their own way, do their own thing, why die on the cross?  Those words: “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.”  The Jewish leaders who campaigned for the cruxifiction were, by Jesus’ own words, only doing what they thought they should.  If that’s not a sin, why forgive?

And if truth and the will of God can be molded to fit our situation, and there’s really no need to worry about fine details and firm definitions, why sweat blood in Gethsemane?  If the Father’s will is merely that we each do our own will, Jesus could have slipped off in the moonlight the way he’d done plenty of times before.

There’s a branch of dissenting Catholics who deny the crucifixion and resurrection, treating one or both events as mere myth.  In which case, sure, a mythical God feels no pain, the blood and the anguish must be just as fictional.  But I don’t think the Incarnation is nothing more than an especially glorious fireside tale, because of the next reason on my list.

2.  The Martyrs died for their faith.  An agonizing death for the sake of a little incense?  I don’t think so.  If the ancient faith were a mythical faith, Roman officials wouldn’t have written letters advising each other how to deal with those cantankerous Christians.  A mad man can gather a few suicidal followers for a short time; no one persuades synagogue after to synagogue throughout the whole Roman empire to face death rather than recant a myth, generation after generation.

It is possible the early Church was wrong, and Christianity is not true — plenty of men have shed their own bled in defense of a mistaken cause.  But those who give their lives freely, for the martyrs were never coerced by the Romans — the Romans urged them to spare their own lives with a few simple gestures — those who give their lives freely do so because they believe they must.  That the faith of the Church requires an absolute loyalty to Jesus Christ and no other.  A Christian can, and should, respect the honest unbeliever; but respect is something different from agreement.  In the early Church, “find your own path”, or in the Roman style, make Jesus just one more god in the pantheon, this it’s-all-good-enough Christianity was no Christianity at all.

3. I’m not ready to throw the saints under the bus.  Were all these martyrs and saints who insisted on one Lord, one Faith, one Truth — were they kindly people sorely mistaken?  Did the Holy Spirit’s promise to lead us into all truth tarry a while, and we didn’t get the real faith handed on until 1960-something?  When we canonize someone, we don’t claim their every word was Gospel, their every action impeccable.  Saints err.  This saint didn’t reason into the Immaculate Conception, that saint had a bad temper, and there’s an alarming amount of disagreement about dress codes and attachment parenting.  (I suppose the modern Church is very saintly that way.)

But every single saint, all of them, wrong about the same basic facts about the faith?  Saint Thomas Aquinas as a jolly old fellow who gave it his best on theology, buy the man a beer and tell him that really there’s nothing particular to know about Jesus, but thank you for getting so many Dominicans off the streets and into the university?  Saints Isaac Jogues and Kateri Tekawitha showing their remarkable pluck, and hey, there’s room in the celestial sweat lodge, relax and try some pantheism for a while, you look like you could do with a change  — it’s all the same thing anyway — hey, what happened to your hands, buddy?

Nope.  My brain just won’t go there.  Because of my final reason.

4. I’m sane.  I mean that in the most charitable way.  (And the most limited way.)  I spent two decades in school, learning “creativity” and “critical thinking”, which was education-code for “outlandish is good” and “If you can convince people, it must be true.”  I had a harrowing moment in business school when I persuaded my accounting professor the wrong answer was in fact correct — the assignment was to argue the assigned position, so I did.  It was wrong, and anyone with half a brain could see it.  But I could argue well. I persuaded her.  It was my first brush with the darkness of dishonesty.  After that I quit going along so nicely with inane assignments.  I graduated anyhow.

But I didn’t really learn how to reason — that is, to find the truth — until after I reverted.  In returning to the Church, I was beseiged by arguments against the Catholic Faith not from the anything-goes crowd, but from sincere and fervent evangelical friends.  The stakes were high: My own spouse was now a born-again evangelical (protestant) Christian.  Try telling someone five years into a happy marriage that he’s gotta start using NFP, and by the way, our marriage isn’t valid and we need to get a priest to fix it.  The man had good reasons to doubt the credibility of the Church before; now the ol’ Mother-n-Teacher is intruding into his bedroom and making his wife think crazy-wacky-papist-talk.

You can’t buy into “it’s all the same thing” when your good friends are giving you books telling you the Church is the Dominion of Satan.  You have to answer the question.  You have to examine the evidence, and decide one thing is true and another is false.  No quantity of parables about blind men feeling the elephant can make Satan and Jesus into the head and tail of a big grey spirituality that squirts water out its trunk.

I could choose not to know the answer about God — to be agnostic about Christianity the way I am agnostic about evolution.  (I don’t care enough about evolution to have an opinion on it, nor to bother forming one.)  But whereas I could in good faith believe that knowledge of God is unimportant, I could not in good reason believe there is no single answer about God.  Either evolution happened or didn’t, and if it did, it happened in either this way or that.  Species didn’t evolve for those who want that to be their truth, and get plopped down as-written for those who prefer a younger and more predictable planet.  Either Jesus is the Son of God, or he isn’t.  Either He founded a Church, or he didn’t.  Either the Pope is head of that Church, with the ability to teach authoritatively, or he isn’t.

A Catholic can in good faith be unable to answer these questions  — to lack the mental capacity, or the free time, or even the knowledge these questions exist.  But to know these questions abound, and in sound mind believe there are no absolute answers to them?  No.  As certainly as a child knows either the dog ate the cupcake or it didn’t,  sane Catholics know that facts are facts, whether we know the facts or not.   Good faith demands good reason.

The Making of a Lukewarm Catholic

Last week in the comments to “Catholics Acting Catholic”, Anna asks:

How? How does the modern church read the same scriptures as me and MISS that Christ is Lord, He is The Only Way, The. End. ???

The Church is made up not of partisan chunks, but of individuals.  Anna and I agreed it was unwise to speculate on what might make any one person lean this way or that in their approach to the faith.  But I don’t need to speculate about myself.  Before I was a pope-loving, catechism-slinging revert, I was agnostic.  And before that?  I was one of those other Catholics.  The catechism-optional, find-your-own-path types.

(Which is how I found my own path out of the Church — and later, following the same method, found my way back in.)

So, to answer Anna’s question . . .  What was it that made me, in 1991, a Georgetown kinda Catholic?  (At heart, if not in wallet.)  Thinking through it, my response is very simple: It was the religion I’d been taught my whole life.

My parents were both Catholic, but we barely went to church when I was little.  After I received my first holy communion at age 7, we quit attending Mass or CCD.  It was one of those parishes where they didn’t do confession until later, so I spent the next decade receiving communion, but never going to confession, or even knowing anything about that sacrament, except what I saw in movies.

Every year at Easter, my mom would say, “And we’re going to start going back to Mass every Sunday from now on,” and every year we wouldn’t.  But she didn’t give up.  In 1988 we moved from metro DC to a small Bible-belt town, and my mom argued it was social necessity for us to turn out a church every Sunday.   She was 50% southerner by birth, which gave her some authority as an expert on these matters, and plus you could count the baptist churches and know she was right.  We went to Mass.

It was kinda fun, after I got over my snotty teenage attitude.  Being Catholic in a baptist-methodist town was countercultural. In your face. Also I loved the God part.

We didn’t do anything crazy though, like praying at home, or reading the Scriptures, nothing Bible-Thumper like that.  We read the same newspapers — Wall Street Journal, the local paper, the diocesan paper.  We watched the same TV shows — heavy on the MTV during the day, sitcoms at night.  My sisters and I read good wholesome magazines for teen girls, like YM and Elle.  I thought the USCCB’s movie reviews were awfully uptight — I just ignored them.  If someone suggested maybe certain music wasn’t so edifying, I would have scoffed.  Paranoid types.  Throwbacks.  Idiots.

Our parish did offer Catholic sex ed, and we attended, but we also did secular sex ed — both at school and via everything we read and watched and listened to.  My parents no doubt wished they could instill a few Catholic moral values in that department, but they had no notion that it was possible — not even, perhaps, entirely convinced it was necessary.  One evening our Catholic youth leader did a presentation about Catholic teaching on sex.  Birth control wasn’t a topic — neither for nor against.  I raised my hand and asked her this: What if two people had promised to marry each other, and they were faithful and they really were going to get married and stay faithful — would it matter if they had sex before hand?

She was literally stumped.  Unable to say it was wrong.  Unable.

After all, she’d been raised in the same religion as me — the religion of the popular media and public schools and rosy planned parenthood commercials.  This was the faith of our nation.  Our religion was Modern American, flavored Catholic.

***

Why be a Catholic-favored American?  Well, for one thing it’s a beautiful faith.  The liturgy, the art — we had a gorgeous parish church, wonderful musicians.  There’s the sense of history.  There’s the McDonald’s factor, too — when you travel, you always have a place to fit in.   And just as I’d proudly say I was part-Irish or part-German, it was a pleasure to have a Catholic identity.  I expect I would have made just as fervent a modern American progressive-Muslim or progressive-Jew.  It’s a heritage.  You love your heritage the way you love your grandma, even if she does sometimes let slip a racist remark, and you know your better, but you never say anything because she’s your grandma.

And here’s the other thing, and this is the truth about many good Americans, whether pagan-flavor or Catholic-flavor or gay-flavor or you name it:  Nice people.  Kind people.  People who do good things for others.  People who try their best to be the best person they can be.  Faithful catechism-reading Catholics don’t have the corner on the Niceness market.   Nice is universal.

So why stick around a Church that I thought was wrong?  Well in the long run I didn’t, but my departure had more to do with being out of town on the weekends and falling in with non-religious friends than it did with an active dissent from the Church.   So what kept me claiming the name of Catholic for many years, until I finally gave up on the Christian thing altogether?

• There’s God.  Humans are spiritual.  We don’t walk away from God easily.
• There really wasn’t any conflict.

Oh, sure, you sometimes maybe heard or read some Catholic thing that you disagreed with.  But when find-your-own-path religion is the voice of the entire wider culture, and a prominent voice within the Church?  You go with it.

And that’s it.  I left for college (State U, no money for Georgetown) an exuberant, rosary-praying, sometimes-Bible-reading Catholic teen, but one who had no serious Christian discipleship, no serious training in the faith, and not a single voice pointing to a faith that was something other than American Mainstream Culture with incense and candles attached.   State U did the rest of the work  to finish off that remnant of a faith.

And interestingly, it was  the hardcore, this-is-not-mere-culture,  Do You Accept Jesus as Your Lord and Savior evangelicals who both cemented my final separation with Christianity . . . and brought me back into the fold. Whence a baptist deacon unwittingly plopped me down at Mass on a Wednesday morning in 1999.  And with a little help from  Jack T. Chick, I stayed.  And started doing what the Catechism said.

Book Review for Saint Gianna Beretta Molla: The Gift of Life

Saint Gianna Beretta Molla: The Gift of Life is my latest review book for the Catholic Company, and they are in luck once again, because it’s a great book!

I knew the gist of St. Gianna’s life, but this was the first detailed biography I’d read, and I think it’s an excellent introduction to the saint.  It’s a compact, readable biography that starts with the marriage of Gianna’s parents in 1908.  Through the lens of family life, we see St. Gianna working to discern her vocation and make the most of the struggles she faces throughout her life, as well as the tremendous joy she found in marriage, motherhood, and her work as a physician.

Reading Level:  Upper elementary and up.  My fourth grader (average reader, Catholic girl — which makes a difference, see below) read it in one afternoon.

Why this is a great book for Moms:  I know that technically it’s a children’s book.  But when you have small children, you really need something that can read in five-minute snatches (with interruptions every other paragraph) and still hope to reach the end of the book before you forget the beginning.  And this a book not only about a mom, but with some encouraging details for normal moms. Just look at these saintly facts:

• St. Gianna, working mother?  Once her first baby was born, she had not just her own sister as a full-time nanny, but a housekeeper too.   Did you get that?  Not a super-person.
• She takes her two pre-schoolers to Mass and the baby stays home.  She was a saint.  And she left her baby at home.
• Her preschool boy lasted all of five minutes at Mass, per her account.

See?  You need to read this.  Saintly living for normal people.

Why this is a great book for pre-teens and teens:  There is a very strong emphasis on vocation.  Even though it was easy enough for my fourth grader to read, it would be perfect for about a twelve- or thirteen-year-old.  Super book-club or youth group discussion choice, if you have a group of teen girls who get together to talk about Catholic stuff.

Sanity via history through biography:  As a teenager, St. Gianna’s parents pulled her out of school for a year so she could rest and regain her health.  They felt the vigor with which St. Gianna was pursuing her studies was wearing her out, and she needed the break.  This is a teen who eventually went on to earn her M.D.   If an American parent did this today, in many cases there would be significant legal and financial penalties for both parent and child.   For this one anecdote alone, I’d recommend this book.   You can’t think clearly about public policy if you are utterly wrapped up in the quirks of your own time and place.

 

Cautions for the would-be reader:

1. It helps to have a general background in Catholic culture before starting the book.  There is a very helpful glossary at the back of the book, for those of us who never can remember what it is that makes a basilica a basilica.  But for teaching this book to a mixed group of students with varying amounts of Catholic up-bringing, I would plan to go over the vocabulary and cultural notes for the next week’s class session before students did the reading.

2. There is a clear and straightforward explanation of the moral choices St. Gianna faced when she was diagnosed with a tumor during her last pregnancy — another reason this is a great book for adults.  But it would be helpful for students to have a knowledgeable teacher to explain some of the basic moral principles that come into play.   St. Gianna’s death is also a good illustration of ways Catholics can choose to handle end-of-life situations.

 

Conclusion: This one isn’t leaving my shelf.  Recommended if you want an enjoyable, readable introduction to St. Gianna’s life, encouragement in your vocation and efforts at holiness, and a real-life example of moral choices in medical ethics and end-of-life issues.

***

Thanks again to the Catholic Company for their on-going efforts to keep bloggers from ever getting bored.  I received this book in exchange for an honest review, and it’s not my fault I picked a book I happened to like (okay it is — but I didn’t know it would be this good in these ways).  In addition to their work of mercy instructing the ignorant, The Catholic Company would like me to remind you they are also a great source for a baptism gifts or first communion gifts.