A Boy's Difficulties.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume XII, Issue 12, 1 June 1922, Page 382

A Boy's Difficulties.

In some very helpful articles published m recent issues of the ' ' Church Times," Canon' Underhill deals with the spiritual training of Boys. The following extract on the difficulties with which a boy communicant has frequently to contend,, should rouse us to sympathy with boys who, m New Zealand as much as m England, have a hard battle to fight against the pernicious influence of un-Christian homes and companians. It should also serve as an appeal to indifferent and thoughtless parents not to put stumbling blocks m the way of their children's religious progress.

"Few of the laity realise what a young communicant goes through m an indifferent or hostile home. It is not only that the parents care nothing whatever about the boy's Communion; it is not only that m very many cases the parents utterly refuse to call him on the morning of his Communion. It is more than that. I have known many instances m which a boy or girl has been reviled, even beaten, for waking the rest of the family by going out early on Sunday morning. Moreover, an impossibly high standard is expected of the -Communicant m the home. The slightest fault of temper or untruthfulness will rouse indifferent parents to scorn and bitter mockery of the boy and his religion.

When ~we add fp all this the other difficulties, at work, m the street and indeed everywhere, the temptations of the boy's own interior life and all the other pitfalls which beset him, we may deplore the lapses which occur, but they «an hardly surprise us. ■_. . .

In many of these home oases the hostility of the parents may- partly be traced to uncofiseious ■ jealousy. ' ' The priest, " they say, ' * thinks the world of the boy, but does not seem to trouble m. the least about the boy 's : father and ; niother, " and so they are indifferent or bitter.

But if the -priests who read this article will.consult the lists. of, the. boys whom they prepared for the Sacrament m past years, they "will find that the overwhelming majority" of ' those who have "stuck" coihe from homes where one or both of the parents are faithful Church people,^ or "at least friendly to: the Church; while those who have lapsed are those who have no such home influence.

No doubt everi in* the best eases you will sometimes get lapses, and also there are wonderful, instances of continued faithfulness m apparently impossible home . conditions. But I would suggest that our objective is the home, and that we should not trust to our lar^e Catechism for. the continued faithfulness of that delightful boy of thirteen from the indifferent home. We must visit and visit and again visit the homes and the parents of our children. We should at least get to know them as well as they will let us ; and if we can make them into communicants and churchgoers so much the better for their boys. I am convinced that this is the kind of work which enables us to keep our boys from lapsing as nothing else can do."