The True Story of a Mother Whose Teenager Cooks the Family Dinner Every Night

Last updated on: December 27, 2014 at 3:26 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Speaking of feeding things, today over at CatholicMom.com I tell the riveting tale of what happens when you put your cash on the table and trust your 14-year-old to feed the family.

With great trepidation we began last month a project that seemed like a good idea when we thought it up it two years earlier: The Summer of Cooking. The theory was that by giving our rising 9th grader responsibility for cooking for the family all summer, he’d learn how to plan meals, grocery shop, budget, and cook. As the start date for this brilliant strategy drew near, we were gripped with the fear that we’d spend all summer eating nothing but Ramen noodles and waffles.

The story-behind-the story: I bought my son the waffle maker for Christmas, because I figured waffles for dinner would triple the menu items. He also came into this experiment knowing how to make grilled cheese.

We were motivated to try the experiment because we knew the dreadful consequences of graduating high school without a culinary education:

. . . Fast forward ten years, and we were still, as a young married couple with a growing family, trying to figure out what to make for dinner. When you are taking care of a newborn and a toddler, it’s hard enough to get dinner on at all — let alone finally learn how to cook nutritious but simple and affordable meals.

So we came up with a plan. The summer before 9th grade would be the Summer of Cooking.

We knew it might be terrible. We feared there might be ugly scenes of parents sneaking in carry-out late at night after the children were all in bed. But we put on a facade of courage, handed over the cash, and set the boy free to feed us.

You can find out here the details of the plan, and what the odds are I’ll lose my pleasantly-plump status any time soon.

Artwork by Cornelis Norbertus Gysbrechts (fl. 1660–1683) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Adult Catechesis on the Thorny Issues that Make People Hate the Church

Last updated on: May 5, 2015 at 6:57 pm By Jennifer Fitz

When I returned to the Catholic faith, I landed in the hands of the right priest. He heard my confession, and then pointed me in the direction I needed to go. “Does your marriage need to be convalidated? We can take care of that. Let’s see . . . I like to offer NFP instruction to all my marriage-prep couples, here’s this free intro session coming up, you might be interested in it.” Gracious, pastoral, and completely confident in the truth of the Catholic faith. Is it easy? Not always. But that’s nothing to be afraid of. The truth will set you free.

People don’t arrive at the doors of the Church a finished product. It was a year later before my marriage was finally convalidated, and in the meantime I can’t say I was the model disciple. I was eager, sincere, and in love with God, but I didn’t do everything as I should have.

I didn’t walk out of that first confession with a perfectly-formed conscience.

We learn with practice. Father keeps teaching the truth, and we keep getting closer and closer to it.

Desperation Breeds Ignorance

Why does what ought to be a simple process — teaching people the Catholic faith — so easily go awry?

There is pressure in parish life to keep the programs running at all costs. Find a warm body, a willing volunteer — someone, anyone — because parishioners are counting on you to deliver the expected ministry. Religious education, we tell ourselves, is so important that it hardly matters who’s teaching, so long as we have an instructor in the room every week. They can use the teacher’s manual if they need help, right?

In that false sense of urgency, we staff the parish religious education program with catechists who don’t know the faith. When it becomes apparent that the instructor is out of his depth, the situation is awkward. There is a strong unspoken pressure not to upset the volunteers, not to question the rights of someone who has already been approved — in however slapdash a fashion — not to be seen as the one “running an inquisition.”

Internally, the logistics of paying parish staff adds a layer of pressure against reform. The existing staff are nearly always valued employees who bring many good talents and a genuine love for their work to the office each morning. Because budgets are tight, parishes are staffed with a core of paid leaders. It’s a managers-only human resources chart. There is no option for shifting this employee over to another department, or adding extra staff to a project to round out the talent pool. Every employee either stays or goes. Every department is thus run on the sole charism of the one paid staff member who is put in its charge.

Meanwhile, there is external pressure against preventative measures. There has been public backlash — featured in the national news — when a diocese insists that all its educators believe and practice the Catholic faith. What ought to be a routine shrug-of-the-shoulders situation, hardly worthy of mention, is instead a subject of national debate. It seems the general public feels it has a right to the running of a religion it doesn’t even believe.

This is the context in which adult faith-formation programs are taught (if they are taught at all), and children’s faith formation programs form each successive generation in the faith.

Love, Courage, and the Catholic Faith

The solution is simple and comprehensive: Put your Catholic on.

You don’t get the luxury of grown-ups arriving at your parish fully-formed and ready to go. They must be taught the faith from the pulpit, from the choir loft, and from their every encounter within the walls of the parish. Patiently, lovingly; distinguishing unequivocal welcome and respect from the firm mercy that is the sorting of truth from error. It is a grave sin to use the pewsitter’s ignorance as an excuse for scorn. Of course we are ignorant. Teach us.

For pastors, if ever the courage of St. Michael were needed, now is that time. Sure, go ahead, dream longingly of a nice quick martyrdom at the guillotine. Sorry, Fathers, you get to live with parish politics instead. You who are the shepherds of souls must gird your loins, grip your staves, and call your sheep. This isn’t some sweet pastoral scene out of Kinkade. You must make the decision that in your parish, only the Catholic faith will be taught. You must make the decision to teach it in your sermons, thoroughly, to insist upon it in your liturgies, and to require it of your parish leaders and educators.

It is right and good, Fathers, that you are patient and gentle with those poor souls who come to you week after week still barely managing to even want to be Catholic, but trying their best all the same. But of your leaders? Your catechists? You are the one who has handed over a portion of your authority to them. You are the one who is accountable for what they teach. Man-up this side of the grave, or pay on the other.

Of Whom Shall I Be Afraid?

For anyone with half a heart, the prospect of confrontation is unpleasant and unwanted. We don’t want to risk hurting the people we love. We didn’t choose to put this kind, giving, but utterly unprepared soul into leadership, it just sort of happened. (Yes: Catechesis is leadership. Your unpaid kindergarten teacher is a leader. Don’t forget that.) And now we must bring up this or that terrible correction, and bring it up knowing that we do not have the wider culture on our side; we don’t even have the opinion of the parish on our side.

It is horrid work. Work that is the fruit of desperate times.

Were evangelization the work of mere men, we would fail. Were we alone in this, acting on our own authority, our own rights, our own vision, our parishes would certainly fall apart.

But the battle is not ours. It is the Lord’s.

This post is part of the Patheos Symposium on the Extraordinary Bishop’s Synod on the Family. Click around the Catholic Channel for more columns on all things Family, Faith, and the Running of the Church.

Artwork: James Tissot [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Should You Be Writing Right Now? And What About the Kids? And What About a Conference This Summer?

Last updated on: June 19, 2015 at 6:53 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Kathy Schiffer reminds you that if, “I’d like to be a writer someday” applies to you, consider attending the Catholic Writers Conference this summer. It’s in metro-Chicago this year, and the location varies from year to year, so if you’re in the upper-midwest or central Canada come July 30-August 1, this is your year.

Promises to be an excellent event. From the press release:

Speakers at this year’s conference include authors Lisa Hendey (BOOK OF SAINTS FOR CATHOLIC MOMS), award-winning science fiction/fantasy author Gene Wolfe (THE NEW BOOK OF THE SUN), Inspirational Speaker Lizzie Velasquez, Gary Zimak (FROM FEAR TO FAITH), Claudia Volkman (Editor, Servant Books), Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle (EWTN, CATHOLIC PRAYER BOOK FOR MOTHERS), Ellen Gable Hrkach (STEALING JENNY), blogger Rebecca Hamilton (PUBLIC CATHOLIC-PATHEOS) and many others.

The conference will give authors an opportunity to meet personally with publishing professionals and pitch their writing projects. Some participating publishers are Ignatius Press, Ave Maria Press, and Servant Books. In addition, attendees have the opportunity to sign up for fiction critique workshop with award-wining short fiction writer Arthur Powers, a non-fiction critique group with Nancy Cook Ward and attend a writing workshop with novelist John Desjarlais. Information for these events can be found on the conference website.

Go here for more info, and here to register. Reminder that if you already have a ticket to the Catholic Marketing Network trade show (exhibitor or attendee), you get to participate in the Catholic Writers Conference as part of the package. And vice-versa – a CWC ticket gets you into all the free trade show events, and you can choose to purchase tickets to the various dinners and breakfasts and so forth as well.

Should Every Catholic Disciple Have a Blog?

We cover blogging every year at CWC, and each year we get a little more advanced. In early-years, the question was, “What is a blog, anyway?” No more. Here’s a piece from Canadian Catholic on Five Reasons Every Disciple Needs a Blog.

I don’t actually think that every faithful Christian needs to blog. But if you enjoy writing, blogging is a great way to practice writing for an audience. If you start small, it’s a zero-cost way to get going as a writer, and you can upgrade later if it gets serious.

Given the tremendous popularity of certain mega-bloggers and news sites, you might be wondering whether it’s worth your time to keep blogging (which you love, I presume) if you have only a small audience. Let me encourage you: Small blogs do the most work for discipleship.

Sure, you only have five readers and two regular commenters. So what? You wanted to write what you were writing anyway, and now you can personally connect with those handful of souls who are looking for exactly what wisdom God has given you.

You think that’s small? Our Lord didn’t think it was small. He would have as soon died for just one of your readers as for the entire world.

So if you love your work as a blogger, don’t lose heart because you don’t have thousands of shares. Be grateful for the chance to reach exactly the people who needed to hear what you had to say.

How Do I Get My Child Into Writing?

A friend recently shared this piece from the Atlantic on the importance of unstructured play to your child’s intellectual development. I think this is one of the values of stay-at-home parenting: When you have a large group of children in a classroom or after-school program, they need structure to prevent Lord of the Flies from breaking out. That’s just how it is. When kids have trusted adults available but not running the show, it provides the combination of emotional support and connection kids need, but also the freedom to play around with the world that they need, too.

I’m not opposed to all structured, classroom-based learning, and I’ve got the book to prove it. Nor do I have any illusions that every child can have the option of many long days devoted to unstructured, parent-at-home play time. But your child is home some of the time. So do what you can to make a good chunk of that time boring. And then leave things around (good toys, ~~recycling~~ art supplies, balls, sticks, dirt, cookbooks) that your child can use.

Top Secret Parenting Thing: You have to unplug the computer, the TV, the iMachine, all that stuff, if you want to make this time happen.

If you want to know whether your child has a future as a writer, see what happens if you give the kid a spiral notebook with his name on it, a pile of decent pens, and a whole lot of privacy.

Is there a Writers Conference for Kids?

Providing support for Catholic educators is one of the longterm goals of the Catholic Writers Guild. To that end, if you aren’t upper Midwest but you are Southeast, and you have a child you want to teach writing to, consider attending the Midlands Homeschool Conference. Even if you aren’t a homeschooler. It’s July 24-26th, and in addition to the many other topics being covered, there’s a huge writing track.

The Catholic Writers Guild will have a few southeastern authors attending (to wit: Michelle Buckman, Deanna Klingel, Fr. Jeffry Kirby, and Christian LeBlanc), all of whom are fabulous with kids. We’ll have giveaways from a few supporters who will be with us in spirit, including the likes of Elizabeth Scalia and Tuscany Press. Also, you should go just so you can heckle Chris Tollefsen. Kidding, kidding. You should go so you can bring him gifts of beer.

It’ll be fun. It’s not expensive. If you’re in the region and looking for Kids-Conference-South, that’s your one.

Modesty as the Language of Mutual Respect

Last updated on: June 19, 2015 at 6:58 pm By Jennifer Fitz

“I just hate it when people tell me what to wear.”

That’s the open admission of a number of women joining in the backlash against the clothing police this summer. Between my native hard-headedness and the reports of egregious abuses committed in the name of “modesty”, I’m sympathetic. As much as we try to patiently forebear and ignore when the control freaks circle, eventually one reaches a limit. One more comment about the evils of elbows and I’m going to stuff that 3/4 sleeve cardigan down your throat.

In that vein, let me quickly affirm a few truths about modesty:

Yes, other people must learn to practice self-control in word, thought, and deed.
Yes, there are cultural differences that influence what is and is not considered modest behavior.
No, it’s not my responsibility to bear unjust burdens because you want an excuse to behave like a boor.

These things are true. And these are the reasons that modesty, in all its forms, is about mutual respect.

There Is No Modesty in Heaven

Modesty is an accommodation to our fallen world. It is an act of consideration. If there were not envy, greed, avarice, and pride, we would not need to worry about whether we are flaunting our wealth. In Heaven, you don’t have to hide the jewels in your crown. What you possess is yours, rightfully yours, and no one will be able to accuse you of showing off if our Lord decides to robe you in haute couture. (I guess it’s all haute, up there.)

In Heaven, there will be no adultery. You won’t have to worry that skipping off to a quiet cloud for a long, fascinating one-on-one conversation with that cute guy in the glorified stigmata is going to tempt one of you to break your vows.

Part of your eternal reward will be an absolute certainty that you have arrived at your highest calling. If your neighbor in the next Heavenly mansion has some hot-shot solo in the Choir of Angels & Other Persons, you won’t secretly burn with jealousy and wish he’d just SHUT UP ALREADY as he goes on and on about that tricky piece they’re going to be performing at the next banquet.

You’ll be free of all that. People won’t have to act with modesty around you. You won’t need them to.

Here On Earth, We Show Respect for the Weaknesses of Others

Because humans are so varied in their strengths and weaknesses, what constitutes modest behavior varies from one situation to the next. My mother-in-law might reasonably brag for half an hour about the accomplishments of her eldest granddaughter (my niece), and I’m all ears. I love, love, love those stories. Thrilled to be associated with such a neat person. Always glad to hear more good.

My same mother-in-law will, in Christian charity and humane common sense, refrain from going on and on about her accomplished granddaughter in the company of the colleague who wishes desperately for grandchildren and never had any, or the young client whose best friend was killed in a terrible accident the weekend before graduation. In a circle of fellow grandmothers, she’ll practice a moderate middle — sharing a few stories, and then letting others have their turn.

This is modesty. A frank tell-all openness in some circles, a careful and generous erring on the side of consideration in a few unusual cases, and a middle ground — neither giving away too much nor too little — in most circumstances.

Modesty Always Relates to Another

You can commit many sins locked alone in your bathroom, but immodesty is not one of them. Modesty is always with regard to another.

Because modesty is relational, the same action can have vastly different meaning depending on the audience. A man might, among his colleagues, confess to his money troubles in all humility: “I’m having the hardest time finding a good tax accountant who really knows how to handle estates in the $5-10 million range. Any ideas?” The exact same statement, disclosed to the parish men’s group in an honest attempt to relate to the fellow who just asked for prayers about his financial situation, will be perceived as the height of impertinence and callousness if his neighbor’s financial situation is one of desperate poverty.

We cannot, of course, know the secret struggles of every person we encounter. My brother was on a camping trip with a group from his wife’s work (civil engineers – they play in the dirt and get paid for it), and a colleague announced she’d baked a cake to celebrate a special anniversary. My brother is an Eagle Scout, always prepared: “Wonderful! Hey, I’ve got a bottle of wine in the truck!” Awkward silence. It was the anniversary of her fifth year of sobriety.

In our encounters with others, we begin at a usually-reliable middle. If we discover an unusual need for discretion, we scale back and tone down. Not out of fearful shame, but out of simple courtesy. We let the other, the one with the significant struggle, give us cues about how much or how little accommodation he needs.

Modesty is Not Slavery

Our respect for the weaknesses of others doesn’t require us to live in some prison of suppressed existence, with the passive-aggressive “victim” acting as warden and torturer-in-chief.

Mrs. Childless has been suffering from infertility for years. We strike a balance in our conversation, neither refusing to ever mention Jennifer’s Children Whose Existence Must Not Be Acknowledged Lest It Cause Mrs. C Undue Pain, nor feeling that every time some slight inconvenience of motherhood attends, the first thing I should do is call Mrs. C and whine for half an hour. Mrs. C doesn’t get to march into every cocktail party and loudly announce, “There Will Be No Photographs of New Babies Displayed, and Pregnant Mothers Must Stay in the Back Bedroom.”

To the contrary: As best she is able, Mrs. C will delight in her friends’ happiness, and rejoice in the beauty and life that each new baby brings to the world. And we who have been so blest will, in turn, take heed when Mrs. C admits that sometimes it’s all a little too much, and there are a few small kindnesses we could show her during moments of weakness, when grief overwhelms.

Sexual Attraction is Not Lust

It is normal and good to want to earn a decent living for your family. It is vile to be consumed by greed. It is normal and good to desire a large family. It is vile to be consumed by envy. It is normal and good for a woman to be attracted to a man who shows her kindness, respect, and admiration. It is vile for her to abandon her husband in order to run off with such a man. It is normal and good for a man to find a woman’s beauty riveting. It is vile for him to be consumed with lust.

Somewhere in between perfect detachment and vile sin is the range of ordinary human weakness in which modesty operates.

If we were all perfectly detached from the goods of this world, we could with perfect equanimity rejoice when our friends feasted, with no regard for our own lack. We could appreciate the kindness and beauty of others, with never a moment’s temptation towards impurity. It would be Heaven.

Modesty is not the response to greed, envy, adultery and lust. No amount of modesty can keep these sins from consuming the one who consents to them.

Modesty is, rather, the set of kindnesses we show others in recognition of their striving after virtue:

He doesn’t want to be jealous of your wealth, so it would be helpful if you’d put the Rolex away before you came to serve lunch at the homeless shelter.
She doesn’t want to be tempted to leave her taciturn, doltish-but-faithful husband, so it would be helpful if you, her single-again male boss with the charming smile, didn’t bring her flowers every week in appreciation of her hard work at the office, then take her out to lunch, alone, and listen for an hour to all her troubles.
He doesn’t want to be thinking about your breasts during Mass, even though they are beautiful enough that yes, your guardian angel smiles beatifically as they heave when you belt out the Sanctus; perhaps you could wear a shirt that covers them all the way?

Does it mean you must dress in rags, conceal every sign of God’s blessing in your life, and cover every hint of masculine or feminine charm, lest some poor soul be led into depravity unwittingly?

By no means. I repeat: By no means.

Modesty Reveals by Concealing

Several years ago I had the pleasure of meeting up with a group of internet friends at a real-life retreat. Because we had known each other for years, and because we had met on one of those moms’ forums where ladies share all kinds of prayer requests and personal struggles, I had the odd experience of meeting “on the outside” people I’d only previously known “on the inside”.

In addition to confirming that I’m horrible at remembering both names and faces, but that I rarely forget a good story, I had the surreal revelation of the difference between what we think we know and what is true. This one was recently widowed. That one had buried a stillborn son. This one was newly-engaged after a bitter divorce and painful annulment. From the outside you could see none of these things. You had to get to know the person.

Modesty is about subduing the externals that distract so that we can first know the internals that matter. Mr. Rich isn’t “Wealthy, handsome, picture-perfect family.” He’s a man with a story of love, loss, frustration and small triumphs. Mrs. Successful isn’t “Hot shot corporate lawyer job, private jet, vacations in Monaco.” She’s a woman with friends she loves, a mother she dotes on, and a spiritual life she’s trying to nurture as best she can in a difficult environment. Miss Ravishing isn’t “Perky breasts, great legs, cute butt.” She’s a girl trying to figure out her vocation, get along with her stepfather, and pass AP Chemistry.

When we push the externals in front of others, we create a fence around ourselves. We create a display that distracts people from seeing the real us. It’s much easier to be “that flamboyant ballet dancer hung like a gorilla” than to be a man who dulls his loneliness and insecurity with long hours in the gym, and wishes he had just one good friend who could support and respect him. It’s easier to be “The girl who gets straight A’s” than the girl who wishes people would quit putting her on a pedestal and start helping her with her eating disorder.

The paradox of modesty is that in deferring to the weaknesses of others, we show respect for ourselves.

Painting by Edgar Degas [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Fortnight for Freedom Begins Tomorrow – What Have You Been Writing?

Last updated on: June 19, 2015 at 7:03 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Over at the Catholic Writers Guild, there’s an open thread for posting your existing body of work on the topic of religious liberty:

The Fortnight for Freedom begins tomorrow! We’ll be hosting several columns on that theme over the next several weeks. If you’ve written on religious liberty, please post a link here so everyone can enjoy your work!

Feel free to head over to CWG and share your links. Doesn’t need to be Catholic, by the way, this is a human rights issue, not a strictly theological issue.

(Okay: If your essay is about how Catholics don’t deserve religious freedom, that would not be a popular piece to share. And no, I don’t agree with the commenter who proposed this religious liberty thing is anti-Catholic. Maybe that’s a topic I should respond to this fortnight.)

I’ll try to write some fresh human-y rights stuff over the next couple weeks to get you feeling all patriotic come the 4th. Meanwhile, for newcomers to this blog, a quick scroll through my “human rights” category of posts picked up a handful of selections that have touched on religious liberty themes:

It’s Not Friendship if It Can’t Withstand Disagreement

Atheists for Religious Freedom

On Dissidents, Freedom and the Eich Case: The Essay You Need to Read

The Truth and Meaning of Sexuality: Reform Begins in the Church

Freedom of Speech? Oh Hush.

Enjoy!

Oh and a hint: I tweet 90% of my favorite internet reading at JenFitz_Reads. Lots of human rights stuff ends up there. I’m not real chatty on Twitter, but if you tweet me a good link and tell me what the topic is / why I should be interested, there’s a decent chance I’ll eventually have time to take a look at it. So if that’s the sort of thing you enjoy, now you know where to find it.

(Weirdly, even though I love love love 99.9% of Dr. Boli’s corpus, I tweet him only rarely. I figure if you were smart, you’d subscribe directly.)

Transgender Children: What is a Christian Parent to Do?

Last updated on: May 7, 2015 at 2:33 pm By Jennifer Fitz

With assorted news articles profiling the lives and stories of various transgender children, the question arises: How should parents respond if their children express a desire to identify with the opposite sex?

My comments here aren’t medical advice — and if you are seeking medical advice, know that you’ll get all kinds of answers from the useless or the dangerous to the truly helpful. May the Lord bless you with lots of the truly helpful.

Rather, what follows are grounded in my experience as a parent and the few hints we can pull together from Catholic moral teaching. Give my comments some thought, but bring your own heart and brain to the problem as well. You’re the parent.

***

In my experience with gender and sex troubles, I’ve seen three broad categories of “gender confusion” problems. I’ll address each in turn, starting with the most common and ending with the most difficult.

1. Not Actually a Sex Thing

Here’s a story from a friend of mine: Her two-year-old son, a sweet, orderly child with a cherubic disposition (when he isn’t terrifying his mother by jumping down the staircase), came to his mother one day and asked to wear a pretty dress like his favorite toddler girl friend wore to church on Sundays.

Mom ignored her inner panic button, and asked a few questions. What they determined: He wanted to dress up. To wear formalwear. Something snazzy.

“Well, darling, you know they make dress clothes for boys. Would you like that? Would you like to get dressed up for church?”

He nodded and gave his charming little toddler “Yes.”

Mom produced a dapper bow-tie and vest, and they put together a suitably stylish outfit. Everyone was happy: This was, in fact, exactly what her little boy wanted.

I’ve seen this in countless variations: She wants to be a boy scout not a girl scout — it turns out the boys are going on more interesting trips, and she has a taste for action and adventure. He’s more comfortable with the girls than with the boys — turns out he doesn’t like being shoved around by the brutes in his class. All her best friends are boys — turns out she’s the only girl in her advanced math group, so she sits with boys most of the day.

None of these are gender issues, not at all. To treat them as “gender problems” would be to create a new problem without solving the real problem. Address the real problem.

2. I Don’t Fit the Mold

One of the things I loved about playing in the SCA was the brilliant combination of egalitarianism and complementarity, substance and style. You could be a manly-man — hard to top beating other people with sticks for that — and still be courtly, poetic, artistic, and exquisitely dressed. Because the SCA ranges over a period of a thousand years, no matter your personality there is bound to be a culture or story that expresses your inner-you in a way that modern stereotypes just don’t.

For all the lip service we give to “being yourself”, our culture can be as dreadful a straightjacket as any other. If you don’t fit the bland sports-n-stuff “boy” mold, people assume you’re gay. If you don’t fit the hyper-sexualized “girl” mold, people assume you’re a prude. There are a few slots open in acceptable alternative categories, but heaven help you if you’re a high school student who doesn’t fit one of the approved cliques. What if you’re not a “drama club person” or a “band person” or “goth” or “preppy” or “athletic” but you’re just a person? A complex, nuanced, utterly unique person?

In the same way, it’s possible for a girl to identify most with her father and brothers, or a boy to identify most with his mother and sisters, for simple lack of a same-gender role model who resonates. If you don’t fit in with all the guys or all the girls, and you do seem to fit in well with the “wrong” gender friends and family around you, it’s easy to have a passing thought of, “I should have been born a ________.”

Again, the response is not to panic or to read more into the situation than is warranted. Instead, look for ways to respond to the real need your child has to spend time and build friendships with “people like me”. The cure for a boy who likes too many “girl-hobbies” isn’t to shame him into forced-football; it’s to find a friend who is both comfortable in his masculinity and also takes an interest in the same kinds of endeavors. Many pursuits that we think of as being “girl things” or “boy things” during childhood turn into gender-neutral occupations later in life, even if they are more often pursued by one sex or the other.

Likewise, as much as we can delight in, say, the lovely femininity of a young woman who dresses in pretty, stylish clothing, it’s important that we don’t reduce our understanding of male-female complementarity into some crude stereotypes, as if authentic womanhood all comes down to swishy skirts, lace doilies, lipstick and a good manicure. Ask yourself: What would Laura Ingalls do? Then go climb a tree or shoot a bear or something.

3. Deep Seated, Undeniable Sexual Tendencies

Disorders of sexual arousal happen. I won’t theorize on the causes, and for practical purposes the causes don’t much matter. Because, I joke around a little here, relax, please allow me to be purely hypothetical, a pickle-fetish isn’t a “thing” in modern America (okay, maybe it is, I don’t want to know), if your child has a deep seated tendency to get aroused at the smell of pickle relish, you’ll probably never find out. He’ll just feel like a freak and keep his mouth shut. More important to know: Certain disorders of arousal are so openly despised that if your child experiences one, he may well hate himself.

Because transgender and homosexual orientations are both accepted and widely-practiced cultural identities, if your child experiences such an inclination there is going to be a strong pull to run with it, and claim the identity and the community that go with; we all want to belong to a community where we are accepted. Know that there is a small but real and growing community of Christians (and others) who openly admit they experience same-sex attraction or gender-disorder, but choose to live chastely.

All children need, at the appropriate point in their education and under their parents’ supervision, to be told how to respond to these kinds of problems. Self-hatred is never the solution. Chastity is the rule for all — there are no special exceptions. We all do our best to live chastely.

It’s important to both recognize the difficulties that may arise, and at the same time not make too big a thing of it. If you aren’t attracted to people of the opposite sex, perhaps marriage is not your vocation. You aren’t exactly alone in lacking such a vocation, and God will make the most of the wonderful person that is you regardless of your state in life. But the fact that you struggle with this powerful and difficult-to-quell sexual desire or inner conflict does not define you. It’s a thing you have to deal with, but it’s not you. You are something much bigger than this or that difficulty in your life.

Closing comments because this is an exquisitely sensitive subject, and I don’t want my readers (of any persuasion or opinion) to be attacked in the combox. If you find it helpful, super. If it’s not helpful, please keep looking around, and quietly decline to share this one.

Art courtesy of Wikimedia [Public Domain]

Evil is Easy – updated twice

Last updated on: June 19, 2015 at 7:15 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Fresh reports of horror out of Ireland, these far grimmer than what I had seen previously (which were grim enough). Is there something special about the Irish that makes them so cruel? No, there is not. It’s not an Irish thing, it’s not a Catholic thing, it’s not a nun thing. It’s an evil thing.

On the question of religion, my advice is simple: If your religion commands you to commit evil acts, it’s time to get a new religion. What happened in this orphanage was sin writ large, nasty, and unabashed. It can in no way be justified or excused or in any manner considered consistent with the Catholic faith.

UPDATE #1: For a broader perspective on the social conditions surrounding this incident, see: Tuam children’s home – salting the earth

UPDATE #2: More fact-checking sheds new light.

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I assume, dear reader, that you aren’t starving and torturing captives as you read this now. I’m not either. Neither were the many people who said and did nothing as these atrocities were being committed under their noses.

What you and I need to fear, then, is not our tolerance of cruelty towards Irish unwed mothers of the mid-20th century, but our tolerance of some other horror that perhaps we can’t even see.

Evil is Ordinary

When I read the first accounts out the Irish laundries several years ago, I was struck by how similar many of the reports were to life on a subsistence farm in the American South in the same era. There were accounts of gross abuse, but there were also travesties that were eerily like something out of Little House on the Prairie. Hard discipline, heavy labor, not much food. That was life around the world for many people from loving, nurturing, perfectly innocent homes.

It occurred to me then that if you’d grown up never having quite enough to eat, your body always aching, the cold always biting, you’d be a very poor judge of what constituted reasonable conditions for a group home.

That’s not an excuse, it’s a caution. You and I have evil we are used to. Venial sins, or merely difficult situations, that are so much part of the fabric of our lives that it clouds our judgement. Grave sins we might not even realize are sins. Our capacity for recognizing evil is dimmed. What ought to horrify us does not.

Evil Smiles

But they were the nuns! But it was the parish priest! Our family doctor! The kindergarten teacher! My neighbor!

Evil puts on a good face. Whether it’s the convict claiming he’s just a poor, simple man wrongly accused, or the upstanding citizen pointing to his accomplishments and honors to prove his innocence, evil always looks for a good facade. Not reasons, not evidence. An aura. “How could you say that about me?” come the hurt protests. “Anyone who says that is just jealous, or ungrateful, or trying to get back at me! After all I’ve done for you!”

I once told my husband that I’d rather live in a working class neighborhood than an expensive one, because wealthy crooks are better at covering over. At least among the uncouth, the crazy shows itself pretty quickly.

Evil Gets Along

When you live alongside evil, there comes a time when you can no longer pretend. It is good to avoid rash judgments. It is good to think the best of others, to look for that charitable explanation of our neighbor’s lapses. We’re all human after all, none of us perfect. Sooner or later, though, the evidence is in your face. Undeniable.

How then are you going to respond?

What evil wants is for you to decide that “getting along” is the highest virtue. Make peace with evil. Live with it. That’s the temptation.

Unless the evil is hurting you, personally, in a grave and unavoidable way, the temptation to get along and go along is very, very powerful.

Evil Demands Sacrifice

It is a powerful temptation because to do otherwise is to risk losing everything. It costs, and costs dearly, to fight evil.

Are you willing to risk your job? Your family life? Your parish? Your community? What are you willing to see destroyed rather than cooperate with evil? Even your very life, or the life of someone you love more than life itself, may be on the line.

Are there rewards in Heaven for this sacrifice? Yes, and yes with abundance overflowing beyond our imagination.

Here on earth? No, not so much.

Related: Just Tell the Police

Artwork: Andrea di Bonaiuto (14th century) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons