The Virtuous Imagination of Anne of Green Gables

Much ado has been made recently of the decision by Netflix to remake L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, making her more “realistic” and giving the setting more “grit.” Some have defended the supposed realism as truer to what life would have been like for a nineteenth-century orphan; others have opposed the remake, arguing that Anne was never meant to be “realistic” and that the “grittiness” of the new version is unfaithful to the emotional heart of the original tale.

But where I believe the new remake gets Anne wrong is in stripping her imagination of its virtue - or, more precisely, in neglecting the fact that, for Montgomery, Anne’s imagination is integrally linked to her unshakeable, unwavering faith in the reality of goodness and beauty. It is this faith that gives her imagination its power and makes it a virtue. Anne's imagination is not an end in itself; it serves a higher, more transcendent truth: the truth that goodness and beauty are out there, waiting to be grasped by anyone, even - or especially - by a poor, ugly, unloved orphan.

It’s understandable why the creators of the new series would eliminate this virtuous quality of Anne's imagination. It's not a virtue we believe in anymore, especially when we try to imagine someone enduring what Anne has endured. For some reason, we can no longer conceive that it might be possible for someone who has faced evil and cruelty to honestly believe in the reality - the fundamental truth - of goodness and beauty. Sure, we can pay kindness and loveliness poetic lip service - but if such a person does still truly believe in goodness and beauty – well, then, it must be a psychological coping strategy that comes at the cost of facing reality. And this is how “Anne with an E” tries to transform Anne of Green Gables.

But this is not the Anne that Montgomery created. Yes, it is true that Montgomery portrays Anne’s vivid imagination as a strategy that a very clever girl uses to deal with her traumatic past. But in Montgomery’s telling, Anne’s ability to see goodness and beauty in the ordinary and even the ugly is, like all virtues, a matter of determined will. “I’ve made up my mind to enjoy this drive,” she tells Matthew on the drive that she’s convinced will return her to the orphan asylum. “It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will. Of course,” she adds, “you must make it up FIRMLY.” For Montgomery, Anne’s imagination is a sign of her transcendence. Like the scrub firs, Anne’s spirit is “quite unbroken by long years of tussle.” For “Anne with an E,” however, her imagination is a mark of her brokenness.

Yet to envision Anne’s imagination as merely a “coping mechanism” wildly misses the point. Underlying Anne’s imagination is not a desire to escape reality; underlying it is, rather, her firm, convicted faith that somewhere, somehow, goodness and beauty actually do exist. And this is the source of her virtue. This belief gives her the ability to see goodness and beauty in the ordinary, such as when she sees the Avenue and is “struck dumb” by its beauty. Even more: her belief in the reality of goodness and beauty enable her to hope for the goodness and beauty of those around her, even when she can’t see it. Speaking of the cloth merchant who donated cheap wincey to the orphan’s asylum, Anne says: “Some people said it was because he couldn’t sell it, but I’d rather believe that it was out of the kindness of his heart, wouldn’t you?”

To postmodern ears this sounds hopelessly naïve. But at a different time, Anne’s faith in goodness was a sign not of naivete but of innocence. Naivete refuses to acknowledge that ugliness exists; Anne never does that. She has known poverty; she has known what it is to be unloved and unwanted; she has known cruelty. Anne is not naïve; she is innocent. For innocence is aware of the existence of ugliness and evil, but it insists that goodness and beauty are the greater powers, the deeper realities, and will always ultimately triumph.

In our culture, we’ve confused innocence with naivete. It’s our loss. By turns we want to shield our children’s naivete – don’t let them go to funerals, don’t let them hear about terrorist attacks – or else we want to expose them to the “hard truth” of hatred and war and violence and bitterness. We do this because deep down we ourselves don’t believe in the reality of goodness or beauty anymore. If we did, we could let our children go to funerals without fearing they’d lose their innocence, because we could tell them, with firm conviction, that death is not the end of the story. We could let them face dragons because, as Chesterton put it, we could give them our belief that dragons can be defeated. But we do not believe this anymore. And in a world where there is no place for real goodness or beauty, there is also no room for true innocence.

Anne’s innocent virtue is not “realistic.” But it is true, truer than any depiction that portrays the darkness as greater than the light, the brokenness as bigger than the transcendence. As Anna Mussmann points out, Montgomery’s Anne wasn’t meant to be realistic – any more than Cinderella, with her kindness and long-suffering patience in the face of abuse is realistic. But the beautiful, wonderful, delightful irony in Montgomery’s tale is that, in the process of imagining herself a fairy tale heroine, Anne truly becomes a fairy tale heroine. She becomes a beautiful, virtuous woman with a family who loves her. She has surrounded herself with beauty and light and love. She gets her fairy tale ending.

And this is why it is so dangerous to dismiss, psychologize, and pathologize the virtue that undergirds Anne's imagination. The thing is, we need fairy tale heroines today, perhaps even more than we need gritty, realistic portrayals of the lives of adolescent girls. Of course, the latter have their place and their purpose, in protecting us from naivete. The world is ugly, filled with bullying, anger, hatred, sadness, brokenness. But if our young people are taught that believing in the very reality of goodness and beauty is only an escapist fantasy, we are stripping them of the very tools they need to create goodness and beauty. In order to make good and beautiful things, we have to believe that good and beautiful things exist – and, indeed, the very act of believing can, itself, be an act of creating. “It’s delightful when your imaginations come true, isn’t it?” Anne asks Matthew. In the course of her own story, Anne’s did. And just as Anne, in believing herself to be a heroine, managed to create a space for herself flourish and become a heroine, so too can we. 

The Perfectly Imperfect Approach to God

Monday of the Third Week of Easter

Gospel: John 6:22-29

Today's Gospel fills me with both sadness and hope. My initial reaction was one of sadness: I can almost hear how forlorn Jesus must have sounded when He says: Amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs, but because ate the loaves and were filled. Imagine if we treated any other person in this way, seeking their company not because we loved them or cared for them or simply treasured their presence, but because of what they could do for us - give us a free meal, do us a favor, give us a gift. Yet that, so often, is how we treat God: seeking Him out only when we need something from Him.

The flip side, though, is that Jesus welcomes even these seekers, who come searching for the food that perishes. He does not turn them away, but rather invites them to more, beckons them closer, into deeper intimacy. Their motivations weren't entirely pure, but despite His gentle rebuke He doesn't reject them but asks them to deepen their relationship with Him: believe in the One He sent. 

There is hope in this. I remember once I went to Confession and lamented the fact that even my good works - my volunteer efforts, my work as a mother and wife - so often were tainted by selfishness - a desire to look "good" or to feel "important." The priest gently reminded me, though, that while we're on earth, our motivations are never going to be entirely pure - and that we need to keep trying anyway. Yes, all our motivations for turning to God will be mixed with selfishness and pride, or at any rate will fall short of complete holiness - but that's not a reason not to keep on turning to God. Because it is only by this constant turning to God that we will, ultimately, be purified. 

The Confirmation Director at my parish interviews each Confirmation candidate at the end of the two-year program, and one of the questions she asks is: "Why do you want to be confirmed?" Many times the students will answer: To make my mom happy. To make my grandmother happy. And the Director will tell them: That's okay. You may not be doing it for exactly the "right" reasons - a desire to grow closer to God, or a desire to grow in holiness or virtue - but you're doing it out of love for family, even out of obedience (which is, in Christian eyes, still a virtue!). And who knows what graces will come?

So long as we keep asking, What can we do to accomplish the will of God? God welcomes us. Yes, we will make mistakes. We will seek God, at times, in a less-than-perfect way, for less-than-perfect reasons. That's okay. As long as we keep seeking. As long as we keep asking. As long as we keep trying. As long as we don't remain satisfied with food that perishes and keep striving for the food that endures for eternal life - God will welcome us, however imperfect our approach to Him may be.

Recognizing Christ

Friday in the Octave of Easter

Acts 4:1-12

Psalm 118

John 21:1-14

How do the disciples, in the days after the Resurrection, recognize Christ?

In the mundane things: the questions He asks of them, the things He advises they do, in the way He eats and says their names. 

Imagine if, instead of recognizing that it was Christ who ordered them to cast their nets on the right side of the boat, they thought it was just some random bystander. "Thanks for the advice!" they might have shouted. And they would have gone merrily on their way. But because their attitude was one of attentive waiting, of watchfulness, of hope, they were able to recognize Christ in the midst of this mundane activity of fishing - and then respond to him. (As an aside, sometimes I do wonder how many other people Christ may have also appeared to, but gone unnoticed, unrecognized, unremarked by - how many people saw Him without seeing, and therefore were unable to respond.)

Part of this response does mean, I think, to fulfill and complete the mundane activity which we were doing when we encountered him. Although the impetuous Peter, God bless him, leaped into the water to run to his Christ, the other disciples pulled the nets into shore. And Jesus took the fish that they had caught and cooked them so that they all might eat. 

In this way Christ blesses and fulfills the activities and events of our daily lives. We offer Him whatever "fish" we catch - the work that we do, the leisure we enjoy, the chores we perform, the art or music or writing we create - and He takes them, blesses them, and returns them to us in a sort of Eucharistic exchange: through Your goodness we receive the bread we offer, fruit of the earth and work of human hands.

And what is the blessing we receive when God returns to us what we offered Him? Why, Christ Himself! But we cannot cut out the "work of human hands" bit. Christ did not magically drop fish from the sky into the disciples' boat. The disciples had to do the work: cast the net, haul it in, struggle with it as it nearly overturned their boat. But when they did this work, and recognized it as work given to them by Christ, and offered to Christ the fruit of their work - and in doing so, they saw and experienced and received the presence of the Risen Christ.

St. Jean Vianney once said: Do nothing that you cannot offer to God. Jean-Pierre de Caussade says, There is not a moment in which God does not present Himself under the cover of some duty to be performed. . . If we were attentive and watchful, we should see His divine action in everything that happens to us, and rejoice in it. At each successive occurrence we should exclaim, 'It is the Lord!', and we should accept every fresh circumstance as a gift of God. The rule is simple: if we offer ourselves to God, God will offer Himself to us - or, more precisely, if we offer ourselves to God we will be able to see that God is always and everywhere offering Himself to us.

Practically speaking, this means that we must live lives of gratitude, knowing that hidden under the veil of each moment Christ waits to give Himself to us if only we will receive Him. We must live lives of service, recognizing that everything we do or endure can be a sacrifice which we can offer to God. At each demand, each difficulty, even each suffering placed on us by others or by circumstance, we must be ready to cry out, It is the Lord! and ask ourselves how God is showing His love to us in this situation, and how He is asking us to respond. 

To Breathe with the Holy Spirit

Thursday in the Octave of Easter

In today's First Reading, a man has just been cured through the post-Pentecost prayers of St. Peter. The man clings to Peter in gratitude, and the people turn to him in wonderment. But instead of drawing attention to himself, to his own miracle-working power and his own greatness, Peter turns the attention to God. I did not cure him, says Peter, Christ did. 

I teach my Confirmation students about Pentecost as the reversal of the Babel incident. At Babel, the people were so intent on glorifying themselves, on getting themselves to heaven by their own efforts, that their own pride condemned them to disharmony and discord, an inability to communicate and understand each other, through the scattering of tongues. At Pentecost, the scattering of tongues is not undone, but rather overcome, so that where diversity once meant disunity, now diversity is a means for unity. 

At Pentecost the Holy Spirit breathed in the Apostles, sharing His breath with them. Now, when they open their lips, they do not use their tongues to foster the self-aggrandizing pride that leads to envy and hatred. Rather, they use their tongues to praise God - an act of humility that leads to blessing and repentance. It's a fulfillment of Christ's words in the Gospel today, that the minds of the Apostles would be open to understand Scripture, how it applies to them, and how they are to live - and speak, and preach - in response to it.

Speech is a profoundly human act. Though other animals may indeed have the ability to communicate through the strategic use of sound, speech is the human fulfillment of that communicative activity - granted to us in our very natures by virtue of our creation in God's image. And, like all else in nature, speech is perfected by grace at work in our souls. The speech of the Apostles at Pentecost is this grace-perfected speech - speech that communicates the Gospel truth of God's love for us. 

And because of the Resurrection, the truth that this speech professes is not mere metaphysical speculation. It is based in the Apostles' direct experience of the Risen Christ - a Christ who could be touched and seen, who could eat and drink, who could call them by name. In Pentecost, the Holy Spirit empowers us to unite all our own physical activities - our own eating and drinking, touching and seeing, and, yes, our speaking too - with Christ's Risen Body. Christ's Spirit now breathes in us, and with each breath we take we are called to exhale it in praise of God. 

This has profound implications for how I am called to live my daily life. Does my everyday speech, do my everyday words, give praise to God by bearing witness to self-giving love? Peter used his speech not to draw attention to himself - not to say, Look at how much I love you, all the good I've done for you, how hard I've worked for you, how much I've suffered - but to point to Christ - to say, Look at how much Christ loves me, that He gives me the opportunity to work for you; look at how much Christ loves you, that He fulfills His promises to you, that He heals you, that He forgives you! Does my speech give witness to what Christ has done for me? Does it reflect gratitude, love, healing, forgiveness, hope, selfless service?

Too often - more often than not - it doesn't. What do I use my speech for? To complain and to gripe. To argue. To express anger or impatience or frustration. To serve my own desires. To gossip. To brag. Christ tells me that I will be accountable for these words (Mt 12:36), because words are powerful. They can heal, as Christ's words do (Talitha koum) - but they can also kill (Anyone who says, Raqa, will be liable to judgment). 

I hate seeing how my own speech hurts others. I hate when I feel the temptation to use my speech to hurt others. And it is so very tempting, because it seems so innocuous. To make the snide comment, the passive-aggressive aside. To ask the "innocent question" that is really a criticism, to make the "simple observation" that is really a condemnation. To raise my voice in anger. To focus on myself in self-centered, falsely humble navel-gazing, and expecting others to join me! 

May I breathe in the Holy Spirit, that my own breath may be pure. May Christ save me from being condemned by my own tongue.

Mercy and Remarriage

I am currently reading Fr. James Martin’s A Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything, and, in the opening pages, he presents his understanding of what makes Jesuit spirituality distinctive. He lists four characteristic traits: finding God in all things, becoming a contemplative in action, looking at the world in an incarnational way, and seeking freedom and detachment (5ff). In particular, Fr. Martin takes the characteristics of “finding God in all things” and looking at the world incarnationally to mean that we are called to meet people "where they are": in their concrete situations of mundanity or even sin.

Our first Jesuit pope is quite consciously applying these Jesuit characteristics in his own papal teachings. For instance, in his latest apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, the Pope tries very hard to find God in all circumstances, even the circumstances of those in an irregular state of marriage (namely, the divorced and civilly remarried). Pope Francis wants very much to affirm that the individuals in those relationships can still possess virtue and are beloved by God, and that their irregular relationships themselves contain elements of true love and goodness. Pope Francis, the bishop of mercy, wants very much to reach out to the people in these circumstances and offer them the aid of the church’s pastoral care.

These goals and intentions are very laudable and very necessary reminders in our hyper-judgmental age. Conservative Catholic rhetoric can easily sound as though there is no good at all in those who would "obstinately persist in their grave sin." But certainly just because one is living in an irregular marriage doesn’t mean that there is no virtue or goodness left in that person, or even that this irregular relationship doesn’t contain anything that is, in a very real way, good. And of course the Church should reach out to these people in every legitimate means available, recognizing and working with those seeds of goodness.

But when the question arises: should the divorced and remarried be admitted to communion? – Well, then it’s the “liberal” Catholic’s turn to be judgmental. For now we hear that denying communion to the divorced and remarried is “unmerciful.” But if “conservative” Catholics can be accused of being judgmental by denying the goodness of the divorced and remarried, then “liberal” Catholics are just as guilty when they assume a lack of mercy in the hearts of those who want to uphold Church teaching.

Amoris Laetitia (despite the infamous footnote) does not explicitly overturn CCC 1580 on this issue, but some have hoped, in the name of “mercy” that it tends in that direction. My question, though, is: should it? Would it be “merciful” to permit the divorced and remarried to receive communion? Should the Church, in the name of mercy, allow it? This is a question which I don’t think Fr. Martin’s four Jesuit characteristics can help us answer. Because while these four characteristics tell us how to engage with the world, they don’t tell us why – to what end are we engaging with the world? And on this point it becomes striking that Fr. Martin omitted the Jesuit motto itself from his list of Jesuit traits. For the motto is: ad maiorem dei Gloriam – for the greater glory of God. This is the goal of our interactions with the world.

Now, why does the notion of the greater glory of God make a difference in our understanding of how we are to approach the situation of those who are divorced? Because it implies that the story doesn’t end simply with our “meeting people where they are” and “finding God” even in the midst of their broken circumstances. That’s only the beginning of the journey. The goal is to then lead them from where they are to where they ought to be: to a situation that makes God’s glory manifest. And marriage, as a sacrament not only of the love between a man and a woman but also of the covenant between God and the Church and also of the eternal communion of the Triune God, is a very powerful means of making God's glory real and present in the world today.

It is not a mercy simply to tell people that it’s “good enough” to settle for their broken, sinful circumstances – that they don’t have to strive to attain the virtue for which they were made and to which they are called. Such a settling is not good enough for human beings, nor for the Church, nor for Christ who calls us to perfection (Mt 5:48). Mercy is only mercy when it frees us to do good, not when it allows us to remain trapped in sin.

Mercy can also never be contrary to truth. To allow the divorced and remarried to receive communion is, in effect, to declare that they are not in a state of “manifest grave sin” (because those in a state of manifest grave sin, according to Canon Law, are not permitted to receive communion). But objectively speaking they are living in a state of adultery, in a state of objective moral evil. They are living as though married to one person when, objectively speaking, they are indeed bonded to someone else in covenantal marriage. There is no getting around this objective truth unless we want to deny the truth of Christ’s teaching on marriage. This is not a judgment on the subjective state of their souls or the goodness of their intentions or the value of their new relationship. This is not about judgment of someone’s moral worth or virtue. This is the objective truth.

It is vitally important to remember this fact. Because, as I said before, the Church has been accused of being “judgmental” when it denies the divorced and remarried communion. But the Church, in her teaching on this matter, does not presume to see into a person’s conscience and judge her personal relationship with God. The Church is making a decision based on what, in the Church’s eyes, is an objective truth. Communion is not being withheld as punishment or as a "prize" withdrawn for lack of virtue. 

In this context, though, Jesus’ example of mercy towards the adulteress is often brought up in this context (John 8:2-11). How can we throw the first stone when so many of us sinners receive communion despite our sin?

There are two ways, as I see it, to reply to this argument. First, let’s look again at Jesus’ example: yes, Jesus forbade the throwing of stones. But he did not deny that the woman was an adulteress, or that her adultery was a sin. What he did deny was our right to condemn her to death for it. But denying communion on the grounds that a person is in a state of mortal sin is not to condemn that person to death. In fact, if we look to St. Paul in First Corinthians we find the opposite: it is death to receive communion unworthily (1 Cor 11:27-29). In a very real, very biblical sense, denying communion to those living in an objective state of adultery is an act of mercy. This isn’t some convoluted logic to justify unmerciful attitudes. This is Scripture.

But what about the argument that, well, who can be “worthy” of the Eucharist? Aren’t we all sinners? Here’s where the idea of the Eucharist as “medicine for the sick” is often invoked. But as canon lawyer Dr. Edward Peters points out, if we’re going to treat the Eucharist as medicinal we must also recognize that medicines aren’t to be used willy-nilly. They come with warning labels, caveats, and restrictions.

And the restriction here relates not only to the sinful state of adultery, but also to the very nature of marriage as a public sacrament. Causing public scandal is, in itself, a grave sin, and Canon 915 prohibits those who are persisting in a state of manifest grave sin from receiving the Eucharist. The “manifest” part means precisely public and visible. And marriage, in the Catholic viewpoint, is not a private expression of your devotion to another person but a public declaration made before God and the Church. But if you are living in a state that, objectively speaking, is a public repudiation of an eternally binding, public vow you made to another person before God and His Church, then you are in a state of manifest (i.e., public, visible, and "scandalous") sin – no matter how you look at it. Again, it’s not a matter of adjudicating the worthiness of your own conscience. In the eyes of the Church, it’s a matter of objective reality.

There are those who will not accept this. But to deny it is to deny Jesus’ teachings on the indissolubility of marriage, Paul’s teachings on the Eucharist, and the Church’s understanding of those teachings handed down through the ages. 

It is not an easy thing to hear. But the Christian life is not easy. That’s why so many people left Jesus. His teachings are hard. The path of virtue is hard. And our pastors should be walking it with us, not encouraging us to abandon it. This is true mercy: to meet sinners where they are, but for the purpose of drawing them to glory. As G.K. Chesterton put it, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried." But we have to try.  We must find practical, practicable ways for divorced people to understand and live their lives in ways that are both true to their vows and to the reality of their marriages, but respectful of their own dignity. We must uncover the beauty of the Church’s teachings on marriage in a way that draws people towards that beauty, rather than presenting Church teaching in a negative, prohibitory, and Pharisaical way (and in this regard, actually, I find Amoris Laetitia quite refreshing). We must help people “see God” in their situations, in the sense of helping them to discern how God is calling them to virtue through their difficult circumstances.

I speak from some personal experience here. When I was young my father was close to leaving my family: divorce papers were signed and in my mother’s hands. My mother has readily admitted that if it weren’t for her Catholic faith she would have agreed to a divorce immediately, and indeed in most Christian denominations she would have been seen as justified in doing so. It was (needless to say) a difficult time for both of them. And it was a difficult time for me, as a child who had to watch and wonder about the future of my family while all the time having absolutely no control over the situation.* 

My father came back, though, and my mother forgave him. And witnessing the way that they have rebuilt their marriage and our family over the past twenty-eight years has been truly inspiring. My mother’s capacity for forgiveness has been amazing, even though at times she has had to overcome the temptation to vindictiveness. My father’s capacity for repentance has been equally beautiful, even though at times he has had to overcome the temptation to resentment. Their relationship is not perfect (and indeed has many odd quirks that make me shake my head in bewilderment), and the road has been difficult, but they are both better people – wiser, humbler, and holier – for having walked it, and walked it together. And, in the strangest way, their marriage may actually be stronger now because of it.

I’m not saying that my parents’ solution is everyone’s solution. But I am saying that it is possible, with God’s grace, to bring goodness even out of a deeply troubled or broken marriage. It is possible, with God’s grace, to walk the difficult road of being called to celibacy if one is, by necessity, separated from his or her spouse – and of growing in virtue on that path. If you find yourself in this situation remember that you are being called to manifest God’s own patient, everlasting love with sinful humanity! How can it be unmerciful for the Church to help you answer this call?

It would, indeed, be unmerciful for humanity to be deprived of the beauty of our Church’s understanding of marriage as an eternal covenant that is absolutely unconditional and has an objective reality apart from any subjective or relative state in which you find yourself. The truth of your marriage doesn’t depend on your feelings towards your spouse, it doesn’t depend on where you are or anything you’ve done or anything you’ve failed to do, it doesn't depend on any perfection or lack thereof in you or your spouse. Your marriage has a truth and reality and meaning in God that transcends any human weakness or error or sin. Your marriage is held in the palm of God's hand. Given that only the Catholic Church explicitly holds to such an understanding, I think that perhaps it is one of our great gifts to the world. The fact that we as human beings have the grace-filled capacity to enter into such a covenant with each other, to create this reality with another person - a reality that that is then respected and treasured by God - this, in itself, is a remarkable gift. I pray that we don’t deprive ourselves of it.

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*And here I must add: the moral obligation of separated or divorced parents towards their children’s psychological and spiritual needs must absolutely be addressed in any discussion of pastoral care on this matter. Too often, far too often, children are told that the divorce has “nothing to do with them,” but although this may seem true to the adults, this is not how children experience separation or divorce. For children’s identities are intimately connected with their parents’ identities; children know intuitively that they have part of each of their parents literally enfleshed in their bodies, and one parent’s rejection of the other will necessarily feel to the child like a rejection of herself. I don't think nearly enough attention has been paid, in our culture of easy divorce, to the very real trauma this causes to children.

Perfection and Parenthood

Prime the presses! A new study by Dr. Darcia Narvaez, reports Dr. Greg Popcak, tells us that "when children [aren't] given things like affection, free play and a warm home environment, they turn into adults with decreased social and moral capacities." On the flip side, it turns out that having affectionate parents and a stable home life leads to happier children who grow into happier adults.  Who knew?  I guess Dr. Narvaez' thesis that science can only tell us what common sense already knows is validated here.  

Okay, I'm sorry.  The snark is unnecessary, but I still haven't recovered from my anger at Dr. Popcak's last piece about breastfeeding.  I haven't read Dr. Narvaez's new study, which isn't out yet and is due to be reported in the journal Applied Developmental Science. But based on the summary, the evidence was gathered through surveys of 600 adults asking them to recall their childhood experiences. Adults who remembered their childhoods as more affectionate reported better psychological well-being. Again, this isn't at all a surprising result.

But, this result must raise the old correlation versus causation question: does a happy childhood directly cause happiness in adulthood, or does having a happy temperament help you remember your childhood as a happier one? Different experiences impact different people in different ways. A person with an anxious, depressed temperament might recall past experiences as more traumatic than someone with a more resilient personality. Even aside from the issue of how temperament and personality affects the brain's processing of events, how do you methodologically validate someone's self-reported experience?  Memories are notoriously malleable.  I know for a fact that I remember my childhood very differently than my parents do.  Neither one of us can verify the "truth" of the past.

There are also some serious metaphysical questions regarding the study's rather reductionistic assumptions about morality, and the equation of psychological well-being with moral goodness.  (I can think of quite a few saints - perhaps even the majority of them! - who would give the lie to that equivalency.)  But even aside from all this, I really have very deep reservations about anyone telling me that there's a certain set of things you must do in order to raise moral children.

Look, it's one thing to give advice or to have scientifically-based opinions on what will help our children be physically and psychologically healthy.  We do all want that for our children, and we do have a moral obligation to care for their well-being as much as it is within our power.  But so much of this talk tends towards making parenthood seem like an impossibly daunting task: if you can't, or won't, do x-y-or-z (be it breastfeed for two-plus years, or baby-wear, or co-sleep, etc.), not only are you endangering your child's medical health, you may also be damaging them psychologically and making it harder for them to be responsible moral agents!  And then we wonder why so many young people are opting out of parenthood, afraid of its responsibilities and terrified of doing it "wrong"!  

But the truth is, you can be an "imperfect" parent and still be a good one - even a great one!  That's because parenthood is not about mastering a skill set or performing some set of discrete tasks.  It embraces your entire identity as a human being.  And as human beings, we are all imperfect sinners.

Parenthood is not a job; it's a relationship between two imperfect, sinful people.  And there's no scientific formula for relationships.  Because relationships, in their deepest (and dare I say moral?) sense are beyond the bounds of science: relationships are about the mystery of two souls encountering each other.  

You are not going to be a perfect parent.  You are going to make mistakes - and that's okay.  You are giving your kids a chance to learn forgiveness and compromise.  You aren't always going to be able to put your kids' needs first - and that's okay.  You're teaching them self-sacrifice and empathy. 

But remember too: your child is also not a perfect child.  Catholicism teaches the truth of original sin, and even the most innocent baby carries its burden.   Your kids are going to make mistakes - and that's okay.  They are going to learn how to ask for forgiveness and how to accept mercy.  And you are going to lavish affection and love on your children - and that's okay, too.  Because then they will learn the limitless, unconditional love of God.

So yes, take from the science what you will.  But know also that parenthood, like any relationship, requires flexibility, adaptability, responsiveness, and discernment.  There is no one path to sanctity, and there is also no one path towards "good" parenting.  Good parenting comes when your strengths and weaknesses meet and intertwine with those of your child's, when you experience the fearful joy of knowing another as another, when you establish your own, intimate ways of sharing love and showing affection.  

There's no scientific study that's going to tell you how to do that.  And that's the true freedom - and challenge - of parenthood.

Singleness and Selfhood

I'm usually an avid NPR listener, but lately I've found myself having to shut the radio off in annoyance.  Today was one of those days.  Tom Ashbrook on WBUR was interviewing Rebecca Traister, author of a new book entitled, All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation.  Now, to be perfectly fair I didn't listen to the whole interview (because I turned it off), and I haven't read the book, so I don't know all of what Ms. Traister had to say.  However, I did read her NPR interview with Terry Gross.  And so I feel a bit more comfortable commenting on what I briefly heard on the radio this morning.

Tom Ashbrook raised the question that the choice to delay marriage is seen by some as a choice to prolong adolescence.  I wish there were a transcript of Mr. Ashbrook's interview, but Ms. Traister responded by saying, essentially, that she disagrees: delaying marriage means that you have to take on more responsibilities (like, for instance, learning how to do handy-man type jobs, managing one's budget all on one's own, etc.), and that means you're more "independent" and therefore more of an adult.  As she said in her interview with Ms. Gross:

. . . what happens is that men and women wind up living more independently in the world for more years, and both of them wind up accruing skills, both professional and domestic, so that by the time - if you're talking about hetero couples - by the time men and women are meeting and partnering and marrying, it's much more likely that the woman knows how to use a drill and do the laundry and the man she may be meeting and partnering with also knows how to do his laundry and feed himself and use a drill. . .

To me equating "adulthood" with a woman's ability to use a drill and a man's ability to cook is a rather doubtful proposition.  But all right, yes, I understand that she was making a broader point about independence and also about the ability for people to enter into marriages with a more balanced sense of how to share domestic labor.  And I do agree that we have done an awful job at teaching our adolescents these basic skills, meaning that they have to learn how to do them as adults.

But acquiring a certain skill set or even being "independent" is not what makes you an adult.  The reason marriage is (or was) seen as a marker of adulthood is because it is (or was) the most important commitment beyond one's self that a person could make.  It binds you to another for the rest of your life.  It is this sense of commitment that makes one an adult - this ability to make an existential choice to devote your life to someone (or Someone) bigger than yourself - that is the marker of adulthood.

Then Mr. Ashbrook raised the question of "selfishness," to which Ms Traister replied to the effect that we, as a society, have a hard time seeing women as people who have "selves" that need to come "first."  This is where I turned off the radio.  All right, yes, patriarchy and misogyny have stripped women of their sense of selfhood - I understand that, I really do, and it upsets me too.  But the idea that we can even have a "self" independent of commitment to others strikes me as fundamentally flawed.  We don't lose our sense of selfhood when we commit ourselves to another person in marriage - we find ourselves.

That's not to say that we have to get married in order to have full selfhood.  The Catholic Church, with its communities of celibate men and women, has certainly never taught this.  Even for non-religious, the Church has affirmed the single life as a vocation.  But regardless of our marital status, we do have to have a certain level of selflessness, and an ability to commit fully and entirely to another person (or Person), in order to discover who we really are - not what we can do or accomplish, but who we really are, our virtues, our vices, our deepest hopes and fears, the source of our hope and our faith.  We must die to self to find one's self.

We are defined by who we love, and making a commitment like marriage ought to be an affirming statement of such a definitive love.  Unfortunately in our society it often isn't.  So perhaps it's a good sign that some are rejecting a flawed institution.  Certainly the increasing numbers of people opting out of marriage should make those of us who are its proponents rethink how this institution is lived and experienced.  But I wouldn't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.  Marriage, at its best, isn't about nice feelings and finding someone who "complements your lifestyle" (or, as Ms. Traister puts it, who will "improve on the life" that you are building).  It's about growing in virtue, growing as a human being, learning how to love and give yourself to another.  And that's what's missing in the discussion.