THOUGH the subject of the previous post, these words of the reader Paul V. are so apt and so beautifully expressed I’d like to feature them again:

The child has only one father and one mother. For better or worse, their moral authority is irreplaceable. The fourth commandment, to honor one’s father and mother, is the first of those concerned with human relations. It precedes the prohibitions against murder and adultery. Parents take the place of God for the child; one’s patrimony has an aura of possession about it that one’s own earnings can never have. It is given by someone higher than oneself, just as what is given by God, one’s talents, is possessed as nothing else is. I recall a talk given to prospective foster-care parents in which the speaker remarked that no matter how much one does for the child or gives, the wayward mother will drop by with a bag of potato chips for the child and he will be talking about it six weeks later. It is touching in the most wrenching way.

This authority, which is to say, the source of all goodness for the child, is the most important gift the parent can give to the child. Failing in one obligations obviously diminishes it, perhaps ultimately destroys it, which is probably why children cling to it, and why the consequences are so grave when in adolescence it is seriously compromised. I think one of the greatest losses of growing out of childhood, hardly, if ever, mentioned, is of perfect innocence and trust towards one’s parents.

Also, this important statement by Lydia Sherman deserves repeating:

Even the most hardened chain smoker will warn young people never to start. “I started, and now I can’t quit.” The modernists use the word “hypocrite” so that no one may teach anything unless he has immaculate perfection with no scars of the battle with the world. People who have made huge mistakes with investments or with purchases, will develop wisdom for the future and be able to tell their children not to do what they did, if they want to succeed. Why not have the same attitude toward sin? The rich man was in Hell, yet from that pit, still called out to Abraham to warn his brethren about it. “Don’t do what I did, ” he was saying, “Or you will end up in a place of torments, and it is a terrible, unbearable place.” Parents who have been corrupted in their youth experience a certain amount of torment over it, but their greatest revenge over the world is to raise their children differently and spare them the torment of a wasted youth.

Please follow and like us: