By REY FLORES
We have all heard the expression that “the family that prays together, stays together.” As for the family that strays from prayer, there awaits an eternity separated from our God, forever lost in suffering . . . together.
While it is clear that the Church is a hospital for sinners and Jesus is our Divine Healer, so many of us just go through the motions as we go to Mass: We stand, kneel, sit and pray, but fail to believe in and ask for His mercy and healing.
Have we lost the faith as families? Have we entered an era when spouses have grown apart by the Devil’s wiles or when children have grown to despise their parents simply for helping to bring them into this world?
I write this as Father’s Day approaches us this month. I believe that it has never been tougher on a spiritual level to be a good father than it is today. Our popular culture assaults our every sense with the profane, the vulgar, and the perverse.
How are we to protect our families from such a barrage of evil and wickedness? While the sacraments of the Church are mighty powerful, sometimes our kids may slip through the cracks and we are unable to shield them entirely.
It used to be that the “home is where the heart is.” But today, many homes are where the danger is. The Devil has entered into our “domestic church” through our own selfishness and sins of anger; addictions, pornography, pop culture entertainment on television, the radio, and the Internet; and any deadly sin you’d like to add to this list.
Perhaps we have evicted the Sacred Heart of Jesus from our homes, thus making them into barren places where the home is no longer where His Sacred Heart is.
Not just our homes, but many institutions of learning — the schools and the priests and nuns whom we once trusted our children to — have gone down the road to perdition. From kindergarten through college, many so-called Catholic schools are run by secularists or, worse yet, by lukewarm or wayward Catholics. These are even more dangerous than a non-Catholic.
Without naming specific elementary or secondary schools, I have heard complaints and witnessed how many of our parochial schools are teaching kids about Islam in the name of political correctness.
Then our universities are being taken over by homosexualist and socialist student groups. And it is not uncommon for school administrators to remove crucifixes from campus because they “offended” some Godless heathen.
And it’s not just someone else’s kids. Our own children can sometimes make us question why God made us parents to begin with. Patience may be a virtue, but sometimes it’s our only saving grace when it comes to raising children.
I have personally witnessed some of the most abhorrent behavior from some Catholic school children who attend supposedly reputable schools. They’ll use four-letter words like they’re going out of style and often talk about how their classmates are “making out” in the school hallways. And that’s just the sixth-graders!
I understand a lot of this behavior is the garden variety “coming of age” stuff, but we must really ask: Who is in charge of these schools and are the parents so aloof, or so lost, that they won’t question why these schools are being run like some kind of R-rated funhouse?
While there are many great young people out here, I have also sadly witnessed how some kids speak to their parents in odious tones and display reprehensible behavior. One girl whom I know regularly calls her own parents names like “stupid” or “jerk” and makes fun of her dad because of his current unemployment.
This is more of the millennial and post-millennial, privileged crybaby nonsense we either have to start getting used to — or we must let these misbehaving kids know who is in charge.
The lack of respect a parent endures has a lot to do with what the kids have witnessed at home. If a wife constantly berates her husband, criticizes him or nitpicks at him, the daughters will follow suit and soon lose any and all respect for their dad.
Their dad has been so beaten down by their mother that he is no longer seen as an authority figure, but only a verbal punching bag for mom to vent her frustrations on.
Because I used Father’s Day as a reason to write this column, I am focusing on the lack of respect dads get nowadays.
For a wife and their children to disrespect and insult their husband and father is an offense to God the Father Himself and a violation of the Fourth and Fifth Commandments. Not only has the head of the household been dishonored, but he has also been killed spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically.
Any woman or child who may be guilty of this should go to Confession and ask your husband or father for forgiveness. Commit to never again attacking the head of your household, the shepherd of your domestic Church, in such injurious ways.
Just so no woman reader gets offended by reading this: It is the same thing with the boys. If dad has little or no respect for their mother, then it’s like they say — the apple never falls far from the tree. But this is a side for someone else to possibly write about.
It is going to take us husbands and fathers to set things straight with firmness, but also with love and compassion. St. Joseph, ora pro nobis.
It’s easy to point the finger at the Joe Bidens, Nancy Pelosis, or Ted Kennedys of this world, but it’s much harder to point the finger at ourselves. To say we are Catholic is one thing. To be Catholic is an entirely different thing. Let’s all start living the faith in our families.
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(Rey Flores is a Catholic writer and speaker. Contact Rey at reyfloresusa@gmail.com.)
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