Saints Who Disobeyed Their Parents

Must children always obey their parents?

Saint Alexis did not. He refused a marriage his parents had arranged.

Saint Catherine of Siena did not. She likewise refused to marry despite her parents urging.

St. Francis of Assisi did not obey his parents. In fact, he refused his father's patrimony.

St. Rita of Cascia disobeyed her parents - "what may have seemed disobedience on the part of little Rita were in fact mild reproofs, prompted, no doubt, by God, against that vanity which alas too often is planted by indulgent parents in the hearts of their young children....From the Augustinian breviary we learn that Rita Mancini was twelve years of age when she made her choice".

St. Thomas Aquinas refused his parents' will for his life.

Joan of Arc disobeyed her parents, choosing instead to walk 40 miles to meet a local lord.

St. Clare of Assisi secretly left her home and parents when she was 18.

And, while technically not his parents, St. John of the Cross suffered similar travail:
"On the night of 2 December 1577, St. John of the Cross was taken prisoner by his superiors in the calced Carmelites, who had launched a counter-program against John and Teresa's reforms. John had refused an order to return to his original house." "He managed to escape nine months later, on 15 August 1578, through a small window in a room adjoining his cell. (He had managed to pry the cell door off its hinges earlier that day)." St. John of the Cross disobeyed his superior's order because it was unjust, therefore, immoral. For disobeying he was imprisoned, but then escaped since he knew the actions of his superior was not God's will for his life."

As I've noted before, until 1917, the canon law of the Catholic Church considered anyone above the age of 12 capable of marriage. The 1917 Code raised the minimum age for marriage in the church to 14 for girls and 16 for boys. This is still the law in the 1983 Code. Though any minister considering marrying someone under 18 is supposed to consult with parents or the bishop, once a the individual turns 18, that consultation is no longer necessary.  

Children have a duty to obey their parents.
Parents have a duty to recognize their children's maturity and consider it in their decisions.

CCC 2253 Parents should respect and encourage their children's vocations. They should remember and teach that the first calling of the Christian is to follow Jesus.

Much as they would like to be, parents are not dictators, nor are their children - especially their teen children - always bound to follow a parent's dictates. 

God gives us children so that we raise them in sanctity. He also gives us children so that we may become more holy. We have to submit to the will of God not only in our lives, but in our children's lives. The children may know a call that the parents do not fully see or fully comprehend. Subsidiarity is one of the bedrock principles of Catholic Faith.  Subsidiarity requires that, just as small children must learn to trust their parents, so parents must, to at least some extent, learn to trust their children.

Pray God that we can.

Caring for the Poor

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” – James Madison, author of the Constitution.

Between 1791 and 1804, Haiti was a French colony in a state of revolt. The Haitians were attempting to overthrow the enslaving French and establish their own republic. In this attempt, they were successful. But this same attempt created a large number of French refugees, many of whom fled to the United States.

Americans felt a debt of gratitude to the French for the inestimable help the French navy had provided American troops during America's recent revolution. Without the French navy, the Americans could not have triumphed. Many called for the government to provide assistance to the refugees.

The quote above was James Madison's response to those calls.

Madison very much wanted to help the refugees, but he knew there was no way to justify that help within the confines of the Constitution. The money was taxpayer money meant to be expended on matters of national importance. It was not to be squandered on specific individuals at the whim of legislators. If help were to be given, it had to be given by individuals and private organizations.

The USCCB 
Today, some of the more reckless bishops in the USCCB have called for Paul Ryan's head. His budget, they claim, is not Catholic.
It does not care for the poor.

But the Constitution has not changed since Madison's time. There is within it, to this day, no provision whereby public funds can be disbursed for private benefit.

As an elected official, Paul Ryan has a duty to care for the funds entrusted to him. The bishops have a duty to recognize Ryan's duty.

Let's put this another way.

Assume you were a bank teller. You are a friend of mine. I walk in and plead with you. I need money. My family is starving, my children homeless. I need money. You know it is true.

As you stand at your station in the bank, you realize you have money close at hand - a whole drawer full of it. Would your Catholic faith justify you in giving part or all of the money in that drawer to me?

If you refuse to reach into the bank till to hand me money, would you be violating your Catholic faith?

That's essentially what the USCCB is demanding of Paul Ryan.
There are poor people.
Paul Ryan is standing at the bank till.
"Give them the bank's money!" cry some of the USCCB bishops.

There is no provision in the Constitution which permits this.
The bishops know this, or should know this.
Their attempt to read into the Constitution something which is manifestly not there should be worrisome.


The Abortionists
The USCCB is not the only group who has tried to read into the Constitution something that is not there.

"[S]pecific guarantees... have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance," according to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

This was the basis upon which contraception and abortion was legalized.

The USCCB protests mightily against this false reading of the Constitution.

Many of its bishops now protest mightily in favor of their own false reading.

God gives us everything we have out of His own abundance.

I am supposed to imitate Him by giving to other people out of the abundance He has given me.

My charity imitates the divine charity.

I can hold a gun to your head and take your things, but I cannot force you to be charitable.

Confiscation is not charity, it is taking.

Taxation is not charity, it is taking.

Insofar as I take resources from you, I take from you your ability to imitate God's generosity.

I steal from you your ability to be charitable as God is charitable.

I violate your ability to image God.

When a child is legally aborted, the state takes of the life of a child.
When a man is unreasonably taxed, the state takes the man's ability to imitate the life of divine charity.

Both are sins, the first much more heinous than the last.
But, if the first is allowed, the last seems not so much a sin.

In attacking Paul Ryan, the USCCB is imitating Planned Parenthood.
There is a reason they do this.

It is the job of Christians to care for the poor.

It is not the job of the government - at least not any government ruled by the US Constitution - to care for the poor.

We Christians should care for the poor without looking to the government for help. The government should assist us in this endeavor by drastically lightening the load of taxes it imposes on us.

When we are lightly taxed, we have excess goods which we then give to the poor ourselves. This allows us to imitate the life of divine charity directly. 

We get to practice the presence of God by practicing constant charity with the resources we have earned through our work and won through God's providence. The government should be small, weak, and out of the way so that we can proclaim and live the Gospel without hindrance, interference or government intermediary.

Charity flows from individuals towards individuals. Government's role is to facilitate this one-on-one charity, not confiscate it. The government can never become what we already are.

Christians are children of God. 
The Church is a real person, ensouled by the Holy Spirit. 
Charity is love between individual persons. 
The Church can practice real charity because the Church is a person.
Government is not a person.

Government cannot be a child of God. 

Government is incapable of practicing divine charity because government is not a person. 

The bishops of the USCCB do not seem able to distinguish between God and government.

Thus, they compel Paul Ryan to do something which violates Catholic Faith.

They have become the evil they claim to fight.

This is a source of sadness for all Catholics.

P.S. 
The original article ended with the line above, but I have been thinking about this and a further disturbing thought occurred to me.


Certainly the bishops know everything I have said above. 
So why do they continue to push for something so wrong?

Many answers could be given to that question, but one answer is particularly disturbing: the bishops do not trust their flocks.


The bishops don't trust that, if left to our own devices, we will be good Catholics.
They believe in government employees.
The do not believe in their own parishioners.

They believe you can be paid to be a good Catholic, you can be employed to be one.
But they do not believe their own parishioners can be good Catholics (unless those Catholics are also government employees, I suppose).


Governments care, parishioners don't.


John Chrysostom, a doctor of the Church, pointed out that if the rich man has more than he needs, then he is stealing from the poor. If I have ten pairs of shoes in my closet, but I only really need two pair, then I have stolen the other eight pair from the poor. 

A poor man who is in desperate need, a poor man who has asked for sustenance from someone who can provide it, but is refused that sustenance because of the provider's lack of charity, has a right to take what he needs - it is not theft, in that case, for the poor man to take it. 

The need must be very great - it must be life-threatening, in fact - but if it is a very great need and the miserly rich man will not satisfy it, then the poor who take that great and necessary thing have not stolen from the rich. Rather, the rich were stealing from the poor by withholding it. The poor man is just acquiring what is, in justice, his. 

In that scenario, the miserly rich man is the thief. 

Bishops think their own parishioners are just a pack of thieves.

Bishops wonder at many lay people's low opinion of bishops.
Given the evidence, laity may legitimately wonder at the bishops' low opinion of us.

Warp and Woof

What would you say to a couple that insisted on aborting a perfectly normal child because they dearly wanted a disabled child?

It happens.

Deaf couples not uncommonly desire only deaf children.
They do not want children who can hear because such children would not fit into their tightly knit deaf community. Consequently, some deaf couples would be willing to undergo genetic testing only to assure themselves that their child will, indeed, be deaf. Children who do not carry the gene for deafness would be aborted.

This came to mind over the recent lesbian-inspired brouhaha in Canada, wherein a lesbian took offense at the presence of a Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) quote in a pamphlet distributed in her childrens' school.

Seems she finds the CCC offensive.
She wants the Catechism passage removed.

Now, there would be no shortage of bishops in the United States who would undoubtedly strike the offending CCC quote from all teaching materials, lest some sodomite be offended (Cardinal Wuerl, call your office!)

But the case made by the deaf parents strikes to the heart of an argument raised by Catholics - the notion of "intrinsic disorder."

What does it mean to be "intrinsically disordered"?
Deaf people would disagree with hearing people.
Deaf people would be wrong, of course.
They would, however, still strenuously disagree.

Eyes are meant for seeing.
If you are blind, you suffer from intrinsic disorder.
Ears are meant for hearing.
If you are deaf, you suffer from intrinsic disorder.

It doesn't matter if you have a wonderfully tight-knit community despite your hearing disorder.
It doesn't matter if you have a wonderfully tight-knit community because of your hearing disorder.
You suffer from a disorder.
Insofar as your community is built around a disorder, so does your community.

Same goes with being homosexual.
Sex organs are made for procreating.
Using your sex organs in ways that can't lead to procreation is disordered.
It doesn't matter if you have a wonderfully tight-knit community despite or even because of your sexual disorder.  You suffer from a disorder.
Insofar as your community is built around a disorder, so does your community.

There are many wonderfully tight-knit communities that are intrinsically disordered.
La Cosa Nostra is a wonderfully tight-knit community, but it's centered around a disorder.
Amish communities are wonderfully tight-knit, but centered around a basic theological disorder.

Too many people are so fascinated by community that they are willing to forgive literally anything as long as community is promoted. But, while Christianity is about human community, human community is not the point.

If promoting human community were the point, becoming a hermit would be a sin.
Since becoming a hermit is a virture, it cannot be the case that human community is the point.

It is communion between God and man that matters.
Any community which arises between man and man as a result of the pursuit of communion with God is just gravy.

Someone might want to mention this to the lay and ordained socialists who inhabit our parish and chancery offices.