Praise be Jesus Christ, Now and Forever!
Just celebrating Halloween, and candy being very much on our minds and in our stomachs, I thought in my Ponderings this week I would reference one of the funniest and most profound movies I have ever seen, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Gene Wilder is one of the greatest comic actors of his day. I have enjoyed every movie I have seen him in. Although the film was entertaining, it had a very profound message. It criticized an alarming trend beginning to take shape in society around the time the movie was made, namely, children being spoiled by bad parenting.
The very colorful, eccentric, but mostly virtuous, Willy Wonka, wanted to retire from being the C.E.O. of his chocolate manufacturing company. He wanted to find a worthy successor. He thought he would have a child succeed him because, in his view, children are innocent and pure. Being a recluse and not having interacted with society in a while, he was saddened when he experienced his children visitors to his factory, behaving badly due to poor parenting. Why the children were misbehaving was directly the result of their parents always taking their children’s side over authority, and not disciplining them when they misbehaved. As a result, their children were brats and unruly. The Oompa Loompa’s were little orange men that worked in the factory and appeared throughout the film as a kind of chorus. They would sing to the audience like one would find in an ancient Greek Drama, in observance of the woes of events that just took place in the film as they gave their critical impression of the children’s ill behavior due to bad parenting. A movie of this nature would probably not be made today, due to it being considered “politically incorrect.”
Since the movie was filmed in the early 1970’s, the problem the film portrays has gotten worse. As a priest I have experienced this first hand when parents choose
extracurricular activities like sports, over teaching their children the importance of practicing their faith and going to Mass on Sunday. Church activities and Catechetics, at times, take a back seat to their children’s involvement in sports. Much of our societal woes over the past 45 years stem from poor parenting. Teachers and educators time and time again, tell of the difficulties in reprimanding students due to parents consistently taking the side of their children when they are
disciplined in school. When a teen comes home from school, and complains they have been unfairly disciplined by their teacher, and they say they didn’t do anything to deserve the punishment, they were just being picked on, the sad, but almost comical reality is, that often times their parents will believe their child over the teacher’s portrayal of what happened. I can attest to this considering in my sixteen years of teaching Confirmation Classes, in every parish I have been assigned, I have experienced this unfortunate reality.
Many in my age group and older did not know what this was like growing up. My parents never believed my side of the stor y of when I ever mentioned being reprimanded in school. lol. When I was a kid it was stupid to tell parents you got in trouble in school, because it would be like tattle tailing on yourself. If my mother had to come to school because of a teacher reprimanding me for bad behavior, the whole time we would be in the conference and the teacher would be describing what I did, my mother would be looking angrily at me with this expression on her face that said, “You are in big trouble when we get home.” I would try my best in the car ride home to convince her of my side of the story, but she only grew more angry, because she believed a trusted adult-authority over what her teen said happened who was just trying to get out of trouble. Admittedly, sometimes a teacher for whatever reason may be unjust in their discipline, or due to unfortunate circumstances, the student is the one telling the truth, and their side of the story is the reality of what happened. In these instances, when parents take the side of authority, it can toughen up youngsters and teach them sometimes life is unfair and you get blamed for things that may not be your fault. But this builds character and strengthens their constitution, so they learn how to cope and deal with these situations when they happen later on in life when they won't have their parents there to defend them.
Similarly, if a parent gives the child the choice between going to catechism class on Sunday, or playing a sport, children 99.999 percent of the time are going to pick
playing the sport. When parents let their children decide what they would rather do instead of insisting that the practice of their faith comes first, they are making a grave mistake and acting like the parents who are taking the tour in Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.
By not teaching a child that Mass and catechism comes before sports or other secular activities, the child misses out on learning two very important life lessons:
1. Nothing in life should come before God and keeping the 3rd Commandment of,
Keeping Holy the Sabbath; and 2. That in life one has to pick what is better for the soul than what one would consider doing that’s more “fun.” It’s no wonder why, that as children grew up in the World of Willy Wonka, Mass attendance and the practice
of the Faith has declined.
When a parent tells me their son or daughter can’t make Mass or a Catechism class, or can’t be an Altar Server because they are “too busy” due to being involved in sports, and it is evident to me that for them that commitment is more important, oh, how I wish I had little orange men that could come out from behind the scenes and sing, “Oompa Loompa, doom-pa-dee-doo, I have another tale for you...”
Un Abbraccio,
Don Giacomo