Dysfunctional Governments and Dysfunctional Families

The majority of world governments are dysfunctional. They promote lies, mass delusions, propaganda, to their people. They do not respect human dignity and human rights. They do not practice social justice—that is, merit is not reliably rewarded. 

In my youth, there was the Soviet sphere, and the Third Word, and only a rough third of the world was “free.” and free of corruption to a dysfunctional level. It might seem that things have improved since the fall of the Soviet bloc; but it seems to me that things have been getting worse quickly in some of the supposedly “freest” countries: Canada, the UK, France, Australia, Germany. And until the modern era, there were no or almost no “free” countries. All governments were dysfunctional.

The Gospel warns of this: the Devil is the prince of “this world.” Government is better than no government, but government is given over to Satan.

The great value of studying history is that there you see the human truths writ large. The state is a proxy for the family; which is why we speak of “patriotism”—from the word “pater,” “father.”

So the lesson of history and politics is that most families, similarly, are dysfunctional. They promote shared delusions; they are not nurturing; they do not reward merit.

By my reading of the Old Testament, the inevitable failure of the family is the conduit for original sin: “the sins of the father are visited on the sons unto the fourth generation.” All the families of the patriarchs are obviously dysfunctional. Abraham abandons his son Ishmael, and is ready to slaughter his son Isaac. Isaac plays favourites between Jacob and Esau. Jacob plays favourites between Joseph and his brothers. Lot sleeps with his daughters. Noah curses his son Ham. Eve tempts her husband Adam into sin. The Bible is making a point, if subtly. Let those who have eyes to see, see.

Richard Mackenzie, who grew up in an orphanage, thought his own childhood without a family had been pleasant enough. And he became a successful economist. So he decided to investigate, using the economist’s toolset. What did he find out?

“Alumni [of orphanages] reported that they had done better than the general population on almost all measures, including education, income, attitude toward life, criminal records, psychological problems, unemployment, dependence on welfare, and happiness…. The alumni reported that they had an overall college graduation rate 39 percent higher than the general population in their age group … They also reported 10 to 60 percent higher median incomes than those in their age cohort. ”

Twice as many said they were satisfied with their own lives, and twice as many felt they had achieved “the American Dream.” 

Shocking? But that was the data. 

Accordingly, associating Christian values with “family values” seems diabolical. Just as we should not idolize the state, we should not idolize the family.

Jesus Speaks on Family Values

Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. 21 When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

22 And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, “He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.”

23 So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: “How can Satan drive out Satan? 24 If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25 If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. 26 And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. 27 In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. 28 Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, 29 but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.”

30 He said this because they were saying, “He has an impure spirit.”

31 Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. 32 A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”

33 “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.

34 Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

There is a great deal to consider in this short passage, Sunday's gospel reading, For now, notice that it is framed as a conflict between Jesus and his family. Is the Bible warning us to beware of “family values”?

His family, it begins, went out to seize him; on the grounds that he was “out of his mind” or had an “impure spirit.” That he was insane, we would say today. “Insane” literally means “unclean,” “impure.”

“If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand,” Jesus observes. By “house” he clearly means family: it is hard to see how the physical structure of a building can be “divided against itself.” And Jesus’s own family, at this moment, is divided against him. He is saying that a divided, dysfunctional family must be shunned.

“And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand.” In other words, when there is a divided family, or a divided nation, Satan cannot be on both sides. Whenever there is strife, one side is righteous, and the other side is wrong. There is no moral ground for pacifism or for being an innocent bystander.

“no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house.”

This looks at first like a non sequitor. What does the question of whether he is mad have to do with binding strong men and stealing from them? Why do “strong men” even come up?

The answer is obvious: his family is trying to seize him, to bind him, as we do with those we declare insane, either literally or, currently, through the use of chemicals. He is saying this is to steal from him. We must question: how often is this true of diagnoses of madness, of mental illness, generally? Are they attempts to steal? Is mental illness really a case of families trying to steal from a particularly strong child or sibling?

Freud himself, after all, observed that “the neurosis rides the strongest horse in the stable.” 

Next, what is the unforgivable sin, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? It is, here, calling someone mad who is not mad, but inspired. Understand that “mad” and “possessed by a demon” meant the same thing in Jesus’s day. It still does, really: “obsession” has this meaning.

I think we can abstract further: the unforgivable sin is when one recognizes the truth, or the right, and deliberately denies it. When one tries to convince a victim that they are insane or immoral for cleaving to it: gaslighting. When one tries to convince the rest of the world that someone is mad or bad for speaking the truth or doing the good: things like antisemitism; perhaps much of the edifice of “mental illness.” This is unforgivable because it is a conscious and deliberate turning against God, who is in his being truth and goodness. These are the Logos.

Jesus concludes by explicitly denying his family. Our true family is those who seek the truth and do the right; in this family of the church we are all brothers.

This all raises an awkward theological point. It would seem that, far from being without sin, as Catholicism teaches, Mary here is guilty of the one unforgivable sin.

But it can be reconciled by referring to St. Paul: that the essence of morality for women is to obey their husbands. It is Jesus’s mother and brothers who come—Mary may simply be acquiescing to the will and judgment of her male relatives. Which is what "brothers" meant in ancient Aramaic. Just as she acquiesces in her essential moral act: “let it be done to me according to your word.” This is perhaps why the Bible cites the presence of male relatives; Joseph having died by this time.

Feminists won’t like the message; but it is consistent. Morality for women consists not in judgment, but acquiescence, 

There are indeed many messages here. But one important one is to beware of family values. Family values are not Christianity. They are a hijacking of Christianity, comparable to nationalism or racism. And as dangerous.

Filial Piety

 

Yesterday’s mass reading:

“But you are not to be called ‘teacher,’ for you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. 10 Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one Instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted. – Matthew 23:1-12

“Do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.”

So much for “family values.”

This does not mean we must not use the word “father”; that would be trivial. It means we are all brothers and sisters. If any one of us finds themselves in the role of parent or teacher, we must understand this as a temporary contract between equals. And it brings with it an obligation to act in the best interests of the one temporarily in our charge.

Family Values

 

“The Chosen” has become wildly popular among Christian TV viewers. I am not so enthusiastic.

The premise of the series is to stick closely to the gospel, but dramatize the imagined backstories of the various figures. What was Mary Magdalene’s life before she met Jesus? What was the life of Nicodemus? These are “the chosen.”

The fact that it makes this assertion, or projects this impression, of strict authenticity, makes it more egregious when it tinkers with the text. I would have more tolerance for Kazantzakis’s “The Last Temptation of Christ.”

To be fair, I I am only in season one; but a recent episode covered the calling of Simon, Andrew, James and John; the first four apostles. And it is not as the gospels have it.

“The Chosen” has Jesus call on Simon and Andrew to follow him. And a discussion follows later between Simon and his wife, in which he points out how unreasonable it is for him to leave her, especially as her mother is ill. But she is adamant that he must go; he must answer the call of the Messiah; don’t worry about her.

In the case of James and John, the series has their father Zebedee insists they must go with Jesus. No need to worry; he assures them he can deal with the catch, and look after the fishing by himself from now on.

But this is not the story in the gospel:

Matthew:

While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. 19 And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”[a] 20 Immediately they left their nets and followed him. 21 And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. 22 Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

Mark:

Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. 17 And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.”[f] 18 And immediately they left their nets and followed him. 19 And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. 20 And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him.

Luke:

 On one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, 2 and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. 3 Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. 4 And when he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” 5 And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing! But at your word I will let down the nets.” 6 And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. 7 They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink. 8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” 9 For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken, 10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. And Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.”[a] 11 And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him.

John’s gospel does not include an account of the calling of the four.

In all three accounts, it is emphasized that they answered the call immediately. James and John simply abandoned their father in the boat. Simon did not go home and tell his wife. They dropped everything.

The makers of “The Chosen” obviously did not like how this violated “family values.” So they twisted the gospel to make it conform. Surely there must have been these intervening conversations? Surely it was a family decision? But this is not a fair inference; all three gospels stress “immediately.”

This is the Hallmark Christianity, the “happy happy joy joy” Christianity, the Christianity of plaster saints and pastel prayer cards that I despise. This is a false doctrine in which the name of Christianity is just co-opted to sanitize and justify whatever someone wants to do, or to support whatever powers be. There is no worse sin, for this is the sin of idolatry.

I see the same tendency in Pope Francis’s current “Synod on Synodality,” which clams to aim at a “listening” church. That is, a church that only echoes back whatever people want to hear.

Christianity is emphatically not about “family values.” When one man asks if he can bury his father before coming to follow Jesus, Jesus refuses, with the words “Let the dead bury their own dead.” James, John, Simon and Andrew are demonstrating this imperative. 

The appeal to family values is akin to the appeal to patriotism: it is as often as not, as Samuel Johnson said, “the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

Today's Mass Reading

 

Jesus said to his apostles:
"Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me,
and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
and whoever does not take up his cross
and follow after me is not worthy of me.
Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

"Whoever receives you receives me,
and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.
Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet
will receive a prophet's reward,
and whoever receives a righteous man
because he is a righteous man
will receive a righteous man's reward.
And whoever gives only a cup of cold water
to one of these little ones to drink
because the little one is a disciple—

amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward."

I was curious to see how the priest would handle today’s mass reading. Going as it does against the common idolatry of “family values.” 

His response was predictable.

“Of course this does not mean we are not supposed to love our parents. Indeed, the greater our love for God, the greater our love for others.”

Which is true, but does not explain the reading. If it is not meant to say what it says, why is it in the Bible? Did God or the Church make some mistake by including it?

It is a warning against loving your parents, or children, or indeed yourself, too much. One is supposed, instead, to love God, and after that, righteous men.

One loves one’s parents, or one’s children, if they are righteous men. Not because they are your parents, or children, but because they are righteous men.

Anything else is immoral, in just the same way racism is immoral.

Zebedee

 

The calling of James and John

One of my favourite comedic bits from the Bible was in today’s mass reading. 

 As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon who is called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; they were fishermen.

He said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

At once they left their nets and followed him.

He walked along from there and saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat, with their father Zebedee, mending their nets. He called them, and immediately they left their boat and their father and followed him.

Nobody ever seems to notice old Zebedee.

He’s left stranded there in the boat.

No permission, no explanation, no farewells. No help with unloading the catch, stowing the craft, mending the nets. James and John leave immediately.

I can imagine the old greybeard muttering to himself about ingratitude, or shouting and cursing after them.

People do not notice it, because it defies their expectations and probably their desires.

It’s not nice, is it? It’s not respectful.

Yet it is an illustration of what Jesus says elsewhere in the Gospel:

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” – Luke 14:26

“Another disciple said to him, ‘Lord, first let me go and bury my father.’

But Jesus told him, ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.’” – Matthew 8: 21-22

The Bible is not about family values. Family is an idolatry, and the Gospel makes this point here rather emphatically.

You have one Father. Accept no substitutes.

Family Values and Fascism

First family. Wait till you meet the kids.

A friend avers that the sanctity of the family is next only to the sanctity of God himself. 

A common view, these days, among those on the right, and among Christians.

I urgently need to disagree.

Logically, family here is equivalent to nation: either is a useful social unit, based on shared genetics and shared experiences. The difference is only in scale.

Now what does it sound like if you speak of the “sanctity of the nation”? If you guessed Fascism, you guessed right. This was the core idea of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. It is not just incompatible with Christianity; it is antithetical to it.

So too with “the sanctity of the family.” It automatically denies the brotherhood of man, and goes ugly places. Crimes as awful as those of Nazi Germany, if on a smaller scale.

No question that family is desirable and useful, just as is a national government. Both give us the warm fuzzies. Exactly for this reason, there is a danger of idolatry, of overvaluing it. Money is useful too; so is sex. But there is immediately a problem if you think of money or sex as sacred.

For my marriage ceremony, we were free to choose our own Bible reading. Not coincidentally, it is extremely hard to find a good Bible reading, unambiguously praising marriage.

How about St. Paul?

“But I say to the unmarried and to widows, it is good for them if they remain even as I am. But if they don't have self-control, let them marry. For it's better to marry than to burn.”

There’s damning with faint praise, surely.

All in the Family

An illustration for The Classic of Filial Piety.

Family values are a scam.

Here’s my evolving take on it. We are all brothers and sisters, and we all have one king, one teacher, one father: God. To elevate any human in this way is idolatry: “name no man father but our father who is in heaven,” and so forth.

“Filial piety” is not a virtue; it is an instinct. Evolution has given us this instinct. When we are small, our entire existence depends on our parents, and we will be inclined to take them as the measure of all things.

Since this is the natural instinct, we get no moral points for it. In general, morality comes from suppressing instinct. So too here; we need to resist the natural idolatry of parent, teacher, or king. We must, that is, for it is the same thing, avoid idolizing family, or nationality, or race. We must judge all men not on their relationship to us, but on their own morality.

What, after all, if your parent, or teacher, or king, is depraved? Is it moral to obey Hitler if you are a German in Nazi Germany?

Surely it is not moral to follow an immoral order simply because it is given by your government, your society, your parents. The Nuremberg Trials assumed as much.

Let’s take it down now to the level of the family. Necessarily, on average, parents will be average in terms of their morality. Some will be better than average, and some, the same proportion as in the general population, will be very bad people. The children will necessarily know; you cannot conceal that much within a family.

Where is the morality in supporting and aiding an immoral parent in their immorality? Or in obeying them in general?

So where is the morality of “filial piety”? One supports a good parent in the same way one does a good person otherwise encountered.



I ran this by friend Darius. Friend Darius has some ties to the Unification Church (the “Moonies”), a group that especially stresses family values. He responded, in part:

I don't buy any idea that it's immoral to support sinful parents. God didn't tell us to honor father and mother unless they are wrong; more, parents even through their shortcomings tend strongly to loathe that their children copy a bad aspect of their character. They will rarely give their children an order to do something immoral unless they be ignorant of what that means. Even a bad father will hope his son turns out better than he was. Of course, at the extreme there will be exceptions.

To which I respond:

You are referring to the fourth/fifth commandment. But it is important to know what the word translated here as “honour” means. It does not mean “obey.” Greek “tima,” used here in the Septuagint, means “repay” (a debt). The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, an influential 19th century Jewish catechism, defines the original Hebrew sense:

What constitutes “honour?” One must provide them with food and drink and clothing. One should bring them home and take them out, and provide them with all their needs cheerfully.

The point is that you are obliged to look after your parents in their old age, just as they looked after you when you were very young. It was a social security system, as is confirmed by the second part of the commandment: “that your days may be long in the land.”

So it has nothing to do with obedience or assuming that they are wiser or better morally than anyone else. That is the idolatry. 

You write:

“parents even through their shortcomings tend strongly to loathe that their children copy a bad aspect of their character.”

This, I fear, is exactly wrong. This is true only if all parents are good people—an obviously false assumption.

All of us have flaws, and good people sin; we all sin. Even St. Peter sinned. Good people will regret this, and indeed not want their children to sin.

Bad people sin too, the difference is that they do not repent. There are goats as well as sheep. Bad people will want their children to sin as they did, and will tempt and encourage them to sin. This is human nature: it justifies their own behaviour. A lecher will want his children to be lecherous; a drunkard will want his son to drink with him. It is surely this sort of parent Jesus was speaking of when he said, “If anyone causes one of these little ones--those who believe in me--to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”



Darius:

If I thought the NT told me it is wrong to call my father "father" and my teacher "teacher" or, if I were subject in a monarchy, to call the king, "king," then I'd question my interpretation. I think backtracking a few verses to the beginning of Matthew 23 will give an idea of what Jesus meant. I don't take everything in the Bible literally word for word.

Also, the "very bad people" to whom you refer, the sociopaths, tend less to be parents than ordinary folk. Many of them are in prison, any children they might have had likely to be with the other spouse or, often, in foster care with a potentially far more loving family.

Me:

I think it is faulty to assume that the New Testament cannot be saying anything radical, counterintuitive, or surprising. It is radical and shocking to say that God walked the Earth performing miracles, and that Jesus rose from the dead. In his day what Jesus said was shocking enough to have him put to death. Accordingly, the radical interpretation should be favoured. Had the message all along been just “go about your lives as seems most convenient and natural, as you always have done” there would have been no need for the incarnation, the passion, or the Bible.

This is not an issue of taking the Bible literally or not literally. Of course one should not take the Bible literally at all times; nobody ever did, until about the early 20th century. But the alternative is not reading it to say whatever you like. If and when a Bible passage is not meant literally, there must be clear textual warrant for this, and for what you assert it to mean. If, for example, a historical character or date is named, you are not reading a parable but history. If an animal starts talking, you are not reading history, but a fable.

When the meaning is not literal, it is also not arbitrary. Metaphors and parables are more precise in their significance than literal statements; you cannot make them just mean anything. What point are they meant to convey, and why is the point not being stated more plainly? This must be justified from the text.

The rest of the chapter in Matthew seems to me to confirm the literal reading of this passage. Yes, Jesus is saying you should not refer to anyone but God as father, and anyone but God as teacher.

Moreover, Jesus seems in the gospel to follow this rule himself. He refers to no one as teacher. The Pharisees were the professional teachers, and he does not speak of them with any great respect, does he? When his mother appears and asks him to do something, he answers, “woman, what have I to do with thee?”

When brought before Pilate, Jesus could probably have saved his life by making some simple act of obeisance to Caesar, saying, as the crowd did, “Caesar is my King.” He remained silent, although it exposed him to the capital charge of treason.

The meaning is clear. We just don’t want to read it as saying what it is saying. Because it goes against our instinct, which is to say, against what we want to do.

I grant that the important thing is to follow the command in spirit, not by the letter. It does no harm to call your biological father father, or your teacher professor. The harm is in thinking this means anything special, or that they are anything special because of this social position. They are just brothers playing a role.

“Also, the ‘very bad people’ to whom you refer, the sociopaths, tend less to be parents than ordinary folk. Many of them are in prison”

Psychologists say that this is a common misconception. Most bad people, that is, psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, and borderlines, to use the psychiatric terminology, are not in prison, but in responsible positions in society. In fact, psychopaths and such are especially likely to occupy high positions in government and management. They want power; they seek it ruthlessly; they are more likely to get it.

Only stupid psychopaths end up in prison. Along with lots of other people who are not psychopaths. We all sin; we all make mistakes. Some are even prisoners of conscience.

I do not have stats, but it also seems to me common sense that psychopaths and narcissists are more likely to have children, and more children, than the general population. Having a child gives you someone to control and own—control and own more totally than you can control another human being in almost any other social situation. It’s a no-brainer that anyone who is power-hungry, or who enjoys bullying and abusing others, is going to want children. Lots of children.

Besides, making children feels good, and a bad person may not care so much that a child results, or what might become of it.



Unificationism is often seen as a blending of Christian with Confucian ideals. Darius defended the Confucian system, which sees filial piety as paramount, and the government as equivalent to the parent.

He summarizes the Confucian virtue of “filial piety” as a refusal to rebel against authority.

“Of course, when authority is clearly wrong,” he adds, “then we are obliged to go our own way…”



I think that puts it too mildly, and a bit askew. As a general principle, we are obliged to respect whatever authority is present, for the sake of social order. “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.” Prudence is a virtue.

However, if a government reveals itself as habitually immoral—if it, like an individual, succumbs to settled vice— “it is [our] right, it is [our] duty, to throw off such Government.” As some wise men once said. Not just a right to go our own way, but a duty to resist such government for the sake of our fellow citizens, our posterity, and mankind.

You may recognize where I am getting those quotes. It is a certain famous political document; but based on universal principles enunciated long before by St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, established Christian principles. It is selfish to continue to support and obey an immoral government. It is almost always in one’s own best interests to do so: to grow wealthy, receive its patronage, and not get either imprisoned or hanged. It is the more selfless act to rebel; it might, if you are lucky, also benefit you, but the odds are against this. More likely, it is a sacrifice, for your neighbours, your descendants, or the others one’s government is oppressing.

Even if a government is completely moral, it is in not really to your moral credit to obey it; to do so is simply in your interests. Otherwise they fine you or put you in prison.

This is all most easily illustrated at the level of government, because one can refer to historical parallels; but all logically applies to the family as well.



Darius:

“Confucian mores did, in the lack of the Judeo-Christian value system I fear we often take for granted, keep Far Eastern society together for 2,000 years or more.”

This is true, and speaks well of Confucianism as a tool; but says nothing about it as a moral system. If a system succeeded in keeping a bad government and society together for 2,000 years, that would make it immoral.

I think it speaks poorly of surviving Confucian traditions that the people of North Korea have not yet rebelled; that Mao, the greatest mass murderer in history, is still revered in China; that Japan, unlike Germany, has never really come to terms with its pre-war racism and war guilt.

I admire Confucius and Confucianism in general; but this reveals a fatal flaw.

Jesus Met the Woman at the Well: Take 2

“Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his children and his livestock?”

The story of the Samaritan woman at the well, last Sunday’s reading, looks like another parable of the need to overcome the natural idolatry of parents or ancestors. This is especially true if we come from a dysfunctional family; it is always true in any case.

For two wells, two waters, and two authorities, are contrasted: the physical well, and the spiritual well of the Logos; the physical water and the spiritual, or “living,” water of the Gospel; Jesus and ancestral custom, personified as Jacob, the eponymous ancestor of Israel.

And the answer is obvious: Jesus is the higher authority.

“So the woman left her water pot, went away into the city.”

She discarded the water of her ancestors. This is an either-or choice. “He who does not despise his father for my sake is not worthy of me.” “Family values” are not a part of Christianity, but radically apart from Christianity.

The point is signed and underlined by her being a Samaritan. The Samaritans and the Jews had irreconcilable differences regarding the proper place of temple worship; as the story reminds us. Both cannot be right. And Jesus unambiguously tells her her ancestors were wrong.

“You worship that which you don’t know. We worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews.”

So she faces the eternal human dilemma: accept the unconsidered assumptions inherited from your father, who at best was no more than a man, or fight through for truth.

It is here perhaps that it becomes significant that she is apparently an outcast in her own community: coming at the unseasonable hour to get her daily water, to avoid encountering others. It is naturally enough those kicked to the bottom of the social totem pole who will find it easiest to see the shared delusions. They obviously have less to lose. See the Beatitudes on this. Children are also more apt to see, having not yet been so thoroughly indoctrinated. “For such is the Kingdom of God.”

I had noted previously that the woman must have been socially rejected because she was living in adultery. I was wrong. By the rules of ancient Israel, concubinage was respectable; consider Abraham’s concubine Hagar, the mother of Ishmael.

She was more likely to have been rejected for having five husbands. A surprising fact; so surprising that it proves Jesus was not just using intuition or playing probabilities, but had true supernatural knowledge. There are two possibilities: either the husbands divorced her, socially branding as a terrible wife; or they died, suggesting she was a jinx. Or a poisoner. Either would explain her social isolation. And either would amount to a profound experience of rejection.

I think we can also infer that she must necessarily also have been extremely attractive and/or accomplished, to have had five or six suitors despite this.

When the woman asks Jesus for the living water, why does he respond, “go, call your husband?” Why need her husband be involved?

Precisely because this is a social problem, a sin of the fathers visited upon the fourth generation. It would not be enough for her to see the truth, so long as she is committed, through marriage, to that corrupted social order. Unless she is, like Peter, to abandon spouse and family, they too must be brought along.

The woman responds that she has no husband. Jesus agrees that this is true, and reveals that he knows her entire marital history.

But if he knows her entire marital history, and knows this to be true, why did he tell her to bring her husband?

The point is that she both has and does not have a husband, depending on how you look at it, surely. The reference might be to concubinage, in which case Jesus might be accused of having spoken with less than perfect accuracy on the first occasion. This is not a plausible inference, however, since he is omniscient, and immediately demonstrates this. It seems more likely that the woman actually did have a husband, and was lying.

Why would she lie?

Oh gentle reader, you are innocent in the ways of romance. This woman has just met a handsome stranger at a well. Meeting at a well is the usual first act of a Biblical romance—Jacob himself, whose well this is, met his wife at it. This appears to be a woman with a reputation for playing the field, as it were, and who is apparently naturally highly attractive. Admitting she is married might kill the fun.

If so, she actually has had six husbands, counting the present one, and Jesus would amount to the projected seventh—a magical number for the Bible.

So when Jesus says her present husband is not really her husband, he is making a more general point, about family ties.

We all both do and do not have earthly fathers; for our true father, Jesus reminds us elsewhere, is always and only our father who is in heaven. We all both do and do not have husbands; for our true husband is always Jesus, the Seventh, the Sabbath spouse. Earthly spouses are, in the end, transitory and arbitrary, like well water. Any five or six might do.

We must not elevate family ties to divine status; and this is the usual temptation.

“So when the Samaritans came to him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed there two days. Many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, ‘Now we believe, not because of your speaking; for we have heard for ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.’”

This fulfills Jesus’s requirement that the Samaritan woman bring her husband. She brought the entire community, and they had to be converted as a group.

The Sins of the Fathers

Orestes pursued by Erinyes.

“You shall no t make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation of those who hate me…”

Note this second part of the first or second commandment, depending on how you parse them. That makes it near the core of the Judeo-Christian message. It says that children and grandchildren are punished for a parent’s or grandparent’s sin.

Indeed, you get the same idea in the doctrine of original sin. Or that of redemptive suffering. One person can suffer for the sin of another.

And it is troubling: how can an all-loving God be so unjust? How can he punish Tom for Jerry’s sin?

Nevertheless, we have to accept that this is a fair description of reality. All of us either suffer or benefit from actions of our ancestors; these inform the circumstances of our birth and upbringing. Since God could intervene to prevent this, he is ultimately responsible.

But there must be more to this, too.

For this then is a case of God taking direct responsibility for human sin. Which is not theologically correct. We have free will.

And if a parent is morally depraved, it is probably not going to change their mind to hear that their children will suffer for it. That would trouble only a good person. In fact, this is what a narcissistic parent actually wants and tries to do. They inevitably choose one or more children as a scapegoat, and blame and punish them without cause. Most often, they are innocently punished for the very things of which the parent is guilty. That is what “scapegoat” means.

So it seems both false and fruitless for God to declare this commandment to the bad. And after all, if they are idolators—the specific sin which this commandment prohibits—they are not listening to God in the first place.

Nor to the already righteous parents, who care about their children. They are, after all, already righteous, and listening to God, not worshipping idols.

It has to be that he is speaking to someone else.

It has to be that he is speaking to the children. He is speaking to the grown children of the iniquities of their fathers.

Children, especially less thoughtful children, get their worldview and many of their unexamined opinions from their parents. Denominational beliefs, politics, and prejudices of all kinds run in families for generations. This is demonstrated often in demographic surveys, were it not self-evident. In our earliest years, our parents are the font of all knowledge; and this assumption never entirely fades.

Yet we all also have an innate conscience, from God, and must be conscious as well of contradictions, between this and what our parents taught us. And we all have a moral duty to actively seek the True and the Good.

It is perhaps vitally significant that this passage comes at the end of the prohibition against idolatry.

The essential and most dangerous idolatry may be this idolatry of the parent; and what Francis Bacon called “the idols of the tribe.”

The word translated here as “iniquity” is actually closest to the English “crookedness.” It is an image of a thing being bent.

That indeed makes it plausible that it refers to a distorted, dishonest world-view.

And it seems to bookend with Jesus’s condemnation in the New Testament of those who would “cause one of these little ones to stumble.” It is a condemnation of parents who fail in their children’s moral education.

One can see, then, how this commitment to sin is both passed down from the parent, and a matter of personal responsibility. We all have the moral obligation to see past such idolatries—this is what the commandment is telling us. If in an oddly oblique way, as if aware of the necessity at the same time not to upset the authority of the family—the foundation of all social order.

Happily, this conflict between God and parent is not great in most families. However, one can easily see in it the basis for original sin. Every human ancestor must, like Adam, fall somewhat short.

A similar concept of guilt running in families was known to the ancient Greeks. See, most obviously, the Oresteia trilogy: it ends in a formal trial, in which by the grace of Athena the parent is found at fault, and the child not guilty. Plato too speaks of ancestral curses for which a descendant must atone, through bouts of “divine madness” and through rituals of purification.

Plato is referring to melancholy, which is much of what we call mental illness; or at least to depression and mania (now “bipolar disorder”). In the Oresteia, the same experience is represented by pursuing Furies. This, depression, then seems to be a product of the dissonance between parental influence and eternal verities.

But those raised by a narcissistic parent who do not suffer through the ordeal remain in sin. They have broken the first commandment.

Elton John Reveals His Problems with His Mother

Ordinarily I avoid celebrity gossip; it is usually the sin of calumny. However, our awareness of childhood abuse is growing, and more and more celebrities are opening up about their own experiences: Michael Jackson, Brian Wilson, Stefan Molyneux, and so on.

Each time one of these big names does, it reduces the oppressive social taboo that keeps us from dealing with the problem. And helping the young victims at the crucial time.

http://www.narcbrain.com/elton-john-brands-his-mother-a-sociopath-who-never-met-his-sons/

The Fire This Time

St. Dymphna

Luke’s gospel is uncompromising. This Sunday’s reading:

Jesus said to his disciples:
“I have come to set the earth on fire,
and how I wish it were already blazing!
There is a baptism with which I must be baptized,
and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished!
Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division.
From now on a household of five will be divided,
three against two and two against three;
a father will be divided against his son
and a son against his father,
a mother against her daughter
and a daughter against her mother,
a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”

So much for “gentle Jesus, meek and mild.” As Andrew Klavan has observed, he is nowhere in the gospels.

I have heard this passage described repeatedly as “challenging.” Followed by a sermon that did not challenge, but avoided mentioning what the passage actually says: Jesus is against peace and family values.

We should not be surprised. Either is an idolatry, the more dangerous for being so apparently desirable, and so seductive. This is what evil always is: God created all things good. Evil consists of valuing a lesser good over a greater.

Sex is good; and so the temptation is to elevate sex beyond its procreative station. Material comfort is good. And so the love of money becomes the root of evil. In the same way, family and peace are desirable, and so especially likely to lead to sin. 

Peace in our time.

Neville Chamberlain serenely betrayed Czechoslovakia to Hitler in the name of peace. Lincoln could have had peace and avoided the carnage of the Civil War by guaranteeing the right to slavery. The neighbours of Kitty Genovese opted for peace. As Edmund Burke put it, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

And “family” is at least as often as not in rivalry with spiritual values. Family values are pagan values: valuing family relationships beyond the point required by gratitude implies devaluing all those to whom you are not related. It is at base no more admirable than racism.

St. Dymphna’s father demanded that she marry him. That would be the ultimate expression of family values.

The Second Coming

The two beasts of the apocalypse.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

For my punts, Yeats’ The Second Coming is one of the finest poems in the English language. It is of historical importance, too. It was written in 1919, just after the First World War and the Russian Revolution, at the moment European civilization seemed to stagger and fall, leaving only the steampunks behind; the day Western Civ ended. It may offer us clues as to why.

The more so as it presents itself as a prophesy. The best artists are inspired, and inspired by the same spirit that inspired the prophets: the Holy Spirit.

The poem is usually supposed to express Yeats’ elaborate gnostic theory of civilizational gyres, in which everything eventually flips into its opposite, in 2,000-year cycles. An early New Ager, he supposedly was speaking of the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius.

Durer's Apocalypse.

Maybe.

I believe this interpretation is unnecessary. After all, a good poet and a good poem will not rely on an esoteric theory known only to a few; it must resonate with many, if not everyone, or it will not work as poem. Yeats was no tyro in this regard. Further, Yeats himself always declined to say that he believed in the theory of the gyres. He said it only gave him “metaphors for poetry.” He self-identified to the end as an Irish Protestant, and Protestant means Protestant Christian. If he toyed with esoteric symbols, why, so did Freemasonry, so did the Orange Order, without regarding themselves as anything other than Protestant. And, if he had really been a pagan, would he not have heralded the dawning of the Age of Aquarius with a little more enthusiasm than is shown?

Moreover, Yeats himself says that this poem is not planned by him to express any definite meaning, but is a spontaneous vision. I take him at his word. This may well be a truth God wishes us to know.

Note that the poem makes perfect sense in orthodox Christian terms. The Book of Revelations itself predicts a rough beast, appearing before the Second Coming of Christ. There will first be a Great Apostasy, and terrible turmoil. And a beast will appear from the wilderness.

Paul says the same in 1st Thessalonians:

For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness[b] is revealed, the son of destruction,[c] 4 who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. ... 9 The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, 10 and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, 12 in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

To Paul, the primary significance of the anti-Christ is apparently lawlessness, a rebellion against the Divine will. So too for Yeats. The first lines of the poem indeed speaks of “gyres”:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

But no background theory of history is necessary. This can be seen quite simply as a mandala, universal symbol of cosmic order, coming apart. A bird is a classic symbol of the soul, as in the case of the Holy Ghost. The centre of the mandala is God. A diagnosis, then, of the civilizational problem: we have stopped listening to and obeying God, as a falcon the falconer. And we have stopped doing so in favour of our innate predatory animal instincts, as if birds of prey.

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

Quite likely a reference to the First World War. And what is the "ceremony of innocence" but baptism? At the Christian apocalypse, the seas and rivers will turn to blood, according to Revelations.

3 The second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it turned into blood like that of a dead person, and every living thing in the sea died.
4 The third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood. – Revelations 16

Beast of the Apocalypse.

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

This again sounds like a Biblical reference. In Revelations 3, the church in Laodicea is told:

15 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

Egyptian sphinx at the Met.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The very expectation that such scenes of chaos predict the Second Coming is a Biblical one; and here is a direct reference to the Book of Revelations more or less by name..

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

“Spiritus Mundi” seems to be Yeats's own invented term. It is ambiguous: it might refer to something like Jung's “collective unconscious,” but it might as well refer to the Holy Spirit. As to the nature of the beast: its “vastness” suggests materialism: big thing; “things” are getting big. Space is getting big. The desert imagery echoes, or rather prefigures, TS Eliot's “Wasteland” as an image of the modern era. One might see it as a time stripped of all soul or spirit, hence of all living, growing things. All that is left is the purely material, which is in the end just barren sands.

The shape as described is obviously the Egyptian sphinx; implying paganism generally; the situation as it was before, or is without, Christianity. But this is also a sub-human image; an image of man as mostly beast. Like the image of the unleashed falcon, a return to a bestial life of pure predatory instinct. It is perhaps time to breathe the fateful name: Darwin. This is Darwin's universe, “red in tooth and claw.”

Note that Revelations already predicts such a beast appearing before the Second Coming proper; in fact, two:

Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. ... 13 And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. 14 Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. ... 16 It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads,17 so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.

This is of course the notorious “mark of the beast,” 666. It is hard not to see this as a reference to overreaching by government. But that may be more the Bible's point than the point of Yeats's poem.

Beast of the Apocalypse.

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The blank gaze seems to me especially important. I think under the influence of scientism, and the scientific imperative of “objectivity,” it has come to be seen as an unambiguous virtue to be unemotional on our approach to the world. In other words, it is “cool” to be “cool.”

It should not be. This is a direct rejection of the prime Christian commandment to love. What is left when emotion is stripped from our world view is pure predatory self interest. The Nazis saw pity as the gravest sin. There is no room for pity or love when it is all survival of the fittest.

The “slow thighs” of the beast surely suggest something sexual. This is a natural concomitant of the reduction of man and the world to a purely physical entity. When it is not about eating, it is about having sex.

The new mandala, the new cosmic order, of scientism, forms around the beast, as the “reeling shadows of the indignant desert birds.” But if birds are souls, here the bird-soul is alienated., from a centre that keeps moving.

The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Slouching towards Bethlehem need not suggest a new faith set to replace Christianity for the next twenty centuries, in keeping with the gyrational theory of history. Both Paul and Revelations speak of the beast or anti-Christ setting itself up as a false God and demanding worship. But this they say will not last.

More interesting is that image of a rocking cradle. Because it cannot refer specifically to the birth of Jesus the Christ twenty centuries ago.

First, and famously, Jesus had no cradle in which to rock. Secondly, that infancy ended a long time ago; how is the cradle still rocking.

No—instead of referring to the Christ child, Yeats is referring to children generally. If the Christian doctrine of love is replaced by a doctrine of bestial pleasure, the first and worst victims are sure to be, not the Jews of Europe, or the blacks of the southern US states, but children generally. The new cool bestial man will want sex free of the responsibility of childbirth and child care.

Yup.

Moloch is back in business.

Focus on the Family

The Holy Family - Schiele, 1913.

We have been taking a few kicks at family values here recently. We have suggested that it--the family--is the source of most of what we call mental illness.

But isn't this supposed to be a Catholic blog? Most people would probably associate Christianity with the phrase “family values.” It is certainly high on the agenda of the current “Christian right” in the US: “Focus on the Family” and all that. In any case, Christian or not, we’re talking Mom and apple pie here. To those who have memories of a loving family, those memories are deeply holy to them, and so too is the ideal of the family.

True. However, as noted previously, the New Testament actually has very little cheery to say about families. Along with the scribes and Pharisees, the family seems to be a special enemy of whatever Jesus stands for. The most Paul can say about coupling off and settling down to that little suburban home behind a white picket fence is “better to marry than to burn.”

And then there is that bit about priests being celibate and all.

What happened to “Honour thy father and thy mother?” Is this a change between the Old and New Testaments? Apparently not. Deuteronomy 13 warns: “If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, … secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’ …, 8 do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. 9 You must certainly put them to death.”

And is there a single family depicted in the Old Testament that might be held up as a model of a happy and holy home life? Even the families of the patriarchs, God’s own chosen men?

Absalom's death. Dutch.

Adam and Eve? The eldest son kills the second son. Noah? He curses his third son. Lot? He sleeps with his two daughters. Abraham? He intends to kill one son, abandons the other in the desert. Jacob? He tricks his brother out of his inheritance; but one can hardly blame him, given the extreme favouritism of his father Isaac. Eleven of Jacob's sons conspire to kill the twelfth, Joseph. Moses? An orphan. David? An adulterer who has his rebellious son Absalom killed. Solomon? Kills his brother Adonijah, then takes 1,000 wives and concubines. Some home life these guys had.

It’s all pretty consistent. The great Old Testament prophets, like the apostles of the New, seem to leave family behind: Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Elijah, Jonah, all seem to be unaccompanied by wife or wee ones.

Of course, the point might be that apparently being made in the New Testament, that bad families produce good men, as in the case of the apostles. Unfortunately, however, even the prophets themselves seem to be guilty parties in this: Jacob, Noah, David, Solomon, Abraham, all seem themselves to behave very badly to family members. So the point seems instead that little good is to be expected from families in even the best of circumstances.

Heck, even look at Jesus's own family. They had one child, only one, and they managed to leave him behind in the temple in a strange city, and not notice for a full day.

So how then are we to reconcile this persistent insight with the commandment to “honour our father and our mother”?

First, the commandment is unique in the Decalogue in that it gives a specific reason for itself. This itself implies that the Almighty feels some justification, some explanation, is required. The full passage reads “Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord gives you.” In other words, following this commandment leads to long life.

It is not hard to see why. If each generation looks after their parents in the latter’s old age, they will all live a lot longer. That this is the main point of the commandment would be more obvious in most societies than in modern Canada, with its Social Insurance and Government Health Care. In most times and places, an elderly person who is not cared for by his or her children is dying in the street.

A view from the tragic life story of Old Mother Hubbard.
"She went to the bakery to buy him some bread. And when she returned, the poor dog was dead."
But probably still edible. 

In the New Testament, Jesus shows the same understanding of the commandment:

Jesus asks the Pharisees, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? 4 For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ 5 But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ 6 they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition.” (Mark 15:3-6).

His immediate application of the commandment is to caring for your parents in old age. Jesus adds, as does the Old Testament too, that one must not curse one’s parents. But then again, as Jesus points out in the same sermon, one should not curse anyone. And, as the Book of Sirach points out, the time when one is most likely to revile one's parents, and when it matters, is in their old age:

“O son, help your father in his old age, and do not grieve him as long as he lives. Even if his mind fails, be considerate of him; do not revile him because you are in your prime. (Sirach 3:12-13).

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the implications of the commandment are extrapolated into many other realms, but we still find ambiguity towards the family. To begin with, the Catechism insists that this commandment is not binding only on children, but that it “includes and presupposes the duties of parents.” Strictly, this means that if parents do not do their own duty first, their children are not bound.

This makes perfect sense if the commandment refers primarily to the duty to tend to and respect one’s parents in old age. Their own performance of their duties as parents is prior in time, and a prior condition. If they were not good parents to the best of their abilities, they are not owed this.

Why not cite the duties of the parents here as well? Because it is not necessary. Given this need for care in their old age, a parent is in most times and places bound by pure self-interest to treat his or her children well. It is only the latter than need to be reminded of their duty, and called to it by sheer moral force.

Nor would most small children, as a matter of nature, need to be reminded of our duty to “obey our parents.” It is as instinctive as little ducks following their mother. It is not moral behavior. Nor are children yet fully morally responsible. Conversely, at this point, the parents do not need any help in having their will obeyed: they have absolute power.

It is only if we presume the parents are old and powerless that the commandment becomes of some significance.

Nor, at this age, can the commandment require obedience. As the Catechism points out, obedience is not owed a parent as soon as the child reaches maturity or leaves the parental home. This happens, in most times and places, at a quite early age—thirteen, by Jewish tradition. So obedience to parents cannot be the main thrust of the commandment.

What are the duties of parents?

First and foremost, according to the Catechism, even before looking after their children’s physical needs, it is to educate. “The right and the duty of parents to educate their children are primordial and inalienable.” Most important is to educate them in the faith; but next to this, and involved with it, is to educate them in their own chosen vocation.

Parents are expressly prohibited from pushing their children into a particular vocation or profession. They also must not pressure their children into marrying or not marrying any particular person. “Parents should be careful not to exert pressure on their children either in the choice of a profession or in that of a spouse.” Of course, the child’s physical well-being must also be attended to, and parents must not play favourites. That, in the end, is the message of Shakespeare's very Catholic play, King Lear—it is Lear's tragic flaw. (And yes, Shakespeare was a Catholic writer).

Cordelia's Farewll, King Lear; Edwin Abbey

The Catechism makes clear that the duties of the individual to the family are parallel to the duties of the individual to the state.

Which is, in Biblical terms, damning with faint praise. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, certainly; but this also implies that whatever is of Caesar is not of God. The New Testament seems to view governments as intrinsically evil. When Jesus is tempted in the desert, the Devil in person shows him “all the kingdoms of the world,” and says, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to.7” (Luke 4: 5-6).

So all kingdoms are in Satan’s hands, and he chooses their rulers.

Dig it; that's pretty damning. And so, might the same be so of families?

All else being equal, we should obey the law, for the sake of general peace and order, but “Citizens are obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order” (Catechism of the Catholic Church). Similarly in the family, a child is to obey his parents, when in their home and underage, “in all that they ask of him when it is for his good or that of the family.” That is a rather narrow remit. It is just what self-interest alone would require.

If, however, Christianity these days looks very pro-family, it is because the family is under attack. And it is under attack by the state. As we see above, the state is in no way preferable. In fact, by the principle of subsidiarity, it is worse. Salvation comes at the level of the individual, as an independent moral agent. It follows that all decisions should take place at the closest possible level to the individual. What the individual can decide for himself, he should. If any only if he cannot handle something by himself, it devolves to the next smallest possible group, which might well be the family. The larger the group, the farther away from the individual, the farther it is from God and from salvation. This is because the individual has less influence in a larger group.

So family comes before the state.

This must not be twisted into an idolatry of the family.

Whatever Happened to RD Laing?

RD Laing tackling a knotty problem.

I cannot pass a dollar book bin without looking in. Not long ago, I came across one in front of a bookshop in Windsor's Walkerville. I dredged up a papeback copy of RD Laing's The Politics of the Family.

Whatever happened to RD Laing? He was the most famous psychologist of the Sixties, as well known as Jung or Freud. Now you hardly even hear the name.

Laing's basic idea was that “mental illness” was not an illness at all, but a coherent response by an individual to an impossible situation. Most often, this was a situation within the family—in effect, the family was mad, its solidarity built on a lie, and one or more individuals within it were sacrificed to sustain the delusion. Laing's brilliance was in analysing the way people can be caught by social situations in “double binds,” in which, whichever choice they make, they are in the wrong. This is the essence of abuse. Depression or even psychosis was the result.

A recent discussion of Laing in the Guardian prompted a lot of comments, which seemed to fall into two groups: comments by professionals claiming that Laing had been disproven, and comments by those diagnosed as mentally ill, or their friends, insisting that Laing was spot on in their own case, or that of their friend.

I don't think Laing has been disproven at all. He was eclipsed, certainly, by a move in psychiatry, encouraged by genetic science, and peaking in about 1990, to ascribe absolutely everything (notably including homosexuality) to genetics. It was the fad of the day, just as everything, including mental illness, was once ascribed to electricity. But since then, the tide has turned, and the actual evidence is piling up that Laing was on the right track all along.

Unfortunately, Laing did not help his own cause. Starting in the early seventies, he seemed to lose interest in his thesis, and indeed to backtrack. He got involved instead in eastern meditation, poetry, alcohol, and rebirthing therapy. I saw him lecture in about 1973, and he already seemed off the rails: instead of talking about psychology, he gave a rambling argument against abortion. A stand that seemed perfectly calculated, of course, to lose him all his political support, which had been on the “New Left.”

Here's what I think happened: both Laing and psychology in general backed away from the Laingian explanation for “mental illness” not because it was wrong, but because it was politically risky. Anyone who does not believe that politics is a major consideration in the field of psychiatry does not know the story of how homosexuality went, in a weekend, from being a treatable mental illness to an unalterable element of self and a human right.

The sad truth is that you can say or do anything you want about the “mentally ill.” They are powerless. But if you say anything against their families, you are bound to get one hell of a political backlash. These are people capable of defending themselves, and in their eyes, if, as Laing believed, they are delusional, you are slandering them. A lot of the “mentally ill” come from highly respectable, indeed prominent, families. This may even be the norm.

And there's worse. If families can drive one or more of their members mad with “double binds,” so too, logically, can other social groups of all kinds: churches, neighbourhoods, governments, employers. This means that 1) some accused families might indeed be quite innocent, the fault lying with another level of social interaction, and 2) you are implicitly challenging all centres of social power—all political entities—with this thesis. 

Backlash? You want backlash? 

Laing himself saw this logical implication, and was courageous or naive enough to level the accusations, in The Politics of Experience, against society as a whole.

Moreover, 3) as a practical matter, neither individual families nor society as a whole are likely to change. So even if Laing's thesis is exactly right, it is not of much commercial value: it leaves psychiatrists and psychologists with nothing to sell.

Certainly reason enough for the profession of psychology/psychiatry to back away from the whole area of enquiry, at least for a generation. Too dangerous to a group of people who, in the end, put their first priority on their own social status and large incomes. And I expect also reason enough for Laing himself to back away—into eastern mysticism, prevarication, the literary approach, and generic “rebirthing.” These are exactly the evasive tactics I would expect in these circumstances. As it was, his controversial stands earned him a persistent rumour that he himself was schizophrenic, and cost him his medical license.

But in the end, all he was saying was what the New Testament has always been saying. And Christianity is presented there as the specific cure. 

Eastern mysticism came damned close.

Christian Family Values

Holy Family. Joseph was kind of left out, wasn't he?

³⁴ “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. ³⁵ For I have come to turn

“‘a man against his father,
    a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—
³⁶     a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’^[c]

³⁷ “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

--Matthew 10:34-37, NIV

So much for “family values,” eh? Not a Christian concept—rather, something a lot of people think is good, and so they assume it must be in the Bible although it is not there. Like prohibition. Jesus is actually saying that the express effect of Christianity, followed properly, will be conflict within the family.

Like nations, towns, “peer groups,” and all other forms of social organization, families are in the end a part of the Devil’s realm, the earthly kingdom. Almost automatically, their demands are in conflict with conscience. Almost automatically, they exclude and discriminate. Almost automatically, one or more members get scapegoated and devoured. Group dynamics are generally an ugly thing.

Of course, families vary widely in their morality. Some are hellishly evil, and some are relatively good. When civil government is bad, the family can be an invaluable support. And, like civil government, families are a practical necessity. 

Let’s just not fall into any idolatries here.