My son and I have been meandering through the hugely enjoyable 'Knight of the Holy Ghost: A short history of G.K.Chesterton' by Dale Ahlquist. So much of what Chesterton wrote is still so fresh and so relevant to our world today. However it was a few lines from Ahlquist's introduction to Chesterton's 'What's Wrong With The World?' that stopped me in my tracks.
You can find them of pages 73-74 of the paper edition:
'What's wrong with the world?'
There are four main things wrong with the world: big government, big business, feminism and public education. Why? Because they all undermine the family, which is the basic unit of society, the thing that must be stable for society to be stable, the thing that must be strong for society to be strong, and the thing that is most under attack in our society today.
What's the solution?
It must be to restore the family to its proper place. We need a family-based economy and a family-based social system, where both state and commerce are subordinate to the family.
So what does this look like? What could it look like?
A starting point is Abraham. Even further back we recall that in Genesis, marriage and family is God's idea: God's plan. God took Abraham and tested him many times before beginning a family through him that would become a nation: a nation unique in the world, because it is a single family and structured on family.
When Israel left Egypt, the 12 tribes marched tribe by tribe in order. Each tribe had its designated position when they camped. Each tribe was subdivided into clans, and each tribe and clan had a leader who could speak for the whole tribe or for the whole clan. When they went into battle, they went into battle as family groups co-ordinated together these leaders.
It took WW1 for the British to re-discover that the battalions composed of 'pals' from the same region achieved more and had fewer casualties that battalions composed of people who were initially strangers to each other. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06d87pz
Even centuries later at the return from Exile, Nehemiah excluded anyone who could not prove membership of a clan. The vast majority could do this, which is impressive indeed, and shows that descent from a great-grandson of Abraham was a source of pride, value and identity. It also shows the lengths they went to keep meticulous records. All the so called 'boring bits' in scripture listing genealogies upon genealogies proclaims that God is faithful to the promise He made to Abraham, and these are the ongoing witnesses to God's faithfulness to that promise.
This gets even more interesting when it comes to the Levites, where even choirs and gate keepers are according to the membership of a particular family line. Traits and giftings of talent run through family lines like a pulse. Watch a few episodes of 'Who Do You Think You Are?' if you need to be convinced.
Even ancient cultures knew this:
https://www.enhancetv.com.au/video/who-do-you-think-you-are-charlie-teo/50588
In ancient China families had centres for ancestor worship that kept records of family membership. Families that consistently produced outstanding warriors, administrators etc were given plaques of official recognition by the emperor. Charlie Teo is a case study for saying that they still are.
If you are still not convinced that family matters to God, recall the immediate preparation God did in Israel before Jesus began His public ministry. The angel that visited Zechariah before John the Baptist was even conceived had this to prophesy about John's ministry: 'He will bring back many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah, he will go before him to turn the hearts of fathers towards their children and the disobedient back to the wisdom that the virtuous have, preparing for the Lord a people fit for Him.' Luke 1:16:17
Which in turn is a reference to Malachi 3:23-24, the last verses of the Old Testament, 'Know that I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before My day comes, that great and terrible day. He shall turn the hearts of fathers towards their children and the hearts of children towards their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a curse.'
This then, is the kind of preparation for a major move of grace that matters. Restoring family relationships is the key, par excellence, to opening up hearts to receive the Gospel.
Should you need further convincing, recall that the 4th Commandment is to honour your father and your mother. In God's economy it is more important than the 5th Commandment, you shall not kill, and the rest of the 10.
Family matters. Family matters greatly to God.
When you look after what matters to God then blessings flow. Read about the positive impact that pro-family policies are having in Hungary: https://catholicherald.co.uk/dailyherald/2019/04/25/the-west-can-learn-a-lot-from-hungarys-pro-family-policies/
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-europe/2019/03/26/hungarian-minister-convinced-pro-family-outcomes-are-linked-to-policy/
https://www.christianpost.com/news/make-families-great-again-hungary-seeing-more-babies-less-abortions-through-pro-family-policies.html
If we are serious about being a Church 'Open to Conversion, Renewal and Reform', then explicitly pro-family initiatives have to be a part of that, especially initiatives that help estranged family members be reconciled with each other.
Yet, at the moment, when it comes to the majority of Plenary Council submissions that fall under the 'Open to Conversion, Renewal and Reform' theme (a.k.a. Theme 6), anything to do with family is barely on the radar.
This is the theme most likely to have to address the child abuse scandals. However the focus has been on its clerical manifestations, when it isn't a church issue as much as it is a family issue. If you go back and look at the origins of a perpetrator's abuse, in many cases the perpetrator was himself or herself abused by a relative, and some in a chain going back generations. Unless with God's grace we are able to out-root the evil at the family level, we cannot hope to remove it from the clergy level.
Family is far more important to God and His purposes than we can even begin to imagine. Chesterton saw that over 100 years ago. Maybe reading 'What's Wrong With The World' will help us begin to comprehend that.
#PlenaryCouncil #PlenaryCouncilTheme6
You can find them of pages 73-74 of the paper edition:
'What's wrong with the world?'
There are four main things wrong with the world: big government, big business, feminism and public education. Why? Because they all undermine the family, which is the basic unit of society, the thing that must be stable for society to be stable, the thing that must be strong for society to be strong, and the thing that is most under attack in our society today.
What's the solution?
It must be to restore the family to its proper place. We need a family-based economy and a family-based social system, where both state and commerce are subordinate to the family.
So what does this look like? What could it look like?
A starting point is Abraham. Even further back we recall that in Genesis, marriage and family is God's idea: God's plan. God took Abraham and tested him many times before beginning a family through him that would become a nation: a nation unique in the world, because it is a single family and structured on family.
When Israel left Egypt, the 12 tribes marched tribe by tribe in order. Each tribe had its designated position when they camped. Each tribe was subdivided into clans, and each tribe and clan had a leader who could speak for the whole tribe or for the whole clan. When they went into battle, they went into battle as family groups co-ordinated together these leaders.
It took WW1 for the British to re-discover that the battalions composed of 'pals' from the same region achieved more and had fewer casualties that battalions composed of people who were initially strangers to each other. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06d87pz
Even centuries later at the return from Exile, Nehemiah excluded anyone who could not prove membership of a clan. The vast majority could do this, which is impressive indeed, and shows that descent from a great-grandson of Abraham was a source of pride, value and identity. It also shows the lengths they went to keep meticulous records. All the so called 'boring bits' in scripture listing genealogies upon genealogies proclaims that God is faithful to the promise He made to Abraham, and these are the ongoing witnesses to God's faithfulness to that promise.
This gets even more interesting when it comes to the Levites, where even choirs and gate keepers are according to the membership of a particular family line. Traits and giftings of talent run through family lines like a pulse. Watch a few episodes of 'Who Do You Think You Are?' if you need to be convinced.
Even ancient cultures knew this:
https://www.enhancetv.com.au/video/who-do-you-think-you-are-charlie-teo/50588
In ancient China families had centres for ancestor worship that kept records of family membership. Families that consistently produced outstanding warriors, administrators etc were given plaques of official recognition by the emperor. Charlie Teo is a case study for saying that they still are.
If you are still not convinced that family matters to God, recall the immediate preparation God did in Israel before Jesus began His public ministry. The angel that visited Zechariah before John the Baptist was even conceived had this to prophesy about John's ministry: 'He will bring back many of the sons of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah, he will go before him to turn the hearts of fathers towards their children and the disobedient back to the wisdom that the virtuous have, preparing for the Lord a people fit for Him.' Luke 1:16:17
Which in turn is a reference to Malachi 3:23-24, the last verses of the Old Testament, 'Know that I am going to send you Elijah the prophet before My day comes, that great and terrible day. He shall turn the hearts of fathers towards their children and the hearts of children towards their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a curse.'
This then, is the kind of preparation for a major move of grace that matters. Restoring family relationships is the key, par excellence, to opening up hearts to receive the Gospel.
Should you need further convincing, recall that the 4th Commandment is to honour your father and your mother. In God's economy it is more important than the 5th Commandment, you shall not kill, and the rest of the 10.
Family matters. Family matters greatly to God.
When you look after what matters to God then blessings flow. Read about the positive impact that pro-family policies are having in Hungary: https://catholicherald.co.uk/dailyherald/2019/04/25/the-west-can-learn-a-lot-from-hungarys-pro-family-policies/
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-europe/2019/03/26/hungarian-minister-convinced-pro-family-outcomes-are-linked-to-policy/
https://www.christianpost.com/news/make-families-great-again-hungary-seeing-more-babies-less-abortions-through-pro-family-policies.html
If we are serious about being a Church 'Open to Conversion, Renewal and Reform', then explicitly pro-family initiatives have to be a part of that, especially initiatives that help estranged family members be reconciled with each other.
Yet, at the moment, when it comes to the majority of Plenary Council submissions that fall under the 'Open to Conversion, Renewal and Reform' theme (a.k.a. Theme 6), anything to do with family is barely on the radar.
This is the theme most likely to have to address the child abuse scandals. However the focus has been on its clerical manifestations, when it isn't a church issue as much as it is a family issue. If you go back and look at the origins of a perpetrator's abuse, in many cases the perpetrator was himself or herself abused by a relative, and some in a chain going back generations. Unless with God's grace we are able to out-root the evil at the family level, we cannot hope to remove it from the clergy level.
Family is far more important to God and His purposes than we can even begin to imagine. Chesterton saw that over 100 years ago. Maybe reading 'What's Wrong With The World' will help us begin to comprehend that.
#PlenaryCouncil #PlenaryCouncilTheme6
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