In this deeply researched and thought about four-part commentary,
Dr Andrew Kania takes you through the difficult
territory involved in the increasingly common phenomenon of the breakdown
in marital and family relationships. The research he uncovers poses difficult
challenges for conservative and liberals alike and for those charged
with the responsibility for providing spiritual and moral guidance in
contemporary society. Virtually all families are affected today by the
pain unleashed by the breakdown in marriages and other relationships.
If we do not experience it first hand we are often called to provide comfort
to our children, other family members or friends who find themselves caught
up when love goes awry.
CLICK
HERE
TO READ THE CHALLENGING WORDS OF LUKE 14:26
BEFORE TACKLING THE COMMENTARY
ARTICLE NAVIGATION: PART I |
PART II | PART III | PART IV
NOTE:
Selecting Print View above enables you to view Parts I and II on a single
page without the pictures.
Part I: An essay on parental love, the blindness of love,
the search for moral truth and much else besides
In Meredith Wilson's 1957 theatre production,
The Music Man, the central
character 'Professor Harold Hill',
is a charlatan, a man who has developed a lucrative money-making scheme,
convincing parents that the best way by which to instil virtue into their
children and turn them away from a possible life of vice, is by keeping
them occupied in learning a musical instrument. Yet what the parents who
have bought into this scheme do not realize, is that Hill, has even less
musical training than the children to whom he is purporting to create
a brass band. Hill's sole intention is to sell as many expensive musical
instruments as possible, before the scam is discovered for the folly that
it is.
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A con man but the
parents wanted to be conned.
Jeff Goldblum as Professor Harold Hill in a 2004 Pittsburgh production
of "The Music Man". |
While the parents are raising finances to fund his project, Hill stalls
for time by convincing the students that the most modern of methods by
which to learn how to play a musical instrument, is simply letting the
enjoyment flow from within; no specific instruction is necessary
just take a deep breath and play formal guidelines or teaching
is not required.
Hill's true identity is soon discovered. Similar to a medieval account
of trial by ordeal, Hill is then led in chains to the city hall, where
dutifully awaiting his arrival, equipped with expensive brass instruments,
is his fledgling brass band.
Ordered by the parents to make the band play, and with beads of sweat
flowing down his forehead, Hill, conductor's baton in his hand, and with
eyes closed, asks the band to begin. Hundreds of parents listen and watch,
waiting for the sound to commence. Soon the reality of the situation is
exposed; the combined cacophony of the band instruments is nothing short
of dreadful. Yet to Hill's amazement, the reaction of the parents is
far from negative. Beaming with pride that their children are creating
a noise that they have never been able to create themselves, the parents
are more than satisfied with Hill's 'labours'.
The ears of the parents have evidently been stopped from hearing the
awful, inconsonant Truth because of the blinding love they carry for their
children. Thus instead of arresting the charlatan for what he really is
the musical cheerfully ends, all characters in the bliss of happy
ignorance that is all characters with the exception of the great
deceiver himself, 'Harold Hill'.
The blind-spot in love
Wilson's parody on the oftentimes myopic
nature of parental love points to a syndrome inherent in the nature of
interpersonal relationships within families the danger of a relativisation
of reality and Truth.
Whether
a family needs no third-party to offer it advice and guidance, is a notion
most certainly open to debate, for the love that exists between a parent
and child, is, far from disinterested. No one wishes to admit that what
is occurring in their particular family is any worse for the development
of the human spirit than what is occurring in their neighbour's home.
Few parents ever want to admit that their child is a reprobate; we even
see at times the parents of serial killers interviewed on television extolling
the hidden virtues of their children; and school bullies seem invariably
to have solid parental support behind them, despite the number of times
they have been suspended or expelled.
Similarly no child who has a deep love for their parent ever wants to
admit that their parent is anything less then a hero; we see this each
time a school yard fight ensues defending the slighted honour of a mother
and father a parent, who in fact may be many things in this life,
with the exception of being honourable. The power of sibling love despite
its rivalry, also has a strong tendency toward painting a million vices
with a veneer of virtue. Thus seems to be the human condition, within
the mechanics of the family dynamic at least; whatever we love, we shower
not only in goodness, and Truth, but we also excuse with spoken and unspoken
half-truths, by way of our selective vision and selective memory. Are
we indeed willing to tell those who are closest to us that they are in
fact wrong, on some points of life and living. At what cost are we
prepared to sell Truth for peace in the family home? Is unconditional
love a euphemism today for moral anarchism, or does the deepest love,
come with certain conditions? Such are the questions posed of anyone who
partakes of the world's most difficult vocation parenting.
The family as primary source of virtue within society
the Foundation of Civics and Faith
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François-René Chateaubriand 1768-1848
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In Political and Social Philosophy
(Eng. Trans. 1924), Jean-Baptiste
Henri Lacordaire, extolled, as many before him, the family
as the primary source of virtue within society, that engine room for the
inculcation of religious awareness within the hearts and minds of the
next generation. As part of the text, the editor of this collection of
Lacordaire's essays, Rev. D. O'Mahony, referred
to the life of François-René Chateaubriand,
the founder of French Romantic literature who in his memoirs reflected
on the impact that his family had had in his conversion toward God and
the Catholic Church:
"On her deathbed my mother charged one of my sisters
to recall me to a sense of that religion in which I had been educated,
and my sister made known to me her wish. When the letter reached me beyond
the water, my sister also had departed this life. Those two voices coming
up from the grave, and that death which had now become the interpreter
of death, struck me with peculiar force. I became a Christian. I did not
yield to any great supernatural light: my conviction came from the heart.
I wept, and I believed." (Lacordaire, 1924,
p. 19 fn.)
Far more powerful than any sermon he had heard, or any theological classic
he may have read, the words spoken to Chateaubriand
from beyond the grave, conveyed by his loved ones to him were so
strong as to cause a radical change of heart toward God and the Church.
It was the immortal power of the virtue within the spirit of a physically
dead mother and sister that kindled within the soul of Chateaubriand
a life of faith. In Chateaubriand
we see almost a paraphrase of the life of Augustine weeping over the passing
of his mother Monica.
Political and Social Philosophy, also includes, Lacordaire's Conference
39, wherein Lacordaire, speaks of the strong bond between a father and
his son:
"Fatherhood is as much above love as love is itself
above friendship. It would be a complete and spotless love if the return
made by the child to the father were the return of the friend to the friend,
of the husband to the wife; but such is not the case. When we were children,
we were loved more than we loved, and now that we have grown old, we must
be content to love children more than it is possible for them to love
us in return. We must not complain. Your children follow in your wake,
the wake of friendship, the wake of love, ardent paths which do not allow
them to requite that hoary passion which we call fatherhood. Man finds
in his children the same powerlessness to recompense his love as he himself
experienced when a child, and has thus the honour to end in a disinterested
love like that of God". (Lacordaire, 1924,
p. 23 fn.)
Once again we hear an author speaking of the sacred nexus between child
and parent. So inherent to the human condition seems to be this bond,
that Christ teaches us in St. Luke's Gospel that even the most reprehensible
of people recognize the power of the obligations and connection that exists
between a parent and their child; as Christ
states: "'What father among you, if his
son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if
he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil,
know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly
Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!'"
(Luke 11: 11 13, RSV)
John
Paul II would speak at length about the importance of the family
in the transmission of the Faith, in Christifideles
Laici (1988):
"The Christian family, as the 'domestic Church',
also makes up a natural and fundamental school for formation in the faith:
father and mother receive from the Sacrament of Matrimony the grace and
the ministry of the Christian education of their children, before whom
they bear witness and to whom they transmit both human and religious values.
While learning their first words, children learn also the praise of God,
whom they feel is near them as a loving and providential Father; while
learning the first acts of love, children also learn to open themselves
to others, and through the gift of self receive the sense of living as
a human being. The daily life itself of a truly Christian family makes
up the first 'experience of Church', intended to find confirmation and
development in an active and responsible process of the children's introduction
into the wider ecclesial community and civil society. The more that Christian
spouses and parents grow in the awareness that their 'domestic church'participates
in the life and mission of the universal Church, so much the more will
their sons and daughters be able to be formed in a 'sense of the Church'
and will perceive all the beauty of dedicating their energies to the service
of the Kingdom of God." (par. 62)
These exaltations of the importance of the family being said, herein
thus lies, the most pivotal point for both the Church and for Society;
for if it is by way of the strength of this bond between parent and
child, that virtues and Faith are instilled and passed on to the next
generation, so tragically, the same avenue can be
used for the spreading of vice and the denial of Faith, if the family
structure is dysfunctional, or begins to fall apart.
CONTINUED
IN PART II
ARTICLE NAVIGATION: PART I |
PART II | PART III | PART IV
Readers may also be interested in the
series by Peregrinus
which examined the Scriptural understandings of Divorce and the
different perspectives taken by different Christian churches.
Bibliography:
See the Bibliography
at the bottom of Part IV.
Photo Credits:
Clicking on the images will take you to the original source and or further
information.
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Andrew
Thomas Kania is a visiting scholar at Blackfriars Hall at the
University of Oxford, where he is completing a book on Dag Hammrskjöld.
He has taken 12 months leave of absence from his position as Director
of Spirituality at Aquinas College, Manning in Western Australia
to complete this task. Prior to this appointment at Aquinas Dr.
Kania was a lecturer for the School of Religious Education at the
University of Notre Dame Australia as well as for the Catholic Institute
of Western Australia at Edith Cowan and Curtin Universities. Dr.
Kania belongs to the Ukrainian Church and is interested in ecumenical
issues as well as contemporary problems facing religious educators.
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©2007
Dr Andrew Thomas Kania
[Andrew Kania's Archive]
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