The SSA Catholic and the Parishes of Doom

Last week, Rod Dreher shared this First Things piece by Joshua Gonnerman, who is a gay Catholic who practices chastity and had some critical things to say about the experience at the parish level for Catholics battling same-sex attraction but trying to live as faithful Catholics. Rod comments:

Boy, do I ever agree with this. It’s not only true for gay people, but also straights who are single, either by choice or unchosen circumstance. In my case, when I became a serious adult Christian, I knew that I couldn’t be a Christian conditionally. I had tried that; it didn’t work. Specifically, I had tried exempting myself from the clear, consistent teaching of Scripture and Tradition about sexual morality. I read all the liberal theologians, and tried to believe it — but it was, to use a Savage-ism, bullshit. And I was lying to myself to think there was any truthful way forward but the narrow path. Like Gonnerman, I found that the Church’s teaching really is liberating, even though it required a lot of painful asceticism on my part (the most painful of which was the real possibility that it might be like this for my whole life; there was no guarantee that I would ever marry). How much easier the burden of chastity as a single Christian would have been if I hadn’t felt so alone in church. The clergy didn’t seem to care much, either intentionally or not, nor did anybody else. Most of the young adults I knew who bothered with church at all had no interest in being faithful to its sexual teaching, and so were no help. Everybody else was bound up with family life, and the culture of family life.

What does a chaste Christian adult, gay or straight, do in such a circumstance? So often you go it alone, because you have no real choice, not if you’re going to follow the truth. It shouldn’t be this way. To live in Christian chastity as a single man or woman in this hypereroticized culture of ours requires deep reserves of faith. It’s very hard to do it alone, without the support of one’s community of faith. I have gay Catholic friends who, like Gonnerman, are caught between fellow Christians who share their belief in the Church’s teachings on sexuality, but who are afraid to befriend in a deep way gay Christians. Those who do want to embrace gay Christians like themselves more often than not want to affirm them as gay and encourage them to live in defiance of Church teaching — something they cannot in good conscience do.

From my own experiences, I would say that the perception that there is not much for the single chaste Catholic (regardless of sexual orientation) at the average parish was followed by the perception that there wasn't much for the married Catholic couple and then that there wasn't much for the Catholic family with really little children and then that there wasn't much for the Catholic family with older children...well, you get the idea. Some of it is a "grass is always greener" problem, but some of it--lots of it--comes from the reality that parish life in many parishes is still coming up short when it comes to meeting the needs or the expectations of the modern Catholic (except for the retirees, but that's another story).

Take, for example, a story I've told before of a parish priest who excitedly told the parish that he'd "solved" the problem of the daily Mass for the working people. The working people, he said, had told him they couldn't be at the eight a.m. daily Mass because they had to be at work. Aha! he had thought, and he had scheduled a special Mass just for them...at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday nights...

Or take the pastor who schedules religious education at different hours of the day on Saturdays depending on the age of the child, who doesn't realize that for a family with multiple children this will mean one child is scheduled at 9 a.m. and another at 11 a.m. and another at two p.m. and...

Or take the choir director I once had who wanted to form a separate children's choir until he realized that the adults whose children were participating in the regular choir (like ours) would no longer be able to attend both the "children's choir" Mass and the regular choir Mass...

Or take the nice people who have a Catholic study group/fellowship thing going and keep inviting people...to the 10 a.m. Tuesday meetings...

It's almost as if the Powers That Be at the parish life level are stuck somewhere in the 1950s, when every parish family lived within walking distance of the parish, every mom stayed at home and had hours to herself every day when the kids were in school, every dad worked from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and every family had so much spare time especially on the weekends that the parish had to schedule activities just to help break the monotony (and to keep the teens away from the drive-in movie theater and carhop diner). Catholic people came in four easily identified groups: priests/religious (or discerning); not-yet-married, married, and widowed. It was easy to schedule those 10 a.m. Tuesday religious discussions for the retired nuns and then to have bingo night (following the 5:30 p.m. Mass!) for the retired widows and widowers, some of whom might end up reentering Holy Matrimony with each other, at which point they'd be invited to the activities geared toward married people, along with the young newlyweds and the busy couples with small children who could easily find babysitters from among the parish teens.

And if there were any SSA people in the parish, well, nobody other than the confessor knew.

Meanwhile, it's 2012. Lots of Catholics drive to church, and some of them drive great distances. Moms work outside the home, in the home, and even homeschool. Dads work long hours and bizarre schedules as they struggle to earn a decent wage in a shaky global economy. Weekends are over-scheduled with everything from basic household maintenance to second jobs to sports to school obligations. Catholics come in more than four groups: there are never-marrieds in larger numbers, there are once-married but now-divorced and raising kids alone--and there are same-sex attracted people, some of whom want to live according to Church teaching and would like some help, support, encouragement, friendship, and ordinary kindness from their parish.

But how do we make that happen? How does the Catholic parish find a way to meet the changing needs of its parishioners--let alone adapting to the new needs of parishioners who weren't, perhaps, present in large numbers in the past? How does the divorced father of two who only gets his kids every other weekend see to their religious education, especially if Mom has left the Church and "remarried" outside of it? How does the person whose vocation used to be called "single blessedness" fit in, especially if he or she had always hoped to marry but realizes now in the middle of his or her life that it's not going to happen? And how does the same-sex attracted or gay Catholic experience the kind of helpful and supportive love and welcome that will help him or her to live this life and carry this burden without falling into despair, serious sin, or cycles of harmful isolation?

I honestly don't know. I do know it needs to happen, and that in a Church that tends (mostly for good reasons) to move at a glacial pace, it may be a while before Catholic parishes realize that it is no longer 1952. But if we don't want the SSA Catholic, and other Catholics who don't fit the older models, to think of the local parish as a place of gloom and doom instead of a loving branch of the family of God, we may have to pick up the pace just a bit.

Pawns in the evil games adults play

Late posting again--I'm still not back on track after yesterday. :)

This makes for an interesting read:

For those engaged in America’s culture wars, it is clear that the welfare of children is the battle ground of choice. We are barely out of the gate with civil unions and same-sex “marriages,” and we have been told, in defense of these new institutions — and with the help of Hollywood — that The Kids Are All Right. And if it be true that “by their fruits ye shall know them,” then, if the kids are all right, so must be their parents.

But as we hurtle along in our social experiments, allaying our fears that children may not be getting the best deal in the new domestic arrangements, let’s pause for a moment and pay heed to the many children who, as adults, have come forward to say something about that older, accepted, and more or less “settled” issue: divorce.

Elizabeth Marquardt, author of Between Two Worlds (2005), Stephanie Staal, The Love They Lost (2000), Andrew Root, Children of Divorce (2010) and Susan Gregory Thomas, In Spite of Everything (2011), all have in common is a willingness to fully and honestly examine the perspective of an entire generation of children who experienced their parents’ divorce and have conducted their own hard-won research. Their forthright, painful stories challenge the entrenched doctrine that it is better for children to have a “good divorce” than a bad marriage.

Living in the trenches, between two separated households, these authors have been able to put their fingers on what is essentially bad about divorce no matter how much their parents adhered to the norms of the “good” one — avoiding any public conflict, parting “amicably” and sharing the kids equally.

They were exposed. They had been brought into the world by two worlds coming together; and now they were “left hanging,” so to speak, “between two worlds.” And notwithstanding all of their measurable successes (good grades, high college enrollment rates, and well-paying jobs), the divorce of their parents had inflicted a wound at the depths of their being. For this wound, there was no remedial “social capital.” [...]

Then there is the lingering question that divorce injects into the consciousness of the surviving progeny: “Who am I now that the two people who together made up my origin have gone their separate ways?” — as one conference participant put it.

There is no question in my mind that divorce harms children. Even the adult children of divorce I have known would agree--and even when the marriage was highly dysfunctional and the separation of the spouses necessary for one spouse's safety or the safety of the children. Most cases, though, are not that dire, and this leads to even greater suffering for the children of divorce. The power struggles over the children and their acceptance of the situation continue well past the point when the adult children of divorce have left the parental nests--yes, nests, because children of divorce never forget that they have two "homes" now, one with mom and one with dad (even if they only live with one parent, and merely visit the other).

Now: how much will this situation be magnified in the case of same-sex couples acting as parenting partners to children?

There are three ways that children can end up in same-sex parented homes: the children are the biological children of one partner and that partner's former heterosexual spouse or lover; the children have been adopted; the children have been manufactured like consumer products using IVF and reproductive prostitutes. In my opinion, all of these children will experience direct harm as the result of the choices those raising them have made on their behalf.

The adopted children are being harmed because adults decided for them that they did not need one of two parents (a mother or a father). Instead, two "mothers" or two "fathers" were good enough. Never mind if a little girl being raised by two men already has deep issues in her relationships with other women because her birth mother abandoned her--it's just not important for her to develop a healthy psychological relationship with an adoptive mother. The experts say so, and they're all really brilliant. Or, never mind if a little boy is already struggling to trust men because his birth father beat or otherwise abused him. He can be raised by two lesbians without any problem, because he really doesn't need a father, a positive male role model to help him overcome the early traumas. The experts say so, and they're all really brilliant...

Moving on to the children of divorce, here the children are already suffering like other children of divorce because the two people who brought them into the world have parted worlds...but in addition, they must now learn that mom doesn't like men or dad doesn't like women. In fact, the kind of sex mom or dad really likes doesn't produce babies. Ever. Was I a mistake, a regretted accident, then? the child in this situation wonders and fears...Was I just another chain, another bar of the prison?...and that fear and anguish may last forever.

The third situation is the most evil, and thus the most harmful to children. The child with two "moms" or two "dads" finds out one day that he was made to order. His own biological mother or his own biological father cared nothing for him, nothing at all. He was sold into emotional slavery by the person who should have cared the most for him in the whole world--but to whom he was nothing more than disposable genetic material, merchandise, a consumer product. That he lived while his embryo-siblings, his womb-twins, died was only an accident, and not an accident anyone cared very much about, not his biological parent or parents, and not the person or couple for whom he was manufactured. Indeed, the evil of IVF parenting is so great that the additional injustice of depriving that child forever of either a parent of his own gender or the opposite one is only an added crime against the child, whose donor mother, perhaps, never saw her daughter or cared what became of her at all, and whose two "dads" are openly and deeply hurt if she ever expresses a wish that she had a mom, or knew what that might be like.

We have already done so much harm to the emotional well-being of children and adults by blinding ourselves to the great nightmare of divorce and its effects on children. Now we are faced with the public cry to magnify that situation by forcing children to pretend that two "moms" or two "dads" are exactly the same thing to them (emotionally, psychologically, relationally, and so on) as a mother and a father would be. We keep making children pawns in the evil games adults play, and then we wonder why society has to keep stepping in to bandage the gaping, bleeding wounds and divert our attention from the real stories and sufferings kept bottled carefully inside the walking ghosts of broken families.

Life lesson

One of my "etc." to deal with today was a lengthy trip to the dentist. One ordinary(ish) filling. One "dig out the old filling and then shave the fragile remains of the tooth down to prep it for a crown and then fit and place a temporary crown on it" procedure. Total time in chair: three hours.

I learned a valuable and important life lesson today:

If a dentist offers you nitrous oxide, take it.

How is it that I have had four crowns, three of which involved root canals, and never knew this before?

:)

Late blogging--comment approval alert

Hi, all! As I posted in the comment thread below this one, I'm going to be busy with other projects etc. for most of the day today. Thus, I won't be checking the blog comments folder or posting a new post until much later this evening--if I can even do it then. (I've learned that sitting down at the computer in the midst of projects etc. "just for a second to approve blog comments" often turns into "where the heck did that hour go?" and so it's wiser for me to avoid that temptation).

I'm posting this only because we do have some popular/controversial posts from the past two days (the Legion one, and the gay "marriage" one), and I don't want readers to worry that they're being censored if their comments don't show up in a reasonable time. No worries. Keep commenting if you feel so inclined--I'll do my best to post the comments tonight!

Your patience, as always, is greatly appreciated.

The splendid dupes

Among those quotes in the annals of history that turn out to be totally unverifiable there is the one about Lenin and "useful idiots." No evidence exists to support the claim that Lenin ever actually called Western sympathizers with communism "useful idiots" for advancing the agenda of the Communists; but the idea that various evils have relied on great numbers of people willing to advance an agenda whose end game and limits they don't really understand is not a new one, for all that.

In fact, G.K. Chesterton expressed a similar idea this way (hat tip: John C. Wright):

There exists to-day a scheme of action, a school of thought, as collective and unmistakable as any of those by whose grouping alone we can make any outline of history. It is as firm a fact as the Oxford Movement, or the Puritans of the Long Parliament; or the Jansenists; or the Jesuits. It is a thing that can be pointed out; it is a thing that can be discussed; and it is a thing that can still be destroyed. It is called for convenience "Eugenics"; and that it ought to be destroyed I propose to prove in the pages that follow. I know that it means very different things to different people; but that is only because evil always takes advantage of ambiguity. I know it is praised with high professions of idealism and benevolence; with silver-tongued rhetoric about purer motherhood and a happier posterity. But that is only because evil is always flattered, as the Furies were called "The Gracious Ones." I know that it numbers many disciples whose intentions are entirely innocent and humane; and who would be sincerely astonished at my describing it as I do. But that is only because evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin. Of these who are deceived I shall speak of course as we all do of such instruments; judging them by the good they think they are doing, and not by the evil which they really do.

If you replaced the word "Eugenics" with the phrase "Gay Marriage," and further spoke about purer marriages and happier families instead of motherhood and posterity, respectively, I think the Chesterton quote might apply rather well to the rank-and-file supporters of gay "marriage" today. But if you express this notion to the average supporter of gay "marriage," this notion that the goals and aims of the gay rights movement are ultimately evil and destructive of social cohesion, they would be just as astonished as the supporters of Eugenics were in Chesterton's day at his relentless negativity toward the concept--and yet, Chesterton was right, and the supporters were so wrong that the human cost of their little idea may not yet have been fully reckoned.

How can I say such a thing, when all gay "marriage" supporters want is a tiny little barely-noticeable and unimportant tweak to the definition of marriage that will remove the concept of opposite genders forever from the word "marriage," completely eradicate any idea that biological parenthood belongs within marriage or, indeed, has anything whatsoever to do with it, and strike a blow from which society may never recover at the clearly outdated notion that children deeply need to have a mother and a father, to say nothing of the nuclear annihilation of religious liberty that will follow swiftly upon the imposition of gay "marriage" on our society?

How, indeed.

Here's Exhibit A in the kind of thing we can expect to see in some not-too-distant future:

(CNSNews.com) – The Obama administration “strongly objects” to provisions in a House defense authorization bill that would prohibit the use of military property for same-sex “marriage or marriage-like” ceremonies, and protect military chaplains from negative repercussions for refusing to perform ceremonies that conflict with their beliefs, according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). [...]

The memo said the two provisions “adopt unnecessary and ill-advised policies that would inhibit the ability of same-sex couples to marry or enter a recognized relationship under State law.”

Section 536 of H.R. 4310 states in part that no member of the armed forces may “direct, order, or require a chaplain to perform any duty, rite, ritual, ceremony, service, or function that is contrary to the conscience, moral principles, or religious beliefs of the chaplain, or contrary to the moral principles and religious beliefs of the endorsing faith group of the chaplain.”

Further, no member of the armed forces may “discriminate or take any adverse personnel action against a chaplain, including denial of promotion, schooling, training, or assignment, on the basis of the refusal by the chaplain to comply with a direction, order, or requirement” that is prohibited by the previous clause.

The OMB complained that, “in its overbroad terms,” section 536 “is potentially harmful to good order and discipline.”

Read the rest here.

A Catholic priest serving as a chaplain in the military cannot ever "marry" two men or two women. But if gay "marriage" becomes an absolute right in the United States, a Catholic priest serving as a chaplain in the military might be ordered to preside at such "weddings." There are only two options: carve out the kind of religious liberty exemption H.R. 4310 is attempting, or forbid Catholics to serve as military chaplains. I am convinced that the powers behind the gay "marriage" agenda want and will demand the second option.

Why? Kevin O'Brien wrote a piece recently that has had me pondering:

Occupy Wall Street and related groups were indignant, and rightly so, that the wealthiest one percent of the population seems to control the government.

We would all agree that in a democratic republic, policy that affects every American should not be set by an elite, particularly if that elite is only one percent of the people.

But what if that elite is only half that size?

The (un-"occupied") Wall Street Journal reports that, according to the 2010 U.S. Census, about five of every one thousand households is a "same sex couple" household - which, apprently means not just "room mates" but sodomites and Lesbians living together as a kind of "family".

And so, even with "gay marriage" legal in many states, and with homosexual cohabitation legal in all states, only about point-five percent of households in this country are "same sex couples". Whence, then, comes this tremendous political push to cater to the whims of one half of one percent of the U.S. population?

The only conclusion that we can draw from this is that "gay marriage" is a contrived issue, politically speaking. It is the "One half of one percent" trying to bully the rest of us. [All emphasis in original: E.M.]

Kevin O'Brien draws a different conclusion from this than I do. My conclusion, after pondering the numbers, was this: why is there such a push to impose gay "marriage" on society when so few people have any interest in it? Is it the case that this one-half of one percent, or even the two to four percent of Americans who identify as same-sex attracted, have so much money and political power that they keep pushing this issue to the forefront of American politics?

I hardly think that's even possible. Which means, I think, that it's that same one percent, that ruling class, that has decided that Americans need to fixate on this idea right now. Some of them, like the wealthy powerful men and women of Chesterton's day who promoted eugenics, might really believe that gay "marriage" is the civil rights struggle of our day--and they have delusions of being brave and heroic and self-sacrificing in pushing for the agenda, just like people in the past who fought for women's suffrage or racial equality. They are the Splendid Dupes of the Chesterton quote, the people who are not so much in love with the idea of a gender-neutral America (based upon the mandatory eradication of heteronormativity, a concept that would probably puzzle many of these Bright Sorts if they had ever heard of it) as they are with the idea of themselves as noble and wise pioneers of the new virtue.

But there are others in the ruling class who know exactly what they're doing. I think the true agenda is twofold:

1. Distract the nation from rising debt, increased governmental power over our everyday lives, the ruling class's own increased control of America and the exponential rise of the sort of thing John Stossel has been calling "the road to serfdom" for a couple of years now, and

2. Cynically wield the gay rights agenda (and similar initiatives) as a club with which to beat the churches into either submission or impotence, given that the churches have the potential to be the biggest objectors and obstacles to agenda point 1.

Think about it. Why else would there suddenly be, for instance, a "line in the sand" HHS mandate attempting to force Catholic Churches to pay for birth control? Why would the administration object to efforts to keep Catholic (and other) chaplains from having to officiate at gay "weddings?" Why was a Catholic adoption agency in Massachusetts one of the first casualties in the war against traditional families? The ruling class is showing its hand a little too plainly--it's obvious that they care much more about weakening the churches, especially the orthodox and traditional ones, than they do about advancing gay rights, at least at present. Whether they will ever actually care about gay rights, or whether they will cast aside and abandon the gay citizens who sincerely think they're working in their own best interests once the ruling class has achieved its objectives is something the average gay citizen might ponder.

The thing is, as I said today to a reader who emailed me on this subject, there's really no way for the churches and the gay rights movement to find an amicable solution. The minute the objective of the imposition of the redefinition of marriage upon the nation is achieved, the push to define all who disagree with the new definition as evil bigots motivated only by irrational hatred will accelerate, with the end goal of crippling the churches (and, it should go without saying, the mosques and synagogues who agree that marriage is between a man and a woman). Every possible strategy to ostracize, marginalize, and punish people for the "wrongthink" beliefs that gay sex is gravely sinful and that marriage is between a man and a woman will be engaged in full force. The new agenda will advance the notion that only bigots and haters oppose gay "marriage," and that these bigots and haters really don't have a place in a decent civil society. For Catholics, this may mean having to sign some sort of "statement of dissent" from Church teaching in order to work as a military chaplain (or, perhaps, to join the military at all), or in a government or corporate job, or just about anywhere other than in a Church job; it may mean being permanently excluded from adopting children (again, without that "statement of dissent"); it may mean having one's children interrogated in the doctor's office or at school about whether mommy and daddy's "hatred" and "bigotry" psychologically affects the child--and that's just for starters.

And all of that will go on until the religious (and other) bodies that disagree with gay marriage are weakened, silenced, terrorized, or even destroyed--at which point we, or our descendents, will find out what this whole agenda was really all about.

And then, perhaps, the Splendid Dupes will wring their hands and say they had no idea, none at all, what was really going on--that the end game was the tearing down and destroying that pillar of religious freedom on which our nation was founded. The possible reasons why a group of the rich and powerful might want to do that are uniformly frightening, and should be abhorrent to all who believe in the liberty our nation's founders fought and died for. Alas, that end game will probably not be recognized for what it is until it is far too late.

The Legion is a dysfunctional family

The pattern of dysfunction within the Legion of Christ continues to emerge with this sad news:

A high-profile American priest in the Legionaries of Christ has acknowledged having had a sexual relationship with a woman and fathering her child, adding another chapter to the growing scandals surrounding the controversial religious order.

Fr. Thomas Williams, known for his work as a TV commentator and popular spiritual writer and speaker, issued a statement today confirming he had fathered a child with a woman “a number of years ago,” and said that he and the superiors of the order have decided that he will take a year off without any public ministry “to reflect on my commitments as a priest.”

“I am truly sorry to everyone who is hurt by this revelation,” Williams said in the statement.

Out of what he described as “respect for the privacy of the woman and her child,” Williams declined to identify the woman or provide other details. He confirmed, however, that the relationship had occurred while he was already a priest and a member of the Legionaries.

Williams told NCR the woman has declined economic assistance, and that she was neither his student nor someone to whom he had offered spiritual direction. [...]

Fr. Luis Garza, the top official for the Legion in North America, sent a letter to members today informing them that Williams will undergo “a period of reflection, prayer and atonement.”

“In the wake of all that we have been through as a movement in the past several years, it won’t surprise me if you are disappointed, angry or feel your trust shaken once again,” Garza wrote, saying that any further information “is at the discretion of those involved.”

Because Williams’ relationship did not involve a minor or accusations of abuse, it is not subject to the Vatican’s anti-abuse procedures. Traditionally, the Vatican has left discipline for transgressions involving a consensual relationship to the priest’s superiors, in this case the leaders of the Legion and the papal delegate appointed by Benedict XVI to oversee the order, Italian Cardinal Velasio de Paolis.

In the wake of this, there are a couple of things I want to get out of the way right away.

First, it is not the sin of detraction to engage in thoughtful discussion of these sorts of incidents when the incidents have already become public knowledge. It is not uncharitable, either. It is human nature to be stunned by sin and to ask, "How did this happen?" as well as to remain mindful of one's own sinfulness and beg God for mercy for all of us sinners.

Second, it is not necessary for most of us to say much about the specifics of this situation except that we will pray for Fr. Williams, for the woman, and for the innocent child who is the true victim here--not in the terrible sense that other children have been victims, but in the injustice inherent in the consequences of his parents' sinful behavior.

Third, and this is the important one: it is neither uncharitable nor unjust speculation about the specifics to raise the question as to whether or not this is yet another proof that the Legion is fatally flawed, whether the sins of Maciel are continuing in the members of the order he founded (considering that one category of his sins was to father children out of wedlock in violation of his priestly vows), and whether it's even possible, at this point, for true reform to occur?

Consider the example of a large Catholic family. They go to Mass every Sunday and sometimes to daily Mass as well, they pray together, they encourage frequent confession, they do their best to raise and educate their children in the faith--and yet one of the children falls into serious sexual sin, involving out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Can we say that there is anything definitely wrong here--or must we just consider the mystery of sin's powerful attraction to us all?

But suppose there's another large Catholic family that on the surface looks as good or better than the first family: Mass, confession, prayer, raising and educating their children in the faith. Behind the scenes, though, as their neighbors learn to their horror, something terrible was happening. Their father was accused, not just once, but repeatedly, of molesting children. Somehow, no charges were ever filed (but the local D.A. is a close friend and relies on this family's money for his election campaigns), and the family spoke sorrowfully of how uncharitable all these "false" accusations were. But then the father dies, and the community learns of his second family, the one he fathered with a mistress (and there may be more than one "extra" family). If, after this, child after child in that family falls into serious sexual sin, is "Gosh, sin is mysterious and powerful..." really the only conclusion we can draw? Or is the family's dysfunction directly related to the father's example, his way of teaching his children, and his own inability to give good spiritual advice in matters related to the Sixth Commandment?

If we think of the Legion as a dysfunctional Catholic family, their tendency to keep insisting that everything is fine and that these matters have nothing whatsoever to do with the Legion itself starts making a terrible kind of sense--the same kind that we recognize when a dysfunctional family closes ranks and pretends to the outside world that nothing is wrong. But if we think of the Legion as a dysfunctional family, it becomes harder to understand why some powerful members of that family are still calling so many of the shots.

Not everything is homeschooling's fault

A little while ago, I wrote a blog post about how the negativity I sometimes hear about homeschooling gets depressing. It's bad enough when the secular world looks down on homeschooling; it's worse if it comes from our fellow Catholics; but I think the worst thing of all is when I hear fellow Catholic homeschooling moms trash homeschooling, as if the only way to get any respect as a homeschooler is to agree that homeschooling is insane, difficult, frustrating, and freakish--but we do it anyway, white-knuckles, weak knees, chaos and all.

So then I got to thinking: why are there so many homeschooling moms who trash homeschooling?

Some easy explanations spring to mind: perhaps these moms want to fit in better with their non-homeschooling friends, or they have this idea that "keeping it real" means complaining all the time and acting as though nobody's ever really happy; or they're acutely aware that in our culture actually liking your kids and wanting to spend time with them is so rare as to sound like bragging if you say you do, or they're so tired of defending their choice to homeschool to critical relatives, friends, and neighbors that they've adopted this style of defense mechanism...and so on. But I think that sometimes the homeschooling moms who are relentlessly negative about homeschooling may actually mean it, and that brings with it a couple of possibilities: they may be the sort of person who really ought not be homeschooling, or their situation may make homeschooling uniquely difficult in a way that it's not for the majority of happy homeschoolers out here.

About the first, there is little to say except that it's really not possible for anyone but the homeschooling mom to arrive at that conclusion. There really are some people who due to personality type or background or temperament or similar things are not going to be happy when they try homeschooling, no matter how terrific the situation may seem to be. But nobody who is outside that family can possibly see or know that. I know moms who have happily persevered in homeschooling despite seemingly insurmountable odds, and others who threw in the towel after three months because they came to the conclusion (with relief or heartbreak or a bit of both) that they really, really, really weren't cut out for it. And that's something only one person can discern--the homeschooling parent.

About the second, though, there may be a few more things to say--but before I say them, I want to be clear about one thing: just because a particular situation might make homeschooling more difficult than it otherwise would be, it does not follow that people in those situations do or even should just give up. What is a great difficulty and heavy cross for one family might be relatively negligible for another. But my suspicion is that some of the grumbling and griping about life as a homeschooling mom may arise when one of the following situations is present:

1. There is strong opposition to homeschooling from one's husband or one's extended family. Why would this lead to more griping on mommy blogs and when in the company of other homeschooling moms? Simple: because in real life, at home, and with critical relatives the mom in this situation is constantly being tested and has to prove, all the time, that things are good. Really, really good. Amazingly, impossibly, perfectly good. Even...inhumanly good.

And nobody's life is like that all of the time. Even if kids are in regular school they can fail quizzes and misplace homework and get creamed while playing dodge ball--and homeschooled children can fail quizzes and accidentally skip over a page of a workbook and fall down while playing touch football in the back yard. The difference is, if one has a critical spouse or parents or in-laws, it's homeschooling's fault that seven-year-old Polychronius*** missed eight questions on a spelling test or left a page of his math homework blank or skinned his knees--but if Polychronius were in "real" school, the bombed quiz and missed homework and skinned knee would be chuckled over as all part of growing up.

So these moms gripe to anyone who will listen about the imperfections, because in front of people who ought to be on their side they have to maintain an illusion of serene daily accomplishment--and they have my sympathy, even if they end up quitting homeschool because once again Grandma insinuated that Polychronius' inability to locate Uzbekistan on a blank outline map she conveniently had hanging in her living room during the last family gathering is all Mom's fault.

2. There is a family crisis going on right now that makes homeschooling a grueling drudgery instead of a joyful and loving experience. Family crises come in all shapes and sizes: perhaps the marriage is strained, or perhaps a young child or one's elderly parents need near full-time care, or perhaps someone is critically ill, or perhaps Dad lost his job, or the bank is threatening their home, or perhaps young Ceolwulf has been charitably spending time with the neighbor children, or that's what mom thought until the whole gang was arrested for running a shoplifting ring targeted at the local convenience store chain...well, you get the idea.

Lots of homeschooling moms manage to get through these sorts of crisis situations. They don't do it alone--they'll be the first to tell you. Extended family, friends, fellow parishioners, neighbors, even total strangers who heard about their situation and felt moved to help did just that. People offered them everything from prayer to financial help to tutoring for the kiddies to free babysitting to anything else that was necessary, and the grateful moms (and dads and kids!) offered prayers of joyful thanks, took the aid, and kept on voyaging in English and meandering in math around the kitchen table right through the hardest times.

But other homeschooling moms may be going it alone, even in the crisis times. We hear all the time about the loneliness and isolation stay-at-home moms face in the modern age, and even though things are better for some moms in some places what's true for one area may not be true for another. That loneliness and isolation are hard enough to deal with during ordinary times, but when the whole family is in crisis mode everything about being a mom can seem overwhelming, from the supposedly simple tasks like laundry and cleaning to the complications of preparing a child to take a college entrance exam. When a mom in a crisis situation seems negative about homeschooling, it may be because it's just another huge brick in the seemingly endless and precarious stack of similar bricks that feel as though they're strapped to the top of her head, all of them wobbly, all of them in danger of crashing down at any moment. And sometimes it's easier to crack cynical jokes about how today's science lesson involved identifying and then removing the bacteria growing in the bathtub then to admit to others (which is hard) and to herself (which is much harder) that she needs help.

3. There is a battle of wills over discipline going on with at least one child, and it has spilled over into homeschooling. Perhaps teaching little Begga at home was a joy for the first couple of years, but then Begga got a bit willful, and then she started being sassy and disobedient, and then she started getting angry, and now pre-adolescent Begga is whining every day about everything Mom tries to do, resisting, refusing, storming off and slamming doors, and acting as though homeschooling is a slow poison to her soul (a phrase she actually used. On the Facebook account she set up without permission. And on which she posted an unflattering camera-phone picture of her mom with a rude caption, and shared with over a thousand people, only ten of whom Begga actually knows in person).

Some moms in this situation will blame homeschooling for the discipline problem, which really isn't fair (I mean, seriously, is every public or private school child you know a paragon of disciplinary perfection?). Other moms will work to fix the discipline issue while still homeschooling, and still others will send a child in this situation to school to remove one point of contention while addressing the underlying discipline issue apart from the question of homeschooling. And all of those are great approaches.

But the approach that lets the situation continue to fester while Mom writes increasingly snarky blot or Facebook posts about the myth of homeschooling and how she's learned the hard way that homeschooling doesn't improve one's relationship with one's child, etc., is an approach that isn't doing anybody any good: not Mom, not Begga, and not the people scared away from even considering homeschooling by stories like this.

I'm sure there are a lot more hypothetical situations out there that can turn homeschooling from a delight into an almost unbearable (or fully unbearable) cross. But I sort of can't help wishing that moms experiencing these things would be just a bit more forthcoming about the fact that right now for them personally homeschooling is rather a drag (and maybe even ask for that help that we all need from time to time) instead of presenting a vision of "real" homeschooling as thinly-concealed perpetual chaos and non-stop junior amateur home demolition. Sure, it can be like that sometimes, because life can be like that sometimes, especially life with children. But I have to say exactly what I'd say to Polychronius's grandmother when she scoffs at his inability to recite Pi to seventeen decimals on command: not everything is mom's, or homeschooling's, fault.


***Hypothetical names for children from the Patron Saints website, because we have some really awesome saints' names out there, don't we?

Some Friday fun

My girls and I were looking through some old photos and memories the other day. It was a great deal of fun, and makes me think that we'd better do something about our digital memories, because otherwise we may lose them!

But a picture the girls found just hilarious, and wanted me to share here (Kitten cropped the "innocent bystanders" in my extended family out to protect their privacy), is this one:

It's a little fuzzy, but I hope you will notice that the proper female Catholic blogger does, indeed, wear a skirt while aiming her brother's air-gun at a paper target. Hopefully any sola skirtura types who see this old photo of mine will heartily approve! :)