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By Domenico Bettinelli on July 29th, 2010 | Category: Faith & SpiritualitySomething one of our priests said in his homily a couple of weeks ago got me thinking about a way I could exercise my spiritual duties as father and husband. Father told an anecdote in his homily about a friend of his who set his cell phone to beep on the hour every day to remind him to pray for his wife and kids, wherever he happened to be.
I like that idea. I would like to be able to pray the Liturgy of the Hours every day, marking each of the hours of the day with readings and prayers, like religious and priests do. Unfortunately, there just isn’t the time for it. I’m often in meetings or deep in a project and by the time the end of the day rolls around I can’t believe 8 hours has passed.
But this I could do.
So I set up a series of reminders using my favorite to-do web service at RememberTheMilk.com that are timed for each hour. Starting at 9am, RTM sends a notification through their iPhone app to my phone to pray for Melanie. I stop for a moment, say a quick prayer for her needs and intentions and that I would be the husband she needs me to be. Again, at 10, I pray for Isabella, her needs and intentions, and that Melanie and I would be the parents she needs us to be. Then at 11 for Sophia, 1pm for Ben (noon being too distracting with going to lunch), and 2pm for our unborn baby.
Occasionally, I’m talking to someone, or on the phone, or in a meeting when the top of the hour rolls around, but as soon as I can after the hour, I take a minute to pause and pray.
I can’t be with Melanie and the kids every
By Domenico Bettinelli on May 29th, 2010 | Category: Parenting, Reviews“The Council of Dads” by Bruce Feiler is a memoir of his “Lost Year” in which he underwent treatment for bone cancer and his quest to ensure that his twin 3-year-old daughters would have men in their lives who embody all the best traits of their dad in the event he died.
The book’s chapters alternate between periodic letters he sent to friends and family updating them as to how he and his family were dealing with the cancer and treatment; chapters about the six men from his life he chose to be on his council of dads; and chapters about the other men in his life: his father, his grandfathers, his oncologist.
Feiler is in his early 40s, Jewish, grew up in Savannah, lives in Brooklyn, and is an author and traveler. He wrote the book “Walking the Bible: A Journey By Land Through the Five Books of Moses”, which was later made into a TV show. In 2008, he was diagnosed with a rare cancer in the bone of his left leg. Confronted with his mortality, he asks six men from all phases of his life, each of them embodying one aspect of his “voice”, that they could pass on to his daughters: Jump into life’s experiences; always be true to yourself; believe you can succeed; stay rooted in the places you’re from; passionately search for the answers to your questions and always find new questions; find the beauty and miracles that are always around you.
The details of how this council would work are left unwritten. Would there be a formal arrangement of visits and trips or would they just be available for the girls as they needed each man’s presence? How would a man who lives hundreds of miles away be a surrogate dad? The details are
By Domenico Bettinelli on January 20th, 2008 | Category: Uncategorized
Crossposted at Bettnet.
We’re just about six weeks away from our delivery date for our new daughter, Sophia Therese. It’s funny that what worried me last time–labor, delivery, and what to expect being a new dad–is not what worries me this time. In fact, the actual delivery of the baby is hardly on my radar screen (sorry, Melanie).
No, what most fills my thoughts right now is how we’re going to deal with Isabella (20-months-old now). More specifically, how am I going to deal with her in mommy’s absence? When the time comes do we take her with us somehow or do we drop her off with my sister? What if it’s the middle of the night? How will she cope with the disruption and not being able to see mommy for some period of time? (She’s never been away from mommy for more than a few hours.)
What do I do with Isabella after Sophia is born? Will I be able to get her to bed and how will I deal with the inevitable calling for mommy? What if Melanie has to have another C-section and is in the hospital for four days? What about after, if she’s not allowed to lift Bella?
It’s not like I’m incapable of doing these things. As it is now, I’m an integral part of her routine. At bedtime, Melanie and I switch off bathing her, but I’m always the one to take her to her bedroom and dry her off and play with her while getting her ready for bed. I brush her hair and her teeth and get her new diaper and her pajamas on her. But it’s Melanie who rocks her to sleep and puts her down.
I wonder what other dads have done, when
By Domenico Bettinelli on November 10th, 2007 | Category: MiscellaneousThis isn’t meant to be a slam on anyone in particular, but I wonder if the Catholic Dads blog has lost its way. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of blogging about being a Catholic Dad anymore. Instead there are a lot of posts about the sort of random stuff people should probably put on their own personal blogs.
Am I off base? Have I misunderstood what this blog is about? If so, I’ll just shut up and move along. But for a while there seemed to be a lot of good posts along the lines of what I’m thinking.
Maybe there should be guidelines that more explicitly outline what type of content goes here. I know the short summary there on the right gives a pretty broad description, but I don’t know if that works.
Anyway, I thought I’d bring it up for discussion if anyone else wants to talk about it.
By Domenico Bettinelli on October 11th, 2007 | Category: MiscellaneousCrossposted to Bettnet.com
Next to a man’s love for his wife, the other great joy in his life is his love for his children. So says Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa in homily for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, which was almost a week ago. The title of the homily is “The Joys of Fatherhood.”
Father Cantalamessa, who is the preacher of the Papal Household, reflects on a little remarked-upon aspect of the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15, that of the relationship between fathers and their children. He notes that while society and culture seems to speak endlessly of the erotic and romantic relationship between man and woman, it has almost nothing to say about a father’s relationship with his children.
If we serenely and objectively look into the human heart we will find that, in the majority of cases, a good, understanding, and untroubled relationship with his children is, for a mature, adult man, no less important and fulfilling than the relationship between a man and a woman. We know how important this relationship is for both sons and daughters and the tremendous void that is left by its disintegration.
He notes that what is most destructive to a man’s relationship to his children is “authoritarianism, paternalism, rebellion, rejection, lack of communication,” just as there is nothing more destructive to the relationship between a man and a woman than “abuse, exploitation and violence.” Yet men bear suffering in these relationships as much as they originate it.
There are fathers whose most profound suffering in life is being rejected or even despised by their children. And there are children whose most profound and unadmitted suffering is to feel misunderstood, to not be esteemed, to be rejected by their father.
He finishes by echoing then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s words about the crisis of
By Domenico Bettinelli on October 11th, 2007 | Category: MiscellaneousCrossposted from Bettnet.com
Time magazine has an article “Fatherhood 2.0 on the “new” notions of what it means to be a father. They note that more fathers are spending more time with their kids and are more active in raising them than previous generations were. Or are they?
Here’s Times’s notion of what “traditional” fatherhood entails:
But what does it mean, exactly, to be a man these days? Once upon a Darwinian time, a man was the one spearing the woolly mammoth. And it wasn’t so long ago that a man was that strong and silent fellow over there at the bar with the dry martini or a cold can of beer—a hardworking guy in a gray flannel suit or blue-collar work shirt. He sired children, yes, but he drew the line at diapering them.
Something tells me the reporter has unresolved daddy issues. This may be what fatherhood and manliness looked like in the 50s and 60s, which goes a long way toward explaining the cultural issues we’ve been dealing with ever since. But it’s certainly not what fatherhood was for everyone or what it was like in a previous age. When most dads were stay-at-home dads, i.e. when they were farmers or workmen who labored in home-based workshops, their children labored by their sides. Boys and girls learned firsthand from fathers and mothers what it means to be a man or a woman.
It was with the rise of industrialization and the newly automobile-enabled suburban commuters that fathers began to be separated from their children (and wives) and eventually the mothers followed them out of the home.
Does changing a diaper or helping your wife through labor make you less of a man? Are you kidding me?
Then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger famously diagnosed the world’s ills as boiling down
By Domenico Bettinelli on August 19th, 2007 | Category: Uncategorized
Cross-posted to Bettnet.com
Last week during his homily for the Mass at the Proud2BCatholic Music Festival, Fr. Stan Fortuna responded to people who say they don’t go to Mass or they don’t like going to Mass because “it’s boring.”
“You are deeply and profoundly bored before you walk into the church, and when you come into the presence of the Almighty in the fullness of love, it is then that the awareness of your boredom begins to bubble,” he said.
Many people merely distract themselves from their boredom by turning something on, changing the channel, upgrading or downloading. This constant activity only “feeds the boredom beast,” he said.
We often get remarks from people that Isabella is such a well-behaved girl, especially at Mass. It’s rare that she gets really fussy to the point where we have to leave nave and head for the chapel; that’s only ever happened less than a handful of times.
Part of the reason is just personality. Some kids are naturally quiet; while others are naturally boisterous. It has nothing to do with how the child is raised; it’s just part of his or her nature.
But I think there’s also an element of parent action involved. A common bit of advice we receive is to provide constant external stimulus for Isabella, whether it means bringing books or toys or snacks to Mass to keep her “distracted”; i.e. pacified. Other times we’re encouraged to get “edutainment” videos for her to keep her occupied and entertained. We generally don’t do either.
Isabella very rarely watches television. The only time it’s ever on when she’s awake is when I’m watching a sporting event or some kind of cooking show. (I flipped on the TV this morning and the Tivo was still paused in the middle of last Sunday’s
By Domenico Bettinelli on June 25th, 2007 | Category: Uncategorized
Gerald at The Cafeteria is Closed asks a good question: What’s so great about children?
Now, don’t misunderstand him. Gerald makes it clear that he understands the Church’s teachings on marriage and family and agrees with them and that he knows and understands the objective reasoning. What he wants is the subjective response: “Why do YOU love being a dad?”
Consider Gerald’s position : He is the only child of only children and admittedly has spent no time around children. How can he know firsthand about children except what he sees in the media?
My wife Melanie just sent me a link to a beautiful video of a song by Billy Ray Cyrus called “Face of God”, in which he sings about his love for his daughter and how, when he sees her, he sees the face of God.
What if–in a figurative sense–we catch a glimpse of the face of God when look into the face of our daughter or son? What if the love between father and daughter (or mother and son and all the permutations) is the purest form of human love and thus is itself the closest yet flimsiest essence of the Divine Love? (While married love is awesome, let’s face it that for all of us it is the love between two sinners, whereas in the love between parent and child, one of you is sinless and thus loves with a pure heart.)
By Domenico Bettinelli on April 25th, 2007 | Category: Uncategorized
Crossposted at Bettnet.
My friend Paul sent me this link to a blog by A Catholic Mom in Hawaii, which gives “Easy Ways to Evangelize in Advent,” but most of the 30 different suggestions are good ideas for families any time of year.
We already do a few of these already, like “Pray every time a siren sounds” and “cross yourself when passing a church” and “say grace before every meal.” Others we don’t yet do, but sound like good ideas like “know your name-saint and celebrate his feast” and “check the liturgical calendar every day.” These sound like great ways for kids to become aware of the rhythm of the liturgical year and to become familiar with the rich tapestry of the saints.
Others are a bit more esoteric, like “eschew cultural corrosion” and “let your light shine before men.”
I’m going to save this and come back to it from time to time to add some of these points to our daily lives as Isabella (and our future children, God willing) gets old enough to appreciate them.
By Domenico Bettinelli on April 23rd, 2007 | Category: Uncategorized
“Leptunus Nex”, an active-duty US Navy Captain serving in the San Diego area, is not Catholic, as far as I can tell, but he’s a dad and a Christian and has a very interesting conversation with his teenage daughter about fatalism and free will (connected to the Va. Tech shootings).
Here’s a taste, but you should read the whole thing:
YHS: (Unpleasantly surprised) You mean it was “fated”?
ED: That’s right, it was fated.
YHS: (Frowning slightly) Do you believe in fate?
ED: Yes – I believe everything happens for a reason.
YHS: That’s not fate, that’s causality. (Brief discussion of causality ensues.)
ED: Then I believe in fate.
YHS: Do you mean fate as a kind of predestination, that every act and thought and result we have is pre-ordained? Or something recognizable only in retrospect?
ED: The first.
And if you like fast airplanes and other military stuff that breaks things, you’ll like the rest of his blog too.
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