We Love You, God, and We Love Our Great Military

"And I want to just thank everybody. And, in particular, God. I want to just say, we love you, God, and we love our great military. Protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you." 

Therapy Culture: Blaming One's Parent

The  NYTimes recently had an opinion piece in which the author claims that one of the reasons that young people are not marrying and having children is because they have too high expectations of parenting, that many of them feel their parents have failed them, and therefore they believe they will fail their children. 

I am not interested in the author's thesis, but I am interested in the existence of a therapy culture on the internet which seems to have hooked many young people into blaming everything upon their parents.  I have placed that portion of the article on my website; it has a link to the full article.

Therapy Culture: Blaming One's Parents

1. There is no doubt in my mind that the presence of Alcohol Abuse, Drug Abuse, Physical Abuse and Sexual Abuse in a person's history causes very high mental health costs. I did a study in our system in which I compared persons for each major diagnosis (depression, schizophrenia, etc.) comparing the cost of people within each diagnosis who did or did not have these various problems. Taking the conservative assumption that people who had these problems would have had depression, etc. without these problems, the problems were responsible for much of the costs of our system.  Therefore, figuring out how to deal with these problems is just as important as dealing with depression, schizophrenia, etc.

2. There is no doubt in my mind that parents in many cases are the abusers, and that children of abusers become abusers themselves.  But children do have exposure to persons other than their parents, who are often abusers. So, we can't blame it all on the parents.

3. There is no doubt in my mind that parents often set unrealistically high goals for themselves and their children. One of my psychology professors in graduate school said he was a convinced behaviorist until he had children. One of them was simply a bundle of energy from day one; the other was calm and placid from day one. He said a managed to calm the first down a little and liven the second up a little bit over the years.  In other words parenting 101 should say don't think that your children will be like you because they have your genes or because you raised them. Rather start with the assumption that a random number has assigned you a child, and deal with it in the same way as if a random number had assigned you a coworker. 

4. My discipline of social psychology says that the social environment determines our behavior far more that any internal traits, values, etc.  Therefore when you want to change the behavior of anyone (child, spouse, coworker) think about how you might change their environment rather than their personalities.  I have found it surprising easy to change environments, even large organizational environments, in comparison to trying to change personal behaviors, beliefs, values, etc.

5. Finally, to what extent do you think internet subculture environments such as therapy cultures exist and have a large influence over internet users.   

The Holy Trinity and families

This is my homily for Sunday, June 15, 2025, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Cycle C (and also Father's Day).  The readings for this Sunday are here.

Immigration law enforcement protests in Los Angeles

Los Angeles experienced a long weekend of spirited, raucous and occasionally violent protests against the Trump adminstration's aggressive enforcement of its policies against illegal immigrants.   Our Catholic leaders have an opportunity, and perhaps a moral obligation, to weigh in on the still-developing events.

Is Catholicism experiencing a "Cool" moment?

At The Free Press site, Madeleine Kearns has posted an article entitled, "How Catholicism Got Cool".  Its thesis is that the Catholic Chuch suddenly finds itself attractive to young adults, who are flocking to it, if not yet exactly in droves, at least in higher numbers than have been seen in years, perhaps decades.

Good and Bad Sectarianism

 Sociologists have developed the notion of sect and sectarianism to describe religious groups and their behaviors.  A sect is a religious group that develops out of an existing religious group by emphasizing certain beliefs and practices as being more important that the parent group. They typically set themselves up in contrast from the existing group and from the broader society. This contrast is the dynamic that attracts and keeps members.

Pharisees in the time of Jesus were a sect. They had a set of beliefs and practices that set themselves apart from fellow Jews and non- Jews. 

Christianity also began as a Jewish sect; Jesus and his followers had a different set of beliefs and practices from the Pharisees. In a sense Jesus and the Pharisees were competing sects. However, the death and resurrection brought into Christianity a new revelation that became enshrined in the New Testament. Some sociologists use the were cult for all situations in which a new revelation is involved, e.g. the Mormons originated as a cult based on the Book of Mormon. 

Most sectarian movements developed out Christianity as heresies, i.e. certain Christian leaders developed ideas which their leaders saw not as new revelation but as the correct interpretation of Christianity in contradistinction to orthodox mainstream Christianity which denounced them as heresies, false opinions. Protestantism has been a constant source of sectarian movements, each one denouncing existing Protestant churches and their cultures. American has experienced many such revivals. Fundamentalism is one of the most recent. Most of these movements developed around ideas rather than practices. These (bad) forms of sectarianism denounce the people who do not belong to their sect. 

Within Christianity, especially western Catholicism, there has evolved a whole series of movements known as religious life which are also sectarian. They set up Chrisitan lifestyles that also have a high contrast both to their fellow Catholics and to the world at large. While viewing their lifestyle as being superior to that of the average Catholic, they do not criticize their fellow Catholics because they do not practice poverty, chastity, obedience, pray the Divine Office, etc. Religious have been the great engines of attracting people into more committed forms of Catholicism and engaging them in lives that face the challenges of their time and cultures.

Jesuit Author Captures Catholic Fundamentalism in Boston Heresy Case

The Iterations of Catholic Fundamentalism

 Michael Sean Winters has an interesting article on the NCR site today.  Actually it is the second of two articles:  Not merely Latin and lace: New book chronicles iterations of Catholic fundamentalism | National Catholic Reporter

I was unfamiliar with most of the names he mentions, since I don't spend a lot of time hanging around fundamentalist sites.  But the article explains a lot.