Family night movie: Why families count

 My granddaughter came home so we could celebrate her birthday. She now has graduated and has a teaching job in Manila: They don't pay well but after a year's experience she will be able to get a job overseas with better pay. 

Sigh. A typical Philippine story: Few jobs and poor pay for the jobs that are here. So people migrate overseas. 

I have the big screen TV in my room (it was bought for Lolo before he died.) Traditionally the family meets in the room to watch TV after supper, usually an old movie.

So last night, we watched the old black comedy Raising Arizona, which she hadn't seen before. The backstory of the film is about the wish for a family.

and the film ends with this line:

And it seemed real. It seemed like us and it seemed like, well, our home. If not Arizona, then a land not too far away. Where all parents are strong and wise and capable and all children are happy and beloved. I don’t know. Maybe it was Utah.” – H.I. McDunnough

And of course, what he is referring to is that Utah was founded as a refuge for the LDS, i.e. the Mormons, a misunderstood sect, but one whose practices emphasize family. They encourage family meetings, the idea that children are a blessing, and community: the symbol is the beehive, of cooperation.

In theory it is a good way of life, and like pre Vatican II Catholicism, the rules encourage responsibility, caring for others, and family stability. In a world of drag queen story hours and the moral chaos of the mainstream Protestant churches (and in many areas this includes Catholic churches) one can see the attraction of someone making rules to live by, even if one can't always follow the rules.

Since the age of drugs, the sexual revolution and rebellion since the 1960s, the family is seen by the culture as a prison to escape from. Freedom they cry, but Non Servium is the phrase I believe would be a more accurate description. That is what Satan said when he found the Creator was planning to become a human being for awhile to teach them how to live... something that disgusted Lucifer because humans were ickky: they had bodies, they gave birth, they raised kids, they worked for a living, and they died. Not like the angels who were so superior and who should be ruling these humans as their slaves, not teaching them by example which requires getting your hands dirty. 

So instead of helping, he rebelled, and he taught Adam and Eve to rebel:Rules are meaningless, indeed rules are evil because they stop you from doing what you want to do. In rebellion lies your freedom he argued:Do your own thing and become like god. 

so what happens when you destroy rules?

From a recent book podcast,,,,

In Live to See the Day, Nikhil Goyal offers a searing portrait of three Puerto Rican children struggling to survive in Philadelphia’s impoverished Kensington neighborhood. Drawing on nearly a decade of reportage, he follows the youths’ personal—but not unique—journeys through violence, homelessness, incarceration, and substance abuse as they strive to defy their designated fate in the modern U.S.' socioeconomic system.

their answer of course is to throw more money at the problem: which in some ways will help but in the long run it will make it worse because it enables those who don't want to follow the rules. 

One could argue that the problem is a mindset that sees self over family, and a corporate mindset that sees profit (send jobs overseas) over the need to support their workers.

so what is the result? Compare his picture to the lower middle class neighborhood of the 1950s Kensington. There was some violence, and a lot of alcoholism, but not the widespread drug use in the street. Homelessness was rare, because usually a family or friends were around to help: to quote Robert Frost:

 ‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.

But you know, behind all the headlines that emphasize the chaos of the cities, families are still there: like Gallileo saying "but it moves", I can only say: But it still exists: 40 million caregivers can't be wrong.

In the Philippines, the problem is different: it is that the families are torn apart because to get a decent job, you need to work in the city, or overseas.  

and in the Philippines, the family is even more vital: because it is the family who does the care for the children, the elderly, the handicapped. True, people go overseas to work, but it is not to get rich, but often to send money home so the extended family can pay school fees, have a decent house, and have enough to eat. And this is true not just in the Philippines but in many third world countries.

Well, anyway, that is what I have against this Pope. He is talking to the margin he claims. Fine. But he is not offering them advice on how to live their lives, but seems more to be wanting to push the idea that getting rid of chastity because it is out of date and oppressive needs to be done: ignoring the reason why all societies have rules here to protect the family. 

yet as Catholic culture article points out:

chastity cannot be reduced to a collection of rules and regulations. Chastity is the holy and habitual self-control of sexual impulses.

and the dirty little secret is that without self control of sexual impulses the family will not exist. And the ripple effect results in a Kensington with homeless drugged out zombies on the streets and robbery and assaults accepted as normal.

accepting the weak and helping them without condemnation and saying go and sin no more is not the same as saying no problemo bro go and do your own thing.

Alas according to Francis, if you object to the synod telling you that loving reptiles and praying for demons and blessing sin is required, well, then you are rigid (i.e. bad). 

Well, fine. 

But holding fake meetings full of those who have an agenda to make the church of what's happening now a reality is evil.

and what is more evil is that there is no talk about ordinary folk and the problems we face. Nor is there support for ordinary folks who try to keep the rules: indeed, the dirty little secret is that the younger generation doesn't even know that there are rules at all.

Sigh.