family

Go Ahead: Be a Stick In the Mud

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

I watched the Super Bowl last night with my bride and, at times, my kids. They came and went as it held their interest, and I spent the second half contemplating why we consume this (or why it consumes us) year after year.

The game was exciting to the finish, marred at the end by an odd play call that sealed the victory for the Patriots, followed by a borderline brawl as the Seahawks saw the championship slipping away. But the halftime show and commercials were what really sparked my thinking. Unlike past years, last night there were only a couple of commercials that made me happy the younger kids had already gone downstairs to play — unfortunately, one was a movie promo, which means not only will we be seeing it for months, but there’s a feature-length version somewhere. The halftime show, on the other hand, once again had me talking to my three teens about what’s wrong with the world. It was a short, pointed conversation, since halfway through the performance, my eldest went downstairs to practice his bass and the other two voiced their agreement with my rant and tuned out (from the show, and likely me, as well).


I try to stay somewhat familiar with popular music to know what my kids are exposed to, so I watched the whole thing. Afterward I watched Facebook to see what friends, family, and the general public thought. As expected, opinion was polarized between fans of Katy Perry and Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliot (the female rapper who joined Perry onstage) and people who don’t like their styles of music. But I was struck by the number of comments in the middle — people offering some variation on the theme, “At least this year it was kid-friendly.”

Really?

Call me a prude if you wish, but Perry’s lyrics, antics, and outfits are not kid-friendly. Consider just the songs we heard last night: “This was never the way I planned, not my intention. I got so brave, drink in hand, lost my discretion. It’s not what I’m used to, just wanna try you on. I’m curious for you, caught my attention” (I Kissed a Girl). Or “We drove to Cali and got drunk on the beach. Got a motel and built a fort out of sheets. … Let you put your hands on me in my skin-tight jeans. Be your teenage dream tonight” (Teenage Dream).

Of course, these pale in comparison to Missy Elliot’s Work It lyrics, which I will not post here. Elliot’s verbal dexterity is such that I couldn’t make out most of what she said last night, but I’d like to assume that her halftime rendering of her hit song was substantially edited to even make it on the broadcast.

“Well, it could have been worse…at least she was fully clothed and not dancing suggestively, like in years past.”

Modesty comes in many forms, but crouching like an animal in a minidress, snarling, “I kissed a girl and I liked it!” is not one of them. And as I shared with the teenage boys I spoke to at the church on Wednesday, “It could be worse” is a pretty low bar.

Perry’s performance was only relatively kid-friendly, as compared to shows in years past — and that underscores the problem with relativism. This is how we lose the practice, or even the recognition, of virtue: by allowing ourselves to slip so far down the slope that a half-step back toward the top seems like innocence regained. And the entertainment industry knows their target market well. They don’t care if a 40-year-old dad enjoys the show — they want to hook my offspring, and in that respect, it’s probably better if I don’t like it. The gleaming space lion, the cutesy cartoon beach sequence, and the sandwiching of Perry’s more provocative songs between hits Roar and Firework, which even turn up in grade-school music concerts — the whole production is meant to keep the kids in the room.

Folks, like it or not, they are selling sex to your children — and not the life-giving kind. Last night’s post from the Practical Catholic Junto blog summarizes my concerns in two brief quotes:

It reaches the extremes of its destructive and eradicating power when it builds itself a world according to its own image and likeness: when it surrounds itself with the restlessness of a perpetual moving picture of meaningless shows, and with the literally deafening noise of impressions and sensations breathlessly rushing past the windows of the senses.  …

Only the combination of the intemperateness of lustfulness with the lazy inertia incapable of generating anger is the sign of complete and virtually hopeless degeneration. It appears whenever a caste, a people, or a whole civilization is ripe for its decline and fall.

— from Josef Pieper’s The Four Cardinal Virtues

When we say, “It could have been worse,” we are too comfortable. We have lost the capacity for righteous anger that could set the world straight. We’re giving in.

Late yesterday morning, I was talking to one of our deacons, who was shaking his head at the fact that families might skip religion classes to get an early start on the Super Bowl extravaganza. “I’m an old stick-in-the-mud,” he said, half-apologetically. “I’m not watching any of it. Not the game. Not the commercials. None of it.”

I suppose I’m becoming a stick in the mud, too. But perhaps such sticks will be the only thing people can grab onto to slow our descent.

Next year, I think we’ll watch Groundhog Day instead.

What’s Keeping You?

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

It’s been nearly eight months since I left the University of Minnesota to work full-time for our parish. At some point in each of my previous jobs, I looked around and asked myself, “Jim, what are you doing here?” Thankfully that has yet to happen since I joined the church staff, but I don’t doubt that it could—work is work, after all.

Faith is work, too. It’s hard sometimes to believe in a good God with so much wickedness in the world, including within the Church. It’s hard to do the right thing when so few people agree on what the right thing is, even within the Church. It’s hard to pray or read or learn more about Jesus, to drag ourselves to Confession, or to haul the family to Mass each Sunday when so many Catholics just…don’t.

I’ll bet at least once you’ve sat in church, looked at Father and the people gathered around you, and asked, “What am I doing here?” It’s a worthwhile question to consider. According to data collected by the Pew Research Center, not only do most U.S. Catholics say they attend Mass once a month or less, but many disagree with the Church’s fundamental teachings regarding marriage, contraception, and the sanctity of life. Yet they persist in calling themselves Catholic. What’s keeping them in the Church?

Well, what’s keeping you? Is it habit or family tradition that brings us here week after week? That makes us seek the sacraments for our children? Is it a hope we hold out for the next generation, even though we may have lost it for our own? Is it a hollow ache in our chest that insists there must be something more to this life? Or is it the peace that radiates from altar, the tabernacle, the Eucharist—peace the world cannot provide?

This month the adults in our LIFT classes focused on the Mass and Holy Communion. We heard the deeply personal testimony of one of our youth ministry volunteers on her own struggles with her Catholic faith—and ultimately, on how she could never turn her back on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Jesus said, “This is my body…This is the cup of my blood”—and so it is. Jesus is God, and God’s words are the very words of Creation. They bring about exactly what they say.

I’ve said more than once that if we as Catholics truly understood who was present in the tabernacle, nothing could keep us from Him. We would fill the pews to overflowing, bring family and friends to a personal encounter with Jesus. We would gladly sacrifice to spend time at His feet, listening to Him, learning from Him, serving Him.

And yet I don’t do these things. We don’t do these things.

The red lamp above the tabernacle signifies that He’s always there. What’s keeping you?

Blogger’s Note: This article appears in the Sunday, Jan. 25, church bulletin .

LIFT Links: Family Faith Formation Through Sacramental Living

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If we want to raise Catholic children and keep them that way, it’s important that we aren’t just going through the motions. This week, how about a few links to help us be more intentional Catholic parents who lead our children to Christ by the sacraments and example?

  • Show Your Faith, Even at Work. When I worked for the University of Minnesota, I often felt as though I were behind enemy lines. I found myself anticipating conflict and constantly wondering if I were outspoken enough about my faith. Three separate priests, on three separate occasions, gave me the same advice: It’s not about picking fights with people who feel differently — it’s about being a known, visible, practicing Catholic. If people see you living your faith, they’ll be drawn to it, and if nothing else, they’ll realize that Catholics are all “bad.” For advice and inspiration on this topic, check out “Five Ways to Show Catholic Courage at Work.”
  • Make Up Their Minds For Them. Some parents worry they are somehow hampering their children’s personal development and freedom by raising a them Catholic. The First Things article “Should Children Make Up Their Own Minds About Religion” makes the case that, no matter how you raise your child, you are shaping their reality for them, and rightly so — because they aren’t equipped to do it for themselves. It is important to give them the right framework early, that they may choose wisely when it comes time to choose for themselves.
  • Mass Is Essential! This month’s adult lessons are focused on the Mass and the Eucharist — the “source and summit” of our faith. How serious is it to miss Sunday Mass? Years ago, I went to confession with a long list of sins, including the fact that I has missed Mass while traveling. When I finished my list, the priest ignored everything but that missed Mass. “You know that the Mass and the Eucharist are meant to be an experience of the heavenly banquet here on earth, right?” he asked. I said yes. “And when you choose not to go to heaven, where do you choose to go?” I understood. God asks us to give Him one day a week — a small price to pay for our existence! For more on how to share this reality with your children, read, “Keepin’ It Real: Why Sunday Mass Is Important” on the LifeTeen website.
  • Stop Worrying and Take a Load Off. For a blessing as big as the sacrament of Confession, we sure have a lot of anxiety about it. “Should I go or not? Is my list long enough? Too long? Face-to-face or behind-the-screen? Will Father know me? Judge me?” For a great insider’s perspective on what happens in the confessional, relax and read Fr. Mike Schmitz’s article “Inside the Confessional: What Is It Like For a Priest?“
…then pack up the family and head to the church. The sacraments — and the Savior — await!

Greetings from the North Pole, Part XII

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

Blogger’s Note: For several years now, we have received a Christmas letter from an Elfin correspondent, Siberius Quill. This is the 2014 installment.

Christmas 2014
My dearest children!
“Another turn around the Sun; another Year begun and done—just like that!” as our Head Astronomer, Nebular Farseer, would say. Just last week, he and Pendulus “Tick” Chronin were debating, over cocoa and gingersnaps, whether the years merely seem shorter or actually are. Your human Stargazers actually claim the years are lengthening by a millisecond or two each century; Tick claims we’re losing time, but Nebbs is on the fence—and each year, when the Chief Timekeeper marks the Year’s End on the Great Chronometer, Nebbs blames Tick’s itchy trigger-finger for any loss.
Truth be told, it is conceivable that Tick’s finger is too fast. I’ve told you before that he is markedly slow for an Elf, save his eye and finger—and indeed, these traits runs in his family: his great-grandmother, Sedentary Chronin (née Scattershot), rarely left her little cottage, but was the Best Wingshot north of the Circle, and crack with a Rifle, too! Why, she was known to harvest wild Ptarmigans and snowshoe Hares out her bedroom window, then send Bob-Catchit, her half-Lynx housecat, to fetch them in for supper—truly!
So the Debate continues, year upon year, and Christmas Day has come again—a Much-Needed Feast, indeed, in this catty-whompus World! The Old Man has been jolly, as always, but has pressed us Elves most intensely this Winter—such a need there is for Peace and Goodwill as he has not seen in Many Centuries! Peace has been the particular prayer of our Good Pastor, Fr. Aloysius Lamplighter, too, this Advent, and may it resound the World ’Round. Amen!
I am, like your Dear Parents, so grateful these days for Miss Lily, who has kept your Family young and the Spirit of the Season bright in your Home. She is Spoilt, to be sure, but the Fault is no one’s—she can hardly spoil herself, and who can blame the Rest of you for falling prey to her Charms and dark eyes. Your Dad has suggested she might become a “Mary,” as she calls the good religious sisters of Your World. Whether ’tis true or not remains to be Seen, but Sr. Providence Goodpath, Director of Vocations of the Sisters of Perpetual Winter, has looked in on her and insists she will draw people to The Incarnation, regardless!
You elder four continue to persist in Goodness and grow in Virtue, year upon year; nevertheless we continue to look in on you. Master Brendan, I am struck by the Seriousness with which you are seeking your own Good Path and remind you to treat your Special Someone with the same or greater care than you show your Own Soul. Master Gabriel, I am impressed by your persistence in All you do and the Strength of your prayers, which echo both over the Earth and in Heaven, as well! For you, Miss Emma, there will always be room at the Inn, and welcome: your Music and your Baking warm the hearts around you, and your Beauty and Joy are infectious (in only the Best Way). Master Trevor, you are becoming a Fine Young Man with your own Callings and Interests. Strick Thumpertink, our Lead Percussionist, has heard you practicing—keep it up, and you’ll be welcome in our Drum Corps anytime!
Speaking of Time and the Flight of it, Marcus Milestone (Monitor’s son, who works Birthdays and other High-Sugar Special Occasions for the Watcher Corps) stopped by the Other Day to remind me on his Elder’s behalf that young Master Trevor has reached Double Digits this year—a Momentous Age, to be sure, and one I’m sure you’ll recall entails Special Responsibilities toward the Keeping of Christmas. Speak to your Father in a Quiet Moment, and he will, no doubt, explain. Marcus also noted Lily’s recent Birthday celebrations and was impressed by the Love shown by friends not her own. How kind they are to mark her Third Year in such a Splendid Fashion!
On that note: Bishop Nicholas trusts you will be Happy with your gifts this year, and gives his Blessing to you—which, from a Saint, is not Insignificant! A Very Happy Christmas to you all!
Yours Still and Always,

Q

Siberius Quill

P.S. All of us here, but Dr. Vendy most of all, send our Condolences on the loss of your dear Schnauzer, Puck. He was the Very Definition of a Good Dog!