Pope Francis on Marriage, “Marital Wounds Hurt Children.”

Posted on by

pope-francis-1

Pope Francis made some powerful observations about the importance of working to create strong marriages.

“Dear Brothers and Sisters: We know well that every family on occasion suffers moments when one family member offends another. Through our words, actions, or omissions, instead of expressing love for our spouse or children, we can sometimes diminish or demean that love. Hiding these hurts only deepens such wounds, leading to anger and friction between loved ones. If these wounds are particularly deep, they can even lead a spouse to search for understanding elsewhere, to the detriment of the family, especially children. Being one flesh, any wounds that spouses suffer are shared by their children, born of their flesh. When we remember how Jesus warned adults not to scandalize little ones (cf. Mt 18:6), we better understand the vital responsibility to maintain and protect the bond of marriage which is the foundation of the human family. We thank God that although these wounds may lead some to separation, even then many men and women remain true to their conjugal bond, sustained by faith and by love for their children. For those who enter into so-called irregular situations, we must reflect on how best to help and accompany them in their lives. Let us ask the Lord for a strong faith to see with his eyes the reality of family life, and for a deep love to approach all families with his merciful heart.”

Good Marriage: The Heart of the New Evangelization

What a wonderful reminder Pope Francis gives us of the importance of working on our marriage and family lives.  Christians often feel selfish about working on their marriage.  It feels self-serving or too insular.  But the truth is marriage is an extremely part of God’s plan for saving the world!  Marriage and family life gives the world a witness of God’s love in the flesh.  For the modern person, words are a poor means of evangelization.  People have heard it all.  “I love you”, “I’ll always be here”, “You can count on me” are promises that are too easy to make and easier, still, to break in the modern world.  One of the reasons Pope St. John Paul the Great emphasized marriage and family life in both his Theology of the Body and the New Evangelization is that solid, passionate, loving, joyful marriages and families are the best way to show the world that Catholicism has something true, good and beautiful to offer the world.  When we work on our marriages and strengthen our families, far from being self-indulgent or inward-looking, we are giving God the tools by which he can show the world an icon of his transformative love.

In additional to our Catholic Tele-Counseling Practice for couples, families and individuals, here are some of the resources The Pastoral Solutions Institute offers to help couples live out the kind of joyful, passionate, grace-filled marriages that God wants for each of his children.

For Better…FOREVER! The Catholic Guide to Lifelong Marriage—  Examines marriage from Honeymoon to Happily Ever After and offers couples of every age skills they can use to live For Better…FOREVER!

The Exceptional Seven Percent:  Nine Secrets of the World’s Happiest Couples— Discover the nine traits that distinguish the happiest couples of all, the 7% of first-and-forever marriages that report uncommon satisfaction and stability.

Just Married:  The Catholic Guide to Surviving and Thriving in the First 5 Years of Marriage–God wants your marriage to be the Greatest Love Story Ever Told!  Discover how to build the kind of foundation for your marriage that will continue to nourish your relationship for years to come!

When Divorce is NOT and Option: How to Heal Your Marriage and Nurture Lasting Love— Research reveals 8 habits that separates marriage masters from marriage disasters.  Discover how to transform your relationship–even if you’re the only one working on it!

Holy Sex!  The Catholic Guide to Toe-Curling, Mind-Blowing, Infallible Loving— Explore the secrets of celebrating a more passionate, sensual, soulful marital sexuality.  Discover practical steps for resolving differences and experience even more joyful, marital intimacy!

Good Without God? (Part 1 in My Patheos Head-to-Head Debate with John Mark Reynolds of Eidos Blog.)

Posted on by
Image Shutterstock

Image Shutterstock

This article is Part 1 in my Patheos Head to Head Debate with John Mark Reynolds of Eidos blog. The question: is a deity necessary for morality?

“Is a deity necessary for morality?”  At the risk of sounding Clintonesque, it really depends on how you define “morality.”  Even so, the answer is by and large, “no.”  To explain, I want to first look at why many Christians struggle with the idea that one can be moral without God but then I’ll reveal why it’s possible–at least to a reasonable extent.

The Moral Christian: Not (Mainly) About “Getting Along”

As I note in my book, Broken Gods: Hope, Healing, and the Seven Longings of the Human Heart, Christians tend to think that people can’t be moral without God because, for Christians, (SURPRISE!) morality isn’t primarily concerned with regulating our relationship with ourselves, our community, and creation.  These are essential, but secondary, considerations.

Rather, for a Christian, being moral is really about conversion and transformation; that is,  conforming my inner longings and outward actions to the divine order so that I can fulfill my ultimate destiny in Christ. Christianity believes in God -given, objective, constant, immutable, moral laws by which the universe is governed.  We call this, Natural Law, “the law written on human hearts and minds” (Heb 10:16).  Christians believe we must learn to conform to these laws, not out of slavish devotion to a taskmaster God, but out of the belief that following the Natural Law leads to both earthly and eternal fulfillment. Christians often struggle to conceive of a morality without God because, for us,  the actual goal of the moral life is not just getting along with others, but ultimately,  becoming “divine” (c.f., 2Ptr 1:4) ourselves. (As  St. Thomas Aquinas put it, “The son of God became man so that men might become gods.”)   People can’t achieve divinization (aka, deification/theosis) by practicing an earth-bound morality that is interested merely in going along to get along.

Theory vs. Reality

That said, believing in an objective morality that leads to divinization is one thing.  Actually making moral decisions according to this process is another.  In fact, research shows that most people–theists or no–rely on more mundane modes moral reasoning that, practically-speaking, have little, if anything to do with God.  Most moral decision making–even for theists–is almost universally non-theistic.

Morality without God:  2 Approaches.

Psychologists who study moral development note at least two general, non-theistic approaches to moral reasoning; emotionally-based morality and socially-based morality.

Emotionally-Based Morality (e.g., “Eww…Gross!” & “Tit for Tat” Morality)  —For people who have a more reaction-based morality, anything that seems disgusting,  strange, threatening to my development, or hindering of my goals is considered morally “bad” while things that seem palatable,  familiar, encouraging of my development, and supportive of my goals is considered morally “good.” Developmental psychologist, Lawrence Kohlberg, called this,  “Pre-conventional morality.”  At its root, it is childish (literally), selfish, and narcissistic, but it still enables people to be at least basically pro-social, because it benefits them to do so.

Socially-Based Morality (e.g, “Coffee Klatch” & “Legal Eagle Morality”)  —Those who display more socially-based morality are willing to sacrifice what their reactions tell them is good or bad based on what their social circle (friends and family) consider “good” or what the law says is “right.”  Kohlberg considered this “conventional” morality because this person considers social conventions (e.g., social mores and laws) to be at least as important, if not more so, than his or her own personal feelings.

While social morality is a somewhat more reliable moral guide than reaction-based morality, it too, can change on a dime and tends to be somewhat rootless.  You can see what might be called “coffee klatch morality” reflected in a person’s instantaneous reversal of her opinion on the morality of, say,  abortion or gay marriage because she suddenly discovers that her best friend had an abortion or her cousin is gay.  Similarly, a good example of “legal eagle morality” might be when a community that previously opposed gambling suddenly polls more favorably toward it once an ordinance allowing a casino to open in town is passed.  In either case, the morality of the thing, itself, hasn’t changed, but the view of whether supporting it or opposing such an act is “sociable” or “lawful” has changed.  People want to be considered agreeable or lawful,  so they adjust their opinions to correspond with the circles in which they run.

Mercy Me

These are, by far, the most common approaches to moral decision making for all people–theists and non-theists–and neither has anything to do with God except that, perhaps God, in his mercy, recognizing that many people will struggle to find him, gives humanity a way to at least somewhat peaceably get along without him in the meantime.

As I mentioned at the beginning, there are certainly more complicated approaches to moral reasoning that may, arguably require belief in God.  But that isn’t the question I was asked to debate.  Based on the data, the fact is, people can be at least basically moral without having any sense of a deity at all because the vast majority of moral decisions are rooted not in our sense of transcendence, but in our reactive and social consciousness.

This week’s question was inspired by Patheos Atheist blogger Peter Mosley’s story on Theism’s Morality Glitch.

5 Secrets of Lifelong, Joyful Marriage–Revealed!

Posted on by

shutterstock_217008835

My book, The Exceptional Seven Percent: Nine Secrets of the World’s Happiest Couples looks at the habits uncommonly happy couples practice to keep their marriages going strong and growing stronger day by day.  In a new study, gerontologist, Karl Pillemer,  has taken a similar approach, asking long-time happily married couples what makes their relationships work well.  His research uncovered common advice for couples walking down the aisle or decades into marriage. To capture the voice of lived experience, the study included a random national survey of nearly 400 Americans age 65 and older, asking how to find a compatible partner and other advice on love and relationships. In subsequent in-person interviews with more than 300 long-wedded individuals — those in unions of 30, 40, 50, or more years — the study captured more insights for overcoming common marriage troubles. The team of researchers interviewed divorced individuals, too, asking how others might avoid marital breakups.  You can read the whole article here, but the following represent the 5 highlights from Pillemer’s study.

1. Learn to communicate: “For a good marriage, the elders overwhelmingly tell us to ‘talk, talk, talk.’ They believe most marital problems can be solved through open communication, and conversely many whose marriages dissolved blamed lack of communication.”

2. Get to know your partner very well before marrying: “Many of the elders I surveyed married very young; despite that fact, they recommend the opposite. They strongly advise younger people to wait to marry until they have gotten to know their partner well and have a number of shared experiences. An important part of this advice is a lesson that was endorsed in very strong terms: Never get married expecting to be able to change your partner.”

3. Treat marriage as an unbreakable, lifelong commitment: “Rather than seeing marriage as a voluntary partnership that lasts only as long as the passion does, the elders propose a mindset in which it is a profound commitment to be respected, even if things go sour over the short term. Many struggled through dry and unhappy periods and found ways to resolve them — giving them the reward of a fulfilling, intact marriage in later life.”

4. Learn to work as a team: “The elders urge us to apply what we have learned from our lifelong experiences in teams — in sports, in work, in the military — to marriage. Concretely, this viewpoint involves seeing problems as collective to the couple, rather than the domain of one partner. Any difficulty, illness, or setback experienced by one member of the couple is the other partner’s responsibility.”

5. Chose a partner who is very similar to you: “Marriage is difficult at times for everyone, the elders assert, but it’s much easier with someone who shares your interests, background and orientation. The most critical need for similarity is in core values regarding potentially contentious issues like child-rearing, how money should be spent and religion.”

For help developing these skills, check out The Exceptional Seven Percent:  Nine Secrets of the World’s Happiest Couples, For Better…FOREVER!  The Catholic Guide to Lifelong Marriage, and When Divorce is NOT An Option:  How to Heal Your Marriage and Nurture Lasting Love.

 

Appalling New Sleep Training Technique Say’s “Don’t Feed Your Baby.”

Posted on by

shutterstock_230367817 (1)

Two pediatrician brothers claim they have developed a “new” method of getting babies to sleep.  And, incidentally, I put “new” in quotes because their method is scary-similar to the method recommended by Babywise authors Gary and Marie Ezzo which was eventually condemned by the American Academy of Pediatrics because it caused failure to thrive and dehydration in babies.  How many ways can I say that this is a terrible, horrible, no-good parenting idea?  (Click here to read the FoxNews article)

Everything Old is New Again.

 

Well everything old is new again and Drs. Jassey and Jassey argue that children shouldn’t eat more often than every four hours (which is nonsense) so if they want to eat more frequently (which most do), then they will wake up through the night also wanting to eat (Well, ok…).  So, what’s the logical solution?  The good doctors’ answer is to refuse to feed your baby more frequently than four hours apart.   That’s right.  Just don’t feed your kid so darn often.  This supposedly “trains” the baby’s “hunger receptors to acclimate to a specific feeding schedule.”  WHAT UTTER QUACKERY!

The “explanation” for why this method works is complete wishful thinking.  I know of no evidence to suggest that the Jassey bros.’ theory actually constitutes the method of action for their technique.  Where is their proof that hunger receptors in baby’s can be trained by this method?  I defy them to produce any evidence to backup this wishful thinking.   Heck, I don’t even need proof.  Show me a peer-reviewed study that shows brain imaging that basically substantiates this claim.   I’ll happily wait while you look, but I won’t hold my breath.

Learned Helplessness Redux.

More likely, the baby simply develops learned helplessness.  As with the Cry It Out method for “sleep-training, evidence would suggest that this new sleep training “method” of food-spacing teaches baby’s that crying doesn’t work to get their needs met. Therefore the baby just learns to stop trying to communicate to mom and dad.  While there is no evidence I know of to support the Jassey’s claims of being able to reset a baby’s hunger receptors, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that cry it out methods for sleep and, now, feeding, induce learned helplessness in infants, which puts children at high risk for future depression and other mental health problems.

You CAN Get the Sleep You Need WITHOUT Depriving Your Child!

I understand the desperation that motivates parents to try these techniques.  Parenting infants is hard work and sleep-deprivation makes doing that work so much harder. But there is good news!  There are sensitive and effective ways to get your baby to sleep AND get the rest you need.  Here are a number of great tips to get you started.    For more ideas on how to get your baby to sleep and meet your sleep needs as well WITHOUT having to force your baby to both go to bed hungry and cry it out to boot, check out Then Comes Baby: The Catholic Guide to Surviving and Thriving in the First Three Years of Parenthood

For Father’s Day, 15 Reasons Dads Matter

Posted on by
Image via Shutterstock

Image via Shutterstock

This weekend is Fathers’ Day, so I thought it would be good to take some time to remind us all how important dads are.  Check out these great dad facts!  (Teaser:  I saved the most surprising fact for last!)

1.  Fathers’ interaction with babies (engaging in cognitively stimulating activities, emotional warmth, physical care) reduced their infants’ chances of experiencing cognitive delay

2.  Children whose fathers are involved in rearing them (“sensitive and responsive fathering”) fare better on cognitive tests and in language ability than those with less responsive or involved fathers.

3.  Fathers who are involved in their children’s schools and academic achievement, regardless of their own educational level, are increasing the chances their child will graduate from high school, and perhaps go to vocational school, or even to college.

4.  A fathers’ involvement in children’s school activities protects at-risk children from failing or dropping out.

5. Positive father involvement decreased boys’ problem behaviors (especially boys with more challenging temperaments) and better mental health for girls.

6. Fathers who are more involved with their children tend to raise children who experience more success in their career.

7.  Fathers being involved in their children’s lives protects against risk factors that pose harm for children (such as problematic behavior, maternal depression and family economic hardship).

8.  Father involvement is associated with promoting children’s social and language skills.

9.  Involved fathering is related to lower rates of child problem behaviors, including hyperactivity, as well as reduced teen violence, delinquency, and other problems with the law.

10.  Father involvement is associated with positive child characteristics such as increased: empathy, self-esteem, self-control, feelings of ability to achieve, psychological well-being, social competence, life skills, and less sex-stereotyped beliefs.

11.  Children in foster care who have involved fathers are more likely to be reunited with their families and experience shorter stays in foster homes.

12.  Children who grow up in homes with involved fathers are more likely to take an active and positive role in raising their own families. For example, fathers who recall a secure, loving relationship with both parents are more involved in the lives of their infants and more supportive to their wives.

13.  Both men and women who remember having loving, supportive fathers had high life satisfaction and self-esteem.

14.  Educational programs that successfully increased father involvement produced positive changes in children’s behavior.

15.  Most importantly, when it comes to passing our faith and values on to our kids it is critical for fathers to take the lead. When mom and dad are regular churchgoers, 33% of their children will be regular churchgoers and 41% will at least attend irregularly.  BUT SHOCKINGLY WHEN DAD ALONE IS A CHURCHGOER, FAITH RETENTION RATE ARE EVEN HIGHER!  It turns out 38% of children with irregular churchgoing mothers but active fathers grow up to attend church regularly and 44% of children with non-active churchgoing moms but faithful dads grow up to go to church regularly.

Obviously that doesn’t mean moms shouldn’t go to church with their families, but it does mean that the more committed and active dads are, the more likely it is that the children will follow his lead with regard to faith and values even when mom isn’t involved.  By contrast, if the father is an irregular churchgoer and the mother regular, only 3 percent of the children will subsequently become regulars themselves, while a further 59 percent will become irregulars. Thirty-eight percent will be lost.  LIKEWISE if the father is non-practicing and mother regular, only 2 percent of children will become regular worshipers, and 37 percent will attend irregularly. Over 60 percent of their children will be lost completely to the church!

The bottom line?  Dads matter. A lot.  For more thoughts on ways to be a great, involved, faithful dad, check out Parenting with Grace (especially our “Dad’s Da Man!” chapter) and Then Comes Baby (especially our chapters on involved fatherhood).  And Happy Father’s Day!

 

(Facts gathered from: Bronte-Tinkew et al., 2008; Chang et al., 2008; Flouri, 2008; Lamb & Lewis, 2004; Lamb & Tamis-Lemonda, 2004; Pleck & Masciadrelli, 2004; Sarkadi et al., 2008; Haug & Warner, 2000)

Something Fishy? Why is THIS Missing from Pope Francis’ Environmental Encyclical?

Posted on by
Image Shutterstock

Image Shutterstock

I was not one of the many Catholics dreading the publication of Laudato Si.  I teach a college course on Catholic Social Teaching and stewardship of the environment is one of the major themes of this great and influential body of work.  As Catholics, we believe that when the Word of God became flesh, all of creation was raised to a new dignity in Christ.  Human beings do not own the world, we are merely stewards of it.  It is an established point of Catholic social doctrine that all of us have a grave moral duty to do what we can to leave this planet in better shape than we found it. As Pope Francis inspiringly notes, honoring God’s creation is  an important way that God’s people give praise to him.

Wanted:  Strong Catholic Voice

In light of this, I was genuinely looking forward to reading what Pope Francis had to say on this important issue.  In all the debate about environmental policy, strong Catholic moral leadership has been conspicuous by its absence.  In this regard, Pope Francis does not disappoint.  He does a wonderful job recognizing the common errors that many secular environmentalists make–from worshiping the earth as a deity to misguided efforts to “save” the planet through abortion and population control and many others–and makes many excellent, practical points about how people can promote an approach to environmental stewardship that improves the life of the planet while simultaneously improving the lot of the poor.

Something Fishy:  A Curious Absence

That said, as a frequent writer on issues related to sexuality, there was one thing I was seriously disappointed to not find in the document; namely, any reference to the serious problem of water pollution caused by the build-up of contraceptive hormones in the water supply resulting in health problems for both wildlife and, potentially, people.  This is not a small issue, nor is it a fringe “Catholic” issue.

For instance, in March of 2015, The Washington Post published an article titled, Fish Don’t Want Birth Control, but Scientists Say They Get it from Your Pill.  Here’s a snippet.

Your birth control pill is affecting more than just your body. Flushed down toilets, poured down sinks and excreted in urine, a chemical component in the pill wafts into sewage systems and ends up in various waterways where it collects in fairly heavy doses. That’s where fish soak it up.  A recent survey by the U.S. Geological Survey found that fish exposed to a synthetic hormone called 17a-ethinylestradiol, or EE2, produced offspring that struggled to fertilize eggs. The grandchildren of the originally exposed fish suffered a 30 percent decrease in their fertilization rate. The authors mulled the impact of what they discovered and decided it wasn’t good.

The WaPo article echoes many points raised in a 2012  article by the science portal LiveScience titled, Water Pollution Caused by Birth Control Poses Dilemma.  More frightening still, an article appearing around the same time in The Daily Mail cited similar problems in European waterways, and further suggested that artificial hormones in the water supply could be having a negative impact on human male sperm count–which has lowered, on average, by 25% in the last 20 years.

No Easy Answers

 The problem, of course, is that current approaches to water treatment cannot remove these chemicals from our drinking water leading many environmental experts to express potential concerns about human health risks to long term exposure.  Scientific American published a Q&A article that cautiously validated many of these concerns and discussed the challenges of removing artificial reproductive hormones from drinking water.

Additionally, there are no simple–or even affordable–solutions for how water treatment plants could rise to this challenge.  In fact, purifying the water supply of these chemicals could prove to be so expensive that Forbes Magazine ran an article in 2012 arguing that Women on Contraceptive Pill Should Pay $1500 a Year More Tax 

Missed Opportunity

When a pope releases a document, inevitably people in every corner pick it apart for how it did or did not treat their pet issue, and readers might well accuse me of doing exactly this, but I would argue that it is a serious missed opportunity for the Church that a Catholic document on the environment would fail to mention a serious environmental issue that the Church is uniquely–and almost singly–positioned to address.  Catholic social teaching is not a collection of random concepts.  It is a whole, a “seamless garment” if you will.  To have not included this insight–even in passing–about the negative impact artificial contraception is having on the environment is to have missed an important chance to emphasize the coherence of the Church’s moral theology as it applies to both personal and environmental morality.

None of this is, of course, to suggest that Pope Francis is soft on the Church’s stand on contraception.  In fact, he is on record as being a strong defender of the Church’s teachings on this issue and has even praised Pope Paul VI’s promulgation of Humanae Vitae as “courageous.”   Nevertheless, despite the fact that Laudato Si is an excellent and inspiring document overall, it it hard to not to argue that Pope Francis, the Church’s first fisher of men, missed the boat at least on this particular point.

The Truth Will Out

Although this issue did not get a mention in Laudato Si, I would encourage my fellow Catholics to take this opportunity  afforded by the incredible press being generated by this document to highlight yet another reason of why the Church has stood fast in its opposition to the Pill.  The more time passes, the more creation bears witness to the prophetic voice of Humane Vitae.  The Pill is bad medicine.  It is bad for women’s health.  It is bad for relationships.  And it is bad for the environment.   To learn more about how the Catholic vision of love can help you live a more passionate marriage AND empower you to save the planet, check out Holy Sex!  The Catholic Guide to Toe-Curling, Mind-Blowing, Infallible Loving.