Fr Bernard responds to a grandparent who is upset at seeing the lack of religious values being trasmitted to her grandchildren.
One of my grandchildren, a two-year-old boy, has not been baptised although both his parents are from devout Catholic families. I took the step of baptising him myself but I still feel that I am neglecting my duty by not asking the parents to explain their inaction. My sister claims it is not my responsibility and says that my action would be taken as interference. I pray that the Holy Spirit will inspire the parents of this child to have him baptised, but is that enough?
It is quite clear from your letter that this is causing you a great deal of distress and pain. There are many people with the same experience as yourself of rearing children in the faith only to see their grandchildren not receiving that same faith from their parents. The pain which you and others feel because of this could fairly be described as a sign of the times.
As a parent you feel responsible for the actions of your children, but one of the great challenges of parenthood is knowing when to realise that your child is no longer your responsibility. In this regard your sister’s advice is a good starting point.
Of course you want the very best for your own grandson, and this means that you want him to be raised with the faith which was handed down to you and which you tried to hand on to your own children. However, the task, the responsibility, of raising your grandson lies with your daughter and her husband. Your own task of parenting is now over. Your daughter is an adult, a married woman, a mother.
The ork of the Holy Spirit
Until you are clear about this in your own mind, and at peace with it, any attempt by you to raise the matter of the child’s baptism with your daughter will only be seen by her as an atempt to impose your wishes. Your sister’s comment about interfering is well worth noting. Furthermore, it can be very difficult for you to be at peace around this issue which is of such fundamental importance in your life. The wisest thing may well be to reconcile yourself to saying nothing.
Part of the pain which you feel is that your daughter’s lack of interest in getting her child baptised opens up a divergence of views between yourself and her. Many parents feel a sense of failure when they see this divergence opening up between themselves and their children who show no enthusiasm for the faith in which they were reared. The Faith, after all, is the work of the Holy Spirit and not of parents. You cannot place the gift of faith inside your daughter’s heart. What happens there is between her and God, and it is always worth remembering that God’s ways are mysterious.
The gift of wisdom
What I would suggest is that, in addition to your prayer that the Holy Spirit inspire your daughter and son-in-law to have her child baptised, you pray for the gift of wisdom. It is, after all, one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
One of the effects of this gift is to free us from anxiety and to give us a sense of peace about the more intractable problems of life. Wisdom gives us a sense of our own limitations and of what is realistically possible. It also gives us the capacity to say the right thing at the right time in a way which will help rather than hinder our relationships with others.
It can’t be emphasised enough that, as long as you are feeling pained and confused about your grandchild’s situation, and it is very understandable that you should be, you would be ill-advised to raise the matter.
Voice of friendship
If you do reach a point at which you have placed the matter fully in God’s hands, then the moment may arise, in a natural and unforced way, when you can voice your concern – but only in the clear awareness that you are speaking to the mother of a child who is not yours.
You have no rights here, and no responsibilities. Insofar as you have any contribution to make, it can only be with the voice of friendship freed from the painful shackles of anxiety.
It is easy for me to say this but, in the real world, it is very difficult indeed for parents to communicate with their adult children in this way about matters on which they disagree, particularly with respect to the rearing of children! You can be sure of one thing, both your daughter and your son-in-law are only too well aware that both sets of grandparents would dearly love to see their grandchild baptised. They would probably find it very hard to explain to you why they have not done so.
The lord of the storm
The truth is that they see things differently from you, even to the point of rejecting something which you treasure. Which brings us back to the painful question of how this could have happened to people from devout Catholic families. As I said at the start of this letter, your situation is not unusual. There are times in the history of the church when it all seems to fall apart and today in Ireland is such a time.
During most of this century in Ireland the church has certainly thrived. She has been very powerful, and all power has a tendency to corrupt. She became too complacent and now she has hit stormy waters. You and many others, through no fault of your own, have been caught up in that storm in your relationship with your daughter. The only way forward is to a deeper faith in the Lord who calms the storm.
When the storm is over the church may appear weaker, but she will be purified and strengthened in her faith and the Good News will be seen in a clearer, simpler light by a new generation.
