{"id":17,"date":"2018-05-16T01:44:37","date_gmt":"2018-05-16T01:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tatraproject.org\/?page_id=17"},"modified":"2019-09-09T17:47:43","modified_gmt":"2019-09-09T17:47:43","slug":"directors-page","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/tatraproject.org\/lt\/backstory\/directors-page\/","title":{"rendered":"Role of the Family in the Baltics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following article is adapted from a talk given at an international conference on the family held at the Seimas, the National Parliament, in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius in April, 2002. \u00a0The article was printed in the Winter, 2002 edition of Church Magazine<\/em>, published by the National Pastoral Life Center<\/strong> in New York. In April of 2001 I was invited to give a talk on the future of family ministry at an international conference on the family held in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. \u00a0The conference, sponsored jointly by the church and the government, was occasioned by the chaos in family life following upon the collapse of the Soviet system ten years ago. But it really was about family life and ministry in America. \u00a0Because with the purchase of all of Eastern Europe\u2019s film and TV distribution systems by American media moguls, what people here see, and what becomes the norm for life even here, is what Hollywood produces. \u00a0And that means a life where relationships don\u2019t last, where people are personally and spiritually mobile, where life is undependable, where most people are on the make, and where making commitments is probably not smart because nothing lasts long. \u00a0This view supports what the people learned living for fifty years under the Soviets\u2019 anti-family policies.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t often think of California and the Baltic Republics having that much in common. \u00a0But in the area of family life Eastern Europe and Middle America are in the very same place. \u00a0We have each come to the point where our societies no longer need their families. In Russia that situation was imposed by Lenin. \u00a0In America it evolved gradually. \u00a0But the result is the same. \u00a0Here in the United States, in order to maintain our military, economic, educational, scientific, political, medical and commercial leadership in the world we do not need families. \u00a0The social tasks that families once performed in our society are now being performed by other, mostly new, social groups. \u00a0And that means that our ideas on family ministry also need to change. \u00a0And they need to change profoundly because the changes are so profound.<\/p>\n

Families don\u2019t just exist. \u00a0They exist to do things. \u00a0A hundred years ago nearly all important social functions \u2014 birth, education, employment, role-formation, care of the sick, economic and social security, instilling both faith and citizenship \u2014 all took place on the farm. \u00a0With the coming of the Industrial Age many of these functions were moved from the family to new institutions. \u00a0We saw the emergence of factories, hospitals, schools, police departments, food processors, insurance companies, banks, even funeral directors. \u00a0In my great-grandparents\u2019 world from birthing babies to burying the dead all was done by the family. \u00a0But now, in a world where both parents work, social care from watching over pre-school children to taking care of the elderly and frail has been transferred into the hands of professional caregivers. \u00a0A hundred years ago, if the family didn\u2019t do it, it didn\u2019t get done. \u00a0Today it gets done whether we do or don\u2019t have families. \u00a0In fact, in some of these areas, the family is in the way. \u00a0Some businesses prefer “unencumbered” employees, or single individuals, to married people with children.<\/p>\n

Society may not need families but the Church does. \u00a0We Catholics still need the family for religious reasons that go to the very heart of our faith. \u00a0Catholic life is based on the sacraments, and the sacraments are rooted in family life. \u00a0And that presents us with a major challenge. \u00a0How do we relate to families and family life in a culture that no longer needs either? \u00a0That is what I want to discuss here.<\/p>\n

Now, to begin with, what I will be proposing here is not an attack on our new world. \u00a0The world is not the enemy. \u00a0There is no enemy here. \u00a0What there is here is a history of great social change. \u00a0And change is not an enemy. \u00a0It is a reality. \u00a0But like all people with beliefs, we have to ask ourselves how we deal with the realities in our world. \u00a0And once again, as we\u2019ve done for hundreds and hundreds of years, we have to figure out how we turn these realities into opportunities. \u00a0Because within all these changes there are real opportunities. \u00a0And they are to be found in the few social functions that are still performed within the family.<\/p>\n

Even with the transfer of so many functions to new institutions there are three that have been left to the family. \u00a0These are reproduction and the rearing of small children; forming a sense of personal identity; and providing a supportive context where we can give and receive love and affection. \u00a0I believe that these three remaining functions are so religious and spiritual that we can build both family ministries and even our parish ministries around them. \u00a0Earlier I wrote that the popular media presents the world as a place in which life is undependable, where people are on the make, commitments don\u2019t work, and relationships don\u2019t last. \u00a0Most of us don\u2019t have to look very far to see the chaos of undependability and the pain of broken relationships. \u00a0But that doesn\u2019t mean that we don\u2019t hope for something better. \u00a0In fact, if we were to ask what a parish should be like and do, I think that helping families fulfill these tasks would be a wonderful “job description.”<\/p>\n

The first of the three tasks still being met by families is the rearing of young children. \u00a0Our medical system probably provides the world\u2019s best care for expectant mothers and young parents. \u00a0But once they are outside the clinics they are often on their own. \u00a0Given the mobility of many young people, their relatives who might help them are frequently states away. Where do young parents turn for emotional support, for parenting skills, and for common sense advice they need to raise children? \u00a0Young parents need to know that they have allies. \u00a0They need to know that there are people who are in their camp. \u00a0Since many of these same young people have loosened or cut their ties with the church and all institutions in their young years they now don\u2019t have ready-made support communities. \u00a0But now that they are parents they will start looking for personally supportive and child-welcoming groups. \u00a0And this is a need that a parish can respond to without stretching its mission at all.<\/p>\n

Identity formation, the second task still left to families, is a technical-sounding phrase. \u00a0But it looks at very human matters, ones that affect all of us. In effect, we look here at the heart of human life. \u00a0Who I am, what do I want out of my life, what beliefs do I want to live by? \u00a0These personal questions are all basically religious. \u00a0And the relationship-focused questions that parallel them are equally spiritual. \u00a0Who are my people, where do we belong, who do I want to be with as I go through life, what kind of life do I want us to have together? \u00a0Our identity has to do with who and what I am both as an individual and in relation to the people around me. And these are the most important spiritual questions we can ask. \u00a0The phrase “identity formation” is well chosen, for our sense of self is not something imposed on us from the outside. \u00a0Our sense of self is something we ourselves form. \u00a0That formation takes place by the choices we make about life\u2019s important questions, and the ways we adapt to the great run of circumstances we all face in life. \u00a0And it is on-going as we go through life. \u00a0Again, that effort is essentially religious, involving all our beliefs and values.<\/p>\n

And it really is on-going, and not a one-time task. \u00a0It comes into play especially as we move from one life-stage to another. \u00a0There really are different stages in life, each with its own agenda. \u00a0How we respond to these agenda is both the effect of who we are, and it is also means to reshape that sense for the future. \u00a0I know I am a very different person from the man I was when I was ordained forty years ago. \u00a0And the issues I am dealing with now as I grow older are certainly different from the ones I faced as a young man. \u00a0When adolescents move into young adulthood, for example, they have to learn how to live on their own, to take responsibility for their lives, and to learn from their inevitable mistakes. \u00a0These all represent major advances in a person\u2019s sense of self. \u00a0And they are advances that can benefit from the support and wisdom of our rich religious tradition \u2014 providing our parishes can make those resources available to them.<\/p>\n

How do I develop a sense of personal ethics that will help me live as the master of my own personal and spiritual household? \u00a0How do I form humane and supportive relationships that can become lasting friendships? \u00a0These questions are answered only in the living. \u00a0They are also very spiritual questions. \u00a0I would hope that they could be better answered by being lived out within a believing community. \u00a0The formation of our sense of self also continues to the end of life. \u00a0Now that so many of my people are gone how and where do I fit in? Who are my people now? \u00a0Do I even belong here anymore? \u00a0These are equally important spiritual questions.<\/p>\n

Providing mutual support and affection, the third of the remaining family tasks, can also be on-going and dynamic. \u00a0It sees the family as a place of healing, where we can cut loose from past and useless baggage and learn to become the masters in our own personal and spiritual households. \u00a0Within the broader community the family can be a base for social benefit. \u00a0For one of the goals of the family is to produce moral adults and responsible citizens.<\/p>\n

No one, I suppose, will disagree with this. \u00a0But to turn these tasks from semi-recognized realities into a plan for pastoral activity, which is what I am suggesting, will require a big change in attitudes. \u00a0After all, these ideas have been around, and largely ignored, for a long time. \u00a0But that change is necessary first of all to keep abreast of the fact that important transfers of social functions are still going on, this time affecting the church. \u00a0Functions once transferred from the family to Catholic institutions are now again being transferred, this time from the church to the state. \u00a0Catholic hospitals, colleges, charities and schools are either no longer Catholic or moving in that direction. \u00a0Whether we see this as secularization or simply the realities of meeting federal funding standards the end result is the same. \u00a0The state and large corporations have already taken over, or are taking over. \u00a0Hospitals that were clearly Catholic when I was ordained are now often Catholic in name only. \u00a0And in parish schools, the increased scrutiny by state educational and child-protective agencies is translating into more public control.<\/p>\n

We also have to face what may be a humbling reality. \u00a0The transferred tasks and the three that remain are not on the same level. From an institutional point of view the remaining family functions don\u2019t rate high. \u00a0They really are the left-overs. \u00a0In America they take on a value only when viewed through a religious lens. \u00a0And even on a purely pragmatic level, they may well become all we have left. \u00a0Part of the shift in attitude I am proposing is that those of us in church ministries need to work harder to understand what is meant by the idea of the family as a domestic church. \u00a0This is not poetry. \u00a0It is a theological reality. \u00a0Unfortunately, it is a theological reality that is almost wholly ignored by our theologians. \u00a0The idea that the family is a true model of the church remains essentially unexplored. \u00a0In a church with long and solid clerical tradition \u2014 recall that our important teachings on the role of the laity in the church are written by clerics \u2014 this will not be easy. \u00a0We may say that parents are the principal educators of their children. \u00a0But basic decisions about their sacramental formation and religious education are still made in parish staff meetings.<\/p>\n

Another change in attitude would involve a new role for parish personnel. \u00a0And that is serving as public advocates in support of family life \u2014 and not just in our society. \u00a0It is needed in the church as well. \u00a0The United States used to have an important body of family law, granting families privileges and exemptions in recognition of their importance to society. \u00a0Little by little this is being dismantled. \u00a0But little though it may be it is still more than we have in church law. \u00a0For in church law, by contrast, the family has never had significant legal standing as a moral person with rights. \u00a0So we need to preserve what remains of the family\u2019s civil standing and promote it in church law.<\/p>\n

The needed advocacy also extends to our American social services. Having developed using 19th century, individualist views of pathology they see families only through their individual members, and often their sick members. \u00a0We can adopt and promote the views that see families as socially valid and necessary systems. \u00a0In other words, we can take the idea of the family as a domestic church and translate it into social practice.<\/p>\n

None of this, obviously, addresses questions about how to put these ideas to work. \u00a0That is my final point. \u00a0What can a parish do? \u00a0The first involves an essential change in attitude. \u00a0But to understand it requires a bit of context. \u00a0As Andrew Greeley has so well described, in the course of the last hundred years America\u2019s European-rooted Catholics have gone from being poor immigrants to becoming America\u2019s most prosperous and successful citizens. \u00a0This has come about largely through the efforts of Catholic schools and colleges. \u00a0In effect, with parishes often leading the way, our Catholic communities became schools for success.<\/p>\n

But so did our families \u2014 and that\u2019s a problem. \u00a0The Christian life is not about success. \u00a0It is about healing, being healed from the worst in us. \u00a0But if our families and parishes are about winning what place is there in them for the wounded and the lost? \u00a0So the first requirement is a shift from the trophy-conscious, success-oriented mentality to one that sees the family as a place of healing. \u00a0And if you want an example of trophy-consciousness look in the glass cases in the hall next to the principal\u2019s office in nearly every Catholic school. \u00a0You cannot form a Christian identity and you cannot learn to share love and affection in a relationship built on competitiveness and the desire to beat out others and win.<\/p>\n

With regard to nurturing the young, make sure that little kids are welcome, and that everyone knows it. \u00a0Parishes can be ambivalent about having kids at the liturgies. \u00a0Don\u2019t be. \u00a0We baptize infants \u2014 and nothing in the rite says that they are to be kept at home for the next three or four years. \u00a0The sound of little kids is the sound of the future. \u00a0Equally important, many women are also ambivalent about becoming mothers. \u00a0Their choice is a gift to all of us. \u00a0So say so. \u00a0Thank them for their gift to all of us. \u00a0Programs in support of parents and parenting should rank high on our priorities. \u00a0Whatever the parental situation or family make-up, and they are very varied today, we need to be clear that they are all welcome.<\/p>\n

With regard to identity formation, our theological tradition tells us very clearly that we become the people we are through our choices. \u00a0So helping people learn the human art of making good ethical and moral choices is helping them form their identities. \u00a0Conscience formation and identity formation are much the same thing. \u00a0But telling people what to do is not what I mean. Identity formation involves interiorizing, it is the process of becoming the masters in our own personal and spiritual households. \u00a0From a young age on up learning how to make good choices is the number one Christian art. \u00a0And orienting our preaching toward helping people learn how to make their own, good, reasonable, moral and ethical choices is key here. \u00a0I, for one, believe that concrete and appealing pictures of people making good choices in difficult situations is the best way to make the principles understandable.<\/p>\n

Finally, how do we support families in showing love and affection? \u00a0The kind of family I am talking about forming here is the first place you want to go for comfort and support and when you screw up badly or blow it big. \u00a0It is not the last place you go to, in fear and trembling, because of the emotional trouncing you know you are going to get. \u00a0People who are in trouble need an ear to hear their pain, not a mouth to inflict even more. \u00a0When, for example, people who were once in love do not love each other anymore there is enough pain to go around for a long time. \u00a0The last thing they need to hear is, “I told you never to marry that woman!” \u00a0And for that supportive mindset to come about we need a shift from the success mentality to a healing mentality.<\/p>\n

The family as a human and religious institution is drifting. But the tasks that the family still fulfils \u2014 rearing and forming children, helping form personal identity, and being a refuge when life beats up on us \u2014 can give the contemporary family a religious and social charter. \u00a0They can also be the bases for a soundly spiritual parish life and ministry.<\/p>\n

David K. O\u2019Rourke, OP<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following article is adapted from a talk given at an international conference on the family held at the Seimas, the National Parliament, in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius in April, 2002. \u00a0The article was printed in the Winter, 2002 edition of Church Magazine, published by the National Pastoral Life Center in New York. In … Skaityti toliau: Role of the Family in the Baltics<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88,"parent":1071,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"spay_email":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tatraproject.org\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tatraproject.org\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tatraproject.org\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tatraproject.org\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tatraproject.org\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/tatraproject.org\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1522,"href":"https:\/\/tatraproject.org\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/17\/revisions\/1522"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tatraproject.org\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1071"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tatraproject.org\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tatraproject.org\/lt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}