Natural Religion
April 21, 2009, 12:27 pm
Posted by Cathleen Kaveny
My sister Meg’s rewrite of the Baltimore Catechism to reflect the natural worldview of a toddler.
Q. Who made you?
A. MAMA made me.
Q. Why did Mama make you?
A. Mama made me to know, love, and serve me in the daytime and to be with me in the night.
Commentary on Question and Answer #1
There is an old family story from well before I was born about a little girl on my mother’s side of the family who was cared for more often than not by relatives other than her parents. She claimed to remember when she was born and said, “There was nobody there except me and grandma.”
Commentary on Question and Answer #2
When I was small, quite possibly younger than 5, my mother, who must have been at her wit’s end, could not bear to hear another request for something beginning “Mommy.” She announced that she was no longer answering to “Mommy,” and that she was “Katie the Maid.” (Her name was Catherine, but she was always called Kitty.) Of course, we kept saying, “But Mommy . . .” And she kept replying, “I’m not Mommy, I’m Katie the Maid. If you want something, ask Katie the Maid.” I think I still bear psychological scars.
Perfect story. Your sister mentions “toddler”….well, our 16 year old princess fits this nicely. Thanks.
Re #1: Did MAMA make her by immaculate conception? No DADA in the picture?
Dada is in very much in the picture! But the mechanics aren’t clear at this point, and she knows she grew in her mom’s stomach.
My sister wasn’t complaining about having to do too much work, but wittily just pointing out how little children (toddlers) really see their parents (especially moms, especially if they nurse) as fundamentally connected to THEM, not really the other way around!
We describe the world as it is from our point of view with ourselves at the center. . . . it takes a lot of work . . . and growing up, to see the world from some one else’s perspective.. especially God’s.
Wasn’t it Sojourner Truth who said that Jesus was made by God and Mary, and no man had anything to do with it?
Cathleen, it is a thought-provoking little catechism! FWIW – I expect that a large number of parents would affirm that in fact they find a great deal of meaning and satisfaction in knowing, loving and serving their children. (And perhaps become frustrated when their children seem to depend on them less as they get older).
I think this absolutely perfect. The world has changed and the family has changed. When I was young, the activities in the family centered what your mother and father said you could do. On a weekend, if they were visiting an aunt, uncle, or grandmother, you went there, and there were no ifs ands or buts. When your father came home from work, everyone was at the supper table. There was no other activity in the whole world that was more important than that. The adults were the center of the house and the children had well heard the phrase “to be seen and not heard”. Priorities have changed. I’m not putting this in a better or worse connotation, but they have changed. Households are planned around what activities the children have.
This little girl is lucky enough to have two parents who pay attention to her. As she’s grown up, I think she’s learned to be patient and kind and empathetic to others–because people have been patient and kind and empathetic to her, and she knows what that looks and feels like.
I think, if we (collectively) raise our children right (and we are all responsible, to greater or lesser degrees, for the children), the good that is in, and should remain, out of this childlike egoism is a conviction that if God loves us even more than our parents do, and we are made in the image and likeness of God –and the ground of the universe is good.
I grew up in a Mexican-American household. The idea that children are seen and not heard is not a ideal in this culture. Everybody talks. My father was not a disciplinarian so my mother had to be. The only thing I remember my father disciplining me about was eating too fast and getting too close to the car in front of me when I drove. My mother was mainly a disciplinarian about home work. They have both been dead a long time. I still miss being able to talk to both of them. I feel very lucky that I have tumbled into God’s creation. I think that gratitude started when I was a kid.
Well, of course, too, Freud would say that we really still think about God in that way. That whatever we say in the catechism, what we really mean is that God “made us to know love and serve us–not the other way round.”
A projection.
James Gustafson, a Protestant ethicist working out of the reformed traditin took that critique very seriously–and in Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective tried to make sense of a God who really wasn’t in the immediate personal sense, concerned about each human being.
“I think, if we (collectively) raise our children right (and we are all responsible, to greater or lesser degrees, for the children), the good that is in, and should remain, out of this childlike egoism is a conviction that if God loves us even more than our parents do, and we are made in the image and likeness of God –and the ground of the universe is good.”
Agreed wholeheartedly … but with the caveat that children learn that it is not only them that God loves! Too many children have been raised to think that they are the center and be-all of the family. A lack of ego and self-centeredness is not their problem!
Augustine seemed to have gotten much of his view of original sin from his observation of children. Altho apologetics tells a different story it does not seem that Augie was that caring a father (or husband) with reference to his own son. As can be expected opinions span the spectrum about children either being totally corrupt or wholly innocent. One thing is for sure, there is nothing like rearing ones children as to understanding them. Those terrible two’s and three’s are a wonder to behold and endure. Parents who do not civilize their children at this stage are in for a lifetime of misery. Piaget, the great psychologist of children said that he threw everthing he knew away when he had his own children.
There is so much to consider and ponder about the Child in Christian history. http://books.google.com/books?id=QBrHz8gRRowC&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=Augustine+on+children+and+original+sin&source=bl&ots=67PzO9R8JA&sig=xRFOxzp8lJLgRBEwSREfHfth8So&hl=en&ei=1LjvSeHKFaCdlQeJ2rkw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4
Moontessori seems to do a pretty good job of civilizing little kids.