Roamer’s column

One gets the impression that children are increasingly becoming everybody else’s responsibility except the parents’; the school’s, for example; the government’s, the Children’s Commissioner and the UN, where Conventions on the Rights of a Child are hammered out, for three more. Forget that there are other agencies within this body working hell for leather to promote the destruction of the unborn.

A poor sermon can be an irritant but it provides the believer with no justification for deliberately missing Sunday Mass

Nor is this off-loading of responsibility surprising once it is deemed a sign of progress that a mother can park her two-year-old in kindergarten or in recreational areas set up by industries so that momma and poppa can make their assiduous contributions to the country’s GDP; anywhere, it seems, is OK for kids except their home in the street where they live.

For it is becoming increasingly anti-social, a sign of regress, for mommas to stay at home, a sign that those who do so lack the imagination and oomph that makes the modern world turn round. They have stupidly given up the excitement of a career for the drudgery of keeping home where they are unsung heroines but heroines nonetheless. This particular accolade was debased recently when it was employed, none too gainfully, to describe a foul-mouthedstudent, to whose stipend I contribute so that she can evolve into an educated person.

Family-friendly governments and family-friendly oppositions have fallen over themselves in their efforts to prove to the electorate that they are all for women in the workplace and for married women to be likewise employed there.

We are constantly being told, as if it is something to be ashamed of, that in Malta the percentage of women in the workforce and married women returning to market after they give birth, is the lowest in the EU.

Carrots are dangled in all manner of shapes and sizes to entice them from home and into productive labour: tax incentives, tax credits, extended maternity leave.

A woman’s place, received wisdom has it, is no longer in the home where her productivity can be put to best use. She will no longer be dictated to and, as GK Chesterton remarked 100 years ago, hundreds of her left the home to become – stenographers.

Today her place is in a boardroom, for some, but for most in a dreadful, soul-destroying packaging hall, filtering out no-no products travelling past her on a conveyor belt, or stitching a zip onto a pair of trousers in an agony of self-fulfilment – hour after hour until the bell rings and, exhausted or cramped, probably both, she gets into her car or mounts a bus that takes her home to spend – quality time with her kids?

To whom we must return. A modern version of Little Red Riding Hood has it that when the little girl danced through the wood to visit her grandmother and found a wolf in her bed instead of grandma, she took out a gun and shot him dead. The moral of the story being that little girls are not so stupid as they used to be.

Much evidence supports this, as does the fact that a number of factors have contributed to their growing up before their time. This was brought forcibly home in an unwholesome manner when 12, 13 and 14-year-olds and older teenagers were reported to have been dancing in clubs frequented by adults. It turned out that in one instance the organiser of such a get-together was convicted last year of having sex with a 13-year-old. Understandably this caused quite a stir; but that is all it didand it was not long before the episode became the day before yesterday’s news.

Strange thing was that in the wake of that story the media turned their attention and some of their wrath on the Children’s Commissioner as if these over-developed creatures were her kids and what was she going to do about it?

It seemed to be quite out of place, at least that was the conclusion one was forced to arrive at, it was indubitable bad form to address that question to their parents. Whatever happened to parental authority?

Apparently we even have to be circumspect about how we use that phrase; we were told recently that the word authority “ought to be replaced because, nowadays, with growing awareness, children are not seen as property of the parents but people whom the parents ought to have responsibility over”.

Presumably this circumspection applies to schools, where teachers have no authority over their charges but have responsibility over them? It would not be long, were this to be the case, before the school became a blackboard jungle – as in some schools abroad it is.

With every respect to the author of that opinion (with what or on whose authority is it made?) this is gobbledegook. A seamstress in a factory is not the property of the owner of that establishment but there can be no doubt that the owner, through the appropriate channels of his organisation can, may, must, exercise authority over her, unless he opts for running a shambles.

Part of a parent’s responsibility for John and Jane requires the exercise of authority, surely; a loving authority but authority nonetheless.

If even this is taken away from them, what chance the children of discovering that there is more to life than i-i-i and rights. And alongside authority is the need, responsibly to be there during the child’s growth and initial formation.

The song’s the thing

Well before last Sunday’s bishops’ Advent pastoral letter, which much of the media and every onliner mistakenly understood as being solely a criticism of poor sermons, Cardinal Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council, had already slated clergy for using theological language that was “grey, dull and favourless”.

Reaction to the letter in Malta centred on the poor standard of the Sunday homily; this in turn was blamed for poor attendance at Mass; which is poppycock. The reasons for abstention are far more serious; it is altogether solipsistic to shake the dust off our shoes and walk away from Sunday Mass putting the blame on the poor preacher; solipsistic and ignorant as to the meaning of the Eucharistic celebration.

For the Mass is not the homily and the homily is certainly not the Mass with its three main elements: the liturgy of the Word (readings from sacred scripture and, indeed, the preaching of the Word); the Eucharistic offering, which for self-evident reason is the climactic moment of the Mass, and the communion of the faithful that proceeds from this.

The homily, the explanation by the priest of the sacred readings and the effect these should have in the context of our everyday lives, plays an important but subsidiary part in the overall scheme of things. It deserves to be preached intelligently; which means the priest must be in control of the scripture readings and charged by them; which means he should start to prepare his homily on Monday, complete it by Wednesday and be word perfect by some time Saturday morning.

It is obvious that a number of priests do not do this and rely on a misplaced belief in their ability and the misguided hope that it will be all right on the day.

But onliners beware. Even if his homily drives one to distraction, his acting in persona Christi when he consecrates the bread and the wine is of a dimension altogether far more awesome; it is precisely this moment that provides the faithful with the greatest gift of all, one that more than makes up for the boorishness of any sermon – and could even redeem it.

A poor sermon can be an irritant but it provides the believer with no justification for deliberately missing Sunday Mass. Would you not take the medicine prescribed merely because you do not like the sound of your doctor’s voice? You are free not to, but most people will tell you that you are being foolish.

Those who blame their absence from the pews on Sundays to the sermon may try digging deeper to discover what really is keeps them away from this central act of worship, from Communion and communion. Without the priest, however limited his oratory, there would be no Communion and precious little communion.

The media may have telescoped the bishops’ pastoral letter to the business of the sermon and the need for priests to renew themselves; it is more pertinent to note that it also called on each of us to renew himself or herself; of this far more difficult request nothing much was made. For their part he bishops should be concentrating on a process of evangelisation based on a catechesis that reaches out to the faithful and faithless alike; which the faithful and faithless are not receiving; at least not sufficiently. Exhortation is not enough; this needs to work in parallel with a sound catechetical formation – be this of our children, of our youth, of each and every one of us; on which we must continue to build.

It is the absence of this formation to a greater or lesser degree, and among other things, that is the main reason for the drop in attendance at Sunday Mass; children are not being taught enough and parents find difficulty in teaching them, let alone praying with them. Staying away from Mass will not help. Here is some advice taken from the leader carried in The Catholic Herald early last month:

“Next time you find yourself shuffling in your pew during a tedious sermon, don’t waste time thinking about how the homily can be improved. Pray instead that the Holy Spirit might speak through the preacher and transform the congregation’s hearts and minds.”