The Catholic Mother
BY BEDE JARRETT O.P.
A.C.T.S. No. 1288 (1958) [No. S 115]
ASSAULT ON FAMILY LIFE
PERHAPS the most sinister menace of recent years has been the assault
on family life, namely, first on the family as an institution and,
secondly, on the various relationships within the family, husband and
wife, father and mother, children and parents. This assault is not
indeed only of recent years, for it is to be found at the French
revolution also, and before that, in Rousseau. But there is this to be
noticed: the assault that is being made at present on the family as the
single unit of society comes no longer from one quarter, but is being
delivered from many different angles. These attacks are sometimes
conscious, deliberate, sometimes utterly unconscious. Thus those who
advocate or denounce certain practices or principles are not always
aware of what they are attacking, nor how inevitably what they hold
today will lead them on to something else to-morrow, which at present
they would repudiate but to-morrow will proclaim.
Thus when the
practices of birth-control were first propagated, the opponents of them
urged that if birth-control was taught there was no reason why abortion
should not also be taught; and they were met by a very indignant denial
on the part of those who favoured birth-control that there was any
connection between the two ideas. No doubt this denial was sincere, but
it was short-sighted and futile. The defenders of birth-control are
equally now defenders of abortion. Sterilization of the unfit has
already been added to their programme. It will be made compulsory, no
doubt, and not merely on those that are now held to be unfit. This is
merely one instance of what is happening everywhere.
Again, the Lambeth Anglican bishops, in their infamous contraception
approval decisions of the 1930's, would have been disturbed if they had
realized where their permissions were leading. But, with false
principles from which to start, there is no end to the degradation that
must follow. The next Lambeth Conference, if it is honest, will either
go on to further abominations or go back. Thus, under the weight of
Divorce, State Education (minus God), Sterilization, the present
economic organization, etc., the family is gradually being assaulted
from every angle.
FAMILY MEANS MOTHERHOOD
Now the first point to realize is that all these various attacks are
attacks on motherhood. They are also, no doubt, in part, attacks on
freedom. They are attacks on motherhood precisely because what is
attacked must inevitably be the centre of the family; - and round the
mother grows up the home. The father is also the centre, but
differently. He is the active external worker; the mother's activities
are as great but they have a smaller circumference. They are limited to
nearer matters. By her activities the home is kept alive and is a true
home. At no time, moreover, can she " knock off work." Her factory has
no hooter to sound the hour for stopping. Her shop has no closing time,
her office hours have no end. But since she is the centre of the home
it must be that her motherhood is most in jeopardy when the family is
menaced. In birth-control it is she who suffers and
she suffers not merely in her nerves but precisely in her motherhood.
Again, it is her motherhood that is affected by divorce. Even the most
advanced defenders of divorce will admit that motherhood in its richest
implications must suffer from the carrying out of their programmes.
They regret this but consider that it cannot be helped.
The problem of children is an old one. Always, ordinary traditional
Christian teaching has allowed parents to space the arrival of their
children; but it forbids this to be done by direct artificial
interference with nature. It recognizes that the virtue of prudence and
also a variety of family necessities and difficulties may, under
certain circumstances, allow a limitation to be set deliberately and
legitimately to the number of children that parents may have. But it
also considers that the will of man (plus the grace of God) is capable
of carrying this out by the sole means of self-restraint. Since human
nature has existed for many thousands of years and has been hitherto
able to restrain itself by means of its will, it seems pure assumption
to say that this cannot be done now - unless, indeed, it is equally
admitted that man today is far less able to control himself than he
was, that instead of progressing from a lower stage to a higher he has
slipped back into the lower, that the loss of religion has meant also
the loss of will-power, the disbelief in God ended in disbelief in man.
We cannot, indeed, but agree that economic conditions do now make the
support of a large family harder than ever. But our answer to this
problem is to urge as the remedy an improvement in living conditions
and an increase in wages and not a diminishing of the family. If one of
these two things has to happen, let living conditions be altered, wages
improved, and not the family altered. We urge, moreover, that the money
spent on contraceptives, this unclean trade, and on the booming of
unclean practices by the trade which profits from their sale, should
rather have been spent, and would have been better spent, on social
propaganda for improving the circumstances of the people troubled in
this way than on continuing them and exploiting the needs of the poor.
Just as the Church forbids even the man who is so poor that he can
hardly house or clothe or feed his family, to use artificial means to
limit his family, on the definite principle that it is immoral, so also
she denounces as immoral the artificial means that have made it almost
impossible for him to house and feed and clothe a family. It is society
which is falsely constructed, not the family. Motherhood is blessed,
therefore what blocks motherhood in the present falsely constructed
society is accursed.
MOTHERHOOD AND CHILDREN
IN thinking of the children we think of their education, and so of
their Catholic education, for Catholic education is not a right so much
as a duty. It is a duty which lies on the father and mother as soon as
the child is born.
The ancient Greeks insisted on the importance of surrounding babyhood
with beautiful things; the psychologist of today entirely agrees with
this. Without intermission the Church has taught the same thing; only
with her it is holy things that the child should be surrounded by,
namely, that particular beauty that is radiant with goodness from God.
At least and always the Church insists that the child should have
these. Here Plato would also have approved, for he maintained that
beautiful bodies were the lowest form of human beauties. Plato would
have approved of beautiful holiness as the best surrounding for a
child, that as early and as constantly as possible it should be
surrounded by whatever true idea, or true representation, of goodness
the parents could collect round their child. Thus the making of the
sign of the Cross on itself, the joining of its hands together in
prayer, a statue of the Child Jesus, a crucifix, statues of the Mother
and Child, of St. Joseph, and of the Angel Guardian, should be familiar
objects to a child, so that it grows up in an atmosphere of
supernatural life. All this will depend largely on the mother's sense
of her duty to the child's education and development.
Naturally, the physical well-being of her child must also be present to
the mother's mind; and here, in the earlier stages of its growth, she
will have need to consult a doctor and a nurse. Let them, if possible,
be Catholic doctors and nurses. There are good doctors and nurses other
than Catholic ones, certainly; but these, if they be properly
instructed Catholics, will help a mother more faithfully than the
others because she will have no misgivings or anxiety about their
advice. She will be able to trust absolutely what they say.
But though the little body must be cared for, yet it must not be
over-coddled. It must be kept clean. It is the temple of God. Again,
the right sort of food for it is a matter about which advice should be
asked from experts, experts in motherhood, mothers who know.
Also the character of the child will need training as far as its frail
condition will allow. It should not be allowed to grow up anyhow.
Neither should it be nagged at. What is wanted is not to have to say,
"You must not fight or lie or be selfish or disobedient," but to
encourage children not to want to fight or lie or be selfish or
disobey. It is not action, but character at the back of actions, that
has to be laid hold of. Now character can only be formed by character
on character. You can only train children properly by making them wish
to form themselves on the model of another character. That is why it is
a mother's business to teach her child the beauty of the character of
Christ. And she will teach it to her child successfully only in
proportion to the way in which she herself perceives it. Only because
the mother loves the character of Our Lord is she likely to be able to
show its beauty and greatness to her child, and convince it that He was
great, is great. That is only another proof of the responsibility of
motherhood; she and her child united "for better, for worse, for
richer, for poorer" in the things of the spirit.
Lastly, there is the opening mind of the child to be taught and trained.
EDUCATION AND THE STATE
ACTUALLY the State now imposes public education on the child from the
fifth year upwards. (In Australia, the State now imposes compulsory
education. All children must attend school from the age of six to
fourteen or fifteen years, either at public schools, conducted by the
State, or at private registered schools, such as are conducted by the
Catholic Church.) If parents are well-to-do the inspector will
presumably not ask what is happening to the children. If they are not
rich, he will want to know if the children go to school. It may be that
we would prefer education to be optional as long as every parent had
the opportunity to send his children to a school. But the conditions
actually obtaining make education compulsory. No doubt there is some
loss in this. It is better, both for parents and children, when the
mother does some of the teaching herself. She would remember her
schooling better herself if she had to teach it. Moreover, it keeps
mother and child closer together all their lives long, when the child's
memories are thus rooted in her home.
It is right also to remember that the authority which the teachers have
over the children has been given them by the parents. The teachers have
their authority because they stand in the place of the parents, and not
from their relation to the State. Their power is given them by the
parents of the children, and these parents, even when giving them
power, never abdicate their own powers. They have always to keep an eye
on the education of their children. Normally they can be sure that, in
the hands of Catholic teachers, the children will be properly looked
after. [But we no longer live in 'normal' times! Great vigilance is now
needed!] But parents should get to know the teachers, and be interested
in the school, and try to see how they can help forward the education
of their children. There should be co-operation between parents and
teachers. The teachers need this co-operation. Sometimes they complain
that the parents do not help them, that the parents undo their work,
undo what the school has done for the children. Parents, too, sometimes
think that the school undoes what the home has done for the children.
The best remedy and preventative is co-operation between parents and
teachers, and this is the best thing for the child.
But there is a difference between the natural authority of the parents
and the imposed authority of the teachers, which makes the authority of
the parents the more to be safeguarded, the more to be valued, to be
kept the more continuously unbroken. Of the two the authority of the
parents should be more important. Yet the teachers have a long
apprenticeship before they are judged to know how to exercise it; this
apprenticeship covers not merely years in which to learn the subjects
to be taught the children, but in which to learn how to teach at all.
Now a mother also has to teach her children many things. Does she ever
learn how to teach? Is not her need to know this even greater than the
need of the teachers? She should learn how to teach her children and
she surely will not be able to do this without learning. It is not that
she is ignorant of this, because she is a mother; but mother-instinct,
though good, is not enough to live by. There are successful mothers,
and mothers who are not in the least successful. It is not enough
merely to love a child to be able to help it; wise love is needed. Love
can sometimes be foolish.
Natural instinct goes a long way but not all the way. Mothers, however,
can learn by watching successful mothers, and seeing how they train
their children, and so becoming themselves expert in the art of
training. Let them remember their own homes when they were children,
and ask themselves whether their mothers failed with one or other of
the children and why. It is not books that they need to help them so
much as a study of the experiences of their life. A mother will learn
more by remembering and watching and asking than by reading or having
instructions in maternity clinics, though these, if carried on by sane
instructors, can be of great help. Only she must remember that each
child is a creature apart, and should be studied individually. It is
due to the small circumference of the home that the children can have
individual treatment. That is the value of home training. It can be
personal. Not all the children of a family should be treated alike. It
is not just to treat every one alike, because all are not alike.
Justice demands a rich variety of treatment and perhaps this is only
possible fully at home.
PROFESSION OF MOTHERHOOD
ALL this makes the profession of motherhood a very high responsibility.
Indeed, it is a profession more challenging than any other profession
in the world. There are professions which demand of those who practise
them that they should be ready face death in the discharge of their
professional duties. Thus a soldier and a sailor have to be ready to
give their lives on demand. A doctor, a nurse, a priest, have each of
them often to risk their strength, or even their lives, if the need of
human service demands them. But yet soldier, sailor, doctor, nurse,
priest, may live to ripe old age without actually having to put their
lives in jeopardy. They may never be in danger from the duties of their
profession. A mother is not like that. She has not only to be ready to
endanger her life: she has actually to risk that danger. No mother but
has actually faced that risk when she has acquitted herself again of
motherhood.
Hence Motherhood asks of every mother a character of heroism. Mothers
are the most constantly heroic of mankind. Mothers have therefore
nearly always been found on the side of religion, for religion demands
heroism of its followers. Religion is not an opiate, for religion does
not help people to forget, but to remember. It does not dull people. It
does not say Take, but Give. Religion asks everything of
its believers, for religion is love, and love is the most demanding,
the most costing, of all the passions of man. That is why Our Lord
compressed the whole of religion into one commandment: "You shall love
the Lord your God with your whole
heart, whole soul, whole strength." Mothers perhaps
more easily understand this than others (except young men, perhaps, who
are learning it by falling in love).
Moreover, not only are mothers heroic because they are constantly being
challenged to risk their lives, but also because more than any others
they find their profession to be a 'full-time job'.
Moreover, many a mother needs heroism to accept the fact that her
profession is " a whole-time job." Mothers are never unemployed, or
should not be, for their children are not merely to be born of them but
tended by them until death parts them. Children take a deal of tending,
children of all ages; and here, in the number of a mother's children,
even their father is to be reckoned. To the mother, her very husband is
always a child. He needs looking after as much as any of them, but he
must not realize that she so judges of him. He is even more sensitive
than the children are to the indignity of being publicly looked after
by the mother. That only means that she must wait on him with the
greater tact.
But her cares are only increased the more by his, and her employment is
only the more continuous. She has to go on looking after them as long
as any of them are still at home; that is what inevitably happens, for
she is the home. The family carries the nation, she carries the family.
The whole of Christendom rests on the mother's knee.
A NEW AGE
MOTHERS are sometimes discouraged by their experiences to believe that
these old ideals of motherhood are done with. In some moods they are
led to think that the world has altered, and that children no longer
obey their parents nor will be governed by them as they once were. It
may be true. But if it is true, the cause for it is manifest.
If a whole generation of youth no longer is governed by its parents.,
no longer reverences them, is utterly selfish towards them, the only
people who can have brought this about are the parents themselves.
Individual cases indeed do not prove that individual parents have
failed, for good parents can have ill-bred children and, contrariwise,
careless parents may have children who worship them. But it remains
true that a whole generation can fail only because the generation
immediately before it disregarded its duty. The excuse was sometimes
made that some young folk grew up in the war without a father to look
after them. That alone would not have caused the trouble. The real
cause was not that the fathers were not present, but that the mothers
were absent. They went to work, or were touched by the excitement, or
their hedonism, and neglected their duty because, in that pitiful
phrase, they wanted " a good time."
WISE SELF-SACRIFICE
PERHAPS, after all, the cause of that selfish generation of children
was not exactly because mothers were negligent of their duty in that
they did not look after their children. The selfishness of children may
be due to another cause which, however, will not free the parents from
blame. It may be unselfishness that has been the mother's undoing. To
be self-sacrificing is admirable and motherly; but it has its
disadvantages. It can be unwise.
Let us put it in this way. A mother will come to the priest and
complain of her child to him. "Father, I have done everything for him,
and now he turns round and is most selfish to me." Poor mother! All the
more shall we pity her because his selfishness is in part her fault.
Why did she do everything for her child? She should not have done
everything. She should have let him do things for himself. When
children are little, the mother does everything for them. She cannot
help doing everything for them since they cannot do anything for
themselves. But gradually she has to steel her heart against doing
everything for them. They must be trained to do things for themselves.
They must not be for ever dependent on her. She has to train them to
get on without her, to be independent of her, to live their own lives,
to look after themselves.
Even that is not enough. They must not only be trained to do things for
themselves, they must be trained to do things for her. And they will
want to do many things for her; that is their nature, they will want to
help. There will be some things, of course, that very soon they will
not want to do for her, dull, dreary things, fetching, cleaning,
carrying. But these also they must be trained to do. The mother will
often want to save time and trouble by doing them for herself, but if
she does she will hurt her children's character. She must train them
young to work for others, to be unselfish, to give.
It is an almost inevitable effect of a large family that the children
of themselves grow up generous and tolerant. This is sometimes thumped
into them by the aid of many fists. But with a small family, it has all
to be done by the mother and father. They have to do for their children
what brothers and sisters would have done for them, for whatever
happens the work needs to be done.
Mothers, then, must not allow their self-sacrificing nature, their
heroism, to prevent them from demanding sacrifices in return from their
children. Their needs and not her needs must be remembered. They need
to be trained to give. Of their very childhood they are impulsive and
generous: but this spontaneous character of theirs can be hurt. It can
also be developed. Let mothers look to it. Let them look into it. That
only is wise self-sacrifice when it encourages and demands sacrifice. A
generous mother can reduce her children to selfishness, a mother who
does everything for her child has actually taught that child to be
selfish. She has no right to complain of his subsequent ingratitude.
Her folly has ruined her child.
That is why it has happened that many "good " mothers have ill-bred
children; they were not really "good" mothers, for goodness includes
prudence and wisdom. Really good mothers are also wise mothers.
PIETY IN MOTHERS
RIGHT in early childhood piety needs to be taught to children; but even
in early childhood, children are very different from each other in
their attitude to piety. Some seem naturally pious, or at least
naturally interested in religious things, or naturally devout and
reverent; others seem wearied and troubled by piety, are restless under
it, irked by it. These are merely natural traits of temperament and do
not really mean very much. Those who are restless at prayer are, as
often as not, restless anywhere; anything that calls for initiative, as
prayer does, makes them uncomfortable. They are difficult at occupying
themselves, entertaining themselves; they must be entertained by
others, need to be amused, cannot amuse themselves. But it does not
always follow that restless children are of this character. Sometimes
the reverse takes place. Sometimes it is those who need to be
entertained who relish church-going. Their temperament is satisfied by
what they look at. So it seems to be impossible to decide why some
children are naturally pious and some are not. Certainly it is not
always a continuing interest. Some begin like that and end very
differently; some never seem to have a love of piety in childhood and
yet have it in youth.
This early attraction or distaste for religion can be well set aside as
of no absolute importance. What mothers have to do certainly is to
study their children; each child is different. That is the beauty of a
home, that children can be studied individually and with sympathy. In
nearly every family, for instance, there is one who is different from
the rest. However, the point to be realized is the delicate way in
which mothers have to deal with each child in teaching it religion.
First, the mother has to insist upon religion, not as a matter of
liking or not liking, but as a matter of duty; yet the duty must not be
made distasteful. Religion of itself is interesting to a normal child.
First a child is curious for information. It wants to know things.
Hence catechism can be made most interesting to a child. But this
depends on the teacher. Some questions and answers should be learnt by
heart. Not all of them need be, for not all of them matter. Some
certainly do. But the child should not be burdened in its learning.
Here, then, is the delicacy of the business; on the one hand the child
should not be plagued with religion, on the other hand the child should
be taught to recognize the demands of religion as of a duty, over and
above mere liking and disliking. Merely because it does not want to
pray, it should not be excused from praying; merely because it does not
want to obey, it should not be excused from obeying. It needs to be
taught prayer in such a way that it shall find prayer interesting. The
rosary is often meaningless, and worse, to a child. A "decade" is as
much as it can manage at any one time.
The character of Christ, on the other hand, can always be an
inspiration to a child; the stories of the Gospels, the scenes, the
parables, His patience, courage, endurance, fortitude, truthfulness,
fearlessness, His love of birds and flowers and the harvest, His choice
of carpentering, His love of the sea and the hills and of gardens at
night for praying in, His forgiveness, all can be of interest as well
as help to a child. With all these it should be familiar at its
mother's knee. She can teach him to pray by showing him how to form his
own prayers, how to ask and thank and praise, how to be silent and
listen, how to gaze at Christ. She will have no difficulty in
explaining the Blessed Sacrament to him, or the Incarnation; she should
have no difficulty in teaching him and guiding him how to talk to God -
which is all we mean by prayer. But talk here also includes silence and
contemplation, for a child is born a contemplative usually. It wants so
often to look and be still and say nothing. Let it be helped to do that.
But no one can teach except what he has learnt himself. No mother can
teach prayer who does not practise it. No one can give what he has not
got.
THE TEACHING OF PURITY
PURITY must be taught. But purity is not the opposite to impurity.
Purity is the thing in itself, impurity is its lack. Purity is the
positive dedication of love to Our Lord in such wise that love is not
killed, but cleansed. To love God is not to deny the need to love man,
still less the need to love a man, a woman, a child. Purity means that
the love of God helps us to love other people, and not merely to love
ourselves in other people. To love passionately may be to serve self
only. To love passionately is sometimes to love the passion of love,
its thrill, its stir, the pleasures it gives us, and not really at all
the apparent object of our love. Thus to love passionately may be only
to love self, not another. Passion can go hand-in-hand with decent,
pure love, will be found nearly always to some degree in all love, but
it can easily usurp love's place, if we love merely to have the
pleasure of loving. Love is not the same as pleasure; love is as much
at home with pain.
But purity means that Our Lord's friendship is a third friend in all
our friendships. Into our human friendships the body enters as well as
the soul. That is as it should be. We are compacted of body and soul.
This love that involves the body in it will not hurt us, for Our Lord
can be remembered as present in every moment of every lawful love. The
Church has even a blessing for the marriage-bed. For marriage is not
something to look down upon, but something to be looked up to. It was
the Manicheans and Albigensians who taught that the marriage-act was
unclean; and yet the Church has been condemned by many for persecuting
them, for wishing to exterminate them. No doubt to exterminate them was
a drastic remedy to apply to their disease; but the occasion infuriated
Mother Church. She believed in the Incarnation. She believed that
matter could be hallowed, that the sacraments were holy, that marriage
had been blessed with a sacrament, that to decry the marriage-act was
blasphemy against the Creator of mankind. For that reason she was
bitterly intolerant. Yet in our time such is the ignorance of people
that they accuse the Church of teaching what she condemned as worse
than heresy seven hundred odd years ago.
WHAT SHALL CHILDREN BE
TAUGHT?
To many it comes as a shock that priests should now recommend Catholic
children being taught the "facts of life." They contrast with this
present attitude of the priests an older point of view which advocated
the reverse, which was in favour of reticence, silence, and leaving
children in ignorance of what life later really implied. But though
older people are thus disconcerted by a change of policy in priests,
they ought certainly to recognize that it is demanded now since the
world too is changed. In older days it was possible, perhaps, to pursue
a policy of silence, because children could probably, in very many
instances, grow up sheltered from any danger, and did not very much
need to know about themselves. Certainly what was once true about this
is no longer possible. It is impossible at present for children or
anyone to escape the flaunting evidence of sex and sex-appeal. They
cannot walk down the road and see the posters on the hoardings, or turn
over the advertisement pages of respectable magazines, or read ordinary
books, or look at moving pictures, or listen to the "talkies" or
'talk-backs' without being faced with all sorts of things that are
plainly an exploitation of our human interest or curiosity in what is
least for our good.
It may be argued, on the other hand, that a child sees no harm in these
things, misses the spice of evil; yes, at first this is true, but
gradually the weight of the obsession of sex must move them to enquire
at last what it is all about, what these references mean which they do
not understand but which interest grown-up people, what it is that
provokes so easily a laugh amongst the older members of the audience.
Sex is the god whom the world worships even more than it worships
mammon, and it is a god whose claims are insistent and terrible, and
without respite, and whose slime is over all.
But if the world is like this, then children have to be educated to
meet it. It is not the world of our heart's desire that they are
entering, have entered; it is this actual world. Now education is at
least a preparation for life, has at least to fit children for life.
Since this is the life they have to encounter, it is as well that they
should be gradually prepared to meet it, be informed about it, i.e.,
this actual world.
To repeat, we do not praise this present fashion of sex-insistence. We
believe that its arguments are false. We disbelieve the principle that
the only way to make the idea of sex normal and natural is to talk
about it. This generation has talked about it enough, but does not yet
seem to have got it normal or natural. It is obsessed by it, in its
literature, its drama, its art. It is not in the least normal, it is
definitely abnormal about it. Any psychoanalyst would be the first to
agree with this. It may be true that the studied silence of the
Victorians on the matter of sex provoked a morbid curiosity that
created worse trouble. But there is no necessity to exchange that
untruthful attitude to sex problems for an attitude which is equally
unwholesome and insincere.
It is insincere for the folk of our time to tell us, for instance, that
there is never any harm in knowledge. It all depends upon the matter of
knowledge. There is obviously no harm in anyone knowing geography or
history or mathematics or French irregular verbs; but knowledge about
the human body and its purposes may very easily be harmful. It depends
on how it is given and who gives it. We are obviously inflammable on
the point of this particular knowledge. It can hurt our waking reveries
and our dreams.
But this is our very reason for saying that, because knowledge can be
harmful, children ought to be gradually given it individually and in
such doses as they can understand without hurt. They must learn this
knowledge one day; the question is from whom. Shall they learn it from
lips that will speak of it with seemly reverence, or shall they learn
it from those on whose lips it will be an unclean jest? Not indeed in a
class, for children cannot be graded in this knowledge as they can be
in other knowledge. This must be given individually by someone who
knows intimately the particular child's mind, feeling his way
delicately, careful not to be too revealing, too gross, yet to be clear
and explicit, not to wrap up ideas in too mysterious a fashion, yet,
however, not to hurt the sensitive, unwounded mind of the child.
Even so it happens that children often know more than those who think
they understand them could have guessed; a child is secretive,
especially in this matter. But if a child is ignorant, it does not
follow there has been no hurt. Even if no one has told him (and he is
always liable to be told by anyone, by another child, or a stray
acquaintance, a boy, a grown man) he may begin habits that only later
he discovers to be evil, later when he will find it much harder to
break himself of what he has begun to do than if he had known at first.
Thus apart altogether from knowledge communicated from outside, there
is always a traitor within man's nature. since it is a fallen nature
with a bias towards evil.
We urge, then, that children should be taught about life, and that they
should be taught this by their parents, father or mother. These are the
proper persons to tell the child, for they have the responsibility of
parenthood; also they ought to know their children and therefore know
just how much can be told them, better than anyone else can. Moreover,
they are in primary charge of the education of their children, and this
is part of that education, and not an inconsiderable part. Perhaps the
whole of their life will be coloured by what they learn now, and when,
and from whom they learn it.
But parents will say that they hate having to do this. To which we
would reply that hating to do one's duty is never an excuse for not
doing it. Moreover, if, on the contrary, they liked talking about these
things, this would hardly mean that they were any better fitted to do
it or likely to do it any more reverently. Sometimes parents will reply
that their way of doing this is not to talk of these things directly,
but that they give their children pets to look after, and thus teach
them indirectly. But this is a poorer way. It is poorer to begin with
the lowest, the animals. It is better to begin with the highest, to
begin with man. After all, father and mother know the beauty of love or
should do so. Why not start with their own case and what it means, and
how human love was divinely designed in itself and in its expression
and what came of it, and how the child itself was framed out of love,
and came through love and is the fruit of love's expression?
Indeed, we have a higher example too by which to teach children, since
their baby lips have early formed the phrase, "the fruit of thy womb."
In telling them the story of the Incarnation they can thus learn its
beauty, its humility, its depth of meaning. Thus, too, the way Christ
came, His virginal birth, the contrast between this and other
children's coming can be shown so as to show also the blessing which
His coming gave to all births and lawful loves.
THE SUCCESS OF
MOTHERHOOD
EVIDENTLY the success of a mother is proved only in her discharge of
her duties as a mother. If she fails in this she fails in everything
else. She may succeed socially or publicly in other matters, but if she
fails here she has failed where her first obligation lay, and where
also her future happiness has most in store. Nothing can compensate
her, especially in her later years, for what she has failed to do in
her mothering of her children. Hence any wise mother will sacrifice any
career of her own for the sake of her children; the children and their
children afterwards will give her a nobler, richer, more human, more
inspiring old age than anything else can give her. Moreover, the world
has many others who will do the work she surrenders for them. Others
who have not her ties will do the public work in her place.
But no one else can do her mothering for her. If she does not do it, it
will not be done.
But if, after all, her children fail her later on ? Indeed, must they
not always fail her? Must not her dreams of them be always greater than
they can make come true? They cannot reach the heights she imagines
them capable of reaching; but because she thinks them capable of
reaching impassible heights they will be able to climb nearer to them
than they would have done had she not believed.
But even if they fail her, she must not fail them. However they fail in
life, in good life, in faith, in all, her love must never slacken, nor
her sympathy be less. Always she must show them sympathy. Others may be
obliged to refuse contact with them, never she. She must always be
their home; her heart their hearth, her love their welcome, her belief
in them their inspiration, their return to her a symbol of another
return. "Even if the mother forget her child. yet will not I forget."
Thus says the Lord! What a reverence in His voice, for mothers. Even if
the mother forget, even if. . . . .
* * *
The Cana Conference
Movement
A Cana Conference consists of a group of young married couples who come
together for a day to learn more about the ideal of the Christian
family and home and the achieving of that ideal in their homes. The
word "Cana" was chosen because it was at the Marriage Feast at Cana
that Our Lord worked His first public miracle.
The first miracle of Our Lord's life was worked, at the request of His
Mother, to help a newly-married couple over an upset that occurred at
their wedding celebrations. Cana was the village where the incident
took place.
Husbands and wives do not require to be told that many of the accidents
and upsets of married life can be avoided, and the foundations of love
cast much deeper, with the help of Our Lord and His Blessed Mother.
The Cana Conference Movement began in the United States and has spread
to most parts of the English-speaking world.
It began in Melbourne in 1947 when the first Cana Conference, sponsored
by the Young Christian Workers
movement, was held at Santa Maria College, Northcote. During the past
decades, the movement has become solidly established and Cana
Conferences for married couples and Pre-Cana Conferences for engaged
couples are held throughout the year.
Cana Conferences
These Conferences are specially designed for couples who are in their
first years of marriage. However, other couples are very welcome. The
Conferences occupy one Sunday only.
The talks cover the common problems of early marriage: adjustment of
emotional and physical affection; the husband's contribution to his
wife's mental security and physical well-being; the importance of
keeping the feminine duties of lover, mother, and housekeeper, in their
right order; the happiness and tensions of pregnancy months; the
arrival of the baby.
Pre-Cana Conferences
Pre-Cana Conferences for engaged couples are held from February through
to November, sponsored by the Young
Christian Workers and the National
Catholic Girls' Movement.
{The following information was accurate at the time this pamphlet was
printed (1958). If you desire up-to-date information today, I would
recommend that you contact your local Catholic Diocesan Office,
OR, do an internet search on your favourite search-engine to find your
nearest contact. Try searching under keywords such as 'Cana', or "Cana
Conference', or 'Y.C.W.', or 'Young Christian Workers', or 'Young
Catholic Workers', or 'Catholic Marriage Guidance', or 'Catholic
Education', or 'National Catholic Girls' Movement'.}
For further information, contact:
Catholic Marriage Guidance Centre,
406 Albert Street,
East Melbourne.
OR -
Chaplain Pre-Cana Conferences,
Catholic Education Office,
379 Collins Street,
Melbourne.
OR -
Diocesan Secretary, Y.C.W.
312 Elizabeth Street,
Melbourne.
OR -
Diocesan Secretary, N.C.G.M.
379 Collins Street,
Melbourne.
* * * * *