Dear Bunglehorn,

Have you ever wondered why the Enemy’s Church considers “openness to life” to be an essential disposition for a couple discerning a vocation to marriage? There are many reasons, but primarily it is because children help orient their parents toward the Enemy. It is commonly understood that parents sanctify, or make holy, their children. It is less commonly understood how children sanctify their parents. Here are a few key ways as well as preventative actions you can take to block the sanctity of everyone.

Parenthood Fosters Selflessness

Humans live somewhere in a continuum between selfishness and selflessness. As a fetus and as an infant, the person is completely dependent on her mother to sustain her life. St. Augustine begins here in Confessions and admits his own selfishness as a child who demanded the attention of his parents. The way to eternal life is narrow and requires the denial of one’s own selfishness.

Generally, as people mature and become more self-aware, they tend towards caring for others. A selfish adult is also an immature person, having never received some need that the Enemy intended to be fulfilled in their relationship with their parents, such as sincere love simply for who they are.

Marriage introduces a real opportunity to sacrifice one’s self for someone else (and receive abundant love in return). As a new parent (and this is especially true for men), the roles finally reverse and people learn to sacrifice their own wants and needs for their children just as their own parents once did for them. In fact, this is often the time people have renewed respect for their parents, so it’s reason alone for you and I to thwart any notion of parenthood! For new parents, they give up sleep and comfort, quality time with each other, and quality time with the Creator.

Sacrifice is a obviously and important lesson the Enemy wishes to impart. He emptied himself completely for mankind. We never want our patients emulating acts of selfishness, lest they too become Christ-like and we lose them forever.

Your Objective
Elevate in your patients all the things they’d have to give up in order to have children. Create in them worldly desires they’ve dreamt about since childhood: the big house, the luxury sports car, exotic travel, nightlife, whatever. This is especially powerful for couples who do not yet have children because they cannot adequately compare the sheer joy and fulfillment that accompanies the gift of children. For those who unfortunately are parents, remind them often of the DINK days (dual-income, no kids) and how wonderful it was to go to the movies, eat in fine restaurants and jet-off for a weekend getaway.

Parenthood Fosters Love of Spouse

Despite the stress from lack of sleep, eating quick microwave meals on the go and loss of intimacy, both spiritual and physical, the astute parent will witness in his or her spouse the very qualities that attracted them in the first place. people tend to take for granted the kind deeds their friends and family do for them. Indeed, they may never know the sacrifices their own parents made for them until they finally become parents. The same is true for husband and wife.

You’ll note, however, it is much easier to see the good deeds someone does for others. At home, each parent witnesses the love and patience and tenderness given by their spouse to the kids, especially at times they are not able to. They see the midnight feedings without complaint. They see the comfort and hugs when the child is sick. They here the gales of laughter and admiration their beloved child has for the other parent. They’re reminded of the love their spouse has for them and their marriage is incredibly strengthened.

Should your patient ever begin praying aloud with his wife and children, I dare-say you’ve lost them. It is extremely powerful for a person to see their spouse ask the Enemy for forgiveness or ask for blessings or give thanksgiving and praise.

Your Objective
Again, tilt your patient’s head toward his spouses mistakes. Needle little fights over minor issues and explode any hint of offense, especially when none is intended. Encourage the undermining of each other’s authority in front of the children. It’s amazing how even a two year old learns to pit mommy and daddy against each other.

Never encourage any kind of acknowledgment or thanksgiving when a parent notices their spouse going the extra mile. Just tell your patient that their spouse knows they appreciate them. And by all means, make family prayer feel as uncomfortable as possible! Remind everyone that prayer is a personal relationship with their Creator. It’s bad enough during Christmas and Easter.

Parenthood Fosters Love of the Creator

It is no mistake the Enemy speaks through parent-child allegories. He is the Eternal Father and everyone else is his children. He disciplines them harshly when they first came to know him (see Old Testament) and lovingly encourages them as they mature (see New Testament).

The Son of Man loves children because, in their natural innocence, they retain a sense of wonderment at his creation. They instinctively know and follow him as is the natural order. By their teenage years (or sooner if we can help it), kids witness the harshness of the world, an indirect result of Original Sin by their first parents in the Garden. Most people today cling to a jaded, skeptical worldview out of fear and defensiveness well into adulthood. Just as we’d prefer.

However, it is a parent who is most apt to shed their “protective” shield and is willing to see the world anew. How? By observing the awe and wonder exhibited by their own children in the simple things they’ve come to take for granted. When a child marvels at a caterpillar, the parent shares his admiration. When a child laughs at silly joke, the parent shares in simple joy. They reclaim a sense of innocence and you’ll quickly find they desire greatly to prolong the experience.

Have you ever noticed that the Enemy instituted his Sacraments, the visible signs of his love for humanity, amid ordinary things like bread, wine, oil and water? Is he really so accessible? Yes he is. For a child, all ordinary things are extraordinary when first observed. A parent is reminded of the Enemy’s love for them when they witness their own child’s wonder in day-to-day common plain old things and routines.

Your Objective
Put blinders on your patients so they concentrate on the boring and mundane. You want them to take the physical beauty around them for granted because over time, they will lose sight of the mystical. Eastern mysticism is all but lost in the West today outside of the Catholic Mass or our own prism of the New Age.

For parents, you want to accentuate any sense of futility with their children. Well up in men their natural impatience and frustration when children do not listen or understand them. Strike chords of annoyance and overbearing instruction. In women, pervert their motherly instincts so that they coddle children to the point they never experience the world. You want to raise children that fail to develop any meaningful appreciation of the Creator’s work, or at least take it for granted.

Final Thoughts

Marriage is a powerful sacramental weapon in the Enemy’s arsenal and a sure path to Heaven. Parenthood is a key component, so avoid it all costs. Thankfully the divorce culture is trending toward people marrying later (if at all) and postponing child rearing (if at all). It shouldn’t be difficult to convince people to wait. Remind them of all the other great things the world has to offer.

Warmest Regards,
Wigglebrick

The Vault

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