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PAGE 5 — November 30,1972
f SELF- '
EXPRESSION
SELF-ESTEEM
LOVE
SECURITY
PHYSIOLOGICAL and PHYSICAL NEEDS
(NC Sketch)
MASLOW’S PYRAMID . . .rises from fundamental needs common to every human being.
The Family
BY DR. LAWRENCE LOSONCY
Abraham Maslow is one of several writers and teachers who
have come to be known as “learning theorists.” Other names in
this group include John Dewey, Malcolm Knowles, Sydney
Simon, Skinner, Bruner, Goldman, and Havinghurst, to name
but some of the better known theorists.
The learning theorist is one who observes people and then
through research, study, reflection, and careful discussion begins
to explain how he thinks human beings learn. Most educational
theory, even as long ago as the times of Socrates, Plato,
Aristotle, Augustine, Plotinus, Aquinas, and Freud has been
developed through this process.
Maslow’s theory includes an analysis of the needs which we
all experience as humans. By constructing a pyramid of these
needs, Maslow has opened the door to a better understanding of
the importance of family. In neither case, of course, are we
being told something we did not already know.
We always knew that adults need to diagnose their
educational needs before deciding what educational activity to
pursue. We also knew that the family is important, indeed
crucial, to the healthy and happy development of the young.
Maslow’s pyramid of needs, however, begins to explain why this
is so. His pyramid goes like this:
Self-Expression
Self-Esteem
Love
Security
Physiological and Physical
The pyramid rises from fundamental needs common to every
human being. We all have bodily needs of food, water, rest, a
place to sleep, shelter, protection from the elements, and so
forth.
We also all have a need for security. We all need to receive
love as well as to give love. We all need self-esteem, and we all
need to express ourselves and to be creative. The interesting,
indeed intriguing, aspect of Maslow’s pyramid is the fact that
those needs are related.
For example, higher needs cannot be satisfied until needs
below it on the pyramid have been met. A starving man
(physiological need) cannot feel secure. A homeless child
(security need) cannot feel loved. A rejected child (love need)
does not have much self-esteem. A person with inferiority
complexes (self-esteem need) is not creative or expressive.
The pyramid is also accurate in reverse. For example, a
person who is denied self-expression begins to weaken in
self-esteem; when people find their self-esteem or self-concept to
be weakening, they find love hard to accept, understand, or
return; when love begins to weaken, people feel insecure; and
when people become insecure they become aggressive,
destructive, careless, sloppy, and generally disruptive of their
physical surroundings. This is why behavioral scientists who see
BY FR. JOSEPH M. CHAMPLIN
The wide-eyed, inner-city young girl ran up to the priest in
charge of her summer vacation Bible school and enthusiastically
exclaimed: “Father, you know what I learned this week? That
God is my Father, Jesus is my Savior, and everyone is my
brother and sister.”
She apparently had “experienced community” during these
sessions, and liked it. According to Father George Fitzgerald in
his new book, “Communes: Their Goals, Hopes, Problems,”
many others, older, are desperately seeking for what our little
one found so easily in a few days.
a world at war or a city decaying begin to look for the reasons
in lack of security, lack of love, lack of dignity, and lack of
affection.
We have always held marriage and family in high regard. For
religious people, family is not only a great value, but it is also
divinely sanctioned. Civil society and law see family as an
essential component of any larger society.
Using the needs pyramid of Maslow, we can see why this is
so. Without a family, how could children receive security and
love? Without family structure, where would any of us receive
our identity? Without family, how would we know someone
Nailing down exactly what proponents mean by the term
community is quite another matter. It often seems to be an
elusive, almost Utopian, generally emotional goal and
occasionally some persons appear more anxious to talk about
community than to work hard at achieving it.
A Chicago group, however, describes the ideal they had
before them as they set up a communal type living arrangement:
“A community caring for each and sharing with all.” One
cannot quarrel with such nobleness and, in fact, could easily
hold that as the model of what a Christian community, a
Catholic parish, a worshiping congregation should be.
cares about us? Without family, how could we learn how to
express ourselves, how to get along with others, how to find our
place in life?
Eugene Kennedy has said several times in public that Church
and family are two unique realities in human experience.
Although they are related, they are not the same. They are the
only two human realities of which we can say that “when we
have to go there, they have to let us in.”
Volumes have been written concerning both family and
Church, and volumes will continue to be written about them.
This is because relationships within the family community
enable us to understand our filial relationship with God, which
is itself the basic source of a happy family life.
at Sunday Mass after having picnicked together in the local
park.
But, a word of caution: The liturgy expresses community,
true, but it also builds it. Sometimes the congregation before
Mass leaves much to be desired, yet afterwards walks out
different, more united.
And a second word of warning: the worshiping community is
united not necessarily by age or interest or attitude, but by a
common faith in Jesus Christ and a belief in his presence at the
Eucharist. The latter should enable us to raise above differences
in the former.
Two Sides
To Family
BY FR. QUENTIN QUESNELL, S J.
“I have come to set a man with odds with his father, a
daughter with her mother, a daughter-in-law with her
mother-in-law; in short, to make a man’s enemies those of his
own household” (Mt. ll,35f.).
One line of statements about the family in the New
Testament is strongly negative. According to that line of
thinking, the family is a danger and a threat to the person who
would be a real Christian. Along that line, for instance, is Jesus’
statement that he has come to bring, not peace, but division,
and to set family members at odds with one another.
Along this same line are the warnings Jesus gives his followers
against family connections. He says that those who love father
and mother more than they do him are not worthy of him. He
tells the man who wants to follow him, but who asks permission
first to go and bury his father: “Follow me, and let the dead
bury their dead.” In this same sense, he offers everlasting life to
those who have given up home, brothers, sisters, father or
mother, wife or children or property, for his sake.
This first line of thought is dramatically underscored in one
gospel’s comment on Jesus’ own life: “Neither did his own
brothers have much confidence in him” (Jn. 7,5). More strongly
still, perhaps, the incident in Mark 3,21 ff: “His own family
came to take charge of him, saying ‘he is out of his mind.’ ”
When Jesus hears that his family is waiting to talk to him, he
answers: “Who is my mother and my brothers? Whoever does
the will of God is brother and sister and mother to me.”
Still, we all know there is another whole line of New
Testament comments that seem to run in quite the contrary
direction. Along this second line, Jesus says, for instance, that it
is God’s plan that a man will cling to his wife and “let no man
separate what God has joined.”
In the letters of the apostles, husbands should love their wives
as Christ loves the church; wives should love their husbands and
children; children should honor and obey their parents; and
parents be careful not to nag and anger their children.
This second, favorable line is behind the teaching that “if
anyone does not provide for his own relatives, and especially for
members of his immediate family, he has denied the faith; he is
worse than an unbeliever” (I Tim. 5,8). It is also behind the
admonitions that “the younger widows marry, have children,
keep house” (I Tim. 5,14); that a bishop be married (only once)
and be “a good manager of his own household, keeping his
children under control” (I Tim. 3, 2-5); that “a wife does not
belong to herself, but to her husband; and a husband does not
belong to himself, but to his wife” (I Cor. 7,4).
The two lines of thought sound very different. Actually, both
reflect one basic reality: tire strong influence of family members
on each other. More than anything else on earth, the family into
which we are born makes us who we are.
Our relationships with them introduce us into the human
race. From our experiences with them, we get our most basic
opinions about ourselves and about others. From watching and
listening to them, we soak up our most deep-seated values, our
ideals, our fundamental hopes and fears.
As we grow out of childhood, God begins to call us to make
up our own minds about things. He may call us to leave our old
selves behind, to try to become better than we are. Leaving our
old selves behind may involve leaving behind some of the ideas
we got from our families. Breaking with old standards of judging
and acting may turn out to be as hard as cutting off a hand or
plucking out our own eyes. It might even involve leaving behind
the family from which our old self came.
To the extent that a family is a school of Christ, the people
of God in miniature, it deserved all the beautiful things the
Bible or anyone else can say in its praise. But most families, like
most people, have at least two sides to them. The Bible has to
consider them from both.
(Know Yo
ited 1972 by N.C. News Service.)
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Liturgy and the Community
All in the Family
BY FR. CARL J. PFEIFER, S.J.
He writes: “The search for community is the obsession of our
day. Someone said community theorists are the arm-chair
philosophers of modern America.” Talk in the past decade
among religious groups, Fitzgerald notes, constantly turns to the
subjects of “team ministry, collegiality, sharing decisions,
worshiping communities, living communities. Whenever college
chaplains came together for seminars or institutes, the day’s
events were high on sensitivity, panels on community, how to
build it, how to discover it, how to experience it.”
“ ‘A community caring for each and sharing with all.’
One .. .could easily hold that as the model of what a Christian
community, a Catholic parish, a worshipping congregation
should be.” Hand meets hand to form a symbol of co-operation.
(NC Photo by Paul Tucker)
Citizens in Fulton and visitors to our fair city may not discuss
or understand the theory of community, but they surely put it
into practice over Cracker Barrel Fair Weekend. This
money-making event raises around $30,000 every year for the
local hospital and involves everybody in the area - and I mean
everybody. Young children staff a penny candy booth, retirees
donate home-canned preserves, business men barbecue chicken,
cook hotdogs and pour beer, women sell cakes and pies, local
musicians entertain. If you don’t work, you do spend, walk
around and meet people you have missed since the previous
year.
Seminarians who waited on tables during the Fall River
priest’s retreat this September at Cathedral Camp in East
Freetown, Massachusetts were impressed, they told me, by the
great community spirit among the clergy. The men, of different
ages, temperaments, backgrounds, still laughed and talked,
walked and prayed, played and listened - together. These
students, who often hear rumors about alienation in rectories
and conflicts between priests, saw a different picture
throughout those beautiful days and must have been encouraged
by it.
Our own parishioners at Holy Family, at least 300 of them,
tasted community a few Sundays back when we gathered for an
afternoon parish picnic. Families brought their own food and
utensils. We supplied the beverages as a way of saying “thank
you” to all for a year of generous collections and loyal
volunteers.
There were prizes galore, including a dinner for two in one of
the region’s better restaurants, and games for every age bracket.
High light of the day was an egg-throwing contest with the
pastor a loser and a soiled pair of pants to prove his defeat.
What do these remarks have to do with worship? A great deal,
actually. Vatican II states: “Liturgical services are not private
functions, but are celebrations of the Church, which is the
‘sacrament of unity,’ namely, the holy people united and
ordered under their bishops.” The document maintains, as a
consequence, that public worship, liturgical celebrations,
“pertain to the whole body of the Church; they manifest it and
have effects upon it .. .”
The closer the community, the better the liturgy. Priests at
the magnificent camp setting concelebrated with deeper
meaning because before they came to the altar they were at one
with each other. Citizens in Fulton who cared for each and
shared with all at the fair should find it easier to worship a
common Father at next winter’s ecumenical Lenten services.
Parishioners at Holy Family will, we hope, better pray together
“I never met a died-in-the-wool atheist who had not grown up
in a military atheistic home,” said Ignace Lepp. His
observation arose out of his reflection on several decades of
personal experience as a committed atheist and influential
communist leader. He admitted he had known and lived with
hundreds of persons who professed to be atheists. But in his
long experience only those from atheistic homes responded
consistently and deeply as atheists.
His experience with atheists finds an echo in recent research
on the effects of Christian education. In general the findings
indicate that the most significant factor in Christian education is
the family. In a very profound sense one might argue that
ultimately it’s all in the family as far as effective, long-lasting
effects of religious education are concerned.
Parochial schools have an important contribution. CCD and
similar catechetical programs for those not attending Catholic
schools have an equally valuable contribution. So does the
liturgy and parish life in general. But their contribution would
seem normally to influence people’s deeply held moral values
and attitudes only when they complement what is acquired in
the genuinely Christian home.
It is not difficult to appreciate the significant place the family
has in a person’s religious development as a Catholic. On a
psychological level experience and scientific research reveal the
extraordinary formative importance of the first few years of a
child’s life. While growth remains possible as long as a person lives,
basic personality traits are already firmly shaped before a child
begins kindergarten. Presumably the greatest religious influence
during these early years is the quality of faith and love
experienced in his home life.
From the perspective of Christian knowledge of God and his
relationship with men, the significance of the family is equally
evident. Christians speak of God as “father,” of Mary the
mother of Jesus as their “mother.” Jesus is known as God’s
“Son,” and we are described as “children of God,” “sons of
God.” As children of God, our Father, we are recognized as
“brothers and sisters” in Christ.
The scriptures and Judeao-Christian tradition describe God,
the community of believers, and their relationship with God and
with each other in familiar terms. Evidently deeply felt
appreciation and knowledge of God in these terms is not
unrelated to the experience of family life in one’s own home.
Jewish religious educators have for centuries recognized the
centrality of family life in the religious development of young
and old alike. For a variety of reasons Catholic catechesis in
recent centuries has centered rather in the school - although the
vital role of the home was at least verbally maintained. Still
today in many parishes considerably more practical concern
about religious education focuses on the Catholic school, the
CCD program, the religion textbooks, teacher training, and
audio-visual materials than on the family.
All of these religious education agents are important and
deserving of concern and attention. But all together they are not
as significant a force in Christian education as the family. While
continuing to devote time, energy, personnel and money to
improving formal education, more and more religious educators
are investing even more resources in aiding parents to fulfill
more effectively their irreplaceable role in religious education.
It is one thing to remind parents of their primary
responsibility for the religious education of their children
through the quality of Christian life at home. Yet it is quite
another thing to discover creative, effective ways of assisting
parents in fulfilling that responsibility. If parents have a
responsibility within the Christian community, they have a right
to the aid of that community - particularly when the average
parent has grown up thinking that the parochial school, priests
or sisters were much more capable religious educators than they
themselves as parents.
In view of the clear teaching of the Second Vatican Council
(Christian Education, no. 3) and the General Catechechetical
Directory (no. 78, 79, 115,121) it would appear that a priority
question to be faced by those responsible for religious education
planning in dioceses and parishes is this: “What are we doing to
help parents better fulfill their responsibility as the primary
religious educators of their children
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