A final wrap-up of the conference, with an extended review of the Popcaks' talk on parenting...
I woke up at 5:15 to get there in time for 7:00 mass... which I discovered actually started at 8:00. Whoops! Mass was celebrated by Cardinal Justin Rigali, which was very nice. I love seeing 30+ priests at the front when they consecrate the host - it is so cool!
Then there was a final discussion group time. The only problem with this was there were nine topics to choose from! I had a hard time deciding, but went with Greg and Lisa Popcak's "Theology of the Body and Parenting." It was very interesting! They discussed how most parenting books contradict each other, and yet most of them "work" in some fashion... but the key is to figure out the worldview that is behind the parenting style and make sure that it matches your own. They wanted to figure out if there could be such a thing as Catholic parenting, and in particular something that worked with a TOB anthropology. Of course they put out a big caveat, which I'll echo, that parents who use a different approach from what they suggest are not bad or trying to hurt their children or anything - their style just promotes a different worldview. With that in mind, they discussed three general approaches to parenting: Calvinist, pragmatic behaviorist, and humanist. (These aren't official terms or anything, just what they used to describe the basic schools of thought.)
The Calvinist approach follows a total depravity mentality, and so children (even infants) are viewed as intentionally manipulative; a heavy hand is often employed to break the kids. The pragmatic behaviorist approach is parent-centric and thinks of children as products, to be tended to with cookie-cutter techniques according to parental convenience. The humanism approach (while in one extreme may tend towards permissiveness, which isn't good) is what the Popcaks suggested was most congruent with a Catholic worldview. This is basically the attachment parenting approach. The reason they think this is the most compatible with a TOB worldview is because it sees the body as good, and as a gift for others; the child is a person; each person is unique; the family is not a collection of individuals, but a communion of persons. (As I reread that, I wonder if it makes any sense to someone who wasn't there? But there you have it.) They also provided a few biological reasons behind this, but mostly focused on the anthropological and theological basis. (I hope no one is feeling offended right now because they have a different parenting style - I just felt that this was thought-provoking enough to share!)
They went on to answer specific questions people had, and really stressed how they think that it's unhealthy to set parents and kids in opposition to one another, as if they were in competition for your love. They essentially said that neither the marriage nor the children comes first, but the family as a whole does, which I thought was interesting. I did buy their book Parenting with Grace and am excited to read it and see how they suggest putting this worldview into parenting practice!
Finally, the last panel of the day was "How to Reach the World with TOB" and it featured Fr. Thomas Loya, Sr. Helena Burns, Bill Donaghy, and moderator Matthew Pinto. They answered a variety of questions about points of entry for this, among other issues. It wasn't quite as direct "do XYZ" as I'd hoped, but good nonetheless. (See my next post for some concrete suggestions.)
Overall, I was so glad that I had the chance to attend the TOB Congress! It really was an awesome opportunity. As I mentioned yesterday, I have a feeling I will be mulling over what I heard for quite a while.