While it is always fun to get together with extended family over the holidays, these holidays brought a rally of strange comments such as “so, it looks like you are joining a cult…””well, you cannot possibly want anymore children, you can’t afford it…””you have to be moderate…””those poor kids, they cannot even watch Charlie Brown’s Christmas<\/i> because you don’t have cable…those poor kids…””why does your wife like to wear long skirts? This is 2003…” Many of the same family remarked and were stunned at how well behaved and non-materialistic our children are, yet pity our children for being forced to endure a crazy extreme lifestyle that teaches them to appreciate family and cooperation over material things and self-indulgence(although you may not know it if you were a fly on the wall here).
\nSo, I left the last family get together wondering what exactly is “moderate” or “too extreme”?I suppose moderate means first of all, how much of the secular world are you willing to allow your children exposed too. My husband and I thought we were rather “moderate” because we do not believe in cutting something secular out, for no other reason than it is secular.<\/p>\n
\nI think a good example of this would be for us, Harry Potter<\/i>. Many Catholics I know are up in arms about Harry Potter<\/i>. After reading the book and seeing the movies, I personally do not see the problem. However I am not someone who has dabbled in the occult before, so stories about witches do not feel dangerous to me and simply seem like fantastical stories that I really would give much thought too. I guess if I were someone who endagered myself in the past with occult practices, maybe I would feel differently. For a very, very long time, I was wary of the stories, but in all honesty, I cannot find anything against them.
\nThere are other areas that I personally feel I should pay more attention to that others have never had a problem with (such as modesty), and I think these issues vary from family to family. So I am wondering why the choices we have made seem to make us so bizarre?If this were a strictly secular scenario, no one discredit a recovering alcoholic from not wanting alcohol in his home. I know I am not alone in this. When I swap stories with other Catholic Mommies, many have similar stories of similar comments from other people. So what is the problem? Why does it stick in someone’s craw if I have cable, or 8 children, or whether or not we do or do not decide to do Harry Potter<\/i>? It is frustrating because on the one hand, my modest dresses are not modest enough and we are too wordly, on the other hand, my family thinks we are running off to join a cult because we moved to the country so the kids can have fresh air.
\nI personally feel often I am groping in the dark trying to find the right direction to steer the kids, and it is so hard when people are always telling me I am too extreme or too wordly. Is it possible that the road that God sets for one family is different from the next? Has a certain culture, such as our American one always been so specific for each family?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While it is always fun to get together with extended family over the holidays, these holidays brought a rally of strange comments such as “so, it looks like you are joining a cult…””well, you cannot possibly want anymore children, you can’t afford it…””you have to be moderate…””those poor kids, they cannot even watch Charlie Brown’s… Continue reading What is “Too Extreme” Anyway?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parenting-and-family-life","category-the-christian-life","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}