The Child and Reality
“And whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it were better for him if a great millstone were hung about his neck, and he were thrown into the sea” (Mk. 9:41).
And how precious to Our Lord is the stage of childhood and its purity and innocence as a model for our salvation?
“Amen I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God as a little child will not enter into it” (Mk. 10:15)
In these last words, there is no parable to ponder, no mysterious utterance to be illuminated under the grace of mystical contemplation: it is simply terrifying in its matter‑of‑fact simplicity, its bare statement of the basic terms for eternal salvation. I suppose, and would venture to say without the help of Scripture scholarship, that a person could wither away at the end of the world and still be saved; but, it is clear, without scholarship, that Our Lord leaves no room for speculation in speaking of the necessity for the spiritual state of childhood innocence; that is, the ability to believe and honor, without clever debate or sophisticated skepticism, that God exists, God is our Creator, and that God, in and through Jesus Christ, has saved us and desires to bring us to heaven for eternal happiness. All the saints attest to this, in their teachings and in their own lives–to the absolute necessity of spiritual childhood. After all, is not the whole plan of God for our salvation one of being born a second time to become children of God? The entire heavenly role of Mary, beginning at the foot of the cross, is that, in addition to her Motherhood of her Divine Son, she becomes our Blessed Mother, too. And when does one cease being a child of Mary? At twenty‑one? Thirty‑five? Forty? Eighty? Never. Not even in heaven do we “grow up” past the age that she is no longer our Mother and God no longer our Father.
The Contraception of Reality
Now, because all of this is true, it would follow that especially Catholics, and particularly Catholic parents and teachers, would do all in their power to preserve the conditions for spiritual childhood in their charges. No doubt we live in times of the devilish mockery of this sublime duty, what with the Year of the Child ala the United Nations, that through a schizophrenic, Jekyl‑Hyde mentality, gives the world support for contraception and abortion while at the same time elevating the child to a status of Tyrant of the Home, of the School, of the Streets, and soon of the World. But we must deny such perversions at every turn. We must do all we can to protect our own, for surely the world at large is doing all it can to destroy the very quality that would lead them to heaven. This New World Order is doing all it can, in one way or another, to destroy the spiritual childhood of adults. True enough, and easy enough to say, about them. But what about us? In what ways may we be giving scandal to our little ones, our traditional Catholic children? And what is scandal other than the denial of reality?
I don’t think we usually associate scandal and reality together. Scandal, for traditional Catholics, usually involves the exposure to some gross vice or obvious heretical teaching, obscene behavior, and so on, and certainly these are scandals. But there is a more subtle but no less pernicious obscenity and scandal to much of modern life which carries with it a growing toleration of evil by way of its seductive powers provided in its technology and a restless pursuit of pleasure. Before proceeding with this point, let us put forth as a principle that anything that distorts the impressions of reality is obscene, since God is the author of reality and there is nothing more real than God. Such things as television, video games, sophisticated recorded music, especially popular music, computer teaching, theme parks, popular literature, the latest movies, and the endless pursuit of “fun,” are all contraceptive of reality. It is artificial birth control practiced against the otherwise fertile and fecund senses, imagination, memory, and intellect of the child. If the child does not progress from, as St. Paul says, the things that are visible of this world (creation, nature), then he simply will not come to know, that is to say, love, the unseen world, the invisible life of the spirit, the higher reality of God’s life and life with God. The answer and alternative to the toys of “technopoly” of modern so‑called entertainment (soon to place a Virtual Reality “game” underneath each Christmas tree), is not a life of boredom, and gloom and doom–though certainly a part of regaining reality for the child is to give them a keen sense of consequences, boundaries, and making do with very little–the answer, rather, is exposure to fundamental reality in its most immediate aspects from the earliest years because reality is good–it is of God.
Fathers Should Know Best
More and more, I believe this role of leading the child into reality is the primary work of the man, the father. Mothers have a tendency to cling to their children, perhaps especially their sons, past the time they should be handed over to their fathers. There was a culture in the West, from the ancient world of Greece and Rome, to the Middle Ages, even up to the nineteenth century and into the early years of this century, a tradition where the son followed the father into the fields, into the barns, into workshops, trades and crafts. Actually, this same tradition persisted in the East, and still does in parts of so‑called Third World nations. But for us in the West, that has all changed. However, the need for this passage of the son into the world of the father has not changed, for it was the beginning of a journey into an immediate reality of nature, of how things worked, how things lived and died, how things were made, and how life on earth was sustained. The mother had supplied warmth, security, happiness, comfort–those first sensory‑emotional experiences that actually look forward to the end of earthly Christian life: heaven. But the father supplied a different kind of security, one of endurance and strength, of practical arts—farming, the raising of animals, the skill of trades and crafts, and commerce–arts which, when experienced by the son, begin to form the child, to cultivate a masculine and rational balance to the tenderness of the mother by grafting onto the initial experience of being loved, and therefore lovable, a hearty confidence in himself vis-a-vis the world where larger mistakes were now encountered, hardships endured, failures experienced, problems even with no solutions humbly accepted, while an overall certainty was established by the father’s example of continuing to do and to make, that all of this was part of life and growing up. All the time, whether it was carpentry or the cultivation of the soil or the raising of livestock, and the natural commerce these activities developed, reality was being absorbed, the nature of things was being deeply implanted in the mind of the child, in real heat and cold, out of doors, and indoors, through the seasons, and through the years marked by feasts and fasts, confession of sins, holy communions, baptisms, marriages, more children, more relatives, and death and burial–at the center, the simple daily prayers and regular assistance at Mass. Furthermore, when these arts and crafts were being practiced and handed down, it was in a pre‑industrial culture, prior to electricity, that is, conditioned air, electric lights and heat, locomotives and automobiles, and factories; in other words, all the things that prevent direct contact with reality as it was once experienced in the closer contact with creation. I intend no romanticism here, for this life of the past was in many ways harder than life now, the work was more exacting, the days long. But by all accounts, measured from the point of reality, of such a life in proportion to the nature of things and God’s plan, it was a better life, if for no other reason than that the senses were sharpened and kept keen by such experience. And why is this so important? The more keen and pure the senses–the paths to the intellect–the greater the ability to know reality and truth. If you dull, or overstimulate the senses, you dull or pervert the mind. It is that simple.
Beginning with St. Paul, as mentioned earlier, there has been a consistent teaching in the Church that we can first know God from learning to read His first book: the book of nature, His creation. And, like any book, one must come into contact with it to understand its meaning; one must learn to read it. But, if the daily experiences of the child today leave his mind full of Ninja Turtles, Nintendo, television sports and movies, the Top 40, just to begin a very obvious and much longer list, then, where is the reality? And when reality in its more harsher statements presents itself to such a mind, can it be even recognized?
The UnReal Attack
As Dr. John Senior has described in his book, The Restoration of Christian Culture, when, for example, we say we saw a whale or the Pope on television, we are already duped by the technology in making such a statement, because we have not seen any marvelous animal on a nature show or seen the Pope, Bishop Sheen, or a baseball game. Already, our mind’s grasp on reality is being played with. We are seeing an electronically produced image of these things, so visually over‑stimulating for the child, that, in a few years, after enough exposure to this unreality, a strong hike in the woods or mountains, a simple game of tag, the time to listen to a good story read aloud, become boring. Even on the hikes, for example, after being raised with the tube and movies, one is not sure when leading these children though the mountains if they really can see what is really there—perhaps it is all being filtered through a technicolor screen now in the mind and through stereophonic speakers in the ears.
This attack on the senses and the mind’s ability to perceive reality via the instrument of television and movies, as just one example among many from modern life, as serious it is, does not yet take into account the content of what is being seen; the wanton violence, recreational sex, and otherwise God‑less behavior permeating so‑called comedies, dramas, talk shows, and so on, not to mention the clever, cute, and pornographic commercials. A very similar situation exists for stereophonic music–now so clear and perfect! The greater the clarity, the greater the deception. What has been perfected is the electronic gadgetry so that, in a computerized recording studio, largely electronic instruments or instruments that become electronic through microphones and speakers, filters, delays, etc., are being recorded by highly sophisticated electronic equipment. Live music concerts became so disappointing because they lacked the electronic illusions of the computer‑driven studio, that special microphones and computerized sound systems were made portable from the studio to take on the road. Since then, it is questionable whether there is any longer such a thing as a live performance of popular music. This reduction of reality in music, just in its technological analysis, as was the case with television, does not, for our discussion here, take up the great moral issue of what is being said in the lyrics of most popular music and the grave influence it is having on the moral judgements of those who listen to it.
Kids in a Coma
But given the two together, the medium (electronic devices of mind‑altering capabilities), and the message (vulgar, revolutionary content), after several years of this exposure, with the thoughtless permission or even supervised toleration of parents, will narrow, if not destroy, the child’s ability to know and love reality—that is, to know and love God’s first signs of Himself to us, in His creation, without such knowledge we will be unable to truly know and love Him as we should, if at all. To have played a part in robbing the child of their God‑given abilities to know reality, and through the instruments of technological “entertainment,” to have even placed before the child perverted images of the True, Good, and Beautiful—God’s images of Himself that permeate the universe–is a scandal of the gravest kind, for it attacks directly the image of God within us: the powers of the rational soul. It will dull those powers if not indeed pervert them so that now reality becomes in the perverted soul, the False, the Evil, and the Ugly. We must realize that it is possible to love the wrong things—for the will to be actively stimulated to pursue evil as if it were the good!
Back to Basics
If fathers cannot take their sons and daughters into the fields– which have now become vast asphalt parking lots–or into their work-shops–which are now sterile offices of business–they can at least remove the television from the home, or at least pack it away in the basement to be occasionally brought out for some decent movie, then take his children into some field or hills or mountains, or to some lake or river–and not once or twice a year–but often. Learn to use a simple compass and read a simple topo map–learn to get lost and look for signs of the way out without a map or compass.
Do you, fathers, and your children, know the main constellations and the brightest stars in each? No binoculars or telescope, but a simple star map for beginners will do, and your own backyard on a cold and clear winter night. Find Orion and learn the little story that accompanies his legend, and when you come back in with red and drippy noses, have mother heat up some hot chocolate to warm up from this little journey to the heavens.
Mothers, buy a wood rolling pin, flour, yeast, and whatever ingredients besides, and roll out and bake some fresh bread, say, once a week, with your daughters, or alone. Perhaps establish a baking day once a week, where bread and pies are made for the week. Fill the house with the aromas of the home in Nazareth.
Clear a space in the basement, Dad, and buy a few simple hand tools, one or two power tools if necessary, and build with your children a simple box of wood, a toy, a shelf, perhaps, to hold a votive candle before a picture of the Sacred Heart.
For fifty dollars you can buy a few of the classic books that beg to be read aloud: Brothers Grimm, Aesop Fables, Peter Rabbit–for older children, the boys, Sherlock Holmes, Tom Sawyer, Treasure Island; for girls, The Secret Garden, Anne Of Green Gables, Little Women. There are hundreds of these classic good books. Read aloud as a family each night, even for just a little while. But the television and the stereo must not be present. Even their visible presence turned off is a powerful reminder of their means of escape from reality.
Let someone old enough in the family take piano lessons, buy an old upright, and sing the songs of our tradition together, folk songs, Stephen Foster, and all the rest, with a few “modern” melodies thrown in to prove to the children we are not hopeless “out of it” adults.
Buy a wood burning stove–not to “go primitive”–but for two very good reasons: one, for Dad and the boys to cut and split wood–use a chainsaw if you must to do the cutting, but only a wedge and maul to split it. Let the boys and girls of the family carry in the logs and pick up the chips. Two, to learn to tend the fire, and gather round it of a winter evening–the friendly flames replace the glass and plastic screen of TV and draw, as if be secret warmth within the primordial wood heat, the family back together. Doing these things would be the beginning of living what is called the Catholic life, distinct, but not separate from the indispensable life of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the Sacraments. Do just these things, and watch what happens in your daily family Rosary, to all your life of prayer. If a family is not doing these things now, it will be hard at first to change. Personally, I cannot do them all, all the time. But I have begun, and the graces, the strength, and the priceless rewards, are just waiting to be called upon.
The Real Answer
And the last and best reality to be discovered in these utterly simple and inexpensive past‑times of the family, is the reality of self—who you really are–a child, after all, of God, with the indwelling presence of Jesus Christ, Who will come again as of old, when the air is fresh again in the body, when the sights are clear again in the eyes, when the hands have touched and made real things again, when we have looked up to the stars and down to the fire, it will be us again spoken of, when He said,
“Let the little children come to me. . .” “And He put his arms around them, and laying His hands upon them, He began to bless them.”
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