Kenneth Joseph Mortimer
To
keep the faith – Home is not enough!
While
taking a short holiday on the heights of Kesrouan, at that moment
wrapped in the glory of the rays of the setting sun, I was discussing
the need for religious formation of our youth with a certain zealous
young priest. I suggested that the years spent in a university
were decisive, while my clerical friend insisted on the over-riding
importance of home.
Frankly, he did not convince me. It was not that I actually disagreed
with him about the importance of the home. There was an English
cardinal by the name of Vaughan in the nineteenth century whose
mother had spent an hour every evening praying that all her children
should become priests or nuns; four sons became priests, the two
others entered a seminary but returned to lay life and all three
daughters became nuns. In fact most saints and most good priests,
monks and nuns have come from good Christian homes. But there
is no rule.
Simple reliance on home influence seems to come from a narrow
sectarian view of religion. One’s religion is too often seen as
a tribe whose numbers have to be maintained by inheritance and
whose blood-line must be kept pure, untainted by that of outsiders(1).
But there is always a leakage, a steady draining away of lost
sheep, which has to be made up from the numbers point of view.
And the fact is that not all so-called Christian families are
good. Many are mediocre and some are rotten to the core. Western
materialism is no longer merely Western. It has invaded the whole
world and is already well entrenched in Lebanon, where more than
anything else it threatens all the precious social values.
Unfortunately, the chief influence in most homes nowadays is television.
Advertisements for cars show them being driven at impossible speeds
on empty roads that certainly do not exist in Lebanon; the advertisements
do not show the cars being driven with care and respect for other
motorists through rush-hour traffic! Once upon a time children
were taught polite table manners and enjoyment of food through
moderation, but now television teaches them greed, a good training
for obesity. When one sees children arguing with helpless mothers
about their food on TV one only wishes their mothers would give
them a good spanking.
The music clips show young blacks and whites of a criminal underworld
against a slum background with songs of violence, revolt, debauched
sex and even Satanism. With such role-models presented to them,
one can hardly complain if blacks in the West turn to crime and
disorder, or are treated with suspicion and contempt. Once upon
a time in order to dance one learnt strict rules of courtesy and
etiquette. “Education” is reduced to learning how to use a computer
and schools are no longer expected to teach discipline and good
conduct.
Further, in these times of rapid change and development, when
a paternal frown no longer brings cowering obedience, when rare
are the children who spend their whole lives in mountain village
communities, very few parents have the level of religious knowledge
needed to prepare their children to go out in the world. Even
in the great cities of our age, otherwise educated Christians
pass their lives with an infant-school level of religious instruction.
It is not enough to have a mother who is a veritable grenouille
de bénitier (holy water frog) as the French say and who
fills every shelf in her house with horrible sickly pious pictures
(art de St.-Sulpice).(2)
Many are lost to the faith because they cannot reconcile their
natural drive with the impression received from their parents
that sex is by nature evil and that marriage is a sort of toleration
of sin. One mother I knew was shocked that her daughter should
want to marry in the month of May, sacred to Our Lady. Unfortunately,
very few people read the Old Testament, the Gospels or the epistles
of St. Paul to learn how marriage is holy and its pleasure willed
by God.
Many parents make religion a solemn, serious matter, a tedious
bore, a matter of “don’t do this and don’t do that”, so it is
scarcely surprising that their children should throw off all restraint
once they are free of parental authority. This reaction against
the Calvinist streak in Protestantism may explain the collapse
of religious practice in Northern Europe a century ago. Church
attendance, often twice on Sundays, was obligatory and sermons
often two hours long, generally about the eternal punishment that
awaited most of the congregation after their death. On Sundays,
all the children’s toys were locked up in the cupboard and all
play and laughter forbidden, while the silence of the tomb descended
on the house.
My London parish priest was brought up in a Catholic family full
of the joy of the Resurrection and the Gospel message – in 1949,
when over ninety, his father attended the golden jubilee (50 years)
of the ordination of his two sons. However, the children had one
aunt of strict Reformed tradition. Once when Christmas fell on
a Sunday, the adults and children were romping about but noticed
their aunt sitting in stony silence. “Why don’t you come and play
and have fun with us?” they asked. The crushing answer came in
sepulchral tones, “Those that laugh on earth will howl in Hell!”
Even in Lebanon many older people may remember religious fear
being used by teachers of a less educated generation to impose
discipline in school.
But there is another aspect to the whole question. Christianity,
Islam and Buddhism are missionary religions, each intended for
all mankind.(3) Of course,
there are the “Fundamentalists”, whether in Washington or Waziristan,
who see religion in terms of war of their community against the
infidel. A Fundamentalist is a person who ignores the fundamentals
of his religion and replaces them with some personal obsession.
Salman Rushdi has pointed out (BBC, September, 2005) that nowadays
more and more people seem to define themselves by what they hate.
As far as Christianity is concerned, it is invidious to pick out
texts here and there; simply the whole Gospel is missionary, burning
with love for all humanity. It is impossible to read the New Testament
with an open mind and come to any other conclusion. “Going, therefore,
teach all nations...” (Matthew XXVIII, 19)
We do in fact see that there are many who have strong religious
convictions, yet were not raised in a religious home. I know a
Muslim who is a model of Islamic piety as well as generosity and
professional integrity although his father was a prominent member
of a basically atheist political party. Dr. Sherwood Taylor was
an eminent Oxford University scientist and well-known atheist
intellectual who became a zealous Catholic propagandist as a result
of studying the Galileo case. Many defenders of Christian belief,
such as G.K. Chesterton and Sir Arnold Lunn, have been converts
who wished by their writings and speeches to pass on their new-found
treasure to others.
In my own case, I was brought up by grandparents in a home where
my mother, a convert to Catholicism, could have little influence.
My grandfather was a typical example of late Victorian religion,
what might be called Low-Church Anglican, imbued with a deep suspicion
of Popery but at least with the virtue of tolerance for what he
disapproved. He had a huge “Family Bible”, which he opened only
to amuse me with the engraved illustrations. He was of extreme
moral rectitude, having resigned in World War I from a military
defence force because other members had sung a dirty song. Yet
he never actually went to church, prayed or mentioned religion.
My religious faith is something I owe entirely to a providential
visit to the local parish church, where again apparent coincidences
led me to meet the priest, whom I addressed as Sir instead of
Father, thus awakening his concern. This holy man became the decisive
influence in my life.
In Britain and America during and after World War II, many who
had been brought up in religious ignorance and indifference found
their faith as a result of military service in the armed forces,
where they were impressed by the example and arguments of prayerful
friends. At the British Air Force base at Habbaniya in Iraq, with
the support of an excellent chaplain, a number of airmen who attended
daily evening Mass led friends to the Church and these on their
return to Britain themselves became plunged in religious activity.
Incidentally, at this time seminaries and monasteries were crowded
out with ex-soldiers who had seen the hapless state of unbelievers
and wished to be missionary by prayer alone or by prayer and action.
No less than twelve quite irreligious businessmen were led to
God by a stock-broker I knew, a controversialist of burning missionary
spirit, I believe himself a convert. While others thought of missionary
work as something done in Africa or Asia, he was obsessed by the
need for reconverting Britain to Christianity.
In order to keep one’s faith in a world which is for all practical
purposes atheist, one needs to know the reasons for one’s faith
so as to be able to preserve and foster it. Most people imagine
that faith is something blind and that the reasons for it must
not be questioned. I was very pleased when His Eminence Justin
Cardinal Regali said to an NDU audience that every Christian should
consider himself a missionary with the duty of influencing those
around him. But to do this one must be properly prepared. In most
cases a young man or woman is cast in his final intellectual mould
during the late ‘teens or around the age of twenty. Therefore
in the terminal classes Christian schools should give a course
of Apologetics, that is to say the philosophical, scientific and
historical reasons for belief in God, His Revelation, His moral
law and His Church. In this way the young person will be able
to resist the temptations of the world and the doubt that creeps
into the soul when surrounded by materialism and mockery of God,
when suffering from discouragement and depression, especially
when studying in other countries.
He will soon have the urge to enlighten others; for this he will
need to deepen his understanding of his faith by reading and by
discussion and to lead a life of prayer, for no work for God can
be done without His help, that is to say without the action of
the Holy Spirit. Love and care for those who know not God will
deepen his own spiritual life.
What is more, he will direct his natural desires to founding a
deeply Christian family with a partner chosen for Christian virtues.
Love for God means love for souls both within the home and in
the outside world.
Reproduced by kind permission of NDU Spirit,
Notre Dame University, Louaize.
(1)
In fact this tribal view of religion is the enemy of
religion, as can be seen in the Balkans and Northern Ireland.
(2) Eastern iconography is far more instructive.
Many people confuse the Immaculate Conception with the Virgin
Birth. The icon of Youakim, Anne and their daughter Mary shows
Youakim placing his hand on the shoulder of his wife, a subtle
way of indicating that the conception of Mary, unlike that of
her Son, was carnal. But many western “pious” pictures are enough
to turn anyone off religion.
(3) This of course is not the case of Judaism,
a fact which tends to vitiate dialogue, particularly with those
who are Zionists, for lack of common ground to start with.
