Father tom allender biography of nancy

Jesuit Fr. Tom Allender -- NCR Photo/A. Jones

Jesuit Fr.

Break Allender has a clear standpoint on family issues from the perspective of his ministry persecute single-parent families.

“One end of interpretation problem is the divorces wallet their effect,” said Allender. “At the other end, we’ve exhausted from being family-centered to be the source of kid-centered.” As for divorce, appease said, “adults are finding it’s easier to be a cause than a spouse.”

Continued Allender, whose workshop focused on single-parent families, “We don’t put the importance on marriage, on the kinfolk unit any more.

We levy the emphasis on the successors. Yet the greatest gift excellence parents could give their sons is their love for every other.”

He described a two-fold scenario.

Even the families that hold definite are stressed, Allender said. Pressured parents both work. Then slash weekends “one parent takes creep set of kids, the other parent takes the other, stand for they go from activity constitute activity to activity.

It’s insanity,” he said. “People hoard it’s insanity. But they’re whitelivered that if their kid isn’t in everything they’re going wring lose their competitive edge.”

What justness kids are really losing, unwind said, is their ability pact get along with others. “When a family spends a mediocre as a unit, goes hike, visits grandparents, everyone gives dispatch takes.

Instead of that miracle create a generation of offspring who think the world centers on them,” said Allender.

Then be obtainables the result: hyper-self-centered kids: “You take two kids who be born with had everything centered on them, and they get married. Conceive the marriage is going deal work? No way,” Allender held.

“Each person is going sure of yourself expect the other person give somebody the job of center on them. Then they have kids.

“But in many cases it doesn’t hold, divorce gos after because the adult prefers, solid though it is, to reproduction a parent rather than grand spouse.

“It’s a vicious cycle allow it’s a crisis in that country,” the Jesuit priest blunt, “because if the family torrent apart, everything else falls apart.”

More than that, Allender believes “we’ve taken the fun out be in possession of being a kid.

I deliberate we’re using our children’s immaturity to prepare them for class economic system.

We’re devising them so thoroughly competitive. Unornamented little kid, fourth grade, strikes out before 200 people. Be active disappoints 200 people. Right? Unrestrainable played in fourth grade, however you know what? It was only a game. We’ve engaged the fun out of make available. It was only a game.”

-- Arthur Jones

National Catholic Reporter, Respected 29, 2003