Rebuild the family, rebuild the nation

This post ties in with my previous two posts on the social and economic importance of rebuilding the family in our society. Below I have three more outstanding articles which use history, statistics, and current research to underscore the importance of the family to our economy and society in general.

• The Basis of Civilization
• As The Family Goes, So Goes the Economy
• The Family-Centered Economy

Read the articles and then take a look at the world around you. It's hard to ignore that all the problems associated with the disintegration of the family, as mentioned in the articles, are happening right before our eyes. I just pray that more people, especially our leaders, wake up and see this before it's too late.

I want to end with some wisdom from G. K. Chesterton, quoted from The Basis of Civilization by Dale Ahlquist:

Chesterton says that every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things. The obvious things are the ordinary things, and we have forgotten them. The modern world that we have created has brought with it great strain and stress so that even the things that normal men have normally desired are no longer desirable: “marriage and fair ownership and worship and the mysterious worth of man.” Those are the normal and ordinary things. Those are the things we have lost, and we need to recover them.
“The disintegration of rational society,” says Chesterton, “started in the drift from the hearth and the family; the solution must be a drift back.”

What is Happening to the Men in Our Society?

I want to bring three articles to you attention that focus on the disturbing decline of manly virtues and the role on men in our world and the negative consequences this is having on the family and society. Click on the links below to read these eye-opening pieces.

• When manly virtue died
• Why men are in trouble
• Should we be happy that nobody is dead?

The statistics from the articles above paint a bleak picture:

In 1970, men earned 60% of all college degrees. In 1980, the figure fell to 50%, by 2006 it was 43%. Women now surpass men in college degrees by almost three to two. Women's earnings grew 44% in real dollars from 1970 to 2007, compared with 6% growth for men.

Men are more distant from a family or their children then they have ever been. The out-of-wedlock birthrate is more than 40% in America. In 1960, only 11% of children in the U.S. lived apart from their fathers. In 2010, that share had risen to 27%. Men are also less religious than ever before. According to Gallup polling, 39% of men reported attending church regularly in 2010, compared to 47% of women.

Today, 18-to- 34-year-old men spend more time playing video games a day than 12-to- 17-year-old boys. While women are graduating college and finding good jobs, too many men are not going to work, not getting married and not raising families. Women are beginning to take the place of men in many ways. This has led some to ask: do we even need men?

With evidence like this, you can't help but ask the question, are men in our world going to wake up before its too late? Let's face facts here, families in our world are crumbling, marriage rates are falling while divorce still remains high. Our media is saturated with sex and pornography is everywhere. Crime and poverty continues to get worse, while the number of children in single parent homes or broken homes continues to increase. How much longer can we deny that Satan is attacking our families, especially God's appointed spiritual head of every household, the father? How much longer will our leaders and our society turn a blind eye to the real root of many of the problems we face, the attack on fatherhood and the deterioration of the family?

Where the real solutions are found.

I want to share with you a letter I wrote recently to our Diocesan newspaper in response to the articles in the links below:

•  Failed policies and misguided morality do not help our youth 
• A ‘True Christian’
• Deal with issues, not personal attacks

Below is my response which discusses the real solutions to the problems mentioned in these articles:

As I was reading the Commentary section of the November 10 edition of the Rhode Island Catholic, two articles really stood out to me because of how the issues they address are related. I am referring to the editorial "Failed policies and misguided morality do not help our youth"  and the letter by Patricia Fontes of Hopkinton, "Deal with issues, not personal attacks".

The editorial is rightly critical of First Lady Stephanie Chafee's severely misguided views on distributing condoms to children. She has actually stated that rather than prevent our children from engaging in sexual practices, we should instead teach them about "safe sex". However, all she will accomplish with this is encouraging irresponsible and reckless behavior by our youth. I agree with the editor that our children deserve better than this. Contrary to what this culture of death telling them, our youth don't need "safe sex", rather they need to learn about the beauty and sacredness of the gift of human sexuality and human life. But most of all, we as parents need to take a stand to ensure that the guidance and values we give our children are not deliberately undermined by political leaders, Planned Parenthood, or teachers with messages of promiscuity and irresponsibility.

In the letter by Patricia Fontes, the writer criticizes the Rhode Island Catholic and the Catholic Church for apparently focusing on issues involving sexuality and not doing enough for the poor. Her accusations, such as this paper being "neo-conservative", a lobbyist for the Republican Party, and the Church silenced by the "1%", just serve to underscore her misguided support for the "Occupy Wall Street" movement. Unfortunately, her political leanings prevent her from seeing that some of the demands of the occupiers and the actions of the Obama administration are directly contrary to Catholic doctrine and deserve the condemnation they have received by the RI Catholic and the Church.

But how is this related to Stephanie Chafee's desire to distribute condoms? Whether the issue is teenage promiscuity and contraception, or a faltering economy and income inequality, the solutions all start in the same place. If we want to rebuild this country and save our youth, the first place we need to start is to strengthen and support the family in our culture. The seeds of the the ills our nation faces today were planted years ago when family came under attack and Christian family values were replaced with materialism, greed, and sexual license. Contraception and socialism are not the answer, as history has shown. Restoring the family and reopening hearts to the grace of God are where the real answers are found.