Taking children to Mass can get tough and overwhelming. Lisa Popcak, Co-author of “Grace: The Catholic Guide to Raising Almost Perfect Kids,” gives some practical advice on how to make Mass a fun, loving, and engaging experience for the kids.
Don't Give in to Discouragement
By: Dom Hubert Van Zeller
Psychologists tell us that one of the chief evils of our age, an evil apparently less evident in earlier ages, is that of easy defeat. Be this as it may, most people who are honest with themselves would probably have to admit to indulging in despondency. They are fortunate if they have nothing worse to confess than despondency; there are many who labor under the weight of near-despair. Whether guilty of surrendering to the tempta tion or whether burdened with a sense of guilt that in fact is without foundation, a man can reduce his spiritual vitality so as virtually to close his soul to the operation of hope. When hope dies, there is very little chance for faith and charity.
It is a commonplace to observe that the saints were not those who never fell, but those who never gave in to their falls. It is less generally understood that the saints felt just the same longing as we do for the excuse to go on falling. The parable of the wheat and the cockle should show us that the saints were not only as divided against themselves interiorly as we are, but that they had to go on struggling all their lives against the de sire to let the cockle have its way.
A mistake we make is to think of the saints as triumphing over temptation by the felt force of ardent love. Some of them, certainly, experienced this fire, but for the most of them it has been a question of grinding out dry, hard acts of faith and hope through clenched teeth. The saints have had to fight every inch of the way against discouragement, defeatism, and even despair.
How could it be otherwise? No virtue can be productive of good unless it comes up against the evil that is its opposite. Courage is not courage until it has experienced fear: courage is not the absence of fear, but the sublimation of fear. In the same way, perseverance has to be tried by the temptation to give up, by the sense of failure, by an inability to feel the support of grace. The reason Christ fell repeatedly – one tradition would have it that He fell seven times – is at least partly be cause we fall repeatedly and have need of His example in re covering from our falls. The difference between His falls and ours is that, whereas His were because of weakness of the body, ours are because of weakness of the will. The likeness between His and ours lies simply in the use that can be made of them.
Even if we do not reproduce the Passion in any other re spect, we have the chance of reproducing it in perseverance under exhaustion. If, as we have seen, the Passion is con stantly being renewed in the members of Christ’s Mystical Body, there must always be some aspect of Christ’s suffering to which our own personal sufferings can show an affinity. If we are bearing witness to the same truth, opposing the same evil, moving in the same direction, then the same means must be used by us as those that were used by Christ – namely, patience and endurance in the all-but-defeating experience of life. The effort that we make to regain the position lost by ei ther circumstances or sin will reflect the effort made by Christ to return to the interrupted work of cross-bearing. Nothing of our experience need be wasted, not even our sinfulness.
So it would seem that the truly Christian man transcends discouragement only by accepting it. No man can pass beyond an obstacle except by facing it and rising above it. To go around an obstacle is not to overcome it, but to evade it. Circumven tion may be all right when we are traveling along a road, but it will not do when we are advancing toward God by the way of the Cross.
This article is from Dom van Zeller’s book, available from Sophia Institute Press
Of the three answers that are given to the problem of pain, it is only the Christian answer that is found to provide any lasting conviction. The Stoic approach, stifling complaint, can carry a man to heroism of a sort, but it does not supply him with a philosophy; it does not point to anything beyond a nat ural nobility to be developed in physical endurance.
Then comes the Christian ideal, which has nothing to do with negation and emptiness. Here is the invitation to take up the Cross; here is St. Paul preaching Christ crucified and glorying in nothing save in the Cross of Christ; here are the Apostles going about glad to be accounted worthy to suffer for Christ. In the Christian dispensation, happiness and sanctity are found in accepting the Cross with Christ, bearing the Cross with Christ, falling under the Cross with Christ, getting up under the Cross with Christ, and going on in the knowl edge that this is Christ’s cross-discouragement.
A man cannot deny his discouragement any more than he can deny his existence. It is part of his existence. All he can do is deny himself the luxury of discouragement; he can mortify his tendency to self-pity. By becoming Christ-centered instead of self-centered, a man re-orientates his perceptions so as no longer to see discouragement by the light of the world, or in its purely human context, but by the light of grace and in the setting of the Passion. If Christians lived out their lives in relation to the Passion – if their wills remained in proper harmony with God’s will – they would be incapable of expe riencing more than the first stab of disappointment and would suffer only such pains as creation necessarily imposes. There would be no settled mood of disillusion, no dispirited pursuit of the second best, no trailing of despaired purposes, no ac cepted exhaustions and wastes.
But because most people live in a lamentably distant relationship to Christ’s Passion, inevitably there must result a lingering malaise in their lives that drains away their irreplaceable resources. Failing to see their place in the suffering Body of Christ, they remain blind to the significance of their discouragements.
What, after all, are the grounds for human discouragement but experience of inadequacy and loss? A man is discouraged either because he looks back at the past and sees a sequence of misfortunes that has shaped for him a mold of failure, or be cause he looks into the future and can see no security, happi ness, or prospects of success. His experience of life has given him these findings, so he feels, understandably, that life is insupportable.
But if he knew more of Christ, he would know that he had misinterpreted his experience, and that life is not at all insup portable. He would neither shy away from the thought of the past, nor stand dismayed by the thought of the future. The im mediate present would not daunt him either: he would know that it could be related, together with the failures that have been and the horrors that are in store, to the Passion.
This is not to say that deliverance from disillusion, discouragement, and despair can be effected by a mere trick of the mind – the knack of referring our desolations automatically to God – but that, in the gradual and painful conversion of the soul from self-centeredness to God-centeredness, there will be a growing tendency toward confidence. No longer brought low by the sight of so much evil in ourselves, in oth ers, and in the world, we rise by the slow deepening of detach ment to the sight of a possible good in ourselves, in others, and in the world. The vision extends to a probable good, and then to a certain good. Together with this widening of a horizon, which reveals the positive where before only the negative was expected, goes the knowledge that the only good is God’s good, and that it exists on earth – as those who receive the Word made flesh exist on earth – not of the will of man, but of God.
In the measure that we allow our desolations to be transfig ured by grace, so that they become part of Christ’s desolation, do we bring at the most significant level comfort to others who are desolate. “If you wish men to weep,” says Horace, “you must first weep yourself”: if we weep for the right reason, we shall prevent others from weeping for the wrong one. If we unite our sorrows with those of Christ, we not only sanctify our own souls, raising them above the discouragements of life, but also come to act as channels of grace to the souls of those for whom, like us, Christ fell and started up again on His way to Calvary.
Credit to Dom Hubert Van Zeller of CatholicExchange.
The Prodigal Father
By: Dave McClow
The “prodigal father” is the story of our time. It is the story of fatherlessness in our families. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is and has always been highly aware of the crisis of fatherhood and its implications for society (see my previous blog). He knows that when fatherhood is gutted, “something in the basic structure of human existence has been damaged” (The God of Jesus Christ, p. 29). But he is also supremely insightful about what happens in the family, both positively and negatively, because of fathers! Let’s start out with the problems:
PRODIGAL FATHERHOOD
“A theologian has said that to day we ought to supplement the story of the Prodigal Son with that of the prodigal father. Fathers are often entirely occupied by their work and give more wholehearted attention to their work than to their child, more to achievement than to gifts, and to the tasks implied by those gifts. But the loss of involvement of the father also causes grave inner damage to the sons” (God and the World, pp. 274-275).
I’m not sure why he leaves out daughters, but the effect is just as devastating for daughters. Are you leaving behind the gift of your children for busy-ness or business? Are you too task and achievement oriented? Part of this over-focus is the religious nature of our masculinity–our natural inclination toward sacrifice for a cause. This is masculine spirituality that is often not acknowledged by men or women. If men can’t relate to God as men, they turn to things which are not ultimate–that is, to things Scripture calls idols. This is why work, hobbies, and sports can become all-consuming.
Fear is another component of turning to non-ultimate things. Sometimes a lot of men view the murky waters of relationships and emotions at home like a foreign country to be feared. They would rather turn elsewhere to feel like a success. We need to invoke my vote for St. John Paul II’s #2 motto (after “Totus Tuus, Totally yours, Mary”), “Be not afraid!” We need to have courage! There is nothing wrong with work, hobbies, or sports, but they must be rightly ordered–they must not take precedence over people or God. Even virtues in the extremes become vice.
As Pope, Benedict XVI includes in the problem list broken families, worries, and money problems, along with “the distracting invasion of the media” in our daily life. All of these things “can stand in the way of a calm and constructive relationship between father and child.” “It is not easy for those who have experienced an excessively authoritarian and inflexible father or one who was indifferent and lacking in affection, or even absent, to think serenely of God and to entrust themselves to him with confidence” (General Audience, January 30, 2013).
ZEUS
He nails the problems of modern life including technology; and the perennial problems of fathers who can be excessively rigid, indifferent, lacking in affection, or even absent. These things damage our view of God and make it difficult to trust. Next, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he contrasts two very different fathers: Zeus and God the Father.
If we look for a moment at pagan mythologies, then the father-god Zeus, for instance, is portrayed as moody, unpredictable, and willful: the father does incorporate power and authority, but without the corresponding degree of responsibility, the limitation of power through justice and kindness (God and the World, pp. 274-275).
If you are the kind of father who wants your kids to obey just because you’re the father, you’re in the Zeus camp, which uses the power and authority of the role without the responsibility which limits that power through justice and kindness. This father uses domination and fear to lord it over the kids and demands obedience. Consequently, because they don’t like the master/slave relationship, the kids usually have a temper problem and find ways to rebel. Or as Protestant apologist Josh McDowell has aptly put it, “Rules without relationship leads to rebellion.” The master/slave idea is found more in Islam, a word which means submission. Allah is not a loving Father–in fact, this idea is blasphemous to a Muslim. Allah is an all-powerful God who must be obeyed.
GOD THE FATHER AS OUR MODEL
Zeus shows us how not to be a good father. The Pope Emeritus says that Scripture helps us know of “a God who shows us what it really means to be ‘father’; and it is the Gospel, especially, which reveals to us this face of God as a Father who loves” (General Audience, January 30, 2013). The Father uses power and responsibility with justice and kindness, which is a more relational approach. As Cardinal Ratzinger, he unpacks this idea:
The Father as he appears in the Old Testament is quite different [from Zeus], and still more in what Jesus says about the Father: here, power corresponds to responsibility; here we meet a picture of power that is prop erly directed, that is at one with love, that does not dominate through fear but creates trust. The fatherhood of God means devotion toward us, an acceptance of us by God at the deepest level, so that we can belong to him and turn to him in childlike love. Certainly, his fatherhood does mean that he sets the standards and corrects us with a strictness that manifests his love and that is always ready to forgive (God and the World, pp. 274-275).
So the Father loves us first (1 Jn.) and is devoted to us, and this love creates trust, acceptance, and belonging! It is only after loving us that he challenges us with his standards and correction; but even the challenge reveals more of his love for us. He is like a coach or teacher who sees our potential and is therefore hard on us. He is working for our good. This is rightly ordered parenting: deep and wide love and then challenge. Many fathers I work with start with the challenge and standards, skipping over the love part. But doing this reverses the way we are designed and messes up the family. To cut these fathers a break, this is probably how they were trained by their parents.
Psychologist Gordon Neufeld puts it a little differently as he answers the question, “What’s the easiest way to parent children?” His answer is not punishment, showing them who is boss, new skills, or even loving them. It is getting them to love you. He often asks, “When did your child give you his/her heart?” If the parent is in Zeus mode, his or her reply is only a blank stare. But when kids love you, they want to please you–it’s in their nature, and it’s the same with adults and God! This is what it means to become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven–when we give God our hearts in response to his love, we take correction more easily and experience discipline as a reconciliation–we are welcomed back home.
The Pope Emeritus continues his description of the Father: “God is a good Father who welcomes and embraces his lost but repentant son (cf. Lk. 15:11ff).” He is “a Father who never abandons his children [Ps. 27:10], a loving Father who supports, helps, welcomes, pardons and saves” and whose love opens the “dimensions of eternity.” This Fatherly love is “infinitely greater, more faithful, and more total than the love of any man.” And knowing this love through faith, “we can face all the moments of difficulty and danger, the experience of the darkness of despair in times of crisis and suffering….” Of course, “[i]t is in the Lord Jesus that the benevolent face of the Father…is fully revealed.” In and through Jesus we know and see the Father (cf. Jn. 8:19; 14:7, 14:9, 11). He is “the image of the invisible God” (General Audience, January 30, 2013).
SUMMARY
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has laid out both the problem and a theological solution: the problem is prodigal fatherhood, i.e., fatherlessness, in various forms, and the solution is God the Father as our model for fatherhood–“the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Eph. 3:14-15). The contrast between Zeus and God the Father is striking and, from my vantage point as a pastoral counselor, insightful and helpful. The Pope Emeritus has even more practical thoughts on the topic, but they will have to wait for another day. With an epidemic of fatherlessness and our Faith’s revelation of a loving, tender, and challenging Abba, an interesting side point comes from the current Preacher to the Papal Household, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa (in Life in the Lordship of Christ): “It’s sad that in the whole liturgical year there isn’t a feast dedicated to the Father.” Isn’t it time?
So, what kind of father are you? If you see yourself more as Zeus than God the Father, you were more than likely trained by a Zeus, and you need to pray and fast to “our Abba” for a deep experience of his fatherly love so that you can love as he loved us. The Catechism challenges us to tear down the idols of Zeus–the paternal images that stem from our personal history and distort God’s Fatherhood (see CCC 2779). And since the wound was created in community; the healing can only take place in community. So find a priest, a friend, a Catholic men’s group, or call us to help.
Credit to Dave McClow of CatholicExchange.
Why Women Live Longer
By: Dr. Greg Bottaro
Some statistical facts about women- They live longer. As of 10 years ago, only 7% of the entire prison population in the US was female. There is a significantly higher rate of Antisocial Personality Disorder among men as compared to women. Another interesting fact? The Pre-Frontal Cortex (PFC), which is the area of the brain where anger and aggression are controlled, is larger in women than in men. A larger PFC is also correlated with higher rates of conscientiousness, better decision-making, and greater overall impulse control. Research also shows that women are better at keeping strong negative emotions in check. When a woman does act on her negative emotions, she will more often attack verbally rather than physically.
A longitudinal study began in the 1920’s by a researcher named Lewis Terman. The study began on 1,548 gifted children and the research has followed these same children long into their adult lives. Although Terman died in 1956, his work was carried on by his students, and then his students’ students, and the study is still being conducted today. Researchers are using the data to try to answer questions about the factors that contribute to a person’s success, health, and longevity.
Almost one hundred years after the study first began, researchers have concluded that the number one predictor of longevity is what they termed, conscientiousness. Conscientiousness involves using forethought, planning, and perseverance in many aspects of life — all functions of the Pre-Frontal Cortex. It just might be that a larger Pre-Frontal Cortex can contribute to living a longer and healthier life because conscientiousness enlists self-control to make better life choices.
Conscientious people are less likely to smoke, drink heavily, abuse drugs, or engage in life threatening or risky behaviors. No wonder they live longer! These are the people that come to a complete stop at stop signs, follow doctor’s orders, and pay all their taxes. Again, these are all functions of the PFC, which is larger in women. Self-control and conscientiousness make up this week’s strength, and they bring us to the last in this series on female brain strengths, which we will cover next week: just a little bit of healthy worry.
In relation to this series of articles, some readers have responded that it seems like I am saying women are “better” than men. I want to clarify for those readers who misunderstand the point of this series. I am pointing out here statistically measured correlations and differences between men’s brains and women’s brains. At some points I might add in my own commentary, or make connections to Catholic thinking, but none of this commentary equals misandry. Some of the differences in brain structures correlate with certain behaviors that can be viewed as strengths. However, a man can perform any one of these functions that, based on brain structure, are more naturally performed by a woman. The difference is that a man might need more motivation, might use different parts of the brain, and might need more practice. If I said that a weight is curled by use of the bicep, and the bigger the bicep, the heavier the weight that can be lifted, it would not be sexist, discriminatory, or inconsequential to say, “Men, on average, have larger biceps and can therefore have the capability to curl heavier weights.” There are women who can curl the same weight, though it would probably take them longer to build the same amount of muscle (since men have more testosterone, which builds muscle) to curl the same weight. Also, some women might be able to lift the same weight if they use two hands. The final action might be the same — curling the weight — but they have arrived at it differently. Analogously, men as people can also display the same strengths covered in these articles, but they might take longer, need more motivation, or arrive at the final action differently than how a woman does. There are also strengths that the male brain has over the female brain. Some of them are implicit in what we are covering in this series, since something might be a strength or weakness relative to the context. Some of men’s strengths are separate and I will elaborate on them in the future.
“Correlation does not equal causation” is a very important distinction when we apply these brain differences to virtue. There might be some objection based on a concern that I am saying women are more virtuous than men. Let me be clear: these brain differences do not create virtue. Virtue is a description of action — which is a complex collaboration of many different systems, including, but not limited to, brain anatomy. A person may very well act virtuously but in opposition to their brain anatomy. A teenage boy with raging testosterone certainly must act against his brain anatomy at times if he is to act virtuously.
The overall take home point is that men and women are very different, though complementary.
Credit to Dr. Greg Bottaro of CatholicExchange.
The Pope, the Sinner, and Me
By: Dr. Greg Bottaro
This is not a response to the media distortions of the recent interview with Pope Francis. I’d rather focus on what Pope Francis actually is saying to me as one of his flock, and admit that maybe there is something here to personally grow from. Second of all, this article is not advocating or in any way considering a “change of church teaching.” If that’s what some readers take away from it, I’d ask them to please read it over.
This has been on my heart to write about for a while, but I must admit, I’ve been a coward. As a Catholic and as a psychologist, I want to add in my two cents to the conversation on homosexuality. This might be one of the single most divisive issues of our immediate time. I have been a coward up until now because this topic is a minefield, and I’m scared of bombs. I say up until now because our Pope has given me an offer I can’t refuse. In his recent interview, Pope Francis gave an example of courage and unyielding tenacity for truth, beauty, and goodness that sparked something in me.
Religion has become for some — myself included — an opportunity for mediocrity in following Jesus. I have a sneaking suspicion that it has been this way for thousands of years. Jesus certainly spoke out pretty vehemently against this sort of mediocrity in his time, and now the Vicar of Jesus is speaking against it now. By mediocrity, I mean to say that religion gives us categories to snugly place ourselves into. It gives us a moral system to fall back on that distinguishes “us” from “them.” Well, for all of us comfortable Christians in the world, Pope Francis just punched us in the gut and knocked the stale air out of our moldy lungs.
“This church with which we should be thinking is the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people. We must not reduce the bosom of the universal church to a nest protecting our mediocrity. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.”
Despite some “spiritual” traditions, trends, and movements, the Church is not to be primarily a megaphone on the street corner calling out peoples’ sins. Likewise, members of the Church, the body of Christ, are not to have these megaphones blaring out from our hearts. Mediocrity is a mentality of “us vs. them,” those of us behind the megaphone, and those that are on the other side of it. Pope Francis is telling us that we can’t let church become for us a system of dividing “us” from “them.” What then, is he saying the bosom of the universal church is to be?
“Proclamation in a missionary style focuses on the essentials, on the necessary things: this is also what fascinates and attracts more, what makes the heart burn, as it did for the disciples at Emmaus. We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow.”
Pope Francis outlines pretty clearly the mission of the Church. We must make a proposition of Jesus to the world. We must propose Love. “From this proposition the moral consequences then flow.”
Pope Francis calls on an image that is extremely important in his interview — the road to Emmaus. What happened at first on the road to Emmaus? The two walking with Jesus did not recognize him. They were the “them.” Did Jesus chastise them, saying, “Idiots, don’t you know who I am?” “Dirty scum, how are you so blind?” No. He walks with them. He speaks with them, as one of them. They don’t feel the need to form coalitions and march in parades to find some form of validation. He validates them. He builds friendship with them and leads them into a true encounter with himself,after which “their hearts burned.”
As a society, we have been so wrong about homosexuals. As a member of the Roman Catholic Church, I can also say that the majority of “faithful” Catholics I have ever known have also been so wrong about homosexuals. I have a question to ask to make my point. As you sit with the discomfort this article may be causing, ask yourself this question:
How does your attitude, belief, and demeanor toward men and women who identify as homosexual compare to your attitude, belief, and demeanor toward men and women who engage in some other mortal sin such as contraception?
How about masturbation?
How about drunkenness?
Let that sink in a bit. How do you treat the person?
I’d especially like to elaborate on this last issue of drunkenness. It astounds me how many Catholic circles consider drunkenness, at least implicitly, as acceptable. Have we not heard Galatians 5:21 before? “Envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Wow. So it’s ok to get together and drink a few too many with our friends, but being homosexual is the supreme debauchery?
I am not advocating puritanical teetotaling. I enjoy my scotch or wine at the appropriate time. Sometimes it is even me who has too many with my friends and I have to hand the keys over to my wife for the ride home. Yes, I am a sinner. Not in the garment rending, abstract, and safely generalized way, but I commit very specific sins. Somehow there is an appallingly strange mercy for me. If we are to love with the love of Jesus, if we are to be Jesus as members of his body, his Church, we will love men and women who experience, and even act out on, homosexual desires the way we love ourselves or our friends when we know the types of sins we commit.
Now as a follow-up question, if you haven’t thought this already (and kudos if you have), let me ask: Did you realize my first question asked about the sinfulness of those “who identify as homosexual”? Is homosexuality a sin? No, it is not.
First of all, if you do happen to know a person is committing mortal sins such as acting out on their homosexual desires, why in the world is it ok to treat him or her any differently than anyone else you happen to know committing mortal sin, including yourself?
Second of all, homosexuality in itself is not a sin. When you meet someone who is homosexual, you very well might be in the presence of a saint. If someone is living chastely with homosexual desires, he or she is living heroic virtue. Homosexuality is a cross that no heterosexual will ever understand. It is a life called to celibacy without the luxury of discernment. It is potentially the most extreme example of “chastity for the kingdom” that I can imagine. Do you happen to know the interior life of every homosexual?
If they look deep enough, many Catholics might be ashamed of their disposition of heart towards homosexuals. I know I am. Sure, I knew how to say that I “Loved the sinner, hated the sin.” But Pope Francis seems to think such words aren’t enough.
If I’m the only Catholic who had these feelings, so be it. Here I am confessing my sin to the world. As Pope Francis said, “I am a sinner. This is the most accurate definition. It is not a figure of speech, a literary genre. I am a sinner.”
Credit to Dr. Greg Bottaro of CatholicExchange.
Emotional Pornography
By: Dr. Greg Bottaro
Sex sells. Marketing in our culture is almost exclusively based on sex. We have known this for years, and although we think we are stronger than corporate marketing strategies, we (men) still fall easy prey to GoDaddy super bowl ads and Victoria’s Secret ceiling-high mall pinups. When I say “easy prey,” I don’t mean we all necessarily go home lusting after these pictures and falling into sin, but somehow there is a movement of something in us. That movement of something within us is because we were made by God to be moved! Although the marketing media has no regard for our souls, we have to give them credit at some level for figuring out better than many Christians how to move people. As men though, we have a serious responsibility to learn how to control our desires and direct them in a way that is consistent with what is true, good, and beautiful. This is how we let our God-given desires propel us towards God himself through a life lived virtuously.
Using sex to sell is a form of pornography. Pornography comes from the same word as prostitution, which is the Latin for “price.” Porn uses a person as a marketable good in a transaction. Pornography is evil primarily because it goes against the very nature with which we were created. As John Paul II said, “the person is the kind of good which does not admit of use and cannot be treated as an object of use and as such the means to an end.” There are actually two major problems with pornography. First, as JPII points out, it turns the people involved into objects of use. Second though, pornography presents fantasy as reality. Porn trains its viewers to believe in a version of reality that does not actually exist. Marketers and producers of porn have figured out how to provide instant and exaggerated gratification to the desires of men and women. In reality, true gratification does not come in the same form. This is why pornography is fantasy. In the examples listed above, women are the marketed objects, but men are not the only ones moved by pornography in the media. There are two kinds of pornography rampant in our culture — physical pornography and emotional pornography.
Emotional pornography markets primarily to women and their emotional desires. Music and movies — especially movies — present an idea to a woman that somehow moves something in her. Movies like the Notebook or Twilight resonate with a woman’s desire. The problem with movies like these though is that they present fantasy to woman as reality, very similar to the way physical pornography presents fantasy to a man as reality. You may think you are stronger than corporate marketing strategies, but you still fall easy prey. Somehow there is a movement of something in you. That movement of something within you is because you were made by God to be moved! As women though, you have a serious responsibility to learn how to control your desires and direct them in a way that is consistent with what is true, good, and beautiful.
Women across the board (and yes I am making a huge generalization here) typically feel pretty rotten about physical pornography. Even women who pretend to be ok with it in public because they think that’s what men want still feel deep down that pornography is somehow way off. It presents an unreal version of women, and a type of relationship they would never want to be a part of, because it supports the idea that women exist for men’s physical pleasure.
Men are very often uncomfortable with chick flicks. While it is true thatmany men are just uncomfortable with emotions in general and could learn a lot about them from women, I am going to step out from behind the macho veil and let you women in on a secret. Just as you know that you will never be able to live up to (or down to) the level of those women in porn, we feel deep down that we will never be able to live up to (or down to) the level of those men in the movies you love. These movies present an unreal version of men, and a type of relationship we would never want to be a part of, because they support the idea that men exist for women’s emotional pleasure.
I am not saying Twilight or The Notebook are evil movies in the same way physical pornography is evil. I am simply saying that if you walk away from these movies feeling like your life isn’t that great, your relationship isn’t measuring up, or somehow you won’t be happy until you find a Ryan Gosling character to sweep you off your feet, you might want to consider how chaste you are being. I am also not saying that women are the only ones to fall prey to emotional unchastity (or men to physical unchastity). The physical/emotional distinctions are only concerning the primary ways that sin affects us in our gender differences.
JPII said, “It is the duty of every man to protect the dignity of every woman, and the duty of every woman to protect the dignity of every man.” If a person were being used to create or sustain some emotional pleasure, his or her dignity is not being protected.
Credit to Dr. Greg Bottaro of CatholicExchange.
The Prodigal Father: Benedict XVI on Fathering
Check out this great post on Catholic fatherhood by Dave McClow. Dave works for me as a clinical pastoral counseling associate with the Pastoral Solutions Institute’s Tele-Counseling Practice. He has some great insights. I hope you enjoy!
The “prodigal father” is the story of our time. It is the story of fatherlessness in our families. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is and has always been highly aware of the crisis of fatherhood and its implications for society (see my previous blog). He knows that when fatherhood is gutted, “something in the basic structure of human existence has been damaged” (The God of Jesus Christ, p. 29). But he is also supremely insightful about what happens in the family, both positively and negatively, because of fathers! Let’s start out with the problems:
Prodigal Fatherhood
“A theologian has said that today we ought to supplement the story of the Prodigal Son with that of the prodigal father. Fathers are often entirely occupied by their work and give more wholehearted attention to their work than to their child, more to achievement than to gifts, and to the tasks implied by those gifts. But the loss of involvement of the father also causes grave inner damage to the sons” (God and the World, pp. 274-275).
I’m not sure why he leaves out daughters, but the effect is just as devastating for daughters. Are you leaving behind the gift of your children for busy-ness or business? Are you too task and achievement oriented? Part of this over-focus is the religious nature of our masculinity—our natural inclination toward sacrifice for a cause. This is masculine spirituality that is often not acknowledged by men or women. If men can’t relate to God as men, they turn to things which are not ultimate—that is, to things Scripture calls idols. This is why work, hobbies, and sports can become all-consuming.
Fear is another component of turning to non-ultimate things. Sometimes a lot of men view the murky waters of relationships and emotions at home like a foreign country to be feared. They would rather turn elsewhere to feel like a success. We need to invoke my vote for St. John Paul II’s #2 motto (after “Totus Tuus, Totally yours, Mary”), “Be not afraid!” We need to have courage! There is nothing wrong with work, hobbies, or sports, but they must be rightly ordered—they must not take precedence over people or God. Even virtues in the extremes become vice.
As Pope, Benedict XVI includes in the problem list broken families, worries, and money problems, along with “the distracting invasion of the media” in our daily life. All of these things “can stand in the way of a calm and constructive relationship between father and child.” “It is not easy for those who have experienced an excessively authoritarian and inflexible father or one who was indifferent and lacking in affection, or even absent, to think serenely of God and to entrust themselves to him with confidence” (General Audience, January 30, 2013).
Zeus
He nails the problems of modern life including technology; and the perennial problems of fathers who can be excessively rigid, indifferent, lacking in affection, or even absent. These things damage our view of God and make it difficult to trust. Next, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he contrasts two very different fathers: Zeus and God the Father.
If we look for a moment at pagan mythologies, then the father-god Zeus, for instance, is portrayed as moody, unpredictable, and willful: the father does incorporate power and authority, but without the corresponding degree of responsibility, the limitation of power through justice and kindness (God and the World, pp. 274-275).
If you are the kind of father who wants your kids to obey just because you’re the father, you’re in the Zeus camp, which uses the power and authority of the role without the responsibility which limits that power through justice and kindness. This father uses domination and fear to lord it over the kids and demands obedience. Consequently, because they don’t like the master/slave relationship, the kids usually have a temper problem and find ways to rebel. Or as Protestant apologist Josh McDowell has aptly put it, “Rules without relationship leads to rebellion.” The master/slave idea is found more in Islam, a word which means submission. Allah is not a loving Father—in fact, this idea is blasphemous to a Muslim. Allah is an all-powerful God who must be obeyed.
God the Father as our Model
Zeus shows us how not to be a good father. The Pope Emeritus says that Scripture helps us know of “a God who shows us what it really means to be ‘father’; and it is the Gospel, especially, which reveals to us this face of God as a Father who loves” (General Audience, January 30, 2013). The Father uses power and responsibility with justice and kindness, which is a more relational approach. As Cardinal Ratzinger, he unpacks this idea:
The Father as he appears in the Old Testament is quite different [from Zeus], and still more in what Jesus says about the Father: here, power corresponds to responsibility; here we meet a picture of power that is properly directed, that is at one with love, that does not dominate through fear but creates trust. The fatherhood of God means devotion toward us, an acceptance of us by God at the deepest level, so that we can belong to him and turn to him in childlike love. Certainly, his fatherhood does mean that he sets the standards and corrects us with a strictness that manifests his love and that is always ready to forgive (God and the World, pp. 274-275).
So the Father loves us first (1 Jn.) and is devoted to us, and this love creates trust, acceptance, and belonging! (READ MORE)
Shocking News–Better Beware: The Nice People Are Coming to Get You
I often joke on my radio program that I am on a campaign to stamp out “nice.” I have always been of the mindset that “nice” is Satan’s plagiarism of charity and kindness. Where charity and 
kindness seek the good of the other, stand up for what is true, and are intentional, mindful virtues, nice merely goes along to get along. It has no aim. It has no intention. It has no principles. It merely follows the path of least resistance on a perpetual quest to be liked.
People sometimes give me a hard time about this, suggesting I am being more than a bit curmudgeonly about the whole thing. Turns out, I was even more correct than I thought. (This, of course, happens so often that you’d think I’d be bored of it, but no. It never gets old 😉 New research shows that nice people are more like to electrocute you.
In 1961, curious about a person’s willingness to obey an authority figure, social psychologist Stanley Milgram began trials on his now-famous experiment. In it, he tested how far a subject would go electrically shocking a stranger (actually an actor faking the pain) simply because they were following orders. Some subjects, Milgram found, would follow directives until the person was dead.
The news: A new Milgram-like experiment published this month in the Journal of Personality has taken this idea to the next step by trying to understand which kinds of people are more or less willing to obey these kinds of orders. What researchers discovered was surprising: Those who are described as “agreeable, conscientious personalities” are more likely to follow orders and deliver electric shocks that they believe can harm innocent people, while “more contrarian, less agreeable personalities” are more likely to refuse to hurt others.
The methodology and findings: For an eight-month period, the researchers interviewed the study participants to gauge their social personality, as well as their personal history and political leanings. When they matched this data to the participants’ behavior during the experiment, a distinct pattern emerged: People who were normally friendly followed orders because they didn’t want to upset others, while those who were described as unfriendly stuck up for themselves.
Give me curmudgeons any day. They might be grumpy, but at least they won’t shock you.
Blah, Blah, Blah–Women DON’T Talk More than Men (yet another) Study Says
Yesterday, I reported on research that exposed the surprising (not for me, but for some) truth that men are not naturally dogs who are, by nature, obsessed with sex. Apparently this is gender-
stereotype busting week because a new study takes on yet another truism about the genders.
You have no doubt heard the pop-psych claim that women use something on the order of 3 million words a day and men use 6 (OK, I’m exaggerating–the actual claim was something like 20,000 vs 7,000 words–but you get my point). Despite the fact that everyone knows this is true, actual research has consistently shown this to be bunk. Men and women actually use about the same number of words each day (see here and here).
New research continues to shovel more dirt into the grave of this false claim. According to this most recent study, men and women tend to talk about the same overall, but men may talk more than women, or women more than men, depending upon the context.
The research was published in the journal Scientific Reports …For their study, the research team provided a group of men and women with sociometers and split them in two different social settings for a total of 12 hours. In the first setting, master’s degree candidates were asked to complete an individual project, about which they were free to converse with one another for the duration of a 12-hour day. In the second setting, employees at a call-center in a major U.S. banking firm wore the sociometers during 12 one-hour lunch breaks with no designated task.
They found that women were only slightly more likely than men to engage in conversations in the lunch-break setting, both in terms of long- and short-duration talks. In the academic setting, in which conversations likely indicated collaboration around the task, women were much more likely to engage in long conversations than men. That effect was true for shorter conversations, too, but to a lesser degree. These findings were limited to small groups of talkers. When the groups consisted of six or more participants, it was men who did the most talking.
None of this is to suggest that there aren’t real differences between men and women, it’s just that those differences are subtler and more difficult to grasp than the too-easy functionalist differences (i.e, differences based on hobbies, habits and attitudes) that most people tend to gravitate toward. The truth is, men and women are similar in many ways when it comes to their actual performance on many different tasks. What men and women tend to differ on is the style and approach they take on the road to accomplishing those tasks. That’s why the Church says the differences between men and women are “complementary” as opposed to absolute. By approaching the various tasks of life from slightly different angles and perspectives, men and women can do a more complete job of something when they work together. This is just another reason why the Theology of the Body asserts that men and women are not made different from each other so much as they are made different for each other.
To learn more about how men and women can be better partners to one another and communicate more effectively with one another, check out For Better…FOREVER! A Catholic Guide to Lifelong Marriage. In that book, I explore how understanding the real, complementary, differences between men and women–and rejecting the false differences which are rooted in Original Sin– can help take you marriage to the next level. Discovering God’s plan for resolving the battle of the sexes can help you have the kind of marriage that is both a blessing to you and a light to the world!
Study Says, “Men aren’t dogs after all.”
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uaPs8sxqB0&feature=kp[/youtube]
At the Theology of the Body Congress last week, I got into a conversation with some of the other speakers about the way Catholics do ministry with teens, especially teen boys. I have long objected to the weird double-standard Christians take in ministering to teen boys versus girls. My son, who was part of the discussion, feels even more strongly than I do about this–and I feel pretty strongly. Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about.
When speaking with teen girls, youth ministers typically say things like, “You’re such beautiful princesses! You are young, grace filled women of God. You need to know how precious, and special and worthy you are in God’s eyes!”
When speaking with teen boys, on the other hand, youth ministers typically say things like, “We know you all just want sex. We know you’re all a bunch of dogs and you can’t control yourselves. But women aren’t like you guys. They’re precious. They deserve better. You need to learn to keep it in your pants so you can be the men they deserve. So, in the Name of Jesus, stop acting like dogs and man up already.”
Now, I realize that teen speakers and youth ministers don’t necessarily say those exact words, but trust me. If you listen to enough talks to young men and young women they all break down along these lines. Girls are God’s precious princesses and boys are predatory, sex-obsessed dogs that God needs to whip into shape to make them passably human. Frankly, this approach has always disgusted me. I have never been a dog. I worked hard all my life–even as a teen–to be a godly, virtuous man. Likewise, my 21 yo son is not a dog. He is an even stronger and more virtuous man of God than I was at his age. Regardless, I have always resented these talks because they made me feel that if I didn’t want to objectify women–and I didn’t–then there was something wrong with me. I was less manly because I wasn’t a dog. I was insightful enough to know that wasn’t true, but it made me angry for myself and for all my peers. I felt then, and continue to feel, that our boys deserve better. They deserve and desperately need to know that God sees them as princes. As gentlemen. They need to know that they are called–no, destined–to great things. They need to know that because God loves them, they deserve so much more than the cheap pleasures the world holds out to them and that God wants them to save themselves–not just for women’s sake–but because they are special and valuable and deserving of a love that is free, total, faithful and fruitful. I have always believed that men desire a deep, loving, meaningful relationship as much as women do. The problem is, men aren’t given the skills to actually accomplish their hearts desire–largely because we’re too busy expecting them to behave like animals.
This idea that all men are dogs infuriates me and I’ve long thought it was nonsense, but since my view contradicts conventional wisdom so much, I don’t discuss it often, although I do make the argument in Beyond the Birds and the Bees.
Well, in light of this new study from Columbia University, I think I’m going to be a little less shy about my contrarian view of the message we need to be sending to our boys…
“Prevailing values in our culture suggest adolescent males want sex, not relationships. However, values and behaviors related to sex and relationships are likely more complex than typically portrayed,” said first author David Bell, M.D., M.P.H.
“In fact, very few of the participants described sex as the main goal of opposite-sex interactions and relationships.”
The study advances an understanding of adolescent males’ early relationships in two significant ways.
First, close relationships were important to the participants. Second, they desired intimate and caring relationships, expressed vulnerability and dependence, and placed great importance on trust in relationships.
Few participants described trying to trick or talk a partner into having sex, and few evidenced pride and boastfulness about numbers of sexual conquests. READ MORE
Incidentally, not that it should matter, but since we’re destroying stereotypes today, some readers might be interested to note that this study specifically looked at the attitudes of low-income, African American adolescent males.
Catholic parents and youth ministers take note, our boys deserve better than we’re giving them. If you’d like to learn how to help your boys fulfill the authentic desires of their hearts–desires for love, acceptance, intimacy and healthy vulnerability–then pick up a copy of Beyond the Birds and the Bees. I think you’ll be glad you did. Your young men certainly will.