Oh, just one more thing to consider...
Has your wife ever met weird kids who go to school?
Yep. There are weird kids everywhere. :P
I was a weird kid who went to public schools mostly in a very large city in an extremely liberal state. I went to undergrad college in a very rural and conservative area of that same state. There, I encountered the same communist trash as I’d been given in middle and high school in the city. I went to three different grad schools, one rural, but uber liberal, in a different, normally conservative state, and two unis back in the same city, same state as grammar and high school. The entire Masonic, communist, Soviet modeled plans of Dewey entirely backfired with me!
I put this up to the moral standards exemplified (not preached or even so much verbalized) by my poorly catechized (no fault if their own), but believing, praying, and sacrificing parents and three of four grandparents. Also, to about seven couples with whom my parents were close friends in my earliest years, before age seven. Some of these weren’t Catholic, but held to very Catholic moral standards. A few of these friendships endured through my growing up years, and two couples are still living and in touch, all in their late 90s, and one turning 100, God willing, on Sept. 11. (Yes, what a birthdate!)
Don’t think because I went to school in the 1960s and 1970s, that I wasn’t exposed to filth. In grade seven at age 12, I learned about being “gαy” from my history teacher. All twelve of us in his advanced placement class learned that the guy in the photo on his desk was not his brother. A dirty minded boy in fourth grade instructed a number of his peers how boys can have fun by themselves. Word got around to even the girls. Then a girl in grade six told a few friends that girls can do it, too. These were all kids from “good” families. Smoking cigarettes appeared in grade four, drinking the same year, and marijuana in grade six. By grade seven, there was little to nothing I hadn’t at least heard of, although it wouldn’t be until the later years of high school that I knew people who did these sort of things, or, at least, were rumored to have done them. In college, forget it! I knew people who admitted either slightly embarrassedly or proudly to being perverts, addicts, criminals.
I knew from the fourth grade that the sex stuff was disgusting, nasty, unnatural behavior. As for cigarettes and beer drinking, it was bad for your health, especially for children, that it could be harmful, so was only for adults. The kids who smoked and drank usually did so to excess, were otherwise rebellious, stupid, rude, doing those other things, and if not stupid in class, were leading double lives. My Catholic grandmother said, “It always pays to keep a clean slate with God.” And my nonCatholic grandmother taught me Catholic night prayers, in English and Polish. She lead me to dedicate myself to Mary decades before she formally converted at age 85! (She was baptized Lutheran at her stepfather’s insistence at age 14. There was no record of Catholic baptism found, although she probably WAS baptized Catholic as a baby. She went to a Lutheran church from about age seven until shortly after her Lutheran baptism, then, by a means too strange to go into, went to the Catholic Church.)
Yes, I was weird, not because I was so religious—I wasn’t, but because I was a true non-conformist in an era when it was popular to be what the culture (falsely) called non-conformist. You were supposed to show your non-conformity by conforming. This meant being anti-Vietnam War, anti-establishment, anti-anything or anyone over age 30, wearing faded, ripped, walked on jeans, (At least in those days, you yourself wore them out, unlike today when people shell out ridiculous sums to buy a heap of rags made in China!). You were supposed to have unrestrained sex, drugs, gyrate to certain rock music and drop acid to other rock music, be half naked in public, eschew the bathtub and shower, live off panhandling, busking, your hopelessly uptight parents, the government you claimed to hate. Getting a job or education was for losers. Later, it was many of these very same people who reenrolled in college, took over the universities, and now rule like the tyrants it was planned for them to become.
I began to read starting the end of first grade, the old looking books in the school library, children’s books from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. I became aware that life was different when my parents and grandparents were growing up. It was fascinating. By grade three I began to read old magazines in my grandmother’s closet; to see the photos, the advertising, to pick up by osmosis, the values and mores of decades past. By grade four I was reading, or at least trying, to read history. I also gained access to a treasure trove of old school books from the mid 1800s to some used by my parents in the 1920s and 1930s. The old literature was so much better than the trite and drivel in my reading books at school. Although I was in the “high” reading group, whatever they named it, (such a joke! Every kid in school knew which was the high group for smart kids, the medium group for average kids and the low group for the dumb kids.), the books were too easy and the stories boring. I discovered my parents and grandparents could recite from memory, pages long poems from their readers. Not wanting to be outdone, I began memorizing those poems, myself. When I inquired of my teachers about learning poems, I was either dismissed or laughed at. In grade eight it was explained to me that memorization was a low form of intellect, just a step above physical reaction, of no use in the modern world!
By high school, I was entirely weird. I wore what today would be called “retro” clothing, if in the mood, or else I dressed as an office or legal professional. It was the early 70s so maxi dresses and the country look was coming in, so a few kids sometimes complimented me, secretly. A few of the non teaching staff complimented me if I dressed professionally. My peers and even some teachers made fun of me or gave really snide, sarcastic remarks. What I discovered was that when in public on the street, in stores, in the library, the bus, the subway, people treated me as an adult, not as a teenaged kid still in high school. I volunteered at a library program reading stories and doing simple crafts with preschoolers and at a nursing home, bringing a cart of magazines, puzzles, playing cards, goody bags containing items like chapstick, candies, two or three loose cigarettes(!), hand cream, plastic ruler/bookmarker/magnifiers, mini note pads and pencils/pens to the residents and just generally chatting in the day room or in individual rooms with the bedridden. There, I was often taken for an adult. Several times, I did the preschool program on my own when the charge person didn’t come in, until it was discovered that I was only 15 and illegal to leave me in charge! There were quite a few elderly men who were WWI veterans at the home, and listening to the stories of those who cared to tell them, (some clearly did not) was fascinating. Any, “when I was a boy, girl, just married” type of story interested me.
By the time I went to college, I was quite entirely a misfit with my peer group and with most of my professors, recently promoted, young, liberal. I preferred the old ones just about to retire. Their classes were more challenging, more informative, their life experiences reflected wisdom more than bravado and rebellion. They had knowledge and common sense. I encountered none that gave good grades in exchange for sex, or used profanity, emotional hype, or who appeared downtown bar hopping and at fraternity or sorority beer bashes, indistinguishable from the students, drop-outs, and hangers-on that are found in most college towns. There was one exception, an English professor in his late 50s, early 60s, who wore hippie attire, ala, 1967 San Francisco, in 1971 New York, tried to talk and act cool, groovy, refer to drugs as if he did them. He fooled nobody. There was a high school home ec. teacher like that, only not as extreme. She was in her 50s and had a wrinkled neck and knees. How did we know? She wore low cut tops and mini skirts. Sorry, not appealing even to those without morals! (Kind of like today’s 350 lb. women who prance around in more tattoos than spandex! I once heard an SSPX priest refer to such behavior as a mortal sin of hatred. He didn’t think there were any men for whom the sight would tempt to impurity, rather, to murder!).
If exercising common sense, having a sound mind, enjoying good literature, good art and music, and being knowledgeable of real history is weird, who wouldn’t want to be weird? Who wouldn’t want their children to be weird? In fact, the weirder the better! Train them right, teach them right, instill the Faith and corresponding morals, be sure to pray, do penance, and make sacrifices. Most importantly, dedicate them to Our Lady! Even if, God forbid, sin is dumped upon them, they will be protected in God’s timing.
I grew up basically knowing next to nothing of the Faith. I went to the novus ordo because my father required it of those living under his roof. He knew nothing of the old Mass still being available. After that, I spent decades trying out Protestantisms of nearly every kind except snake handlers. It never occurred to me that the Catholic religion had the Truth. It was kept from me that the Latin Mass still existed. Through no fault of my own, or of my parents, my catechesis was virtually nonexistent and that which I did receive, no different than the trite and drivel in my school books. I first heard of tradition in 2005. In the space of one week, I went from identifying myself as Christian without a church to Traditional Catholic.
And I’m still weird, even among Traditional Catholics because of my life’s path. I fit no recognized category. I’m not a revert, not a convert, never lived a licentious lifestyle from which I was rescued, (I’m not claiming holiness, either! I had to go on a retreat and make a general confession over several days.) Was never a convinced heretic because no Protestant church satisfied. If a heretic, a material heretic through ignorance and weakness of intellect.
So I’m still weird. Please pray for me to save my soul. That’s all that counts. In Purgatory and Heaven, I’m willing to be the weird one if that’s Gods Will.
Tell your wife the weird kids are often those with excellent parents.
Topic: Public schooling an excommunicable offense? (Read 2110 times)