Ah. I missed the ‘every day’. However, as I referenced above, my BFF when her boys were in hockey did not have games all over the state every Sunday only. No, they had games on any given day of the week. Also, these boys practiced every day of the week. . .and that meant on the ice at 4:30 a.m. each day in order to have 3 hours of practice before heading in to a full day of school and then usually every 2nd or 3rd day a hockey match at home or away.
It’s the same thing, Father. Some families have children who practice a musical instrument for 3 or 4 hours a day on top of doing all their regular school work and family work. (I should know, I was one of them. And a National Merit Finalist to boot I add). Some families have children who are in the theatre, or in dance, at the ages of 8, 10, 12, and who go out every day for weeks and months at a time to audition, then to rehearse, then to perform in plays. Sometimes the family drives them not just in state but out of state in order to do so.
If you think the above are unhealthy practices for families then I’d understand your feeling the same for the family mentioned, but if you think that the above are, if perhaps ‘not for everybody’ then certainly acceptable and reasonable, then I’m honestly puzzled that you would be concerned for this family. . .
No. Frankly, I do not consider it the same thing at all. But, no less true, I also do not think what you describe is really acceptable or reasonable for an educational setting but far far less with regard to the situation for Mass attendance that the poster described.
At the stage of being retired for age and for length of years since the remote days when I was ordained, there is very little I have not seen – be it in my academic career, be it in my years of pastoral assignment, be it the years of chancery work, or the years of special assignments.
I have worked with families where the children were sent with great success to boarding schools; the children were happy and the parents were happy with the outcome. And I have worked with families where the children broke relations with their parents, once they were adults, because of being sent to a boarding school. With children who suffered very great harm from a variety of sources because of what educational choices made for them.
I had the privilege of knowing a few very talented people who thrived for the sort of gruesome environment you describe, one an Olympian…but I have known
far far more who were harmed – and I would go so far as to say damaged – by the experience of those sort of experiences, such as you describe, in their childhood.
I have also worked with those trying to find, if they can, some relationship with the Church and with their being Catholic after a childhood in which the family religiosity was so unhealthy and imbalanced that they left the Church and have a very hard time in finding any place for it in their lives…even when they understand, with help of distance and an objective analysis, that their parents concepts were, actually, warped and when they can articulate the positive aspects of faith and religious practice.
Perhaps you are puzzled by my reaction because you are not a parish priest who has had to try, across the decades, to help people deal with these sorts of issues – be it parents who have to come to terms with children who have rejected them and left the Church or the children who are now adults but with a childhood behind them that has left them scarred.
