The Challenges to Family Today

Dublin,Ireland. What is family to each one of us and how important is it to belong to a family? We all greatly desire and long for the secure “happy family” whose members love and trust each other, share solidarity, give mutual help and care and are faithful to shared values and goals. They live and work together to meet the basic human needs of all. This is the ideal and beautiful to behold but, sadly and tragically, the reality is frequently far different. So what is the modern family?

This is a question that will hopefully be discussed during the 9th World Meeting of Families to be held in Dublin, Ireland this August 2018. In this fast-changing world, the traditional understanding of “family” has given way to many kinds of “families.” Human relationships, partnerships, groupings are evolving and are being recognized by society and the state. Same-sex marriage is common, such couples adopt children and form a family.

There is what is called the blended family. These come together when divorced or separated people come to live as one family and they bring their children from former relationships. They form different family units that are very different from the traditional family of two parents with children, grandparents and relatives.

The World Meeting of Families will be the biggest public event in all of Europe this year when hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, visitors, guests, and onlookers and families join the various celebrations, symposiums, meetings and the Festivals of Families. Pope Francis will be here for a pastoral visit. He will attend various functions and celebrate the closing Mass in the Phoenix Park where organizers say there will be 500,000 people on 26th August.

The hundreds of thousands of people there will have that one thing in common: that they came from a “family.” They might be couples that don’t have children for one reason or another. They too have family and count their relatives and even friends as “family.” So family can be said to be a basic unit in society consisting of several people that are dedicated to each other in solidarity to survive by having mutual commitment for life and live under one roof. It is a unit that is recognized by society.

While there are different kinds of families, the most common kind is the one formed by two parents that have children. So in this kind of family their main task and purpose of making a commitment to each other is to care for and protect their children.

While there are millions of strong, caring, happy families in the world, there are as many that are unhappy. It’s a kind of wonder that there are so many good parents caring for their families, sacrificing, striving, working, and loving each other. They are bringing up their children endowed with spiritual values and providing for their needs and wants. How did the parents become positive like that? The school that provides the lower to the highest form of education does not normally provide a comprehensive training course on “how to be a good loving parent.” Is it necessary, would it help make better parents and happier families? For sure, it would be a big help since all positive knowledge and learning helps us to be better, wiser persons. The extent of its positive impact is still widely unknown except to those happy couples that had such training in parenting. 

If they did not have a training course where did the good parents learn to be good parents? For some, it was because of the most essential element of all in a family, “teaching by good example.” No school training course can surpass that. Nor can the innate instinctual virtue of wanting to protect and nurture one’s own child. Most rearing of children is passed on from one parent to another. That is why a happy learning and active childhood is essential for a child to grow up and be a good loving parent. They have to see goodness, feel loved and learn from the good example of their parents.

What society needs is a personal formational training on how to be good parents and care and protect children. Parents ought to undertake the value formation of their children, too. This is a serious obligation and one that will bond the parents to their children.

The greatest threat to the family nowadays is indifference by parents to their children. Somehow, there are parents who leave nature to teach their children. But moral education is what leads the children to accept, cherish, and live out family values.

If they see and experience it in their parents, they too will want to follow their parents’ example and they will form a values-based family. This is what is essential, to teach children by word and deed. Teaching them knowledge of their dignity as persons endowed with rights. Teaching them to respect each other and their neighbor and the neighbor is always the person in need gives them true character.

The respect for each other, taught by word and deed, in a family, is what brings them together and forms the basis of love. Then the commitment to respecting each other’s rights and dignity is renewed in the parents and in the children and forms the happy family. They can stand together in friendship overcoming all challenges.

Christmas Day is for Children

I am standing in the center of the spacious main hall, the atrium, of the new Preda children’s home for girls. The light from the transparent roof throws its soft and gentle light on the children playing nosily, shouting in glee. They are happy, running about, playing games, and laughing, cheerful and joyful. They had a sumptuous Christmas dinner and gifts and new clothes. They are the lucky ones to have found refuge and protection and a chance to start their childhood over. Soon they will go on trips to the zoo and then to the fun park and other Christmas treats will come their way. There will be Christmas Mass and joyful singing and some will have sad memories of childhood before coming to Preda.

Maggie is only 14 years old and I see her chasing Elizabeth, they are enjoying the fun. Later they will go to their sports and karate.  She is gaining weight in the recent weeks as she eats three times a day with snacks in between. She sleeps in a comfortable bed and has her personal things close to her, a doll to cuddle and friends to listen to her as she tells about her life. 

When she first came into the Preda home for girls, Maggie was quiet, withdrawn and fearful of what she would find. However the welcome and introduction to the other children and their embrace said they would be her friends. This gave her courage and a smile and her nervousness evaporated. Soon she felt at home, accepted and welcome.  This was a place where she was safe from her abusers and free from fear and the control of her human traffickers. This was a happy place where the girls choose on their own free will to stay and find education, affirmation and empowerment through therapy, counseling and education. 

Christmas has it joys but there are also the sorrows of life .The poverty and neglect suffered by the Holy Family is one of them. They were rejected at the Inn and Mary had to give birth in a dirty animal pen. In humiliating and poverty-stricken circumstances Jesus of Nazareth came into this world. Then we cannot forget the death threats and flight from the evil murderer King Herod who was committing genocide against the innocent children slaughtering hundreds. The impoverished life as a refugee in a foreign country was how Jesus spent the first years of his life.

Maggie was a slim, malnourished and undersized child when she first came into the Preda girls home a few months ago. She was traumatized and has had a terrible experience.  Her mother worked for a powerful man. During her employment and afterwards, it appears he sexually abused the child and brought her to various other men in hotels around San Fernando, Pampanga. These men sexually abused her also on twenty occasions. The Preda paralegal officer filed the formal complaint against the suspect. It is feared that the mother of Maggie was approving or allowed the abuse to happen. She may have received money to let it happen. 

And it’s only one of hundreds of thousands of children like Maggie in the world and especially in the Philippines where there is a massacre of the youth in a campaign against the use of illegal drugs.  The latest report by Unicef and the Philippine Council for the Welfare of Children in the report named, National Baseline Study on Violence against Children (NBS-VAC), tells us the horror and extent of the abuse: Eight of 10 Filipino youth suffer abuse:  verbal, physical or sexual. Young children and youth between 13-24 years of age, one in every five is a victim of sexual abuse, most of it happening in their homes. 

So while we campaign and work to bring Christ into Christmas and save the children, we are unheard because of the futility to persuade government to care for the children to protect them and heal them. We campaign to persuade the moral majority to demand the cancellation of mayor’s permits and close the sex bars and clubs. We appeal to Church people to speak out.

In these dens of iniquity where foreign sex tourists proliferate, youth and children are sexually abused daily. Many are subjected to forced drug use and abortions. Like Maggie, they are helpless victims of exploitation and the threats of powerful adults.   

Many corrupt government officials, senators and representatives are morally bankrupt and ignore the plight and suffering of the innocents. They want the death penalty and to make 9 year old children suffer as criminals. We need a strong outspoken and uncompromising leader to bring about a moral revolution in society. Yet none has the courage to emerge. 

Christmas is happy and joyful for those saved and healed but so much has to be done to save the thousands more. That moral revolution to protect children’s rights, bring compassion and care back again is just a dream. It was brought into this world by the birth of Jesus of Nazareth but it has long been forgotten. All we have left is jingle bells. 

We who still believe in the values that make us compassionate and decent loving humans must take our stand and work to bring about that spiritual revolution of mind and heart that will change the world.

The Values of a True Democracy

Democratic societies are increasingly feeling the challenge of a rising wave of civil discontent with many traditional politicians. They are turning to populist upstart politicians who promise an anti-establishment agenda to bring about a disciplined crime free or immigration free new society.

These opportunistic politicians around the world are using the genuine anger of those left behind economically and politically as a surfing wave to autocratic rule. They make outlandish promises, bully their way to prominence, grab media attention with outrageous comments and threats. They can persuade, with bombastic rhetoric a large portion of the electorate to trust and elect them. They claim to be the Messiah who will wipe away all the tears and hardships of the disadvantaged and the marginalized in society.

They have a valid list of people’s complaints with which to challenge the traditional elite and established governments of the rich. The social inequality, the ever-widening gap between the few rich and the many poor is fertile ground to make them populist.

Democracy is losing the trust and support of populations as economic disparities and injustices grow and remain unaddressed. Increasingly bureaucratic corruption makes their lives a burden and miserable. They welcome and support any false messiah.

In the United States the rise of Donald Trump is an indication of this distrust of the establishment by millions of Americans. They despair that a true independent democratic government can be elected without the funding of the billionaires of the business class. They want a government that brings prosperity with fairness. They are desperate and blinded by a false hope and support an uncouth bullying billionaire businessman.

There are other democratically elected leaders who promised a paradise and rule with increasingly autocratic authoritarian rule intolerant of any criticism and opposition. In Hungary, Poland and Turkey, the elected leaders of these countries rule by repressing and controlling the media, judiciary and the civil society that stand for the rule of law and human rights.

More political parties are rising in Austria and Germany that are extreme in their policies, are anti-immigration, nationalist and tend to deny the fundamental freedoms of a democracy based on the freedoms and values that are the bedrock of any true democracy.

We can say they are pseudo-democracies led by false messiahs where they exclude minorities, refuse to recognize the freedom of religion and equality and dignity of the human person. They get elected by the voter’s anxiety, troubles, isolation from the political dialogue, being voiceless and disparaged. The established governments have to answer for.

The electorate rally behind the demagogy of a rising politician based on ignorance of his or her true character, intentions and secret agendas once in power. Like all politicians their promises of change and a corrupt free new society are the stepping-stones to power. They may grip the imaginations and ignite hope in the voters but the promises are soon ignored when they take over the power of the president or prime minister.

When they abuse power and the educated and disillusioned population awaken to the reality it is sometimes too late to get them out of power. In Africa many rulers defy or manipulate the democratic process to stay in power for up to thirty or more years.

The election of a left of center reformist government with a social justice and equality agenda, can indeed partially succeed in bringing success in reducing poverty and creating a stronger economy but for how long? Eventually corruption and mismanagement of the economy, as happened in Brazil, opens the door for the entry to power of the corrupt elite business billionaires.

They are perhaps the most dangerous to democracy since they legislate to deregulate the banking sector, promote liberal capitalism, unfettered free trade. They create monopolies and buy out the media so as to shape the news and establish their political power. These ruling elite allow exploitation and multinational companies to maximize profits without social sharing.

The growth of secular values where society is increasingly a selfish and self-centered society and is becoming addicted to the pleasure principle the role of the church as teacher of values and morals principle has been disregarded.

Perhaps this is due to the authoritarian and dominating interference that church leaders had in imposing unnecessary burdens and restrictions on the believers. They too were autocratic which is now rejected and secular interests dominate.

Church leaders are failing to promote and live out in a relevant way the values of religion that are based on human dignity, compassion, and justice, equality and universal human rights. So we have a society striving for a true democracy but they get a pseudo-democracy, which has few of these basic values.By invigorating and committing themselves to these values a honest capable leader could emerge with a following that can bring a more equal society.

There is hope for a real vigorous model of democracy in the world where everyone’s voice is listened to and heard. Where openness and trust is based on reflection, reason and knowledge. With these values at the heart of their movement a society committed to fearless non-violence, social justice and genuine participation could indeed come about.