To Act As Devils
Never before in the history of the Catholic Church have we had a Pope the likes of Pope Francis. He seems so attuned to the problems of everyday living and not removed from the Parishioner’s daily struggles with life. For instance, shortly after he took office he stated: “We live in a very sinful world where the wheat and the weeds grow together. The mission, as parents, is to protect the wheat and leave the mowing of the weeds to the angels.” The importance of being a good parent is not overlooked by Francis and he managed to stir up a media storm when he backed parents who spank their children, providing the child’s dignity is maintained. In remarks devoted to the role of fathers in a family he said: “One time, I heard a father say he sometimes had to smack his children a bit, but never in the face so as not to humiliate them.” “How beautiful,” he continued: “That father recognized the sense of dignity. He punished his children but did it justly and then moved on.”
The Church’s position on corporal punishment came under criticism some time back during a grilling by members of a UN human rights committee monitoring of the UN treaty on the rights of the child. I personally feel the lack of discipline of children has led to many of our social problems facing us as a Nation. I won’t attempt to list them but I can say that when I was a single parent I enrolled my children in the Catholic School where I had the backup of strict rules and set guidelines. The Principal’s opening statement to me and my children was: “Attending school at Sacred Heart is a privilege and not a right. Mess up and you can be removed.” I knew from that instant forward if when I needed reinforcement, it would be there.
As Jackie Kennedy once wisely stated: “If you bungle raising your children, nothing else much matters.” Another famous mother, Lillian Carter knew disappointment in her son Billy. He and his brother, Jimmy Carter, might be the prime example of parental laxness. Jimmy was thirteen when Billy was born. Their father, Earl Carter, felt he had been too tough on his eldest son, Jimmy. He now doted on Billy.
Billy became the family’s “wild child.” When Jimmy Carter was elected to the Presidency, the limelight quickly centered on Billy and his “good ole boy,” antics. At first he provided a charming contrast to his straight laced brother, the President. But by 1980 his act had worn thin. So much so that a newspaper story stated: “If Billy isn’t working for the Republican Party, he should be.” Even Billy’s own Mother, Lillian Carter, told a reporter: “Wherever there’s trouble, that’s where Billy is! Sometimes I say to myself, “Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin.”
Parenting is possibly the toughest job in the world. To raise good human beings, it is not only necessary to be a good mother and father but to have had a good mother and father. I think I was blessed with having good parents and my father certainly never spared the rod. I recall the last “whipping” I received from him when I was about twelve. He took a limber switch from a “pussy willow” bush and set my legs on fire. I had red whelps for a couple of days, and I can truthfully say, I deserved them. I can also say, if you have never been hated by your child, you have never been a parent.
Often parents think their child can do nothing wrong and then there are those that believe their child can do nothing right. One is as destructive an attitude as the other. As difficult as it seems, we need to maintain a happy medium by punishing bad behavior and praising the good. As Pope Francis said. “Let the child maintain his dignity.”
You don’t always have to strike a child to crush them. A destructive incident I once observed will remain with me forever. I was attending a high school commencement program. The Seniors came off the stage and carried long stemmed roses to their mothers, grandmothers and other feminine members of their families. One female graduate gave a four-year old girl cousin, a rose. The beautiful child was seated on her father’s lap and her face lit with an inner joy upon receiving the special gift from her older cousin. Her mother reached across and jerked the flower from her, refusing to let her have it back. The look that came into that little girl’s eyes will haunt me to my dying day. In that single swift, cruel, action the mother had crushed her own daughter’s spirit as surely as if she had struck her in the face with her fist. The wound was devastating, even though there was no visible evidence of abuse. If I had to bet, my guess would be that mother had received similar treatment as a child. As I stated previously, good parents are usually descended from good parents.
When I was a child, children were expected to defer to their parents in everything. We were to wait on them and have our own chores around the house. By the time I became a parent childrearing had changed. Many of my contemporaries believed parents were expected to defer to their children in hopes of not damaging their creativity and squelching their little imaginations. Frankly, I still believed it was my turn, as a parent, to be deferred to.
I don’t know who’s right and who’s wrong in this argument but I firmly agree with Pope Francis about “smacking” behinds. P.D. James stated it in a nutshell when he wrote: “If from infancy, you treat your children as gods they are liable, in adulthood, to act as devils.”
