Culture

May 20, 2010 will mark the 20th anniversary of the beatification of Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati by Pope John Paul II. So the Associazione Pier Giorgio Frassati— the Rome-based official association promoting his cause for canonization led by his niece, Wanda Gawronska— is organizing a celebration in Italy on that date during the Year for Priests for priests and religious who have a devotion to him as part of their ministry. The gathering will be in Pollone, near Turin, which is where he grew up. The timing is fortuitous because the Shroud of Turin will be on display at the same time. Here is the official announcement as sent out by the Associazione:

Our encounter will begin with welcoming the participants who arrive on May 19th at the Shrine of the Oropa and the accommodations in their Reception facility. The gathering of May 20th will be central, we shall exchange our experiences and visit the Frassati house in Pollone, pray in Pier Giorgio’s room, and in the afternoon a Eucharistic Celebration will be presided by S.E Mons. Mana, Bishop of Biella. On May 21st, there will be a visit to Pier Giorgio and the Holy Shroud at the Cathedral of Turin, as well as a Eucharistic Celebration to close our joyful encounter, to be held in the Church of Saint Dominic of Turin, near the Cathedral.

If you’re a priest or religious interested in attending, email Wanda Gawronska for more information.

The US Census Bureau has redefined the word “parent”, according to a New York Times story on a spike in the percentage of black children being raised in two-“parent” families.

The point of the story is to tout this gain, which may be entirely due to a re-definition of terms and not any actual change in society. Other possible drivers of the “trend” include more immigrants with traditional family structures who are part of the group known as the “black population” and an emerging black middle class. Yet, without giving us a breakdown, the bureau drops this bomb in the middle of their report, which to my mind invalidates the conclusions.

The Census Bureau attributed an indeterminate amount of the increase to revised definitions adopted in 2007, which identify as parents any man and woman living together, whether or not they are married or the child’s biological parents.

According to the bureau’s estimates, the number of black children living with two parents was 59 percent in 1970, falling to 42 percent in 1980, 38 percent in 1990 and 35 percent in 2004. In 2007, the latest year for which data is available, it was 40 percent.

There’s no denying that grandparents, aunts and uncles, foster parents, or just good-hearted folks who raise other people’s children are better for these children than not having anything, the re-definition of the word and concept of “parent” broadens its meaning to insensibility and risks watering it down, not unlike what has been done to the word and concept of “marriage” by civil partnerships, same-sex “marriage” and no-fault divorce.

It is undeniable that children are better off when raised by both parents living together in a loving household. And, yes, it is better for children not to be raised by abusive or neglectful parents. I would agree with author Orson Scott Card on this point:

There are marriages that desperately need to be dissolved for the safety of the children, for instance, and divorced parents who do a very good job of keeping both parents closely involved in the children’s lives.

But you have to be in gross denial not to know that children would almost always rather have grown up with Dad and Mom in their proper places at home. Most kids would rather that, instead of divorcing, their parents would acquire the strength or maturity to stop doing the things that make the other parent want to leave.

Let’s also not forget the statistic that children whose biological mother is divorced or never-married are “six to 30 times more likely to suffer from serious child abuse” and some studies show that children whose mother co-habits with a man whose not their father are 33 times more likely to suffer serious abuse and up to 73 times more likely to suffer fatal abuse than children living with their married parents.

So why re-define parenthood? For one thing, it’s the bureaucratic impulse. When faced with a difficult problem not easily solved in one budget year or one administration’s term, you redefine “victory” in order to show that you’re doing a good job. But there’s also another impulse, connected to the marriage issue, which is the effort to re-engineer society, to break down the old structures with their traditional morality and strictures to usher in a new age that conforms to new desires and trends. Plus, it does away with all the inconvenient guilt over “broken” homes. Pretty soon you won’t be allowed to talk about the nuclear or traditional family. Already we’re made to feel guilty for excluding single-parent families and families where the grandparents are raising their grandkids in the absence of the parents.

The family is the most fundamental building block of society, not the state, not even the Church. Everything else is built on that foundation and we’re now tinkering with that foundation. If we’re not careful the whole tower of civilization will come tumbling down on our heads.

Photo credit: Flickr user Ela2007. Used under a Creative Commons license.

There are so many things wrong with this New York Times story that tells us the sob story that mothers are having to sacrifice buying designer jeans so their kids can have more stuff this Christmas. Yes, my dad tells me tales of his mom forgoing designer fashions during the Depression; it was such a hard time for everyone.

The article starts with this anecdote of a woman who is buying her daughter a mess of Christmas presents, but will have to forgo the designer jeans she wants to buy herself. (Click through to see the photo of the Christmas gifts for her daughter.) Then it tells us that the economy is so bad that “for millions of mothers across the nation, this holiday season is turning into a time of sacrifice.” No, they’re not worrying about whether they can put food on the table, heat the house, or even keep a roof over their kids’ heads.

Weathering the first severe economic downturn of their adult lives, these women are discovering that a practice they once indulged without thinking about it, shopping a bit for themselves at the holidays, has to give way to their children’s wish lists.

We’re so steeped in our consumerist lifestyles, so obsessed with buying stuff we don’t need and can’t afford that being unable to buy stuff for ourselves at Christmas is considered a major sacrifice.

“I want her to be able to look back,” Ms. Hunt declared, “and say, ‘Even though they were tough times, my mom was still able to give me stuff.’”

Right, because what really endures for kids is the memory of the stuff your mom is able to buy you.

Note, too, that there’s no mention of a dad for Ms. Hunt’s kid. But the Times doesn’t forget them, being quick to point out that it’s moms who are enduring this horrible burden of being unable to buy stuff themselves the most. Yes, because dads don’t sacrifice. Nope, in our culture, it’s only moms who really sacrifice. Dads just go to work and then go out drinking with their buddies and go play golf and then plop themselves in front of the TV. They don’t sacrifice anything.

In what world is being unable to buy something for yourself during your Christmas shopping any kind of sacrifice? I guess in the world of the yuppies that the Times considers its audience.

And if our economy is dependent on people buying stuff for themselves they don’t need and can’t afford, then maybe it’s time for a little shakeup and a re-ordering of priorities.

Just a little thought to share with you all on this Black Weekend (formerly known as Thanksgiving weekend or the First Sunday of Advent).

Photo credit: Flickr user litherland. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Archeology continues to turn the best theories of scientists on their heads. In Turkey, they’ve uncovered a temple that’s millennia older than the next oldest known temple. They estimate it to be at least 12,000 years old, dating from the earliest moments of civilization, at time most scientists believed humanity consisted solely of roving hunter-gatherer nomads.

 

Schmidt and his colleagues estimate that at least 500 people were required to hew the 10- to 50-ton stone pillars from local quarries, move them from as far as a quarter-mile away, and erect them. How did Stone Age people achieve the level of organization necessary to do this?

The new theory is that an elite priestly caste must have formed much earlier than previous estimates. What’s funny is that the scientists continue to base their theories on assumptions, such as for example that monotheism follows after polytheism and animism in human civilization.

There’s a kind of post-Enlightenment chronological snobbery, a sort of gnosticism, not in the classical sense, but in a more general sense of a worship of our own intellect. Modern intellectual man believes he can unlock all the secrets of the universe through his own means. Yet we’re constantly seeing the folly of such belief.

So many theories once taught as virtual fact when I was a kid have now been cast aside in favor of some new formulation, often characterized as bedrock solid and the last word. In 30 years they too will be on the ash heap of history. So it goes.

Photo credit: Haldun Aydingün in the journal Archaeology.

I was in line at the TSA security checkpoint at Chicago’s O’Hare airport yesterday and had just reached the kiosk where the TSA agent checks your boarding pass and ID. The agent happened to be black. The woman behind me, a white woman in her 60s, asks him excitedly out of the blue: “Are you ready to vote for Obama?”

I know we’re in Chicago, Barack Obama’s hometown, but I think it would be a little much to assume everyone is voting for him. There must be some Republicans in the city. So why would this woman assume that a perfect stranger is voting for Obama?

Could it be that she saw the color of the man’s skin and made an assumption about his preference? This is just plain old racism, as if a black person could not possibly have considered policy stances or character or any other factor and found he preferred John McCain.

Whatever happened to Martin Luther King’s dream that someday we would judge a man by the content of his character, not the color of his skin?

And yet maybe this woman’s assumption was not so far-fetched. I received an audio file in my email from a friend the other day of a clip from the Howard Stern show, of all things. Someone had gone up to Harlem in New York to interview folks in the street, pulling aside black people in particular and asking them who they were voting for. All of them said Obama. So then the interviewer listed off a bunch of McCain policy positions, characterizing them as Obama’s, and asked if this was why they were voting Obama.

“So which of Obama’s policies do you support more: his pro-life beliefs or wanting to stay in Iraq until the job is done.” The most common answer was “both”. The interviewer even asked, “Do you like Obama’s pick of Sarah Palin to be his vice-presidential running mate? What do you think of her?” They all thought it was a great idea, they thought she was wonderful.

Maybe the woman in Chicago wasn’t so far off in her assumption. Maybe it’s the people who are voting for Obama because of the color of his skin who have betrayed the legacy of Martin Luther King.

Photo by Daniel Schwen via Wikimedia Commons. Used with permission.