Parents role in a situation

[PetraG]

I will take the last two sentences first. A leader must be an exemplary example, not almost good enough. Sure, no one is perfect. Of the leaders I’ve seen, I know they had to work at it, to be open to appropriate and responsible criticism. Growing up, I was taught to be the best I could be. By what standard? Church teaching which I got at school and at home, and by the day to day example of most of the adults around me. Yes, there were a few bad apples. I did not bother them and I was not encouraged to bother them.

If you are saying that parents ought to run their homes with the same duty to protect the life of virtue of all living there as an abbot or abbess of a monastery has, you won’t find an argument from me. Abbots generally stick with exerting authority over their own monasteries, though. Pastors exert authority within their own parishes and bishops within their own dioceses. Those with the jurisdiction to correct them in specific cases are relatively few. As for the rest of us, we sort of need to stick with correcting those who ask for an opinion or with whom we have a relationship of mutual correction. Some extended families have that as the accepted rule, but others don’t and still others aren’t even on speaking terms because they never agreed on where that kind of boundary was.

 

[PetraG]

Where do the ideas for variant households come from?

The traditional answer is: the World, the Flesh and the Devil.
Rationalizing one’s way around chastity is usually the Flesh talking.

That is not to say that there isn’t more than one legitimate way to run a monastery. There is room for variety among the virtuous, too. The active orders obviously leave more contact with the World than the cloistered ones do.

 

[Thorolfr]

Along with the very strange implication: “Mom, dad. I loved you guys and followed your rules when I was 17 but now that I’m 18, no more rules and no more love.” How crazy is that?

I think that in a lot of cases, it’s more along these lines: “Mom, dad. I don’t love you guys very much and I hate your rules and the only reason I’m following your rules when I’m 17 is because I don’t have any choice and know that you’d probably beat me or kick me out of the house if I didn’t. I can’t wait to turn 18 so that I can get out of here and get away from your oppressive rules.”

 

[PetraG]

I think that in a lot of cases, it’s more along these lines: “Mom, dad. I don’t love you guys very much and I hate your rules and the only reason I’m following your rules when I’m 17 is because I don’t have any choice and know that you’d probably beat me or kick me out of the house if I didn’t. I can’t wait to turn 18 so that I can get out of here and get away from your oppressive rules.”

There are a lot of young people living in dorms who seize the opportunity to do everything their parents did not allow them to do when they were living in their parents’ homes. Sometimes it is because their formation was entirely external, but sometimes people don’t have the strength to live a virtuous life when they are surrounded with a living environment and a social environment and even an intellectual environment built largely on indulging in vices. Some young Catholics assume they will be able to live according to their own values regardless of who they share living quarters with, but living a virtuous life while surrounded by those who openly disdain those virtues really is harder than it looks. (I don’t just mean the virtues of chastity and temperance but also the virtue of religion.)

Some people even become sexually active because they despair of ever finding a spouse if they don’t. If enough people you date break up with you if you actually insist on remaining chaste and doing what it realistically takes to remain chaste, it can get really discouraging. Even Catholics have this problem, and it exists for all age groups, not just the ones in their 20s. Worse yet, there are even other Catholics who give into this despair and call that act of despair just being realistic.

 

[Thorolfr]

Are more people happier? I would say not.

I’m sure that LGBT people are a lot happier now than what they were before 1970 when many of them probably lived in fear of losing their jobs, having their careers destroyed or being disowned by their families if anyone found out. Some were subjected to barbaric treatments by psychiatrists and doctors.

And in the past, I think that religion could be extremely oppressive. My Baptist grandmother wouldn’t even let my father play with any children who were Catholic when he was growing up because she had such negative views about the Catholic Church. Now, one of his best friends is Catholic and even though my father’s not very religious and doesn’t attend any church, he volunteered for a long time for a Catholic charitable organization (and no one there ever made him feel unwelcome because he’s not Catholic). My Baptist uncle went to a church that only allows women to wear dresses.

 

[TheLittleLady]

My Baptist uncle went to a church that only allows women to wear dresses.

I’ve never known a Baptist church that allows men to wear dresses!

 

[IsaiahSpirit]

Yes, we know that Objective Beauty, Truth, and Goodness
with Divine Revelation by the lens of Jesus The Christ comes
from The Holy Bible.
Assertive compassionate relations do much more for Evangelization
than coming down hard ever did. Condoning, enabling, and facilitating
only come by agreeing with the behavior; not by having a dialogue with
the persons involved.
“A gentle answer deflects anger, but harsh words make tempers flare.”
Proverbs 15:1
“Sailing ships are driven by strong winds. But a small rudder turns a large ship whatever way the man at the wheel wants the ship to go. The tongue is also a small part of the body, but it can speak big things.” -
James 3:4-5
“Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. ‘I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!’ And immediately the leprosy left him.
Then Jesus ordered him, “Don’t tell anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.’” Luke 5:13-14
~
We usually do not get the results Jesus The Only Divine Anointed One did; but to treat a sinner in a family like a leper not to be touched, alienates the person. Many times, just knowing someone is there to catch, hug, and help when needed lets someone see an error that is not condoned hurting one’s self. Patience is a virtue. Assertive loving kindness does not* necessarily mean condoning, enabling, and facilitating - especially when not allowed in one’s own house.
~
We assert things. We lift fingers to help another’s burden. I forget where the following is from. But I think a Nun in NYC many decades ago worked in soup kitchen, plus clothing was given away. A prostitute would come in every single day, and be mean to the Nun. The Nun would only speak kind words. Around one
year later, the prostitute asked the Nun in a mean voice, how can you be so nice to me? (It wasn’t Mother Teresa.) The Nun replied, ‘because I see Christ in your face.’ The prostitute converted and actually became a Nun.
~
Peace.

 

[PetraG]

So true. But look at the media. Pre-1970, most media respected and reflected Christian values. As 1971 came in, more and more disrespect, followed by sexual situations. Not the majority but it was certainly there. And as each new year passed, it was a little more bad, followed by a little more, until all that gradual poisoning resulted in today’s media. Mostly dark and sexual and twisted. Irreverent? No. Actively anti-Christian. Reverse oppression? Yes. Definitely.

Are more people happier? I would say not.

Are more young people despairing today about finding someone to have an authentic relationship with? Yes. Why? Because the corruption took hold and some people think they have no choice. Only by reestablishing authentic male, female relationships can the West hope to recover what it has lost to those who wanted their personal idea of ‘freedom’ to be marketed to all as ‘the only way.’ Ignore the lies.

What the media is up to is straying from the topic a bit.

My point is that while a Benedictine abbey will “welcome all as Christ,” which is in the Rule, that does not mean that the same monastery does not have a Rule that those who are members of the community have to abide by in order to remain part of the community, a rule that is more restrictive for full members than for guests.

A Catholic household is a domestic Church. Those who are the heads of a Catholic household really do have to have a Rule for their homes. What that means can vary from one to another, but when adults form a community, they do usually have a rule of some kind. The idea that “we only have the authority to care what you do when you are physically here” is by far on the least restrictive end of what the rule in a Catholic home is going to look like. I’m not saying it is just totally out of bounds, but I also think it is far too restrictive to say that feature justly must be part of the rule of life that governs a Catholic home. No. If anything, it would be easier to argue for the reverse.

 

[IsaiahSpirit]

““Tolerance is an attitude of reasoned patience toward evil … a forbearance that restrains us from showing anger or inflicting punishment. Tolerance applies only to persons … never to truth. Tolerance applies to the erring, intolerance to the error … Architects are as intolerant about sand as foundations for skyscrapers as doctors are intolerant about germs in the laboratory.”
source: “Tolerance” by Archbishop Fulton Sheen

 

[Angel_Bradford]

It is their house, therefore their rules. If she doesn’t like it, she is free to move out. My father told me that as long as I lived under his roof, I would abide by his rules and it did not matter if I was 18 or 80.

 

[Angel_Bradford]

They are under no obligation to let her live in their home or pay for her college.

 

[LilyM]

LilyM:

How many jobs actually require a PhD? And why on earth would someone desiring to be seen as an independent and intelligent adult not DO the intelligent and adult thing and support themselves by working for a living while studying part-time for said PhD? And stop acting like perpetual adolescents if they don’t want to be treated as such?

To answer your questions, anyone who wants to teach at a major university as a professor would need to have a PhD. And, anyone who wants to be a clinical psychologist would need a PhD. And if it takes up to 7 years to get a PhD, why stretch it out even longer by going to school part time? PhD students do get part-time teaching jobs as Teaching Assistants and they might also get grants and fellowships, but most of them would probably make less than $20,000 per year.

I can see that having a PhD doesn’t impress you very much. But money isn’t everything. The search for knowledge at the University level is quite rewarding. And teaching is rewarding, too.

Mileage varies hugely in terms of the contribution PhDs make to the greater good. Some are fantastic, some are of little real value or interest to anyone other than the student and their direct supervisors. Universities are a business, the more students willing to pay to do a PhD the better. The quality and significance of the research is less important.

I do volunteer work. I find it very rewarding. I also self-educate in areas that interest me outside of work. That too is very rewarding. But I don’t expect anyone to pay me for it or pay my living expenses while I do it - as you said, money isn’t everything.

However, people like Andrew Carnegie and Bill Gates can tell you that being self-supporting gives you much more freedom to pursue other things that aren’t lucrative but you find rewarding. And you can do (and have) both.

 

[Nmc]

Are they paying for her shelter and edu?
If she is a legal adult she is free to do whatever she wants, and support herself. If she’s under 18 she needs to obey.

 

[Thorolfr]

Thorolfr:

LilyM:

How many jobs actually require a PhD? And why on earth would someone desiring to be seen as an independent and intelligent adult not DO the intelligent and adult thing and support themselves by working for a living while studying part-time for said PhD? And stop acting like perpetual adolescents if they don’t want to be treated as such?

To answer your questions, anyone who wants to teach at a major university as a professor would need to have a PhD. And, anyone who wants to be a clinical psychologist would need a PhD. And if it takes up to 7 years to get a PhD, why stretch it out even longer by going to school part time? PhD students do get part-time teaching jobs as Teaching Assistants and they might also get grants and fellowships, but most of them would probably make less than $20,000 per year.

I can see that having a PhD doesn’t impress you very much. But money isn’t everything. The search for knowledge at the University level is quite rewarding. And teaching is rewarding, too.

I do volunteer work. I find it very rewarding. I also self-educate in areas that interest me outside of work. That too is very rewarding. But I don’t expect anyone to pay me for it or pay my living expenses while I do it - as you said, money isn’t everything.

How would someone self educate about the history of ancient Egypt, for example, if no one had gotten the training to be an Egyptologist or an Egyptian archaeologist and was able to write the books that the non-specialist would want to read? Becoming an Egyptologist requires a lot of study, especially in the language of ancient Egypt and the various scripts used to write it over several thousand years.

And PhD students get paid (although not a lot) at least in part for the work they do in grading students’ exams and papers and in teaching discussion sessions and language classes. And grants and fellowships that they receive are often paid from money donated for that purpose by wealthy individuals. In some cases, the money comes from the government which is trying to encourage US citizens to learn strategic languages such as Persian or Russian or Arabic or Chinese.

 

[QwertyGirl]

Doesn’t do anything at home about it, but goes off to KKK meetings all the time.

You compare joining the KKK with having a normal sex life by secular standards?

 

[PetraG]

A number of PhD programs can be as long as 7 or 8 years of full-time graduate level study after finishing an undergraduate degree (the PhD program in my department at university was at least 7 years). This means that such people won’t graduate until they are about 29 or 30. And graduate students in those kinds of programs usually don’t make a living wage while they’re in school. Hardly any of the PhD students in my department were married and I doubt that any of them were still virgins.

It probably happens, but I do not know a single person who lived with their parents during their post-graduate work. Some did marry and have children. Their spouses worked and they often took out loans, too.

The thread is about whether or not somebody ought to be living according to their parents’ rule of life while still living with their parents, after all.

 

[QwertyGirl]

The child has already moved away from the faith tradition in which he or she was raised.

The child has already rejected the influence of the parents.

This is a very shallow view. I know my parents were multi-faceted human beings. Rejecting the faith of someone doesn’t mean one rejects that person’s influence. My parents, to this day, influence me greatly in wonderful ways. They will continue to influence me once they are gone, too.

 

[VanitasVanitatum]

You compare joining the KKK with having a normal sex life by secular standards?

The point being disputed is that whether behavior outside of home can be something the parents can restrict.

 

[QwertyGirl]

I just read the entire thread. Something that strikes me is, where is the respect for privacy???

If my 19 year old daughter living at home goes out for the night and says she will be back in the morning, I don’t ask questions I don’t want the answers to. It is easy. She is entitled to her privacy. I am entitled to only know what I want to know. I never discussed my pre-marital sex habits with my parents. I knew not to come home at 3 AM and wake the whole house up, though, when they had to get up and go to work in the morning.

The point is, daughter could be staying at her girlfriends house, she could be staying at the library prepping for exams, and yes, she could be having pre-marital sex with the boyfriend. Not my business. And certainly not something I would let stand in the way of a healthy relationship between us.

Activity in the house and under the roof is one thing. Set the boundaries. I wouldn’t advise trying to do the same for a grown adult when they are out and about. Afterall, the saying is “Under my ROOF…”.

 

[LilyM]

LilyM:

Thorolfr:

LilyM:

How many jobs actually require a PhD? And why on earth would someone desiring to be seen as an independent and intelligent adult not DO the intelligent and adult thing and support themselves by working for a living while studying part-time for said PhD? And stop acting like perpetual adolescents if they don’t want to be treated as such?

To answer your questions, anyone who wants to teach at a major university as a professor would need to have a PhD. And, anyone who wants to be a clinical psychologist would need a PhD. And if it takes up to 7 years to get a PhD, why stretch it out even longer by going to school part time? PhD students do get part-time teaching jobs as Teaching Assistants and they might also get grants and fellowships, but most of them would probably make less than $20,000 per year.

I can see that having a PhD doesn’t impress you very much. But money isn’t everything. The search for knowledge at the University level is quite rewarding. And teaching is rewarding, too.

I do volunteer work. I find it very rewarding. I also self-educate in areas that interest me outside of work. That too is very rewarding. But I don’t expect anyone to pay me for it or pay my living expenses while I do it - as you said, money isn’t everything.

How would someone self educate about the history of ancient Egypt, for example, if no one had gotten the training to be an Egyptologist or an Egyptian archaeologist and was able to write the books that the non-specialist would want to read? Becoming an Egyptologist requires a lot of study, especially in the language of ancient Egypt and the various scripts used to write it over several thousand years.

And PhD students get paid (although not a lot) at least in part for the work they do in grading students’ exams and papers and in teaching discussion sessions and language classes. And grants and fellowships that they receive are often paid from money donated for that purpose by wealthy individuals. In some cases, the money comes from the government which is trying to encourage US citizens to learn strategic languages such as Persian or Russian or Arabic or Chinese.

Howard Carter, discoverer of Tutankhamun’s tomb, had no formal training in anything to do with Egyptology. What he did have was interest, and self-education by way of friends and acquaintances who did have an interest. Plus a wealthy patron, Lord Carnarvon, who had cash to splash.

Champollion, discoverer of the Rosetta Stone, did study ancient languages, but struggled to make a living until he similarly found a rich and influential patron - Napoleon - who again shared his interests. Champollion gained a lot of his knowledge in the field, when he tagged along on Napoleon’s military campaign in Egypt. In other words self-education by going to sites and learning by personally observing what was there.

What neither of them did was ask their parents for handouts or do a PhD in Egyptology.