Coffee Clicks: best of the week {Volume 1}
I’m thinking of starting a new feature where I round up my favorite clicks from the week behind us and throw them up for your hungry eyes instead of just clicking “like” on Facebook and moving on…but that means they have to be really, really good clicks. Worth your time and my energy curating them into a tidy little list.
(Also, who am I kidding, Dave just got home from a 4 day business trip and when daddy is gone the kids can smell my maternal fear and did you know that fear causes insomnia in toddlers? No?)
Lucky you.
So this list…it won’t be all blogs, some of the links might even lead to – gasp – scholarly articles. But you know what? I know you can handle them. And I commit that by sharing them here I hereby testify that they are worth the 5-20 minute investment of your time to ingest. Especially the longer one. (Because I really, really wouldn’t post it if I didn’t feel strongly that every parent and non parent and human in America needed to put their eyeballs on it.)
Without further ado:
1. This is the longest piece I’ll share, hands down, but it’s a critically important read. And it describes my undergrad environment (at CU Boulder) to a T. Parents, if you think your “good kid” who’s away at college isn’t getting involved in some terrifying stuff, or at the very least standing witness to it in their dorm/sorority/frat, you probably have another think coming.
(disclaimer: not all college students are behaving like animals, and not all colleges are complicit in their behavior. Some are working very, very hard to foster an environment that goes so far as to encourage virtue in their student body. And of course everywhere, even on the darkest campuses, there are FOCUS missionaries and Newman Center’s fighting for your children’s lives. But overall, this is a very, very apt representation of what college is like for a large majority of co-eds across the US.)
2. Remember the worldwide push for “safe” sex and access to free contraception and abortion on demand and all that fun and essential business? Well, here’s one unforeseen consequence that many European countries are pulling their heads out of their … sand hills and beginning to panic over. I’m curious to see how long it takes them to realize they cannot only encourage procreative copulation but also marriage and a traditional family structure to go along with the fruitful success of their efforts? (Because somebody’s got to raise those babies to become hardworking patriots, no?)
3. (and 4). Did you hear about the passionate crew of enthusiastic and “prominent, faithful catholics” who are presumably better catechized and more deeply converted of heart than San Francisco’s Archbishop? Well, undeterred by pesky little details like the fact that a full page ad in their lame local newspaper is probably not landing on Pope Francis’ desk every morning (silly narcissists, nobody outside the Bay Area reads the Chronicle) these brave evangelists are calling for their local shepherd to be ousted by their universal shepherd because, um, nobody explained the inner workings of the Church’s ecclesial structure to them, I guess?
And also temper tantrums! Because we’re vewy, vewy frustrated by our stodgy old Church (which we actually stopped attending regularly back in the 70’s. Except at Christmas time.)
5. A fluffy, lighthearted click to warm the cockles of your heart and kick your weekend off on a high note. (This mom has actually got better pipes than Miley, in my estimation.)
A happy weekend to one and all. May your thoughts be deep, your sleep be unbroken, and your morning coffees endlessly hot and refilled.
11 Comments
Alix
So I read the first article, and while I completely agree with it, I’m wondering what our take away is supposed to be? How do we change the culture at universities? What steps do we take next?
Caroline
It is a long road, but I suppose, bring up your children in the faith, and next, if possible, send them to Good, faithful, Catholic colleges. It is so easy to fall away if one is not grounded in the faith, let alone when one is surrounded by lack of morals.
Marie
As a current student at what many believe one of those “good, faithful, Catholic” colleges (on the Newman Guide), I think it’s important that people know we’re not immune from coming into contact with this stuff. Administration likes to portray us as a perfect Catholic place, but it’s NOT true. People get drunk, throw up in the hallways, get suspended for having drugs, and even get pregnant here.
It doesn’t happen as often as other places, but I just want to make sure people realize going to a school like this will not guarentee your child is safe.
I did not have the foundation in my faith that us young people need, but thankfullly I learned what my parents didn’t give me from good sources. Your child may not have the same opportunities I did, so please. Parents, you cannot underestimate the importance of grounding your child.
This hurts me to this day that my parents did not give me the tools to handle the world. It is something I will always carry with me. They are good people with good intentions, but failed me in many ways. I don’t know why. But they did. And I don’t know how I was led to the good, beautiful, and true sources I’ve learned from. I am so thankful this is the path God has led me to. I’ve never partied or even witnessed one of these situations we’re talking about. And all I can say is that God has given me the gift of stubbornness to protect me from caving.
All this to say: the only thing that will stop your children from participating in this stuff is them being secure enough in who they are. They need to know who they are as a child of God so they don’t feel the need to be affirmed constantly by peers. And they need to surround themselves with good friends who will help build each other up. Being Catholic nowadays is about being countercultural, so your child has to be ready to face that – even on a Catholic campus.
Remi
The first story is rather depressing – but I went to university after I left the fire-brigade, in my early thirties and with already four children and five by the time I left.
I remember looking with bemusement at the drunken and debauched waste many of my peers were making of their lives.
And in England the extent of university support was also access to ‘family planning advice’ – condoms, morning-after pill and abortion, with whatever appropriate ‘non-judgemental’ counselling and after-care was around.
My catholic college was so far from having any regard for church teachings that at the inauguration Mass the priest invited everyone to communion – the protestants, Muslims, Hindus as well. He did this in front of the principle and senior staff – trendy nuns and lay sisters – so forget any in-depth support in line with properly Catholic pastoral care.
As a result I have refused to support my own grown up children or give them a penny to go to university if they leave home to do so.
They benefit from their bedroom, our hot water and electricity, family meals, Sunday prayers and our continued company (and a decreasing but not disappearing degree of supervision). They also keep the social circle (church friends) they have had since childhood.
It’s not such a bad deal, we think.
Amanda
I met my husband when we lived together in a co-ed dorm, and we did not date much. We just were a couple, and while I can’t complain it didn’t work out, it wasn’t the romance I would have preferred. It’s astonishing colleges can insist students live in dorms- what a terrible environment they can’t escape, especially since the reason for dorm living is to get along with everyone else! As though a bunch of 18 year olds will socialize each other well. My kids are years away from college, but there’s a lot to consider. God in His mercy spared me from great moral harm, but that’s no excuse to knowingly send my kids to the lions’ den.
Tia
just a correction; that link to the San Francisco fracas should refer to the SF Chronicle, where the ad was placed. It was not placed in the Examiner.
Jenny Uebbing
Thank you! (SF native here, I should know better)
Marie
As a current student at one of the Newman Guide’s top Catholic colleges, even we’re not all you might crack us up to be. Administration brags about the high level of our Catholicism, but I know otherwise. I’m a junior, and I am HORRIFIED to be hearing about drinking, drugs, and sex happening more prevalently as classes come in – and people being suspended because of it. Though I have never been part of it or witnessed it in person, knowing people are hungover, throwing up in the hallways, smoking weed, and getting pregnant on one of the allegedly BEST Catholic schools in the country is rather concerning. Administration tries to pretend it doesn’t happened. But it DOES. No one is immune from this.
Parents, do not be fooled that your child is exepmt from these things if they’re at one of these schools. Us students will only stay out of that stuff if we’re secure in our identity with a solid moral foundation – AND hang with the right group of people. You cannot underestimate your power as parents to help equip your children.
I was not equipped, but through the grace of God learned enough about my faith to become passionate about it – not drinking, drugs, sex, or the like. I am so thankful for God giving me the opportunities to learn on my own what my parents did not give me. Please, PLEASE parents – your children may not end up learning from the same sources I did. Talk with them and prepare them.
Thank you for what you are doing already to grow strong kids who will be witnesses to the beauty of Catholicism!
Remi
The second story is very interesting.
I have eight children and soon to be seven grand-children (I sent the link to the last story to my daughter-in-law awaiting her fourth to cheer her up).
For years, whenever I have mentioned my own large family, certain people have intimated that I am a social parasite (there are child tax credits available in some European countries – though in England these are paltry), or that I was destroying the planet with the elephantine carbon footprint my family must be making, and that I was storing problems for the future, since kids are so ungrateful that they never repay you for the trouble they have caused (I was actually told this!!)
I have always defended my corner (the Church’s corner, since without her wisdom we would not have had the confidence in providence to have so many kids).
Children are economically necessary – an aging demographic is more expensive for the nation since older people pay less tax and are a greater burden on the public health systems we have in Europe (Pr. Obama, take note!) – if no-one has had more than a couple of kids, when the time comes there will be no-one to keep the economy afloat to support them in retirement. – Then laws will come in (and are afoot in many places) proposing euthanasia for whoever wants it, including the sick and elderly so that they do not feel they have to be a burden on their children, on the savings they would to leave in their will, etc. Quite sinister, really.
Children are socially necessary – an aging population dies. If you do not renew society, it dies. If you want to keep society going, you then have to import people. It is called immigration.
While I fully support the Catholic imperative to welcome the stranger, to give shelter to the refugee, and the orphan, I think that this NY Times article shows that the Powers have finally woken up to the fact that many of the immigrants they have encouraged into our lands have no intention of adopting the agnostic, Enlightenment (masonic) culture that was intended – I speak of the Muslims. So they realise that if Europe does not make it’s own babies and continues to rely on others to make them, then the European culture for which the take credit will be lost.
What is also noteworthy is that the NY Times (a liberal sort of paper) story is not yet being told in England and France. I look forwards to the matter raising its head over here. But I also suspect that the USA has similar demographic problems and is introducing the question to people’s consciousness with that article.
Then Jenny is right. Who will bring these kids up ? – if the new adults can even be brought past the consumerist traps that have convinced the two previous generations not to have any in the first place.
Patricia
Regarding the first piece, I agree that present-day college culture has *many* disturbing aspects, but I do feel the author might be painting an unduly “golden age” image of college life of yore. My mother attended the University of Connecticut up till 1962, and lived in an all-female dorm where men were not allowed beyond the foyer, where there was a 10 pm curfew (midnight on Saturdays) and female students could only wear pants on campus on Saturdays (had to be skirts all other days) but from what she’s told me, there certainly was alcohol and drunkenness going on, as well as (attempted, in my mother’s case) date rape -mostly in cars, and during dates, where, to quote my mother “They acted like rape was going to become illegal *tomorrow*.” FWIW, my mother’s solution was to date and then become engaged to a man who had already done five years in the Navy during the Korean War before going to university, as according to her, the GI bill men behaved far better (and that man is my father…)
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I’m a sucker for roundup posts 🙂