Browsing tag: catholic

  • Refrain From Adultery

    Adultery–who does it with whom, when, where and with what consequences–is an endlessly fascinating topic for all societies, and in the literatures of all languages.  Adultery is interesting.  Same old same old is boring.  Bored people commit adultery.

    You may not think of yourself as bored.  You may think of yourself as interesting but unappreciated.  Never mind.  You still don’t have to turn into the sort of person who commits adultery just for the thrill of it.  Cultivate variety in your life–in other areas.  Take on interesting challenges.  Set ambitious goals.  Find something other than sex that motivates you.  Find something other than yourself that holds your attention.

    But what if you’re really tempted?  What if your marriage has degenerated to the point where there’s nothing much left: no camaraderie, no communication, no sex.  What if you don’t even see your spouse, most of the time?  And then you meet someone attractive: someone you enjoy looking at, or talking to, or both.

    Do nothing.  Adultery is not a sin that you’re going to commit inadvertently.  No doubt someone, somewhere has committed adultery by mistake, distracted by something else.  But for most people, this particular transgression involves planning, or at least a series of conscious actions.  There needs to be communication, maneuvering, overcoming of obstacles.  That’s why it’s interesting.  If it were just the pull of inertia, you might as well go home to your spouse and save yourself the part where your kids cry themselves to sleep every night.

    If, like everyone else who has ever had a job, you meet someone attractive at work, the do-nothing rule will ensure that no one ever knows how you feel, because most people’s jobs do not pay them to express their feelings about their coworkers.

    What if you’re required to attend one of those seminars where total strangers goad people into sharing their impressions of each other?

    If you’re clever enough to have that sort of job, you’re clever enough to think of something noncommittal to say.

    What if it’s not a co-worker, but someone you interact with socially: the spouse of a friend; the parent of your child’s friend; someone from long before you were ever married?  The possibilities are endless, and there’s no question that some situations are poignant.  You may be attracted to someone whom you have every reason to respect and like, whom you cannot avoid interacting with, and whom you genuinely care about.  Still, if you do nothing, you won’t commit adultery.

    The do-nothing rule doesn’t mean you aren’t working hard.  To refrain from the action that you could take is the spiritual equivalent of isometric muscular contractions.  Nothing moves, and no one sees anything happening, but it’s very hard to sustain over time.  This is why you need an active outlet for your frustrations: because in tense situations, doing nothing becomes unbearable.

    What if it’s not about a relationship at all?  It’s just sex.  Your spouse can’t keep up with you; is absent, ill, or somewhere else along the spectrum from unwilling to repulsive.

    It’s still adultery.  It’s not a massage.

    What if you never touch another human body?  What if it’s virtual?  What if it’s a really old porn video and everyone in it is dead already?

    Jesus suggests chopping off your right hand (Matthew 5:29-30).  If you’re left-handed, you might have to go for the other side.  But before you try mutilation, you might try improving your relationship with your spouse.  Improving your relationship may not mean improving your spouse.  It may mean improving something else in your life to make your relationship more enjoyable.

    And you must pray:  “Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13).  Your situation no matter how miserable is not tragic, because God is faithful and will answer prayers.  More specifically, he answers the prayers of people who do the right thing (James 5:16). So do clamor to God to get you out of the situation you’re in and into a better one.  Maybe you need a seismic shift.  God can do seismic shifts.  Maybe you need a new job, a new town, a miracle–love?

    Don’t be surprised that you feel devoid of love.  Everyone gets there.  Not if, but when you’re out of love, turn to God, the source of love, and ask him to give you love for your spouse.  Of course, you have to find within yourself at least a faint wish to love your spouse.  You may need to ask for that first.

    It may not feel like the excitement you want.  It may feel, instead, like the tide imperceptibly flowing in and lifting your beached boat off the sandbar.

    (Rule of St. Benedict 4.4)

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  • Trick Or Treat

    Obey the orders of the abbot unreservedly, even if his own conduct—which God forbid—be at odds with what he says.  Remember the teaching of the Lord: Do what they say, not what they do Matthew 23:3.  (RB 4.61)

    Do what I say, not what I do?

    Well, we’ve all been there.  We shouldn’t be too quick to accuse others of hypocrisy.  People who fail to live up to their own standards aren’t usually hypocrites: they’re just human.

    So, actual hypocrisy involves a deliberate, conscious, sustained discrepancy.  If you create an alias and leave remarks online that you wouldn’t want anyone who knows you to find out about, that’s hypocrisy.

    As for hypocrisy within the Church, it’s nothing new.  There have been fakers all the way back to Ananias and Sapphira.  Of course, it’s disturbing when those people rise to positions of authority.  When this happens, they’re never in isolation.  A hypocrite can’t remain in power without supporters who collude to maintain the fiction.

    Hypocrisy is always expedient.  The anonymous cipher behind the false front has a goal.  Sometimes it’s the glaringly obvious goal of retaining a position of influence (“accomplishing all the good we do”).  Sometimes the real goal is so murky that only a brilliant psychoanalyst could uncover it.

    If you’re a sincere person, you may be more easily duped at first, because you assume that others are equally sincere.  They will play you.  But when you figure out what’s going on, you’re not obligated to stick around for more.  You’re free to move on in search of integrity.  In fact, there may come a time when you must move on, if remaining means playing their game.

    St B reminds us that the experience of other people’s dishonesty is not an excuse to behave badly ourselves.  Even if you have no power to change the system, you can choose to remain honest yourself.

    Children are natural prophets.  They will call you out on your discrepancies: listen to them.

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  • Contend Courteously

    One of the most important skills to develop for life and love is the ability to work through a conflict with another person.

    Yes, you have freedom of expression, but is it going to be the expression of a war zone? Victories can be won on battlefields, but the area remains uninhabitable afterwards for years. Or perhaps you tend to express yourself through the silence of a cold indifference. You may thus establish rulership of your domain, but it will be the barren waste of a permafrost from which have fled all those who attempted to love you.

    There is another alternative. You can choose to approach your relational mess as a construction site. It’s true that injuries can occur during construction, but the intent is to build something.

    Within a family you are always still your own person. But when you got married, you chose interdependence. Does your pursuit of your personal goal disrupt your household? You may have to set that goal aside until a more suitable time. A family like a team is undermined by the sort of individual ambition that sees everyone else as competition. If the thing that is good for you is placing an undue burden on everyone else, then in the long run it’s not good for you either. This is because the people you use or neglect on the way to getting what you want will escape as soon as they get the opportunity. And why would they ever come back?

    These are ugly questions, but you’re better off putting them to yourself than waiting for the terrible day when your children put them to you. Ask them of yourself, and then ask your spouse to assess you. If the two of you can uncover what the underlying problems are, you’ll be well on your way toward improvement.

    Sometimes there’s nothing antisocial about anything you’re doing. Maybe it’s your words that cause problems. Be polite, even to the person you sleep with. Courtesy counts. Listen first, then speak. Remember that it’s on you to explain what you want. The marriage vow does not bestow psychic powers. No one else can read your mind, but if you never pause to reflect, you yourself may not know your own mind either. The more complicated it is, the more time you’ll need to give it.

    And be honest.

    How can you be both honest and polite?

    You’ll need a sense of humor. You also need the grace of God. But as a practical matter, the very small act of checking in with each other regularly can prevent conflicts from emerging. Better to anticipate difficulties and discuss options ahead of time than to play catch-up to poor communication.

    Last but not least, don’t assume that you are right while the other person is wrong. Maybe the other person knows you’re right but is tired of hearing you repeat it. Or maybe something else is going on that would change your view entirely if you just made the effort to find out.

     

    (Rule of St. Benedict 3.4-8)

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  • Eat Your Vegetables

    Raising Kids

    …we must be vigilant every hour… (Rule of St. Benedict 7.29)

    The kid who is old enough to chew solid food will also be smart enough to realize that you’re cooking peas with his pasta.

    He’s willful enough to feel insulted.

    He’s passionate enough to throw a screaming fit.

    Because you’re a Christian mother–loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, generous, faithful, gentle and self-controlled–you don’t beat him with your wooden spoon at the end of a long, hard day.  Instead, you pour yourself a glass of wine, turn up the music, get down in his face with the bag of frozen peas and say: WATCH ME.  Then in defiance of his will you add the peas to the ziti while he howls and kicks on the ground at your feet.

    So what if he removes every pea from his bowl and refuses to eat even one?  So what if he peers into each tube of ziti and sticks his finger in it to expel each internal pea?  You’ve held the line.  You’ve retained your principles.  That was the Battle of the Peas, and you won it.

    When he’s a little older, you’ll no longer permit him to remove all vegetable matter from his personal space.  Even if he won’t taste the broccoli, he must tolerate it.  He may not remove it to the table, or throw it on the floor, or foist it onto someone else’s plate.  He must suffer the presence of the hated green thing.  When at last he resigns himself to its existence, you’ve won the First Battle of Broccoli.

    Then there’s the Second Battle to fight: he’s got to taste the broccoli.

    When he gags and vomits at your dinner table, you feel disheartened.  You’ve already toiled through years of cooking for an ungrateful, complaining family.  Now you want to give up and never eat again–not with them.  But the night is darkest just before the dawn.  The little boy who gags on his broccoli will one day volunteer to cook dinner for his whole family (Fettuccine Alfredo; extra Parmesan; no peas).

    Far, far more important than the presence or absence of vegetables are the social principles he has internalized:

    1. Everything the cook serves must be TASTED.
    2. The one who provides dinner must be THANKED.
    3. If you want it different, do it YOURSELF.

    The first two principles are essential to civilization.  The laws of hospitality are older than Abraham. Flaunt them at your peril.  The third undergirds a free society.

    So persevere.  One day you’ll reap the rewards of having trained your children in good habits.  When you feel yourself flagging, just take a look around at the consequences of giving up.  Habits of self-control and principle go far beyond food choices.  Children who’ve learned that food consumption is not an act of self-worship will later be able to put other forms of consumption into context.  Habits acquired in childhood are difficult to break.

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  • Beware Fatal Attraction

    Rage Definition

    We must then be on guard against any base desire, because death is stationed near the gateway of pleasure. (Rule of St. Benedict 7.24)

    Last week a man identified himself with death and stationed himself at the gateway of pleasure to deal it out.  

    This was not a Kenny Rogers kind of Gambler.  But was he one of us?

    Answer 1:

    We don’t see the appeal of murdering as many people as possible before killing ourselves.  If we were to kill ourselves, we’d just swallow a bottle of pills.

    Answer 2:

    Ending it all is not necessarily the goal.  You just want what you want, and you don’t care if it kills you.

    Answer 3:

    The lure dangling before your eyes is more playful.  You figure you can take the bait and leave someone else on the hook for it.

    Answer 4:

    None of the above.  You want to live a good life.  And you want to be happy.  Why does this have to be so hard?

    St. Benedict’s approach:

    St. Benedict warns us not against desire in general, but against base desire.  We keep all our other desires in check because our deepest desire is for life itself.  Only God can satisfy this desire.

    First mistake to avoid:

    The first mistake is to imagine that Christian faith requires a repression of desire itself.  

    Not so: Christian faith is all about the ultimate fulfillment of desire.

    Second mistake to avoid:

    The second mistake is to imagine that because desire itself is good, therefore all of our particular desires must also be good.  

    Not so: the practice of the faith involves learning to distinguish between right desires and base desires. We also develop self-control, so we can enjoy good impulses without giving in to bad ones.

    Third mistake to avoid:

    The third mistake is to imagine that because there are right desires and base desires, every impulse must have a moral rating.  

    Not so: many actions are in themselves neutral.  The rightness or baseness of a desire resonates within the forms of God.  Where God is silent, we may improvise as we please.  But where God reveals, we heed and harmonize.

    The theory isn’t that difficult.  It’s the practice that gets you, as you finger your way through the cacophony. All around are neurotic types who want to dominate, each according to his own devices. There are hedonist types who want to let everything go, especially themselves.  And there are neurotic hedonists: the peculiar creatures of our time.

    The neurotic hedonist rejects the forms of God in their entirety, by rejecting the very existence of God.  He sets himself up as a replacement for God.  This sort of narcissist glorifies the impulses of the self.  But the neurotic hedonist also regulates the worship of the self with a complex, compulsory structure.  Then when he really gets going, he tries to impose the worship of himself onto everyone else.

    The Enraged Man:

    A neurotic hedonist can develop into an enraged man.  For a lifetime he cultivates anger at everything that does not conform to his control.  For a lifetime he refuses to tune the one thing his creator asks him to adjust: himself.

    The Christian script calls for an entirely different way of living.  We worship God and attempt to follow his lead.  We subordinate our wills to his on principle and seek to harmonize our desires with his.  But within the parameters set by God, we enjoy complete freedom.  We’re under no compulsion to do anything in a fixed way.  We rid ourselves of anger, rage, malice, slander–how?  By giving thanks to the one from whom we receive every good thing.

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  • Align Your Will With God’s Will

    Scripture tells us: Turn away from your desires Sirach 18:30.  And in the Prayer too we ask God that his will be done in us Matthew 6:10.  We are rightly taught not to do our own will, since we dread what Scripture says: There are ways which men call right that in the end plunge into the depths of hell Proverbs 16:25. (Rule of St. Benedict 7.19-22)

    You don’t need to wait for eternity to see the train wreck.  The bitter rewards of folly are everywhere exhibited around us.  How agonizing to watch as people you care about make foolish choices and then inflict the consequences on others.  Like King Lear they resent honest advice and choose instead to listen to flattery.  They reject offers of help and surround themselves with toxic influences that justify their decisions.  They go from delusion to destruction and leave sorrow in their wake.  Like the Fool, you trail along in the aftermath: faithful, sorrowful, impotent.

    Or not.  If you have a will of iron, for the love of mercy bend it to conform to the truth.  Sometimes that means diverging from those who have been companions.  There are others following behind you who deserve to arrive at destination safely.  Granted that it’s impossible for any human being to act always with perfect insight.  So, commit yourself to the will of the One who knows everything, and who is always, everywhere working for good.  This is what you’re doing when you pray the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”  You subordinate your will to the will of God.  You align yourself with his plan and trust his Spirit to guide you through this world and into redemption.

    It’s not that we never make independent decisions or take spontaneous action. We don’t wait around for a special revelation about every detail of our lives.  God is not a micromanager.  God is a delegator. Jesus compares our relationship with God to that of a steward whose master has gone away on a journey, and with whom there’s no communication.  He doesn’t know when the master will return, and he’s on his own with his responsibilities (Matthew 25:14-30.)  God entrusts us with enormous freedom to act at our own discretion–more freedom than we want.

    Subordinating your will means that when you have the impulse to depart from his command, you don’t bestow on yourself permission to disobey.  This temptation can come even after years of righteous living, as another steward parable describes (Matthew 24:45-51.)  It’s tough when you find that your practice of the Christian character, rather than earning you the respect and gratitude of those you’ve helped, actually inspires their contempt.  When someone to whom you’ve always been kind abuses you, it calls into question your mode of relating to others.  There’s a natural impulse toward revenge.  And yet, life depends on curving off to the good.

    This includes speaking out.  The record of Scripture and of the Church shows models who speak cogently and forcefully.  We don’t subordinate our will to the will of everyone we meet.  Still less do we defer to the collective will of any group.  On the contrary, knowing what’s right and wrong–based on the standard of Scripture and of the Church, rather than on a code of convenience–we have the courage to stand firm, and to protest.

    We don’t see what lies around the bend into the future.  But the message of redemption is that when we align our will with God’s will–even when we’re not sure where that’s going to take us–a whole new vista opens up.  There is a path forward, through whatever terrain we find ourselves in, over the horizon and into eternity.

    (“We can but trust God,” says the parson in Dorothy Sayers’ The Nine Tailors.  Read it once for the detective story.  Then come back to it for the flashes of spiritual insight.)

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  • Yield Your Imagination

    Our thoughts are always present to God… God searches hearts and minds Psalm 7:10….  The Lord knows the thoughts of men Psalm 94:11….  From afar you know my thoughts Psalm 139:2….  That he may take care to avoid sinful thoughts, the virtuous brother must always say to himself: I shall be blameless in his sight if I guard myself from my own wickedness Psalm 18:24. (Rule of St. Benedict 7.14-18)

    Invite the Holy Spirit into the house of your mind Romans 12:2 ; Revelation 3:20.  The dark and horrible corridors hold no terror for him.  Hand him the keys, and you will find that the doors you tried so hard to keep locked will soon be propped open.  A ray of light will penetrate even fearful corners.  A breath of air will stir in stagnant places.  The Holy Spirit will not demolish your imagination: he will inhabit it.

    Your imagination is not the part of yourself that you must overcome.  Rather, your imagination is the organ God endows you with to help do the overcoming.  Just as he designed the human body with a liver that filters out toxins and aids in digestion, he designed the human mind with imagination.  If you were never exposed to toxins, you wouldn’t need the liver to be the heaviest organ in your body.  If you were living in the Garden of Eden, an impure thought would never enter your mind.  But even if you lived in a pristine environment, you wouldn’t necessarily do the right thing in it.  Adam and Eve certainly didn’t.  Conversely, history shows that the holiest people have often been exposed to terrible things.  Removal from contamination does not guarantee righteousness.  Proximity to evil does not produce sin.

    It’s true that moral toxins can overwhelm the imagination, just as alcohol abuse can overwhelm the liver. You shouldn’t expose yourself deliberately to poisonous influences.  But day after day, a functioning imagination helps us process the moral challenges to which a fallen world exposes us.

    For example, there are occasions when the task that duty calls you to is onerous, boring or repellent.  When you’re cleaning up vomit off the floor, should you fully engage in the moment with all of your faculties?  Because the sight and smell of vomit can induce such nausea that you’ll be unable to complete the task.  In such a situation, the imagination offers a way to distance yourself–to redirect your attention–so that you can complete the task without quite focusing on it.  At the end of the day, right action remains the standard of right living.  If your weird fantasy helped you do your duty, then you’re in better shape than the people who ran away from responsibility because they couldn’t enjoy the moment.

    The imagination also serves as an aid to right living when we rehearse various options for behavior.  When we’re angry, we may imagine any number of phrases we could say to the person who has offended us, or vengeful actions we could take.  But what do we actually say and do?  The imagination gives us a way to consider the consequences of wrong behaviors without actually living them out.  Sometimes it’s only through the process of imagining a wrong behavior that we come to feel that it is wrong.  The important question is whether, after imagining our options, we reject the wrong and choose the right.

    A third way that imagination helps us is by entering into evil, not to embrace it, but to combat it.  If you want to vanquish evil, you must gain an understanding of how it works.  Not all thinking about evil things is sinful, not anymore than working with a deadly virus is sinful, if your goal is to find a vaccine.  However, you must take precautions.  Don’t underestimate the thing you’re called to combat.

    Your imagination also provides a place to escape to, when you’re too weary to cope with reality.  Sometimes your fantasy reveals a specific stressor that you need to address.  In constrained situations, the escape into fantasy may be the best alternative available.  We live in a culture with fewer physical challenges than ever before in human history, but with overwhelming mental challenges that produce chronic psychological exhaustion.

    God knows all of this.  Even in our most intimate, most embarrassing, most bizarre moments, we can always turn to God and ask for grace to grow into habitable dwellings for the Holy Spirit.  When we feel ourselves inclined to evil, we should admit it and ask for strength to behave rightly.  Entrust your thoughts to God, and keep dreaming.

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  • Fear Of The Lord

    The first step of humility, then, is that a man keeps the fear of God always before his eyes and never forgets it. Psalm 36:1  (Rule of St. Benedict 7.10)

    The practice of humility isn’t so daunting once you realize that it’s not about what other people think of you.  It’s about your existence.

    The first step in this practice is elemental.  Over and over in Scripture, the fear of God is recommended to us as beneficial to our well-being:

    Happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways.

    You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be happy, and it shall go well with you.

    Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table.

    Thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord.  Psalm 128:1-4

    Immediately it becomes clear that if your idea of happiness is winning the jackpot in Vegas, you’ve got the wrong God here.  The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the psalmists and prophets, St. Benedict and all the saints of the Church will bless you with a domestic life and a living wage.  God’s idea of happiness for his favorite creatures is not idleness, but satisfying work; not luxury, but abundance; not sexual adventures, but family.

    That’s the carrot.  But in case the carrot doesn’t motivate you, there’s also a stick.  When St. Benedict echoes the psalmist in proclaiming the fear of the Lord, he’s not talking about an intellectual assent to a coherent philosophical proposition.  He stands with all the other prophets in proclaiming that God is a Person.  And this Person holds each human being accountable for every free action.  God will punish those who willfully disobey his commands.  God will reward those who attempt to obey him.  Both the punishment and the reward will endure forever, once we’ve completed our journey through time.  So it is scary.  You’re supposed to feel a thrill of terror.

    But as always in this religion, there’s a paradox.  For those who don’t deserve much of anything, there is infinite mercy, if you’re humble enough to accept mercy.

    The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life Proverbs 14:27 

    The metaphor evokes fresh water in the desert.  On barren cliffs green things flourish.  How can this be?  A seed drifting on the wind lodged in a crack and sensed that it was time to send forth a tiny root.  Just so, the fear of the Lord is the mysterious spiritual sense that God endows his creatures with, enabling them to recognize his presence and to turn to him as the source of their vitality.

    Does it have to be fear?  Fear isn’t nice.  We’ve edited it out of religion.  But then again, we’ll pay money to feel it in a horror flick or on a roller coaster.  If it’s so bad, why do nice people seek it out and pay for it?

    Because we are alive.  Only living creatures can feel fear.  When we feel fear, we also feel alive, because we’re viscerally aware of a threat to our existence.

    The barren rock that never lived cannot fear losing the life it never had.  And people who’ve never felt alive can’t fear the loss of what they’ve never known.  They become indifferent to annihilation, their own and other people’s.  In interactions with others, these petrified souls exhibit a delusion of impunity.  Their moral indifference extends from their spiritual aridity. They’re untouchable, or so they imagine.  This is not a sign of progress or of superiority.  It’s a sign of something missing.

    The fear of God is the first step of humility, because humility is the root that aligns us in the proper posture with respect to our creator, so that we’re able to draw life from him.  We recognize our dependence on the one who called us into being.  We acknowledge the presence of the one who sustains everything at every moment.  And we send out at first just a tiny filament towards him, but as we grow and thrive, this will become a tough root mass that attaches us firmly to the region of our life source.

    What about the trouble that comes to everyone?  The trouble you face in this world is not the punishment of God.  The trouble you face now is what you have to get through on the way to your reward.  Now is the struggle of life in the desert.  Later is the rest at the oasis.

    St. Paul tells us that even if everything in the universe conspires against us–death, life, angels, demons, the present, the future, nature, culture, hurricanes, floods–God is still on our side, through it all, as long as we’re trying to do the right thing (Romans 8: 1-39).  Our struggle toward goodness through harsh surroundings shows that we are vital after all.

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  • Speak Artfully

    …the abbot shall call the whole community together and himself explain what the business is; and after hearing the advice of the brothers, let him ponder it and follow what he judges the wiser course. The reason why we have said all should be called for counsel is that the Lord often reveals what is better to the younger. (Rule of St. Benedict 3.1-3)

     

    You have a dream of a daily dinnertime. The whole family gathers around the table and discusses important topics. Children express their thoughts freely but respectfully. The assertive ones willingly keep silent to listen while the halting share too. Lively debate ensues and does not degenerate into contradictory assertions. No one goes off on a rant. You have the energy to pay attention to everyone and the wit to respond insightfully. Your spouse asks for your opinion. Together you arrive at a decision that everyone is happy with.

    Then you wake up and realize that you’re still in the madhouse. Some of them don’t speak at all: they just scream at the pitch calculated to unravel your nerves. The others do not heed anything you say, and they want everything right now. They stick their fingers into electric pencil sharpeners and throw themselves in front of moving vehicles and sprinkle fish food into toy bins daily.

    When you’ve wrestled away the paring knives clenched in each small fist and extinguished the flames from the cardboard waffle box set on “toast” in your oven, you may feel that your own mind is teetering on the brink. The teaspoons seem to be disappearing, but you’re afraid to mention it, because it sounds—well, crazy. When you catch your son stashing them in the air vent, you’re so relieved not to be insane after all that you don’t even mind the pilfering he’s been doing.

    Your only chance is to outwit them. You must become cunning. Offer them two choices, either of which is acceptable to you, and let them have the pleasure of deciding. Guess what they might do next and get there first. If it can cross your mind—no matter how bizarre a thought—it will cross their minds too, but they will actually do it.

    It’s easier to redirect them than to halt their motion. So, when you forbid one action, make sure to tell them what they’re allowed to do instead. They don’t need good reasons, do they? They can be happy for half an hour just running around in circles. Channel their impulses in ways you can live with.

    Negotiate. If it’s terribly important to them but just a passing preference for you, let them have their way. Save your energy for matters of principle.

    And remember, just because you had a hard day doesn’t mean your spouse had an easy one. Beware Domestic Drone Syndrome, when you can’t remember the last time you said anything that didn’t involve a mundane task. Try to think of something loving once in a while. Life can be hard. Sometimes the world is scary too. It’s not the fault of the person you married.

     

     

     

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  • Punish Patiently

    He should not gloss over the sins of those who err, but cut them out while he can, as soon as they begin to sprout, remembering the fate of Eli, priest of Shiloh 1 Samuel 2:11-4:18 (RB 2.26-29).

     

     

    With children, the proper purpose of punishment is to make the evil path repulsive. This means that there’s no question of punishing them for actions outside their control. You don’t punish infants. Punishment only becomes a factor when the child begins to exercise his or her will in a harmful way. But there’s no point in punishing the child for bad behavior if you don’t simultaneously redirect the child toward a feasible correct alternative. It’s not enough to learn what not to do. We need to know what to aim for instead. If you punish without redirecting, you’ve only done half your job.

    Corporal punishment can be appropriate when the misdeed is corporal. It is fair to spank the child who throws a fit and kicks her mother. “That hurts!” she cries. Yes, and that’s the whole point of why you’re not allowed to kick and hit. Generally speaking, if the behavior involves a lack of empathy, it can be effective to give the child a taste of what he or she is inflicting on others. You can’t refrain from doing unto others what you would not want done to yourself if you’ve never suffered anything to refer to. Thankfully, human beings don’t need to suffer every possible harm in order to refrain from each particular behavior. Unlike machines, we have imagination and reason. By the time your child is old enough to carry on a conversation, you’ll be able to say: “Remember when so-and-so did such-and-such to you? Well, that’s how it felt to this person when you did that.” Most likely the child will resist the comparison, because accepting it entails accepting the whole weight of a moral life. But by practicing these small interventions, you’ll be setting your child upon the path of righteousness.

    This said, there is an age that feels like an eon: the months that stretch between the time when the child learns how to walk and, so much later, when he learns how to talk. During this phase, he can be a mortal danger to himself. Each day he acquires a new ability, but you never know what he’ll be capable of next. He has neither the reasoning ability nor the verbal comprehension to understand anything you tell him. What he does understand are emotions and bodily sensations. It is certainly better to be spanked than to be run over by a truck. So, if he breaks away from you and dashes toward a busy street, and if, by the grace of God, you catch him in time, that’s the moment to get angry and yell and spank: to impress the experience into his memory, so that next time you call his name in that tone of voice, he will hearken, heed, and turn back.

    This also means that you must aim to be habitually calm and measured in your reactions. If you’re always yelling and spanking, what your children will come to be good at is avoiding you. If your toddler figures out how to unlock the door when you’re not looking, and your kind neighbor returns him to you after finding him in the middle of the street, the proper reaction is not to spank the child but to install new locks on the doors so that the culprit can’t repeat his escapade. If you catch your daughter spreading a bagful of flour across the kitchen floor, when she has no concept of the difference between that and spreading paint across a piece of paper, which she has been allowed to do, you’ve got to find a way to enforce the distinction. But if you are going to spank, use the flat of your hand, because you will feel the sting too, and this will deter you from excess. No smack should produce any physical result more severe than transient pink flush on the skin.

    In some situations, it can be satisfying to all concerned for you to spank the table, or the chair, or some other inanimate object that can be made to take the blame for an unfortunate event. Humor is another thing that children understand before they’ve acquired words. Through all the messes, mistakes and mishaps of life with children, a sense of humor is one of the most important traits to cultivate. This in itself can make the difference between a happy and an unhappy home.

    However, if someone transgresses a law of God, you mustn’t just shrug it off and make a joke of it. Stealing, for example, is not just about secreting away a desired object. It’s an injustice with respect to a human being. And if she’s getting into the habit of it, don’t imagine that it will be easier to deal with when she’s a teenager. If she learns not to steal from stores but still pilfers around the house, enforce stronger boundaries. If she tends to take your jewelry, lock up your jewelry. Even adults have a hard time distinguishing between accessibility and permissibility. Make it harder to get the forbidden thing so that there’s a clear distinction between what she may use and what she must not take. But if she goes to her grandmother’s house and steals the purse that she knew was intended to be her sister’s birthday present, and then lies about it, you’ve got to break out of what has become a routine.

    Punishment by definition is aversive to the one punished. If your usual reaction evidently has made no impression, you’ve got to brainstorm some other plan. If the mother is the one usually interacting with the children, it is fair to hand the child over for a paternal intervention. The father will have a different vantage point on the situation. He’ll interact differently with the child. His punishment, for being unusual, as long as it is unusual, may have more impact. The most important thing, though, is for mother and father to work together to convey a shared resolve: that you will not price this behavior into the cost of doing business. There are things that you won’t absorb into the lifestyle of your household. Define what she did wrong, but also describe the actions you want to see instead. Detail how she could have behaved differently at the point of temptation. Tell her that you don’t want her to grow up to be a thief. You do want her to grow up to be an honest person.

    When you get angry, it’s because you care. Parents who don’t care are already long gone. But if you feel that you’re approaching a point where your anger may take control of you, give yourself a time out. Walk away, lock the door, and pray. Remind yourself of the good things in your life that you can thank God for. Allow the Holy Spirit to reassert joy. We have received a Spirit of self-control, and it’s this Spirit that we’re teaching our children to live by.

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