An Old Ideology Lives On
Perhaps all missionaries have mixed feeling about returning to their native countries. On the one hand it is a great blessing to renew relationships with family and friends. On the other hand it is always disconcerting to have to rearrange one's habits, to live and work out of a suitcase, and to be away from the support structures of one's religious community. In the case of going from Russia to America and back again, there are also the complicating factors of two very divergent cultures and two very different living standards. It feels strange to experience culture shock upon returning to one's own culture! And for those of us who have been living away from America for a very long time, there is also the sadness of seeing our country's progressive slide down the slippery slope of decadence and demoralization. If that last sentence sounds harsh to those readers who have never lived outside of the U.S., it is not meant to be. It was written with love for a great and beautiful country which is not living up to its responsibilities and its potential, and which, by dominating the culture of other countries, is spreading its poison abroad at an alarming rate.
What is most distressing to me when I am in the United States (usually once or twice a year for about a month at a time) is to see the myriad ways in which many Americans are short-changing their children. I will mention three of them.
1. The most glaring and horrific example of this is the wholesale slaughter of babies in their mothers' wombs. After almost a quarter century of this nightmare it is still no easier to accept than it was when the Supreme Court justices betrayed their sworn oath of office and inflicted this ghoulish scenario on a largely unsuspecting American public. Even though this ideological interpretation of our laws has been a sad reality of American life for over 20 years, I did not feel so bad about being an American until the election of our first pro-abortion president. The occupant of the office of president has the power to bring to symbolic reality what he stands for. With a pro-abortion president we are now faced with ever more powerful abortion lobbies and media campaigns, like minded Supreme Court appointments, and death-dealing executive policy decisions. It is a cynical betrayal of our nation's heritage. It is wrenchingly sad for me to be in America knowing what is being perpetrated there. Never doubt that it will haunt our collective conscious for generations to come, even if all elective abortions were to cease today. What child can enter fully into the loving bond that God intends between parent and child when he knows that his own parents have killed one or more of his brothers and sisters and that they could just as well have killed him before they ever knew him. For these deadly personal sins we as a nation are paying dearly with untold anger and depression on the part of the mothers, bewilderment on the part of fathers and grandparents, and loss of trust and faith on the part of the surviving children.
2. Selfishness toward children is also clearly demonstrated by widespread divorce. America has the highest divorce rate in the world. In the last 25 years no-fault divorce laws have brought about the virtual elimination of the indissolubility and sanctity of marriage. Sacramental marriage is always a difficult vocation, but in present day America, it has become a game of Russian roulette. Who can be sure at the moment they pronounce their vows that their spouse won't simply walk out on them a few years later? What other legal contract is held in such low esteem that it can be broken with impunity (no fault) whenever one party feels like it? And what of the children? Twenty years ago it was common to hear psychologists and marriage counselors pronounce solemnly that divorce could be the best thing for children so that they need not grow up in the tense atmosphere of a strained marriage. Now many of the same experts are saying, "OOPS, sorry! We were wrong. Excluding grave bodily harm, a broken home is the single worst thing that can befall a child." Yet divorce continues in America unabated.
3. America is also harming her children by the low expectations of their own parents, of school teachers and administrators, and of society in general for a good education. Content has been replaced by "process", subjects by projects. Children are taught that learning should take place through fun and games. When I was teaching in an expensive Catholic high school in California just before I came to Russia, I learned to my amazement that many of my students' parents did not want their children to learn Spanish, and the school administrators didn't really care how much Spanish was taught. How dare I (the Spanish teacher) require that my students memorize anything! Parents were paying high tuition and administrators were receiving high salaries for the children to be baby-sat and kept out of the trouble of drug- and gang-infested public schools. Later when I spoke to groups of students in Catholic schools in Michigan my faith in contemporary Catholic education was somewhat restored because I met bright and interested children and dedicated and self-sacrificing administrators and teachers. I wish they were the rule and not the exception.
Perhaps my perception of these contemporary American problems has been heightened by my first-hand experience of the same difficulties in Russia, difficulties magnified to an infinite degree by the anti-god, anti-family ideology of Communism which has influenced American culture in many ways. Here is a brief glance at the same three problems, Russian style.
1. In 1921 Russia became the first country in the world to legalize abortion. By 1934 there were almost three (2.7) times more elective abortions than live births in Moscow. During the last 45 years of the Soviet period (1946-1991), elective abortion was the only generally available means of family planning. No pro-life educational program or activity was permitted by the totalitarian state, and Natural Family Planning was not taught. Because of this, reliable studies indicate that today women of late child bearing age in Russia have undergone on average 6 to 8 elective abortions, and some more than 20 elective abortions. Here in the Far East Russian women are desperately seeking other ways of spacing their children because they know that the abortion procedure is so invasive that their chance of ever becoming pregnant again decreases by 10% with every abortion. Will America realize where godless, death-dealing ideology leads?
2. What about divorce and the destruction of the family under Communism? As a way for the new Communist ideology to gain greater control over the young people of Russia and to spread their propaganda with less resistance the totalitarian central planners devised schemes to weaken parental authority. A key tactic was an all-out attack on the family and a drastic loosening of divorce laws. The following quote is from the book, The First Socialist Society, a sympathetic history of the Soviet Union by Geoffrey Hosking (Harvard University Press, 1985):
In the 1920's the regime had tried to weaken the family as a 'bourgeois institution', which exploited women and perpetuated a paternalistic notion of property. Under legislation passed at that time, any stable cohabitation, whether registered or not, could be considered a family... A partner to a marriage could obtain divorce simply by requesting it: the other partner had to be informed, but not necessarily consulted, so that sometimes divorce was achieved simply by sending a postcard. There is little doubt that these provisions... quite seriously weakened the family as a social institution. (pg. 212-213.)
This anti-family policy, coupled with abortion on demand, soon led to a dangerous drop in the birthrate, a huge increase in the number of orphans, a much greater burden on limited state funds, and steep increases in street beggars, roving gangs of parentless children, hooliganism and gangsterism. To their credit, the socialist tinkerers of the Soviet Union quickly saw the difficulties inherent in their own prejudice against the family, and by the mid 1930's they set about to correct them. The government propaganda machine was pressed into service to extol the value to society of the traditional family, and the need for more progeny. "Divorce was made both more expensive and more difficult, becoming from 1944 contingent on court proceedings." (Hosking, pg. 214.) But the damage was already done. The delicate fabric of family life had been worn thin and torn in too many places. Today most of my Russian friends and acquaintances do not know their own fathers. Three generations of children have been raised by single mothers. Anger and alcoholism are rampant among people of all age groups who over the last 75 years have been raised more by the State than by a traditionally-structured family.
3. Concerning the education of children, the problems of American schools can be traced in part to the acceptance in America of basic principles of Communist ideology. Early Soviet educational theorists such as V.N. Shulgin believed that any system of formal education was inherently elitist and should be abolished or at least drastically diminished. When Shulgin's disciples gained control of the Commissariat of Education in 1929 the curriculum was vastly altered to contain much less content and much more "process". "There was now far less classroom teaching: children spent much of their time on 'projects'... and on social and political work. The proportion of political instruction was also increased". (Hosking, pg. 175.) In just a few short years the Russian educational system was in shambles, and even the Communist ideologues had enough humility to see that it was the excesses of their own cultural revolution which caused the problem. "In August 1931 the Central Committee passed a resolution noting that schools were 'not imparting a sufficient amount of general knowledge, nor adequately solving the problem of training fully literate persons with a good grasp of the basic sciences.' This reflected the views of both parents and employers that children were coming to their first jobs without good work habits and without the fundamentals a school could be expected to have taught." (Hosking, pg. 214-215.)
As a noted sports figure has said, "Deja vu, all over again." To America's credit, many parents and teachers have recognized the problem. But big government bureaucracy, including teachers' unions and school administrators, continues to insist on its monopolistic right to disburse tax revenues in its own self interest.
Some readers might jump to the conclusion that I am a conspiracy theorist, seeing a communist behind every crumbling cultural pillar. Not at all. It would be naive to think that the monolithic system of Soviet Communism never spent a penny to try to influence American public opinion. But I believe that the main reasons for the cultural drift toward atheistic, ideological positions in the U.S. cannot be blamed on foreign forces. The reasons for our modern, cultural malaise are many, and the roots are deep. What is clear is that the growing pattern of confusion and doubt on the part of many American Catholics about the traditional teaching of the Church concerning the family and sexual reproduction has contributed to America's cultural problems. This confusion and doubt has not been addressed forcefully enough by the leaders of the Church in the United States. All too often theologians and those responsible for teaching future priests and catechists the truths of the Faith have themselves broken faith with the American Catholic people who have counted on them to transmit the ever-constant truths of the Church in a clear and understandable way. Too seldom have our bishops used the ministry of their God-given authority to call teachers and priests back to the Truth. Today we are paying the price of the cowardice and confusion of the past 30 years. Tomorrow the price will go up.
To all Americans who have been swayed by or who have toyed with the following enticing ideas:
- a woman's right to "choose"
- our "duty" not to overpopulate the earth
- "Parents who have many children are irresponsible."
- "every child a wanted child" (so abort those who are not wanted.)
- no-fault divorce
- "We're splitting up for the sake of the children."
- "It's my turn!" (self-actualization independent of prior life-commitments)
- affirmative action quotas (hiring or promoting people of lesser merit)
- "Children must not be made to do things they don't like."
- "Learning should be fun."
- "quality of life" arguments to justify the elimination of people judged not worth keeping alive
- and many other ideologically-based and politically correct ideas.
I invite all of you to come to Russia and see the consequences of these same ideas. I guarantee that you will not like what you see. And after you see, I think you will go back to America with a new understanding of the dire consequences of the cultural revolution that is taking place in the U.S, a revolution which too many in the Church actively or passively support.
Those of us who love America must learn a lesson from Russia which has undergone almost a century of spiritual, moral, economic and ecological devastation wrought by the atheistic ideology of Communism. The clear and constant teachings of the Church are not a burden imposed arbitrarily on the faithful. They are the light of Christ, present in His Mystical Body, guiding us away from the darkness which our human nature can too easily crawl into when left to itself. I invite all Sunrise readers who strive to be faithful Christians to take to heart the words of St Paul to Timothy, "I charge you to preach the word and be urgent about it, whether convenient or inconvenient -- correcting, reproving, appealing. Teach constantly, and never lose patience... For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own liking. They will stop listening to the truth and wander off into myths. As for you, always be steady. Put up with hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry." (2 Tim 4:1-5).
Fr. Dan is a member of the Canons Regular of Jesus the Lord and is an associate pastor at Most Holy Mother of God Catholic Church in Vladivostok, Russia. Those wishing to know more about the Church in Russia or wishing to send support should go to http://www.vladmission.org/, the parish's home page.
This item 2931 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
