Spanking, Race, and Class and the Archdiocese of New Orleans

VOX NOVA has a pretty good post ( though it's not directly mentioned) related to the ever escalating events in New Orleans with the Archdiocese and the famous St Augustine School . See Spanking, Race, and Class .

First a few words on my conflicting views of the ever continuing St Aug trama as to spanking.

First and foremost the Archbishop words is final. One cannot in my view sanction spanking for the need to show discipline and authority and then on the other hand go to war with the authority of the Archbishop.

On the other hand I do think that perhaps the Archbishop has perhaps let his own personal bad experience color his views and I wonder why this issue is a must shown down now.

However on the other hand I am not sure why the school must spank if the parents can do it at home.

On the other hand there is a tradition and cultural thing going on here that actually might have some practical good that needs to be engaged or at least listened to my the Archdiocese.

But

On the other hand despite all the news reports that have this as Anti Spanking Archbishop versus Spanking parents ,I am sure there must be parents at St Augs that agree with the Archbishop .

Finally again First and foremost the Archbishop words is final. One cannot in my view sanction spanking for the need to show discipline and authority and then on the other hand go to war with the authority of the Archbishop.

So that being said I think this article has merit. This part struck me:

The pressures not to spank children are greater among upper class African Americans. As another Salon article notes, not spanking originated as an upper class, progressive movement. Of course one of the luxuries of being upper class is having abundant resources to be vigilant of your child’s behavior. Today’s children are for the most part under the constant care and supervision of some adult. Given that, there are simply not that many casual dangers a child of even lower middle class upbringing will encounter. Whereas in previous generations a twelve-year-old providing temporary care for an infant would be common, today many parents have difficulty leaving their children with a 16-year-old babysitter.

Why this disconnect in the Catholic Church. I hate to say it but part of it is the Church's fault. The Catholic Church that used to be very good at evangelizing African Americans ( as well as other poor from other ethnic backgrounds, has become dismal at it for decades. That is related to a second point. A major part of evangelizing African Americans and indeed getting African American Converts was Catholic schools.

As Catholic schools (as a matter of class which relates to race) become the enclave of the more offspring rich and successful parents of society then this disconnect grows. The grandfather who grew up in the Irish Channel and got spanked at Catholic schools now has Catholic grandchildren that just live in the above world that is described in the above post. The leading Catholic citizens of Shreveport that basically grew up in the Italian ghetto got spanked but their children now would be horrified to see their children or grandchildren spanked. CLASS is at play. The fact these kids are "soccer mom ed" from event to event with constant adult activity is a factor for the disconnect.

The question is if the Catholic Church and it Parishes were educating on average the more "lower class" like they were many decades ago would we be seeing a different viewpoint.

Just food for thought.