Hilmar Johannes Backer, The Spoiled Child

“USUALLY parents are so proud of their children that they fail to give them any religious training during their infant and childhood years, much less school them in the virtues of humility and the fear of God. Instead, they worship them as the fulfillment of all their desires, the same way other people love their dogs and cats. Contrary to all logic, instead of seeing the child as a poor sinner, whom it is their duty before God to save from his innate pride and selfishness, they are consumed with such adoring love of him (or her) that they proceed to destroy them with toys … and cooing and coddling and compliments. Many modern parents are misfits, who refuse to grow up to their awesome responsibility. They seem beset with a mortal fear that their child will not love them, or thanks to their carefully-instilled phobia about child brutality, they find it impossible to punish or discipline him.

“…. As might be expected, such a child will grow up to be an insufferable, unmanageable ingrate … (All such children should be named Nero and Caligula.) Later in life, he is a sociopath, who hates himself, and everyone else. His summation of his life is printed on his dirty, black T-shirt, something like: “No Fear!” or “Life Stinks.” Not infrequently he destroys himself with play, drink, drugs, crime, sexual perversion, and/or suicide.

“The child who is seriously spoiled in his or her infant and childhood years has little chance of saving his soul, for he will never submit his will to God’s. The Little Flower wrote that it took her whole life to get over the coddling of her dear father and sisters, and she lived in a truly Catholic household. Regardless of what they are thinking, or what they intend, if modern parents were incarnate demons out of Hell, they would follow the same program for their child’s ultimate damnation. When our divine Savior said, “Unless you be converted, and become as little children …” He was speaking to children as well as grownups. He was saying, simply, that true and profound humility is essential for salvation. And achieving it is the great labor of the Christian life, the great undertaking and burden, something more difficult than any kind of physical fitness program, or studious endeavor, or professional training, or work of art, and infinitely better.”

— Fr. James Wathen, quoted in Thou Art a Priest Forever, The Life of Father James F. Wathen, 2015

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