from Helps to Happiness by Father John Carr, C.SS.R.
What a queer unmanageable sort of term is Human Respect. We see it so often in print and in practice that we now easily recognize it; but really, if we met it for the first time, most of us should not be able to make head or tail of it.
Used in its ordinary sense it is a moral cowardice keeping men from speaking or acting as they know they should, through fear of what others may think or say of them.
On the other hand, we must be careful not to have wrong ideas about moral courage. Moral courage does not mean parading; flaunting our virtues, trumpeting our good deeds, sky-writing our excellences, as did that Pharisee in the temple who reminded God what a fine fellow he was and how well he compared with the sinner whom he looked at from the corner of a disdaining eye.
It does not mean saying prayers and doing good and holy deeds “that we may be seen by men.”
Nor does moral courage mean singularity, when singularity is not called for. (At times we must be singular if we are to follow our conscience). But some people set out to be singular and affect originality in serving God. This looks dangerously like vanity and love of notice.
Nor does moral courage mean intruding our piety and our zeal for God’s glory and the good of souls. To pull out our rosary in a crowded bus, for instance, and ask the passengers to join in prayers for peace; to accost our neighbor in the public thoroughfare and question him on his compliance with his religious duties; to treat our fellow-travelers in a railway compartment to a little holy reading—all such exploits in moral daring would no doubt be a brave defiance of human respect, but would show an alarming lack of common-sense.
Human respect has enormous crimes to its account. Here are two:
Pilate sent Jesus Christ to His death through fear of being reported to his Roman masters. Herod had St. John the Baptist beheaded through fear of what his company would think of him if he broke a stupid oath he made when well in his cups.
Human respect can make men ashamed of doing the right thing and proud of doing the wrong.
Writing of his sinful boyhood, Saint Augustine says : “I invented things I had not done, lest I might be held cowardly for being innocent, or contemptible for being chaste.”
There is much moral cowardice amongst us. A smutty story is told in company. What keeps people from treating the smutty raconteur as he or she deserves? Human respect.
The good name of another is attacked. What keeps us from dissociating ourselves from the attack, at least by our silence? Human respect.
What makes many people, even passing for good Catholics, more afraid of being caught with a holy book in their hands than with a risque novel? Human respect.
This statement once emanated from a body of Protestant bishops: “People are more ashamed today to mention God’s name than to tell an obscene story. It is scarcely too much to say that in our daily speech the Creator is almost taboo in His own creation.
Men seem to be the worst offenders in this matter. Men who would at once accept a challenge to fight, who would be heroes on the battlefield and the first over the top, who would risk life and limb to save a life, will shrivel up before a taunt or a sneer.
They would fear being caught with a rosary in their hand, or carrying a fair-sized prayerbook, or saluting a church, or joining a sodality, or going to Mass on a week-day, or making the Way of the Cross. They would fear what the other fellows might say—the other fellows and “their sisters and their cousins their aunts.”
And the folly of it! How often we fear that others are thinking queerly of us and they are not thinking of us at all!
Anyhow, they think little of us for following our conscience, they would probably think less of us for not following it through fear them.
How many bad Christians does not Human Respect keep from becoming good! How many good from becoming better!
October – Month of the Holy Rosary
The Nativity
For nearly 9 months Mary had born her God-Son in her womb; her time is now at hand. She would be thinking only of Him, of course, and of the Holy Family-to-be.
Joseph left her to her quiet meditation, but Caesar did not. In obedience to the emperor’s ambition, she traveled the wearying hills to Bethlehem, where a cave was her Son’s first home.
Sad? Unfortunate? Hard to take? Not for Mary. She obeyed the government; she went where Caesar could rightfully bid her go, as willingly as she had obeyed the Angel Gabriel, and for the same reason – she saw in both God’s will for her. A “fiat“ that is all mine!
The great St. Bernard wrote in his rule that whenever the monastic bell rang, the monks were to drop what they were doing and go to whatever they were being called to.
In our homes, our monastic bell is all the many things beckoning at us throughout the day…the diapers to be changed, the dishes that need doing, the laundry that needs to be done, etc.
We respond to these things right away, even though we many not want to, remembering that these duties are the very things that will make us holy.
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Hands Free Mama is the digital society’s answer to finding balance in a media-saturated, perfection-obsessed world. It doesn’t mean giving up all technology forever. It doesn’t mean forgoing our jobs and responsibilities. What it does mean is seizing the little moments that life offers us to engage in real and meaningful interaction. It means looking our loved ones in the eye and giving them the gift of our undivided attention, living a present, authentic, and intentional life despite a world full of distractions.
With his facile pen and from the wealth of his nation-wide experience, the well-known author treats anything and everything that might be included under the heading of home education: the pre-marriage training of prospective parents, the problems of the pre-school days down through the years of adolescence. No topic is neglected. “What is most praiseworthy is Fr. Lord’s insistence throughout that no educational agency can supplant the work that must be done by parents.” – Felix M. Kirsch, O.F.M. https://amzn.to/2T06u28 (afflink)
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With his facile pen and from the wealth of his nation-wide experience, the well-known author treats anything and everything that might be included under the heading of home education: the pre-marriage training of prospective parents, the problems of the pre-school days down through the years of adolescence. No topic is neglected. “What is most praiseworthy is Fr. Lord’s insistence throughout that no educational agency can supplant the work that must be done by parents.” – Felix M. Kirsch, O.F.M. 