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A Reference and Resource Paper also for the Eighth FABC Plenary Assembly.
 
 

The texts in this publication were presentations at the 8th annual meeting of bishops and secretaries responsible for social communication in the FABC bishops' conferences—the "FABC-OSC Bishops Meet," November 22-28, 2004, in Negombo, Sri Lanka. The theme, "Family in Communication, Communication in the Family," was chosen in view of the upcoming VIII FABC Plenary Assembly, 2004, in South Korea. We wanted to explore the different communication dimensions of Family. Because of this, we also invited married couples to share their views and relevant experiences.

Family communication starts with husband and wife themselves. The different inputs at our conference showed that, already here, difficulties in communication arise. (1) Because of pressures in work and society, both husband and wife do not have enough time for each other; and in this way the danger of slow alienation arises. It calls for setting the right priorities; and also for the courage to follow them through. (2) Something similar can be said about communication between parents and children. Here, parents very often do not have enough time and energy for their children. Social concerns and economic pressures easily preoccupy them, so that children are left on their own, or to others from outside, including the all-pervasive communications media. The media can easily become intruders and "surrogate" baby sitters in the family; but they do not necessarily contribute to mutual trust, community, and positive moral growth. Such situations need a lot more assessment and attention also from Church bodies; and this very often is missing.

Therefore, the final statement of the conference calls for a positive view of the media and proper understanding of the media culture. This needs adequate communication formation and media awareness in families.

"The image of the family as presented in the media is not always positive; and encouraging Christian family values is very often neglected. Therefore, there is the urgent need to see and develop them as instruments of knowledge, understanding, development and fulfillment." Families are to develop a "culture of love in and through mutual communication, which is also the communication with the Creator—the Trinitarian God—as the center of Christian family life."

Family situations are always dynamic, and therefore also need quite an amount of discernment and listening to the Holy Spirit. The spirituality of family and communication still have to be developed, but will be different from family to family.

"The communication between spouses, and between them and their children, as well as the communication with other families, should be patterned after the communication of the Trinitarian God, and the communication between Jesus and the Father. This calls for deeper communication spirituality in the family." This then becomes the basis for sharing between family members; but also of their common use of the modern communications media and the involvement of traditional ways and means of communicating.

The appendix to this FABC Paper presents five World Communication Day messages from Pope Paul VI, to Pope John Paul II, which were written on themes related to family. There is no other theme in the annual celebrations since 1967 which was so often repeated as Family and Communication. It shows that the Church is concerned in a special way about the family. An analysis of these papers reveals that not only do the Popes sees family as important; they are also aware of special communication issues in family life.

Lacking, however, are more serious studies and research on the presentation of the family in media—TV or the new medium Internet, for example. Which values are presented? And how is the family as such projected in the different programs? Such studies have to be done locally and on the national levels, to see concretely the media situation of individual countries.

The final statement of the Negombo conference gives concrete points and recommendations, which should be followed through also on the national level, which address the bishops' conferences, but also the dioceses and parishes.

We hope that this presentation will contribute to a deeper understanding of the communication dimension of family and its everyday realities. This might also contribute to developing a communication in the different Church communities as "families" before the Lord.

The Asian Family

The FABC has dealt with varied subjects pertaining to religion and society in Asia. Over the years, it was able to set relevant guidelines for different Church ministries. Among those it considers of utmost priority is the apostolate for the Family.

In several plenary statements, the Asian Family was seen to be under attack. Values opposed to the Gospel are said to be systematically brought into the sacredness of the home. The FABC calls these "anti-family forces" and "death-dealing forces."

The fourth FABC Plenary Assembly in Tokyo (1986) said: "The Asian family is the cellular receptacle of all Asia's problems: poverty, repression, exploitation and degradation, division and conflicts. The family is directly affected by religious, political, economic, social and cultural problems of Asia, by the problems relating to women, health, work, business, education, etc."

"The Asian Family is a microcosm of Asian reality," declared the Sixth FABC Plenary Assembly in Manila (1995): "It is bombarded on all sides by anti-family forces of dehumanization and disintegration, ranging from material and moral poverty to secularistic values and external pressures leading to anti-life types of bio-ethics and practices of abortion and contraception. Children, as many other areas of life, become the unwilling and innocent victims. Young girls and boys are also exploited through illegal labor practices and sex tourism."

Thirty years after FABC's inception in 1970, it again lamented the death-dealing forces directed towards the family: "At this juncture of history, we painfully witness the breakdown of the family in many places of our continent, especially in urban centers. Many are the forces arrayed against the sanctity and endurance of the values of family life. Individualism, hedonism, materialism, consumerism, interference from the state, a contraceptive mentality and a technological life-style, all adversely affect the stability of marriage and family life, and endanger the stability of our society and its values" (Seventh FABC Plenary Assembly, Samphran, 2000).

But "the family is the strength of our Asian society" (Third Bishops' Institute for Missionary Apostolate, Taiwan, 1982). "(T)he Christian family is a miniature Church, the Church in the home. The missionary grace and vocation of the Church must be realized and fostered in the Christian family, first of all" (Third Bishops' Institute for Missionary Apostolate, Taiwan, 1982).

The FABC "believe that the family as a social unit is a sacred and important treasure. The Christian family is rightly referred to as the 'domestic church,' where members assist one another toward a fullness of life in Christ through the ordinary circumstances events of life" (Fourth FABC Plenary Assembly, Tokyo, 1986).

"The family is (also) the 'way of the human person,' the place where a human being becomes acquainted with life and social existence. It remains a place of strong emotional involvement. It is the place for one's expected recognition as a person. It ensures the necessary stability to the mission of education. It is recognized as the ultimate refuge from the danger of marginalization" (15th Plenary Assembly of the Pontifical Council for the Family, Rome, 2002).

Families can truly be "effective agents" and not merely objects of evangelization. The Seventh FABC Plenary Assembly (Samphran, 2000) affirmed this, echoing the Holy Father's apostolic exhortation " Ecclesia in Asia." Boldly, the assembly stated that renewal in the world starts in the family:

The Sixth FABC Plenary Assembly (Manila, 1995) listed "The Asian Family" as one of five concerns requiring "pastoral focus." It stated thus: "Discipleship in Asia has to denounce anti-life and anti-family pressures, policies and practices and foster bioethics that is in accord with God's law and the Church's teachings in order to promote the family as a 'sanctuary of life and a school of life."

A ministry for families "is geared to the fundamental call of both the human and the Christian community. The service of the Church is needed to help build this unit into one of love and communion, able to provide for the needs of growing children. The minister will also guide people to solve modern problems" (Asian Colloquium on Ministries in the Church, Hong Kong, 1977).

Cardinal Macharski of Krakow listed three pastoral tasks to support the family ("Pastoral Care of the Family," paper presented at the 4th World Meeting of Families, Manila, 2002):

1. The Church must "look for ways to deepen the relationship between God and the family, and help the family discover in a more and more complete manner the presence of God, and at the same time, be molded in the light of His grace." The Church does this by proclaiming the word of God, because "it reveals to the Christian family its true identity, what it is, and what it should be according to God's plan. With the celebration of the sacraments, the Church enriches and strengthens the Christian family with Christ's grace so as to achieve holiness and glorify the Father. The care of the Church for the spiritual development of the family is also expressed in prayer for the family itself. In this way, the Church embraces every family and contributes to make them powerful of the power of God."
2. "Marriage alliance on the basis of faithfulness to God and man" should be strengthened. Married couples must understand "the essence of (their) marriage communion" and "orientation towards procreation." Young people must also be guided and prepared for married life. They should have a deep understanding of family as domestic church, and of what "matured love means in the context of the community of life." This "will contribute to the enrichment of the entire Church (Pontifical Council for the Family, Preparation to the Sacrament of Matrimony, Rome, 1996, 2)."
3. Adequate structures should be set up, with manpower and other supporting resources, for the pastoral care "of all marriages and families in every aspect." "In fulfilling the Church's pastoral duties towards the family, the different associations and groups of families 'in which the mystery of the Church of Christ reveals itself and in certain measure lived (Familiaris Consortio, 72) are of utmost importance. They are the expression of the great dynamism of families and people who understand the role of this basic cell of society in the life of human beings."

Communication ministry for families

The FABC Third East Asian Regional Laity Meeting (Korea, 1982) proposed a different approach to caring for families. Participants of that meeting highlighted the importance of "communication" in the family:

"(T)he door for the Laity to participate in the life and mission of the Church is the Family. And the evangelizing task within the Family starts with giving more time for communication among family members and with showing concern for one another. Family prayer is an important element in the evangelization of family members and also in helping them become evangelizers. Since as Catholics we are a minority in this region, having 'Neighborhood Family Communities' to care and encourage one another will contribute to greater participation of the Laity in the life of the Church."

A three-directional communication process needs to constantly happen in the family. First and foremost is communication with God through prayer and the sacraments. Communion with Life Himself is necessary to sustain life in the family. Second is communication among family members. Intimate exchanges between parents and children and between siblings pass on and help develop moral sensibilities especially of young people. The third is communication between families. Solidarity with other families is a direct consequence of finding or renewing solidarity with God and with family members. This is living out the concept of "community" where families help each other in the journey through life.

Competing forces, however, come in the way, barring this three-directional communication from happening. Most urban homes, for example, are no longer conducive for heart-to-heart talks among family members, much less for talking with God. Receiving rooms are now filled with gadgets and gizmos—receivers of communication happening elsewhere—that interfere with "live" conversations. Often family members talk about what and who is on the television screen instead of their own individual selves. Icons and sacred pictures that adorn family altars, once the center of people's identity and purpose, are now mere conversation pieces. The patterns of communication in the family have indeed changed.

Asia's Communication Landscape

Let us look briefly at the Asian communication environment, and see possible hindrances to intimate sharing and dialogue in the family.

Television

Television has permeated Asian societies in the last fifty years. UNESCO (2000) reports that among the top ten households in the world changing TV sets every year from 1980-1997 are five Asian countries, with China and Sri Lanka at the helm. Mongolia, India and Thailand are included, along with Senegal, Oman, Ghana, Guinea and Benin (Source: World Culture Report 2000—Cultural Diversity, Conflict and Pluralism).

About a third of Asia's population are children 15-years and below. About the same proportion of TV viewers in the continent are then young people. But do children get the right programs for their age? AMIC (Asian Media Information and Communication Centre) studied children's viewing patterns and TV programs in seven Asian countries in 1996. The results were published in a book entitled "Growing Up with TV, Asian Children's Experience" (2000). Here are some of the findings:

In China, more than 60 percent of children aged 6-8 years old watch children's programs, while more than 80 percent of children aged 12-15 years old watch programs for adults or general viewing. Children aged 6-10 years old spend more time than other age groups watching mostly cartoon series from Japan and US. (60 percent of the world's animated cartoon series are made in Japan, reported TIME-Asia in 2003.) About 22 percent of the watching time of the 15 years old group is spent on programs produced in Hong Kong or Taiwan. These are adult programs with love and family life themes or "chivalrous conduct in olden times as subject." The average viewing time for girls is 57 minutes daily; for boys, it's 53 minutes daily. The most popular programs watched from March-April 1996 are adult programs, locally produced and from Taiwan. Parents are most concerned about how TV wastes children's times, and interferes with study. Violent and love scenes are also problematic for parents.

In India, children's programs refer exclusively to cartoons and other foreign children's programs. They are for very young children and there is very little that is available for older children. Older children consider children's programs too "kiddish." There is no single Indian-made children's program but only those dubbed into Indian languages. "Children in India, at least those living large metropolises are fast catching up with their counterparts in the West in terms of the extent of TV exposure. The average in Delhi was 26 hours per week irrespective of socioeconomic status. This puts TV viewing ahead of being in the classroom, playing, chatting with friends and members of the family or any other recreational activity. Nearly 90 percent of what the children watch are adult/general audience programs dominated by movies, movie-based programs and serials. The peak viewing hours for children, on weekdays, are between 8pm and 10pm. These are also the peak hours for adult viewing, which means that unless the family has more than one TV, everyone has to watch the same programs."

Of the four media available to children in Indonesia, TV is considered most entertaining, followed by radio and magazines. Children aged 6-15 years old spend an average of 3.5 hours daily watching TV. Programs specifically designed for their consumption, however, account for only 3.62 percent or 4.6 hours per week of the total weekly TV fare. Children then also watch other programs, which are not intended for them. Adult movies are considered "more attractive, suspenseful and often humorous."

Almost all households in Malaysia have TV (97%) and radio sets (96%). About 82 percent of children 5-9 years old spend their free time watching TV, home videos or playing computer games. For them, watching TV is entertaining, informative, a way to "pass time," and a suitable "companion" that eases boredom. Like in other countries, TV stations offer a limited range of material for children. Thus, children also watch programs for general family viewing. Older children, however, are more actively seeking information-based programs, thus the popularity of National Geographic Specials along with X-Files, Superman and Chinese Drama. Younger children are often controlled by parents as to which programs to watch. But parents often need to put up with tantrums when children do not agree with their choice of programs. For many parents, though, watching TV is better than other unproductive activities. The medium is a "surrogate baby sitter."

Nepal is quite different from the other countries studied. In 1996, there were only 250,000 TV receivers posting a ratio of only 13 TV receivers per 1,000 population. About 64 percent of households owned a TV set; 72 percent of urban households and 52 percent in semi-urban areas. During weekdays and Sundays, average TV viewing time for children is one hour; on Saturdays, it can extend to about three hours. More than half (53%) of children mostly watch entertainment programs for adults. About 15 percent watch education programs for adults; 18 percent watch educational programs for children; and 14 percent watch entertainment programs for children. About 88 percent said that the programs they watch are their own choice, and 11 percent said they were chosen or imposed on them by others in the family. "TV viewing in most Nepalese homes is generally a family activity, and particularly for those with only one channel available, whatever program comes is watched by everyone regardless of age, for lack of other choice." "Across age groups, more children watch adult entertainment programs as age increases." Reasons for watching include "to be entertained" (59.8%), and "to learn something," or "to be aware of current events" (22%).

Singapore is the other side of the coin. Its "small size, high-tech and uniformly urban nature makes the provision of island-wide media services" possible and efficient. A TV measurement method was adopted using the People Meter, an electronic device that finds out who is viewing what programs at which time. Favorites among children are programs meant for general viewing: movies, dramas, sit-coms, the bulk of which are Chinese-language programs. Singaporean viewers average 3.6 TV watching hours on weekdays and 4.3 hours on weekends. Younger viewers have a penchant for cartoon series but this is outgrown as they increase in age. Children watch certain programs simply "because (they) like it," proof that Singaporean audiences are not passive about what is being is offered to them. They exercise autonomy in the choice of programs to watch.

In Vietnam, living conditions affect children's access to television. Children of poor rural families have less access than their urban counterparts. About 62 percent of children in urban areas watch TV daily. In rural areas, about 59 percent of children have daily access to the medium. Some 37 percent of children with TV access spend 30-60 minutes daily in front of the TV set, 26.5 percent extend up to two hours, and a fifth (20%) spend up to three hours. Yet TV viewing among Vietnamese children is not regular as their other counterparts in Asia. About 62.5 percent said they have no time to watch, some 14.3 percent have no TV sets or not allowed by parents to watch. More than 7 percent said there is no electricity in their area. The Central TV station, the Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City TV, the largest stations in the country, relay most of their programs through over 50 local TV stations. The two city stations produce high quality and interesting programs for children.

Much have already developed since the study was conducted. Alternative forms of entertainment have been introduced but we see that across Asia children are entrusted to the television medium for quite a significant period of time each day.

Internet

In January 2000, there are an estimated 40 million Internet users in Asia. The continent was ranked third among the world's continents with the most Internet users. (At first rank were Canada and USA with 120 million users, Europe is at second with 70 million). Asian countries at the helm were Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan (Source: www.apmforum.com/news/apmn39.htm).

Newsbytes Asia reported (1999) that there will be a 422 percent increase in the number of online users in Asia over a five year period; and the number is expected to reach 228 million by 2005. Most of Asia's users are in Japan, but by 2005, China is expected to surpass all other countries in the region. About 37.6 percent of Asia's online users, roughly 85 million, will be Chinese in 2005. (Source: www.commerce.net/other/research/stats/wwwstats.html)

There are mixed assessments about the role of Internet in society. Some analysts say that the Internet is a "hotbed of vice," a source of illicit material. Others saw it as the great leveler of the information divide wrought by different patterns of media consumption and media accessibility. Still others saw the opportunity for learning and called the Internet another window on the world. Information is power and the use of the Internet at whatever cost can advance peoples' lives.

But does the Internet indeed help propel people's growth—materially and morally? "Web Studies," an anthology of researches on the Internet phenomenon (2000), suggests that the Internet has evolved into a "virtual shopping mall" more than a place to learn. Entrepreneurs found a new channel to pump up their revenues from advertising. Search engines like Yahoo, MSN, Google and others have multiplied their services to become "web portals"—the start and end point for net surfing—to win not eyeballs but sticky eyeballs. These eyeballs have demographics that are sold to advertisers.

Research on China has found that nearly 80 percent of Internet users are below 36 years old, and that more than 50 percent are below 25 years old. Three out of five (60%) Internet users in China are men. Nine out of ten (90%) Internet users in the mainland have completed high school, and about 50 percent are now in or have completed college. Nearly three-fourths (74%) of Internet users access online news for professional or academic work, while the rest do other activities. This can be anything from plain browsing through websites or engaging in another dimension of Internet life, voyeurism. Certain websites allow visitors to enter private dormitories and observe residents in private form doing private things. While in chat rooms, netizens equipped with webcams (that tiny gadget used to capture and transmit photos and video clips via the Internet) can show themselves, or all of them selves, to "enliven" the session.

Prolonged use of the Internet can affect people's ability to handle emotions or shape world-views. A recent study by the Korea Education and Research Information Service found that 20 percent of teenagers who daily use the Internet for more than 3 hours show symptoms of psychological disorder if they are unable to do this. More than one-fourth of the youth surveyed (25.8%) said habitual Internet use distracts them from studying. About 60 percent of the respondents have accessed porn sites and experienced "verbal violence" online.

The Nanyang Technological University in Singapore also recently found that one out of five Singaporean youngsters aged 12 to 17 have met face to face with a stranger whom they first encountered in Internet chatrooms. 27 percent met more than six strangers, which is much higher than their counterparts in Nordic countries, where only 16 percent agree to such meetings. Another troubling statistic is that 10 percent of the youths surveyed thought that they were going to meet another teenager, but were shocked to find an adult who had introduced himself as a child on the Internet. Only 20 percent of Singaporean parents believed that their children had access to pornography—but in reality, 66 percent of Singaporean teenagers have already accessed porn on the Net.

A telephone poll conducted in mid-2001 in Taiwan revealed that traditional values are fading more quickly among people who surf the Internet. Among the 2031 respondents, few rated "honesty" highly as a positive trait. Few are opposed to premarital sex. A Catholic mother fears that Internet cafes, numbering about 4000 throughout Taiwan, have become "dens of iniquity." A high school student, however, said he likes to visit the cafes because of entertainment which he cannot enjoy at home. Internet café owners in Taiwan share the parents' concern about porn sites but they cannot prevent children from online gaming, which is a fad among urban young Asians. Games like Counter Strike have become so popular a sequel has been developed. Internet cafes in Philippines are packed with young people with eyes transfixed on computer screens, body swerving as they maneuver virtual battle ships for the next kill. If they are not in Internet cafes, most likely they are in their favorite gaming arcade, seated in space shuttle like booths battling with a device called joystick. This brings us to another happening in urban Asia that robs opportunities for communication in the family, video gaming.

Video Games

Japan emerged as the leader in the gaming industry in the last years. Games running on Play Station2 and Nintendo's Game Cube rule the video game universe, despite a frontal attack from Microsoft with its black Xbox. Although it currently experiences a slack because of alternative forms of entertainment like the cellular phone, Japan's creative minds are always a step ahead to maintain that leadership.

Game giant SEGA spearheaded a remodeling effort to give new twists to lackluster gaming software and to revitalize the market. Players are given more realistic experiences, emulating through graphics emotions when driving at high speeds, for example. Programmers actually get behind the wheel, test-drive cars, rent out racing circuits to experience the sense of "drifting." SEGA's Rally Championship series is still a favorite with gamers around the world.

The thrust according to a SEGA executive is "to break the mold and create unconventional games." Unfortunately, Japan's education system does not teach entertainment and business but SEGA programmers are now headway into teaching at a private animation school in Tokyo. Such an initiative could "build confidence among game creators who have ambitions to influence the world." Gamers in Asia, mostly young people, can then expect more thrills, more shrills, more violence, and more emotional involvement in upcoming gaming software. What other emotions besides "drifting" will future games elicit?

Cellular Phones

An alternative form of entertainment has emerged that almost immediately changed lifestyles of Asians, Filipinos especially. The cellular phone, which was considered a luxury some five years ago, has spread like wildfire in urban areas. It is estimated that some 12 million mobile phone users are in the Philippines alone. But Filipinos use the SMS (short-messaging system) or texting service to avoid the high cost of voice conversation. Some 120 million text messages are processed daily and these go far beyond Philippine borders. In a country, where about 2300 people leave daily for jobs overseas, the cellular phone is indispensable for keeping family members in touch with one another.

Much of human experience has then become "mediated by electronics and telecommunications networks." "Membership to our culture—the shared experiences with people—becomes based less on traditional criteria like location, ethnicity, kinship ties or religion but rather on affordability and our ability to purchase access to the network" (Celdran, David, "Text Revolution" in I, The Investigative Reporting Magazine, April-June 2002). The phenomenon of cellular phones has also created a gap between those connected and those who are not. There is a perceived elitist membership into the culture of cellular phone users, while nonmembers remain as outsiders.

Common to mobile phone companies in the Philippines is the "mobile chat" service, which operates in much the same manner as Internet chat rooms. Users of this service are mostly young people, aged 30 years old and below. Acquaintances are made here, which can lead to intimate relationships.

Shopping Malls

A new way to spend leisure time has emerged, "malling" or hanging out in shopping malls. In Manila (Philippines), "where there is already a high concentration of them, shopping malls are acknowledged as the 'new plazas,' replacing the traditional social center" of towns and cities. "There is not one municipality or city in Metro Manila that does not have at least one mall" and new ones are upcoming. "I, The Investigative Reporting Magazine" (2003) reports that top Filipino mall developer, SM, plans to build two new shopping malls per year within the decade. 45 more malls are scheduled for construction during the same period. Another mall developer plans to build some 100 strip malls in several provinces across the country.

Although malling brings family members face-to-face with each other, topics of conversation mostly focus on what items to buy, and what to do. Malls are becoming the "new down towns" where people do not only shop. A vast array of goods and services are available under one roof, family members would not have the time to sit down and dialogue. Younger children are ultra-sweet to parents only because of an ulterior motive and if parents try to avoid the trap, chances are they will have to face tantrums. Older children, meanwhile, look somber and aloof—signifying a lot of things. But with peers, they are more communicative even boisterous. Malling is often less relaxing even stressful. Although one emerges as better informed of what's new and what's "in," malling is never the same as quiet moments of recollection or intimate sharing with a trusted person. But young Filipinos still flock to the malls even on weekdays and regard them as the ultimate hang out place.

Observers, however, are wary about the phenomenon. Aside from manipulating people to buy through aggressive (sometimes offensive) marketing schemes, malls seem to introduce another "divide" among people; a notion of "othering" or "us versus them. "Not everyone is allowed inside malls—those who are not properly dressed or suspicious looking are denied entry so as not to "upset the malls' carefully calibrated environment." Prices are also mostly exorbitant. A certain attitude among those who can afford to buy is quite observable when passing by those with lesser items to carry. Scholars Rimmer and Dick (1998) described the new urban geography of Southeast Asian cities as follows:

"The attitude is reminiscent of 19th century attitudes toward the threatening London crowd, which was regarded as being uneducated, uncouth, and unpredictable. The attitude of the middle class in Southeast Asia towards the urban mass is also not so very different from that of the colonial Europeans to their indigenous subjects. A common language does not bridge the cultural gap or the economic divide."

The present communication landscape in Asia is not an all evil phenomenon. The media of communication present tremendous possibilities for learning and enriching our moral sensibilities. They even offer opportunities to live and strengthen our divine call. They are "gifts" which should be utilized, but with good discretion and judgment. Audiences need to be critical consumers of media.

Socialization is also important for the development of a healthy personality. People should go through the process of socializing, experiencing each other's lives and learning from such experience.

But if we must stand against the forces that try to hurt our family and our humanity, we need to foster and deepen genuine communication in the family—a communication that is three-directional: first, with God through prayer and the sacraments, with family members in intimate sharing and dialogue, and with other families in solidarity and living as a community.

References:

Franz-Josef Eiders (Ed.): "For All the Peoples of Asia, FABC Documents from 1992 to 1996, vol. 2." Manila: Claritin Publications, 1997.

Franz-Josef Eiders (Ed.): "For All the Peoples of Asia, FABC Documents from 1997 to 2001, vol. 3." Manila: Claritin Communications, 2002.

David Gauntlet (Ed.): "Web.Studies, Rewiring Media Studies for the Digital Age." New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Anura Goonasekera, et. al.: "Growing Up with TV, Asian Children's Experience." Singapore: AMIC, 2000.

M. Nadarajah (Ed.): "Pathways to Critical Media Education and Beyond." Kuala Lumpur: Cahayasuara, 2003.

D. Paranagama, et. al. (Eds.): Television & Children in Sri Lanka. "Colombo: Signis-Sri Lanka, 2002.

Gaudencio Rosales & C.G. Arevalo (Eds.): "For All the Peoples of Asia, FABC Documents from 1970 to 1991." Manila: Claretian Publications, 1992.

Philip Rossi & Paul Soukup (Eds.): "Mass Media and the Moral Imagination." Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, 1994.

Magazines:

• TIME-Asia
• Far Eastern Economic Review
• I, The Investigative Reporting Magazine
• FABC-OSC. Communication INFO

Introduction

There are several ways one can approach the topic of family and communication. We can approach it singly, first one and then the other. We can also approach it as a single combined subject (which we are doing in this Conference). Again, there can be several ways we can approach the combined subject of family and communication. I propose for this conference to approach it from the perspective of Theology, the science of God. God is communication. God is family.

GOD IS COMMUNICATION

God is the paradigm of all communication. He is the first and foremost communicator: the primordial analogue in the analogy of communication.

Communication has two movements: towards within the unit and towards outside of the unit. This is what the theologians call AD INTRA and AD EXTRA communication. Within the Godhead, which is a Trinity of Persons, namely: the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, there exists an AD INTRA communication. On two levels: the cognitive or intellectual and the affective.

On the cognitive level, the Father eternally thinking produces the eternal Word who is called the Son. When thought is articulated it becomes a word. In God this Word is a Person. He communicates back. The Father and the Son, thinking back and forth, produce the eternal Spirit, which is the life of their mutual communication. The Word spoken by the Father is a living Word. It is life and life-giving.

On the affective level, the Father eternally loves the Son. Love begets love. The Son eternally reciprocates the Father's love. Their mutual loving produces the eternal spirit. Procedit ab utroque. The Spirit is the eternal fruit of their mutual love. The Spirit is also a Person.

Affective communication through expressions of love may not be verbalized, but it is communication at a deeper level than words.

GOD IS FAMILY

God is not a singular Person. If He were, He would not be able to communicate. He would be engaged in an eternal soliloquy, or if you will, an eternally narcissistic introspection. But this would not be communication. Communication involves a sender and a receiver.

The thinking and the loving within the Godhead is an eternal flow of communication between distinct Persons. This results in perfect happiness that needs nothing else to fulfill and

complete it.

But God is not selfish. He wants to communicate the Trinitarian happiness to other outside of Himself. Since there was no being outside of Himself at the beginning, He invented or created the other, namely, the world. In the creation, God communicates, shares Himself: AD EXTRA.

In the movie, Castaway, Tom Hanks is the lone survivor of the plane crash. He finds himself all alone in an uninhabited island. To keep his sanity he paints the face of a man on a derelict volleyball. He names it Wilson. He strikes an endless conversation with this ball and develops a personal and emotional relationship with it. Creator and creature become one in mind and heart. Creator invents creature according to his image and likeness. This is what happened when God created the world. He left on it His imprint. The creature cannot be identified with the Creator. But it carries His imprint.

We can draw an analogy from art and music. Michelangelo, Raffaelo, Botticelli, Picasso, Dali, all left behind their virtual autograph on their respective masterpieces. So much so that we can distinguish a Michelangelo from a Raffaelo, a Picasso from a Dali.

So it is in music. A Mozart is distinguishable from a Beethoven, a Vivaldi, a Verdi and so on. Each one leaves a distinct imprint on their compositions that distinguishes their opus from that of the others. The created imitates the creator.

God invented the world outside of Himself, to communicate and share His happiness with a reality or being outside of Himself. The created world bears the imprint of the Creator. The galaxies and the constellations, the suns and the planets, the moons and the satellites, all reflect and proclaim the glory and grandeur, the wisdom and the beauty, the order and the harmony of God. This the AD EXTRA communication by God with beings outside of Himself. In time, this outward communication took the form of DIVINE REVELATION, a direct communication of divine truths that are beyond the natural comprehension and understanding of the creature. God revealed Himself at a level that the human being, for all his intellectual capacities, just could not reach without the special divine aid called GRACE.

THE MASTERPIECE OF GOD'S CREATION

From out of this vast created universe, God took a clod of earth and produced His masterpiece: MAN. He breathed into his nostrils life. He endowed him with spirit, an intellect and a free will. He made him unto His own image and likeness. Then He gave him a companion from out of his own ribs, and called her WOMAN. To them both He gave the mandate: Increase and multiply and fill the earth.

This mandate was to fulfill His desire to replicate Himself-His total Self-over and over again in order to populate heaven with creatures who are His complete image and likeness, who are capable of sharing His happiness and His glory.

This capacity was given only to man and woman. This power or capacity is what theologians call POTENTIA OBEDIENTAILIS. Obeying this mandate to copy God the Trinity, man and woman become a trinity of father, mother and offspring. The family becomes the complete image of God.

Forgive my irreverence- if irreverence it might be- but I dare say that man is more honorable in the eyes of God than the angels. For angels cannot procreate and therefore will always remain individuals. They can never become a trinity.

AD INTRA COMMUNICATION WITHIN THE FAMILY

Every man and woman is born into a family and in turn can form another family, another trinity, ad infinitum, until the end of the world.

The family, as the complete image of the Trinity, is destined to affect also, the AD INTRA and the AD EXTRA movements of communication that we see in God.

The AD INTRA communication is what transpires between husband and wife, between parents and children, and children among themselves.

Between husband and wife, their communication is both unitive and procreative. The unitive end of the communication is achieved then they become one, not only in body, but above all, one in spirit, mind and heart: Two in one flesh, one mind, one heart and one spirit. This singular and unique kind of communication is basically expressed and accomplished in marital intercourse. The marital union of husband and wife, in God's plan, is the medium that conveys the message of love and fidelity. Without love and fidelity, marital and any sexual union, for that matter, is a sham. A lie. It is a breakdown of communication, a miscommunication, a dichotomy between medium and message. It is like saying "I love you" with the lips, but the heart is elsewhere. As the popular song from Moulin Rouge says: "Whenever we kiss, I worry and wonder; your lips may be near, but where is your heart?"

The totality of husband and wife relationship must be a continual and endless sign or medium of the message of love and AD INTRA fidelity. From the very first morning kiss through the multifarious activities of the day, until the last goodnight kiss, every word and action must signal love, devotion, affection and fidelity.

Communication is the lifeblood of family. The breakdown of communication signals the end of family life. If the family is an intimate communion of love and life, as the Pope says in Famialis Consortio, it is communication that sustains that intimacy in communion. Without communication, communion starts to atrophy.

There are various levels of communication. It starts at the physical level. Physical attraction starts the ball rolling, so to speak. This is followed by stolen glances that lead to staring, then, one can hardly take one's eyes off the other. It might be beginning of, but certainly not yet, love. At that level it is no better than an infatuation.

When words are exchanged, communication graduates to the verbal level. Terms of endearment, mutual understanding pass from one to the other. A degree of agreement is achieved when mind meets mind,

But even at this stage, communication is still superficial. There is a deeper level. Oftentimes it is called gut-level communication. It is at the level of the heart. At this level words sometimes become superfluous. Body language is sufficient to convey the message.

Communication within the family generally goes through all these phases. Generally I say, because it is difficult to stereotype human relationship which is the basis of intra-family communication.

Skin-deep and verbal communication by itself can hardly establish a lasting relationship. Physical attraction rubs off with time. Even intellectual exchanges can become boring. It is gut-level communication that perseveres. This is the communication of heart to heart. It sees beyond defects and imperfections. It forgives failures and lapses. It makes allowances for foibles, idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. It is understanding at the emotional and spiritual levels. This is what we call empathy.

Communication within the family is tri-dimensional: 1. Between spouses, 2. Between parents and children, and 3. Among siblings.

1. Between spouses, of the many ways of communication open to them, the defining expression is marital intercourse whereby they become one flesh. This is the primary reason why they are married. For this reason, a man leaves father and mother and clings to his wife, as Scriptures says. Now, their every marital act must be open to the transmission of life. For, while the act is most pleasurable, it is not only for the pleasure of it that they engage in marital embrace. The marital act has a unitive and procreative meaning, as we have already said. The union of the sexes is the means designed by God for man and woman to fulfill the mandate "Increase and multiply". This is the way by which they become a trinity.

Their act of love is holy, sacred. It is a sacrament. It is the sign of the union between God and humankind, between God Yahweh and His covenanted people, between Christ and the Church. Their relationship is expressed in the Old Testament in spousal language. In the New Testament the Church is called the Bride of Christ. At the wedding rite, the groom is told: "Love your wife, as Christ loves the Church".

By their mutual love expressed in the marital act, spouses evangelize each other, becoming to each other a witness of Christ's loving relationship with the people, the Church.

2. Between parents and children, a relationship of love, duty and responsibility is established by the very fact of procreation. Parents are the natural teachers of their children. They communicate to their offspring, - by word and by witness - basic skills of survival, lessons in social living, values and spiritual exercises, faith, culture and religion. The child in turn feeds back its needs, love and reciprocation by crying or by other non-verbal but understandable signals. As the child grows, it becomes capacitated to convey messages of love and other lessons that adults might have forgotten or now take for granted.

3. Between siblings, the older and more experienced share their knowledge and skills with the younger ones, also by word and by example. The latter-born are advantaged in the sense that in addition to what they learn on their own, they also possess what the older sibling know. Their mutual exchanges of knowledge and affection contribute to build up family and community. Not only the parents but also the children are responsible for their becoming a trinity of love, a complete image of the Godhead of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

AD EXTRA COMMUNICATION

The family does not exist in isolation. It is not insulated against the influences of its environment. The family is part of the main. It is surrounded by other families and the rest of the world. Its long-term end is to live with other families, form together with them a larger community and walk in pilgrimage to their common destiny: the Kingdom or Reign of God. This is God's plan for all mankind. To achieve this end, mutual communication is indispensable.

Human communication has a very long history. It began at the very beginning of time, at the crucial moment of Creation. The ways of communication have gone through an interesting evolution: from the rudimentary and simple communications during the Stone Age to the quite sophisticated I.T. revolution of the Modern Age.

Man always saw the need to communicate. He is social being by nature. He has to communicate with his contemporaries as well as with the future generations. Archeology has unearthed carvings and drawings on the walls of the primitive caves, that old the story of that particular age. Indian tribes have been known to communicate messages of love and war by smoke signals. Later the pen and the scroll were invented, followed by the printing press, then telephone, radio, television and now internet and websites.

Family in communication takes on a special importance in the context of evangelization because of the mandate "As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you". This is addressed to the family as well as to the individual. The family has first to be evangelized. Then in turn it has to evangelize. And in the measure that it is evangelizing, it becomes more deeply evangelized. It has been said- and I subscribe to that truth- that no one is saved or lost alone. We are saved and lost as a community, as a family. For we have been called to community and destined to be community, a trinity.

We are God's people. We are inheritors of the universal call and mission. He planted the seed of His Plan in our first parents. It is now the mission of their progeny-us- to carry on the task of communicating, broadcasting the Good News that we have been called by God to become trinity and be like Him to enjoy the happiness and the glory of His Kingdom with the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

A: Enid and I feel deeply honoured to be invited to speak to you today on a topic that has been an intricate part of our lives. When we first met each other 29 years ago, I was already in mass communications for five years. But my meeting Enid brought me face to face with a new communications challenge—I had to unlearn and relearn the art of communications! From communicating with a faceless, non-interactive audience, I had to now learn to communicate face to face, at a deeper, more intimate level with a human being of a different gender! Nothing that I had learnt before had prepared me for this kind of communication! Here was I, a completely rational, logical, result-driven individual, who said what needed to be said and wrote what needed to be communicated. Suddenly, I was interacting with an individual with feelings, emotions, sensitivities and intuition very different from mine! It was much later in life that I came across the book, 'Men are from Mars, women are from Venus'.

E: Yes, Allwyn was a good writer and communicator in print when we first met at a Catholic magazine where I was helping out. I was just out of college, was not looking for a relationship with one person. I came from a sheltered existence, where the parish was the centre of my life, where we always had good priests who gave me a positive experience of the church. I studied in a women's college with wonderful nuns. And here came this young man into my life with very different, and strong views, with a much wider experience of the world of political, social and economic issues—but completely ignorant of communications as I understood it!

A: So we muddled along for 21/2 years—meeting, talking, quarrelling, making up, wondering whether we were meant for each other, some days feeling life was beautiful and other days not so... till one day we decided to go for a communications programme for couples conducted by an American Jesuit named Dick McHugh. That was an eye opener for me. It taught us how to pick up each other's feelings and thus to understand and listen to each other rather than just throwing our frustrations and disappointments at each other.

That was before the days of Marriage Encounter and Engaged Encounter weekends. Today's courting couples are indeed lucky to have the benefit of the Engaged Encounter Weekend. That session with Fr Dick McHugh taught us how to communicate with each other, to get through to each other, instead of just throwing our ideas, thoughts and emotions at each other. It taught us the basic lesson of interpersonal communications—information is giving out, communications is getting through. Communications is not just about telling you what I think and feel; it is about understanding also how you think and feel—and also how the children think and feel because the challenges of bringing up children today are huge.

E: Both of us have come a long way since then. It is now more than 26 years since that programme which was a turning point in our lives. We've had our fair share of ups and downs in the 26 years since then, but they have enriched and strengthened us in many different ways and deepened the bonds between our children and us. And our communications has undergone a change as the children and we have grown in years. We also did the Marriage Encounter about 8 years after we got married. The point we wish to make is this: that Engaged Encounter and Marriage Encounter are powerful tools to learn the art of communications within the family. We Catholics are lucky that the Church offers them to us at virtually no cost. What we need to do is strengthen the Engaged Encounter and Marriage Encounter movements and make more couples aware of them. They help not only to respect and communicate with each other, but also to respect and communicate with the children as they grow towards adulthood—letting them alone to discover the basic truths of life for themselves, but, and the but is important, letting them know that you are around to provide a listening ear when they need it, without thrusting yourself on them.

A: Having said that, we thought we would share with you our experiences on communications issues and concerns in the family today from our experience of an Indian family. In some ways, it is a typical Indian family experience; in some ways it is not. For instance, one of the first tough decisions Enid and I took was that she would give up her job when the children came and stay at home to look after the children. It is a decision that we have never regretted even though it has cost us a lot in financial terms. But it is not a typical family situation today because the costs of housing, living and educating the children are so high that both husband wife need to work to give children a fair chance at life. This is increasingly a challenge that couples today face—in India certainly, and we are sure in the rest of Asia too. Women need to work not only for the extra money, but also because they do not know when their husbands will lose their jobs, especially with many companies offering their employees "Voluntary Retirement Schemes" in mid-life. Often, because the men have not been trained to do any other kind of work, they are not able to get a job. At that time, the wife's job is really a lifeline.

E: The decision to give up my job was a tough one for me to take, not only from the financial point of view but also from my own need for personal and professional growth. In financial terms, we did without a lot of luxuries and we still do without a lot of goodies that two-income families can enjoy. But more than that it meant I would be denying myself my own career, the daily opportunities for interaction with a much wider cross-section of people, and my own money to spend on what I wanted for the family—like a dinner set that I was able to buy only after 25 years of married life! Husbands have other priorities!

These are not easy decisions for a modern young woman to take, especially a woman who has worked outside the home. A woman who has worked outside the home always yearns for that daily opportunity to go out and interact with a wider circle. This has nothing to do with our commitment to our families or to our being wives and mothers. Some of my friends did try to balance both home and work but many of them ultimately gave up their jobs for the good of the family, especially when the children were 8-10 years old because that is the time when the children are too old for the crèche and too young to be left alone.

I don't know whether my daughter will take the same decision that I took—I know each generation will find its own answers to its own challenges. Today it is even more difficult to give up a job because of rapid technological changes that makes it more difficult to get back into the mainstream of working life. For instance, when I quit working, there were no computers in my office. But when I wanted to get back to a working life, computers had changed the scene dramatically and I was not equipped for the world of work today. Similarly, even a teacher will have to be comfortable with online learning and teaching in another 5 years—which she will not be able to if she opts out of the system like I did.

But I do know that if today my children are mature, balanced individuals who will not hesitate to come and tell me first about some new challenge they are facing in their lives, it is because I was always there for them when they came home—from school, from the playground, from a social get-together. More than that I was there to listen. But I was able to listen because I had both the inclination and the time. And I did want to impart certain values to them.

There are many mothers who suffer the anguish of having the inclination but not the time to be there for their children and to listen to them, simply because they are commuting long hours to work and back and then managing the responsibilities of running a home. On the other hand, there are mothers who have the time but do not knowhow to listen. This is where we see the church working towards setting up or strengthening Family Service Centres run by professional counselors with programmes like Family Encounter on the lines of Engaged Encounter or Marriage Encounter. With children being influenced so powerfully through the media and peer pressure, we need help today in communicating with children.

Bringing up children with a particular value system also has to be a conscious decision involving both parents who are in tune with each other. As parents, we had to have our own family value system in place first—which meant I had to communicate with my husband and determine our family value system no matter what the rest of the extended family or the neighbourhood or the world outside said. In the ultimate analysis, as parents we are our children's first role models. To be a role model, we had to first be happy with ourselves and with each other before we could expect to reach into their world. Too many parents are not able to communicate with each other and come to an agreement on what line to take. The result is a dissonance that children, especially teenagers are quick to take advantage of.

A: I must say that Enid staying at home meant a great difference to our children. Especially because my work as a journalist meant that I would not be at home most evenings because those are the busiest hours in a newspaper office. In later years, when Enid began leaving home in the morning along with the children to teach at a school close to our home, I was lucky to have a laptop that enabled me to work from home because it gave me the flexibility of having lunch with the children and then leaving for work. This meant a great deal because we did not have the luxury of having our evening meal or praying together most days.

E: That brings me to: what are the communication issues and concerns in the family today? One is the long hours that fathers, and in many cases, mothers, have to put in at work today. The 9 to 5 job is over—even for women secretaries. New technologies like email, direct inward dialing, robotics have meant that jobs of secretaries, telephone operators and packers in factories have vanished. In most companies even the few jobs that are left are from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., inclusive of travel time. Many young women are now going into the new professions of marketing, training and communications, which means even longer hours for preparation and also travelling to other cities. All this is putting new stresses and strains in family relationships.

A: On the one hand, new technologies have made life difficult and disruptive of relationships, but on the other hand they have also created new opportunities for staying in touch. Gone are the days when you had to walk if you wanted to talk. I remember our courtship days - if we parted after a quarrel, we had to wait till we met again or till she reached her office the next day before I could call and make up. No so today! Mobile phones, SMS, email, chat rooms enable us to stay in touch with each other and our children all the time—one of the new joys we have experienced in recent weeks is that of seeing our son via a web camera, even though he is more than 12,000 km from us.

E: But while new technologies enable us to stay in touch, it is not the same thing as being together at the same table under the same roof. Unlike earlier, when long distance calls were expensive, Allwyn now calls me several times from his mobile when he is travelling. But it is not the same as being together. There are times when you need a father at home to put his foot down and reinforce what a mother says.

Allwyn at least comes home in 3 or 4 days. There are others who are working in the Gulf or on a ship or in other towns. They can come home only once in six months or a year. That kind of separation can lead to great stresses and pressures on family communication. And it is not only carpenters and masons who are getting separated from their families. I think of my own son who is a software engineer. I know that software engineers often travel to customer sites to complete a job in time. I wonder what kind of stresses he will face when he gets married.

A: Yes, many of the new jobs in today's world involving the services industry mean travelling to customer sites and completing a job to the customer's satisfaction. I do know that there are many in the computer software industry in India who cannot take their families with them when they go on 3 and 4-month assignments. One of the assignments my company was involved in a for a leading Indian software company was making these employees and their families feel that the company appreciated the difficulties they face as a result of their having to go where the job is.

This means providing domestic back-up support like making a plumber available if a leaking tap has to be fixed, ensuring social support from older wives of senior employees if a child is seriously ill or needs hospitalisation, ensuring flex time when the employee is back at the home base so that he can spend more time at home, providing counselor and similar facilities if the family needs it. Companies do this not out of wanting to do good, but because they want to make sure that the employee is able to concentrate on his job without having to bother about minor problems back home.

I offer you an idea: can the parish church play the same role as the company? Can it identify women volunteers and professionals who can provide a family support network of the kind that I talked about? Could this be a new outreach programme, a programme needed for our day and age? Could this be an outreach programme that could also reach out to families of other faiths and be a new means of evangelisation for the Church in Asia today?

E: Allwyn talked a little while ago of increased connectivity enabling families to stay in touch electronically. But being connected does not necessarily mean being in communication with each other. That's typical male thinking! The fact is that with laptops and non-stop connectivity, a father or mother may be physically present in the house itself and yet not be fully in it! Take, for instance, our situation and I know that this is also the situation with other families. When Allwyn was running a biotech news bureau for the whole of the Asia-Pacific region, he was on the computer, online in the mornings before he left for work because the sun rises in Japan, Australia, Hong Kong and Thailand several hours before it does in India.

And when he came home in the evening, he was on line to the US where the day was just beginning! So, though he was in the house he was not part of it. His mind was elsewhere. So, today, even though a family may not be separated by distance, there may yet be less time for the family—because though the man is in the house his mind is elsewhere.

A: Yes, non-stop connectivity causes its own problems. I know a man who works in the logistics department of a computer company. His job has nothing to do with software. Rather, it's his job to ensure that if any computer system breaks down anywhere in India, resulting in the railway or airline online reservation system to break down, he has to get that spare part into the machine by coordinating the physical movement of that spare part, as well as getting the nearest engineer there to fix it. He has to ensure that "down time" is the least. Today in the industry or services sector there is no more frightening situation than the words, "the system is down". This poor man is virtually glued to this laptop and his mobile all the time. Even on Sundays. If a plane has not taken off, he has to find another flight or find an alternative route by train or road, sometimes even hiring a bullock cart to get the part to a remote rural destination where a power plant or a continuous process chemical industry is located. He's not a software engineer. He is a logistics man, a new field of employment today, like supply chain management.

E: I remember the 'good old days' when Dad used to leave home at 7 in the morning and come home by 6 and take us to Church and then for a walk or a treat and was always home for family rosary and dinner. Today's and tomorrow's children are denied those simple pleasures. But then because daddies and mummies work so hard today they have access to the new tools and toys and books that are an essential part of their lives.

A: Take television, for instance. We had no television in our home for 4 years out of choice. Then, when we realized that not having television was making the children more curious, we decided to buy one. The next step was teaching the children to use it responsibly, a task that my wife took up.

E: In the old days, you only had to worry about how much time your child spent hanging out with friends. Today, it is a question of how much time the child spends watching TV and also what he/she is watching on TV. Also, you have to teach children today not just what to watch on TV, but also how much time they should spend on the Walkman, on the telephone, on the landline as well as the mobile and the SMS - because all these are as addictive as friends or TV!

We have to monitor also how much time your child spends on the computer and also on which sites. Do you allow a child to surf at will? Do you allow a teenager to get into chat rooms, which all their classmates are getting into without any guidance, and chatting with strangers without realising the risks involved? These are difficult questions. How do you tell a child anything about these new tools when you do not know anything about them yourself?

A: Yes, although I have used a computer since 1987, I have never been to a chat room till last year. And I was so bored, that I quit and never tried again. My wife struggles now to chat with her son even though the software has all been set up and all she has to do is to click, click, click to reach him. Parents need guidance—a great deal of it. And this is what church homilies and meetings at Small Christian Communities must be about. Not just reading something from Isaiah or St John or listening to a sermon on St Teresa of Avila when we have a saint of our own times,

Mother Teresa. Isaiah and the prophets stood in the market place and warned people about the dangers of their times. We need increased inputs—and at a much faster pace—about fast-developing situations in our own times. How many parents know for instance that the computer should not be in a bedroom but in the hall, so as to subtly discourage your teenage child from accessing adult websites offering a distorted view of life?

E: Yes, and the bigger the house, the greater the privacy and the freedom to explore without being discovered—and the greater the danger to the children. And it is not just the computer that is a source of danger. You can have direct marketing companies ringing up your daughter and asking her what cosmetics or what brand of undergarments she uses and getting into an unwanted conversation with her. This is already happening. Or she could be getting an SMS about a new form of contraception and asking her to dial a number for more information. The company sending out the SMS does not know or does not care that the number is that of a child or a teenager.

Mobiles are so common today and information is so easily available and accessible that even school children now need to be guided to prevent them from being swamped with unnecessary information at too early a stage in their lives. Today, parents give their children a mobile to enable them to stay in touch with them, little realising that this tool also enables others to reach them without their parents knowing it.

A: All this calls for greater involvement on the part of parents with their children. But this means having the inclination and the time to do so. It means also greater discipline and self-sacrifice on the part of the parents—perhaps having to forego a late night movie on the TV that has been widely advertised and which the children know will be on that night. We cannot tell children "Do as I say, don't do as I do." They do not understand that you as an adult are more mature to watch it.

E: It's tougher when there are grandparents in the same house. They want, they perhaps need, to watch movies or serials in the afternoons, which the children don't want to or don't need to. The most popular such serials now are about mother-in-law daughter-in-law relationships. Or soaps about extra-marital affairs. How do you handle this? Or how do you work out how much time the children spend before the TV? We asked our children when they were young to choose which programmes they wanted to watch and I made it a point to sit with them and watch it myself and tell them what was realistic and what was not. I put what they saw into a context. It helped ensure not only that they did not become zombies before a TV set, watching the flickering screen for hours on end, but also that they were able to understand and relate what they saw to life.

A: There are other new concerns coming up that we would like to share with you. Concerns that arise out of inevitable changes in society and in our way of thinking, working, socializing. Enid talked earlier of how life revolved around the home and the parish church. Today, our people no longer live in parish ghettos, physically or otherwise. And as they move out, their thinking changes. Increasingly, young people are meeting their life partners at work or in social settings because other communities too are undergoing change. This means meeting people with a different value system, different attitudes to life.

E: This puts new stresses on family relationships. How do you tell a young son or daughter that I do not object to a particular girl or boy, but that I am concerned that their value systems are different? And then, if the relationship culminates in marriage, not only have the couple to adjust to each other, but even the family members have to adjust to the new person from a different culture and a different faith. Then there is the question of bringing up the children. A Hindu or Buddhist mother may leave her child with her mother-in-law, yet object to her talking to the child about Jesus and Mary—either because she wants to bring the child up in their faith or no faith at all—"let the child choose when it grows up."

A: I wonder how equipped the Church in Asia is to help us face these new realities. Except for the Philippines, Christians form less than 3% of the population. I cannot speak for the rest of Asia, but certainly in India I see no awakening to the new realities. How many priests and nuns are really trained to deal effectively with young adults? How many are trained to provide pastoral care for those in mixed marriages? Often the attitude is: these are the rules, accept them if you want to get married in the church or get out. This is not an exaggeration. The approach is coercive, not persuasive, accept the official position or face the consequences.

A good example is insisting on baptism certificates for admission of children of mixed marriages to our schools, even when the number of Catholic children is less than 10%. I remember a Catholic mother who ran up against this hurdle when she wanted her daughter to be admitted to a Catholic school. The nun at the convent school was obstinate and the parish priest whose help she sought made fun of her. I can still hear her telling me: "My marriage is going well. My husband allows me to go to church and to take the children with me, though he will not allow them to be baptized. I know that someday I will succeed in that. All I want now is for my children to be brought up in a Catholic atmosphere. But the priest made fun of me. I would not have minded if he could not help me. But did he have to make fun of me?"

We reflected on this incident later and came up with three questions:

1) Is baptism an end in itself or is it a means to an end? The way it is being pushed by the Church in India, it seems to be an end in itself. For us, it can only be a means. Baptism through carrots or coercion only makes a mockery of the sacrament and encourages people to engage in duplicitous relations with the Church.

2) The second question we asked is, "Is she not a daughter of the community? Is she dead to the community just because she married a Hindu? The problem is that Church rules are written by men who do not understand how love drives a woman. Some wise man once wrote: Love is only a moment in a man's life, for a woman it is her whole life." A woman does not take a decision to marry someone quickly or lightly. We have to reach out to our sons and daughters who get marry outside the community, even if they have a church ceremony.

3) That brings me to the third question: how many priests, nuns and lay people have we prepared for this new specialised ministry whose need is beginning to be keenly felt, the ministry of mixed faith marriages? Just look at the marriage statistics in dioceses across India. Look at the statistics of broken marriages and the summons before Church tribunals. The Church has woken up and issued new rules: engagement for a minimum of six months, compulsory Engaged Encounter Weekends, compulsory involvement in Small Christian Communities. Some of these steps are good. And though couples resent rules sometimes, I know many who appreciated these sessions after experiencing them. But what about after the wedding? There is clearly a need for pastoral care for couples in mixed faith marriages or where one of the partners has no faith. We also see this ministry as being driven more by lay people, not just priests and nuns.

E. We also see it involving lay people of goodwill of other faiths because you need their help to build bridges in difficult situations. At the end of the day, what matters is that the two people who have committed themselves in marriage to each other live fully-integrated lives that strengthen and protect the family as an institution and bring up their children to experience the love and caring of the one Eternal Father of us all. What we see in Europe and the US, and our own experiences, tell us that the family has to be protected as an institution at all costs and that we have to go all out to do it. In a continent where we are just less than 3% of the population, we will have to do this by joining hands with people of other faiths because when families around us start crumbling, when problems disrupt the peace and stability of the family next door, we cannot expect to escape the impact. You cannot ignore the fire in your neighbour's house because when the wind changes direction, you may not have a firewall to protect you.

A/E: So to wrap up, we need to:

1) Strengthen the Engaged Encounter and Marriage Encounter movements and perhaps also introduce more Family Communication components/sessions in parishes to help parents update themselves on the times we live in, and to communicate with their children in the language and idiom of our times. Professional counselling a must, especially when there is a block in communications. Prayer without professional help under such circumstances can only be an escape and a form of band-aid. Prayer is one part of the solution, professional help is the other necessary part.

2) We must set up Family Support Networks in parishes for families experiencing separation because of the economic situation and job needs.

3) We must work towards a Ministry for Mixed Faith Marriages, involving lay Catholics and also people of other faiths, because the family as an institution has to be protected and supported at all costs.

As you know, in any movie or theatre or musical production, there has to be a cast, the people who make it happen. For any musical show the job of casting director is extremely important. Many come to try out, but few can be chosen.

The first requirement is that the individual selected for the role already created by the author will fit the part in looks, voice, style, and talent. Miscasting can be costly.

The second need is that the whole group blend together, that they have what is called "chemistry". No show can be successful even with a string of excellent actors if, when you put them together, nothing happens.

Unfortunately, our family productions don't have casting directors. We meet and marry without the guidance of an experienced selection committee and when our children come along we have to take what we get whether or not they blend in and sing harmoniously.

Indeed in our family we need a casting director who can communicate and put the right people into the perfect roles, but since we don't have one, the next best thing is to do our best in order to understand the cast we already have.

In this presentation I will share quite a great deal about me, my family and my family circle.

My wife and I have four children: two sons and twin daughters. My parents have eight children and I am the eldest. My wife, Christina, comes from a family of seven children and she is the youngest.

Together with in-laws and their children, our family circle, like many other families in Asia, is fairly big by any world standard.

One of the personal dilemmas I have in today's presentation is just how much to share of our family stories, mistakes and achievements. On the other hand, I don't want to sound as if we think we have all the answers.

Throughout this presentation, you will see that Family in Communication in my opinion is the family whose members are happy, loving, peaceful, feel good, and above all understand each other.

They are not frustrated or angry, fearful or want to punch someone in the nose! The family, in my opinion, will most likely have at least some of the following attributes:
 

Seek first to understand... then to be understood

To learn to seek first to understand and then to be understood is vitally important for any Family in Communication.

In the last few decades, studies have shown that children and indeed all of us are born with pre-packed personalities. Children will not have to be very old before we can sense their personalities.

The Popular Sanguine will laugh a lot, love fun, and enjoy being with people. Catherine was the life of the party from the time she was two years old.

The Powerful Choleric will give orders as soon as he can talk. My brother's young son, Ball, at 2 years old looked up at his father one night, pointed in front of him with his finger and stated clearly, "Daddy, here!" My brother moved immediately to his side and Ball knew he had his father under firm control.

The Perfect Melancholy, who is well-behaved and can be disciplined by a disapproving glance, will start lining up his toys in rows when he is still a toddler. Our son Charles (with his new hair style) when he was young put all his dinosaur toys in certain order on his bed each day and if anyone moved one of them, he knew.

The Peaceful Phlegmatic is the child more eager to please as he wants to conform to our wishes and will do whatever makes people happy. Our eldest son, Peter, as a Phlegmatic child, went out with us several times a week and sat quietly and politely wherever we placed him, causing us no trouble.

As we became acquainted with the different personalities, we found explanations for the behavior of ourselves and our children. We developed a new way to communicate with those people who are not like us and began to accept our children as God made them to be, not as we might want them to become.

Right or wrong

As you already know, logic would dictate that whenever two disagree: one is right, and the other is wrong. But family life is not always logic; it's psycho-logic. Both are right-each from his or her point of view.

These kinds of perception pictures brings us to realize that the way we see the world is not necessarily the way other people see the world.

In fact, people do not see the world as it is; they see it as they are-or as they have been conditioned to be.

We each look at the world through our own pair of glasses that come out of our own unique and conditioning experiences, glasses that create our value system, our expectations, our implicit assumptions about the way the world is and the way it should be.

One of the mains reasons behind communication breakdowns is that the people involved interpret the same event differently. Their different natures and background experiences condition them to do so. If they then interact without taking into account why they see things different, they begin to judge each other.

Differences

My wife and I recognize that, whether we like it or not, God has called both of us to be the human directors of our family production. It is important that our jobs is to have unity in our communications. It is obvious that no show could make it through the first rehearsal if there were two directors each giving his or her own creative instructions.

What would happen if I say to our children who are our cast, "This show is going to be a comedy and were all going to wear colorful costumes."

And my wife says, "No, this is going to be a drama and we're all going to dress in symbolic black."

The cast, or indeed the children, would be so confused that there would be a stalemate, a defection, or an insurrection. Without unity of purpose little can be accomplished in any group activity. Yet there are families, the most important unit in the history of mankind, that the cast functions daily under conflicting information. Mother say one thing and Dad another. The little ones don't have to be very old before they assess which director to go or avoid. Unfortunately few parents spend time discussing and agreeing upon general household procedures.

I remember years ago when two sons, Peter and Charles, were still young. I came home one day after being away from communication with our young children for more than a week. I was feeling somewhat guilty about this lack of communication, and when I feel guilty, I tend to become a bit indulgent. Because I was often way, my wife had to compensate for my indulgence by coming on a bit too strong. Her toughness caused me to become a little softer. My increased softness caused her to become a little harder. Thus, the discipline system in our home was sometimes driven more by politics than by consistent application of principles that create a beautiful family culture.

When I arrived at home that night, I went in and yelled, "Boys, are you there? I'm home."

Charles ran out from his bedroom, looked at me, and then shouted back to his brother, "Hey, Peter, dad's nice." In other words, "He's in a good mood."

What I didn't know was that these boys were in bed under threat of their lives. They had used every conceivable excuse to get up and keep playing and goofing off. That had gone on until my wife's patience had come to an end. She had sent them to bed with a final command: "Now you boys stay in bed or else!"

So when they heard Dad's voice, a new ray of hope was born. They thought, Let's see what kind of mood Dad is in. If he's in a good mood, we can get up and play some more. The words, "Hey, Peter, dad's nice," were their cue. We started wrestling around in the front room and having all kinds of fun.

Then out came Mom. With a mixture of frustration and anger in her voice, she shouted, "Are those kids still up?"

I quickly replied, "Hey, I haven't seen much of them lately. I want to play with them for a little while." Needless to say, she didn't like my response, nor did I like hers. And there were the boys, watching Mom and Dad arguing right in front of them. The problem was that we had not communicated and discussed on this issue and come up with agreements we were both willing to live with. I was too much a product of my moods and feelings, and I wasn't consistent. At the same time, I must admit that I didn't show respect for the fact that these boys were in bed and should have stayed in bed. But I also hadn't seen them for several days. And a pertinent question was "How important is the bedtime rule anyway?"

The solution to this problem was not worked out immediately during that night, but eventually we found time to sit down and discuss and conclude that the bedtime rule wasn't that important for our family- particularly as the children became teenagers. We felt that what were normal bedtimes for many families were important and fun family times for us. The kids would sit around and talk, eat, and laugh- particularly with my wife, since I typically went to bed earlier if I were at home. That thing that enabled that synergistic solution for our family was acknowledging the differences and allowing all of us to do what we individually and collectively felt strong about.

Sometimes living with differences and appreciating other people's uniqueness is hard. We tend to want to mold people in our own image. When we get our security from our opinions, to hear a different opinion-particularly from someone as close as our spouse or children-threatens that security. We naturally want them to agree with us, to think the way we think, to go along with our ideas. But as someone once said, "When everybody thinks alike, nobody thinks very much." Another said, "When two agree, one is unnecessary."

Over the years my wife and I have come to recognize that one of the very best things about marriage is our differences. We share a commitment and value system and destination, but within that, we have great diversity. And we love it! Most of the time, that is.

She tends to more logical and consequential-more "left brain." I tend to be more "more right brained," to look at things more holistically.

When we first married thirty years ago this month, this difference created something of a problem in our communication. It seemed I was always scanning the horizon, looking at new alternatives, new possibilities. It was easy for me to change course midstream if I thought I saw a better way. On the other hand, she tended to be diligent and precise. Once we had a clear direction, she work out the details, burrow in, and stay the course, no matter what.

This gave rise to a number of challenges when it came to making decisions together on everything from setting goals to buying things to disciplining the children. Mind you, our commitment to each other was very solid, but we were both caught up in our own ways of thinking and it seemed like a lot of work to try to make decisions together.

For a time we tried to separate areas of responsibility. In doing the budget, for example, I would do much long-range planning, she would keep the records. All this proved to be helpful. We were both contributing to the marriage and family in our own areas strength.

But when we discovered how to use differences to create synergy, we came to a new level of richness in our relationship. We discovered that we take turns listening to each other and have our eyes opened to a whole new way of seeing things. Instead of approaching problems from "opposite" sides, we were able to come together and approach problems with shared and much greater understanding.

This opened the door to all kinds of new solutions to our problems. It also gave us something wonderful to do together. When we realized that our differences were part of a greater whole, we began exploring the possibilities of putting those parts together in new ways.

In preparing this presentation, we wife also played a big role. I go for the big concepts, the holistic ideas and the right brain ways of saying things. She challenged and interacted with me on the ideas, arrange the content, and suggest better words choice. And we love it!

This has brought us together in a whole new level of communication and contribution. We've found that our togetherness is much better because of our differences rather than in spite of them.

As I was preparing this presentation, I also invited our children and cousins to contribute by sharing their opinion on any attribute which my wife and I had outlined for this task. Under the topic of differences of Mom and Dad, Cecilia wrote to me and shared her thoughts as follows

Cecilia: If you wanted advice about something, you'd go to Dad, and he'd give it to you. He'd say, "I'll do this." And he'd outline everything.

But sometimes you didn't want advice. You just wanted someone to say, "You're the best. You're the greatest. They should have chosen you as cheerleader instead of that other girl." You just wanted someone to be really supportive and loyal to you, no matter what. And that was Mom.

Cecilia continued to say:

In fact, she was so loyal, I was always afraid she was going to call whoever I was mad at and bawl them out to say, "Why are you being so rude to my daughter? Why didn't you choose her to be the lead in the play?

She thought we were the greatest. It wasn't so much that she thought we were better than other kids, but she thought a lot of us. And we could feel that, even though we knew she was prejudiced about us and usually exaggerated what we did. But it felt good to know that someone believed in you that much. And that's what she instilled in us: "You can do anything. You will rise and accomplish your goals if you just stick with it. I believe in you and you can do it."

Somehow Mom and Dad taught us the best of what they were.

Understanding, not misunderstanding

One of my sister-in-laws is known for her inordinate attachment to buying Sanyo appliances. She seemed to have an obsession about Sanyo that my brother was at an absolute loss to understand. She would not even consider buying another brand. Even when they were just starting out their family life and on a very tight budget, she insisted to drive a long way to the big city where Sanyo appliances were sold, because no dealer in their small town carried them at that time.

What bothered my brother the most was not that his wife like Sanyo but that she persisted in making what he considered illogical and indefensible statements that had no basis in fact whatsoever. If she had only agreed that her response was irrational and purely emotional, my brother thinks he could have handled it. But her justification was really upsetting. In fact it was such a tender issue that both of them were afraid to look each other in the eye.

Luckily, both of were very open. One day while spending their weekend at a beach resort where the small refrigerator in the hotel room was Sanyo. They started talking about their other appliances. Then she began to open up.

She said that as a young girl, realized that her father worked very hard to support his family. He worked as a school teacher, and to help make ends meet, he went into the appliance business, using the front part of his house as a showroom. One of the main brands he carried in the small store was Sanyo. When her father returned home after a full day of teaching and working late into the evening selling Sanyo appliances, he would lie on the couch and she would rub his feet and sing to him. It was a beautiful time they enjoyed together almost daily for years. Often during this time he would talk through his worries and concerns about the business, and he shared with his young daughter his deep appreciation for Sanyo. During an economic downturn and he was out of teaching job, he had experienced serious financial difficulties, and the only thing that enabled him to stay in business was that Sanyo financed his inventory.

As his wife shared these things, there were long pauses. My brother knew that she was tearing up. This was a deeply emotional thing for her. The communication between father and daughter had taken place spontaneously and naturally, when the most powerful kind of scripting takes place. And perhaps his wife had forgotten about all this until the safety of their year of communication, when it could also come out in very natural and spontaneous ways.

My brother's eyes began to tear as well. He finally started to understand. He had never made it safe for her to talk about it.

He had never empathized. He had simply judged. He had just moved in with his logic and his counsel and his condemnation and never even made an effort to really understand.

The 17th century French Philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) once said, "The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of."

When my brother and his wife returned from their weekend at the beach resort, they felt so renewed, so bonded to each other, so affirmed in the preciousness of their relationship. They didn't even need to talk.

There's no way to have rich, rewarding family relationships without real understanding. Relationships can be superficial. They can be functional. They can be transactional. But they can't be transformational- and deeply satisfying- unless they're built in a foundation of genuine understanding.

In fact, at the heart of most of the real pain in families is misunderstanding.

Work out the solution together

TV Watching

Some years ago, my wife and I had read a great deal about the impact of television on the minds of children, and we had begun to feel that in many ways it was like an open sewage pipe right into our home.

We had set up rules and guidelines to limit the amount of TV watching, but it seemed that there were always exceptions. The rules kept changing.

We were constantly in the position of dispensing privileges and judgments, and we had grown weary of negotiating with the children. It had become a power struggle that occasionally caused feelings to flare in negative ways.

Although we agreed on the problem, we didn't agree on the solution. My wife wanted to take an authoritarian approach inspired by an article she'd read about a man who actually threw the family TV set into the garbage! In some way that kind of dramatic action seemed to demonstrate the message we wanted to send. But I favored a more principle-based approach. I didn't want the children to resent the decision, to feel it was not a win for them.

We realized however that we in fact were trying to decide how we could solve this problem for the children when what we needed to do was help them solve it for themselves.

At one family night we introduced the subject "TV-how much is enough?"

Everyone's interest was immediately focused because this was an important matter for all involved.

Charles said, "What's so bad about watching TV? There a lot of good stuff on. I will get my homework done. I can actually study while the TV is on. My grades are good, and so are everyone else's. So what's the problem?"

Catherine added, "If you're afraid we're going to be corrupted by TV, you're wrong. We don't usually watch bad shows. And if one is bad, we usually turn to another channel."

Charles added, "Besides, what shocking to you is not all that shocking to us".

Cecilia said, "If we don't watch certain shows, we're socially out of it. All kids watch these shows. We even talk about them everyday at school. These shows help us see how things really are in the world so that we don't get caught up in all the dump things that are going on."

We didn't interrupt the kids. They all had something to say about why they don't think we should make any drastic changes in our TV habits. As we listened to their concerns, we could see how deeply they were into their feelings about TV.

Finally, when their steam was spent, we said, "Now let us see if we really understand what you've just said." And we proceeded to restate all we had heard and felt them say. Then we asked, "Do you feel that we truly understand your point of view?" They agreed that we did.

"Now we would like you to understand where we're coming from."

The response was not very favorable.

"You just want to tell us all the negative things people are saying about watching TV," Peter said.

"You want to pull the plug and take away our only escape from all the pressure we feel at school," Catherine added.

We listened empathetically and then assured them that this was not our intent at all. "In fact," we said, "when we've gone over these articles together, Mom and I are going to leave the room and let you kids decide what you feel we should do about watching TV."

"You're kidding!" they exclaimed. "What if our decision is different from what you want?" "We'll honor your decision," we said. "All we ask is that you be in total agreement about what you recommend that we do." We could see by the expressions on their faces that they liked the idea.

So, all together, we went over the information in the two articles we had brought to the meeting. The children sensed this material would be important in their upcoming decision, so they listened very attentively.

We began by reading some shocking facts. One articles said that the average television diet for a person between the ages of one and eighteen is six hours a day. If there is cable in the home, that increases to eight hours per day. By the time they graduated from school, they will have spent thirteen thousand hours in school and sixteen hours in front of a television set. During that time they will have witnessed twenty-four thousand killings.

We told children that, as parents, those facts were scary to us and that when we watched as much TV as we did, it became by far the most powerful socializing force in our lives-more than education, more than time spent with the family.

We pointed out the discrepancy concerning TV program directors who claim there is no scientific evidence to link TV viewing to behavior and then quote evidence showing the powerful impact a thirty-second commercial has on behavior.

Then we said, "Just think about how different you feel when you watch a television show and when you watch a commercial. When a thirty-second commercial comes on, you know it's an advertisement. You don't believe a lot of what you see and hear. Your defenses are up because it's advertising, it's just hype, and we've all been burned by it again and again. But when you're watching a show, your defenses are most likely down. You become emotionally invested, vulnerable. You're letting images come into your head, and you're not even thinking about it. You're just absorbing it. Of course, the commercials impact us in spite of our defensiveness. Can you imagine the impact the regular programs are having on us when we're in a much more receptive posture?"

We continue these discussions as we read more. One author pointed out what happens when television becomes the baby-sitter for parents who are not cautious about what their children watch. He said that unsupervised TV watching is like inviting a stranger into your home for two or three hours every day to tell the children about a perverse world where violence solves problems and all anyone needs to be happy is the right beer, a beautiful car, good looks, and lots of sex. Of course, the parents are not there while all this is happening because they trust this television character to keep the children as quiet, interested, and entertained as possible. This teacher could do a lot of damage and causing problems no one could solve.

After discussing the negative impact of watching too much television, we turned to some of the positive things that might happen if we changed our habit. In one of the articles a study was quoted which showed that families who cut back on TV watching found more time for conversation at home. One person said in the article, "Before it was, like, mostly we'd see Dad before he left for work. When he came home, he'd watch TV with us, and then it was like, "Good night Dad.' Now we talk all the time, we're really close.

As we shared this information, we got up and left the room. About an hour later we were invited to return for the verdict.

Catherine later gave us the full report of what happened in that vitally important hour.

She said that after we left the room, her brothers and sister quickly appoint her the discussion leader. They knew she was an advocate of watching TV, and they anticipated a quick resolution.

At first the meeting was chaotic. They all wanted to speak up and get their views known in a hurry so they'd be able to get a liberal decision-perhaps to cut down just a little on the amount of TV they were watching. In order to satisfy us as parents, someone suggested that they all promise to do their household chores cheerfully and get their homework done without being reminded.

But then Peter our eldest son spoke up. Everyone turned to listened as he told how the articles had impressed him. He said TV had put some ideas into his mind that were not what he wanted to be there, and he felt he would be better off if he watched a lot less TV. He also said he felt the younger children in the family were starting to see things far worse than what he had seen as a young boy.

Then Charles the younger brother spoke up. He told everyone about a show he had seen that made him feel scared when he went to bed. At that point the spirit of the meeting became very serious. As the children continued to discuss the issue, a new feeling gradually began to emerge. They started to think differently.

Cecilia then said, "I think we're watching too much TV, but I don't want to give it up altogether. There are some shows I feel good about and I really want to watch." Then others talked about shows they enjoyed and wanted to continue to watch.

Catherine added, "I don't think we should talk about how much time to watch each day because some days I don't want to watch at all, but on the other days I want to watch more."

So they decided to determine how many hours each week rather than each day-would be appropriate. Some thought twenty hours each week-rather too much; some thought five hours would be better. Finally, they all agreed that ten hours a week was about right, and they appointed Catherine as the monitor to ensure that the decision was carried out.

This decision proved to be turning point in our family life. We began to interact more, to read more. We eventually reached the point where television was not an issue. And, although we have a separate TV room in our home, today-aside from news and occasional movie or sports event-we hardly ever have it on.

By involving our children in the problem, we made them participators with us in finding a solution. And because the solution was their decision, they were invested in its success. We didn't have to worry about supervising and keeping them on truck.

By the way, we have no television during meals. Because our breakfast and dinners are the focal points of our family day, we want no interference in our conversation. This rule was agreed upon and accepted as fact. The minute the meal is announced, everyone is to come to the table, no matter what they are doing.

Many of the children who visited our home were amazed at the conversation that took place at our dinner table. When I asked them, "What's it like at your house?" their usual reply was, "Oh, we all watch TV."

Having fun together

Probably the most important dimension of family is having fun together-genuinely enjoying one another, enjoying the home environment, making home and family the happiest, warmest in people's lives. Having fun together is so vital and so important that it could even be listed as a tradition in and of itself. And it can be nurtured and expressed in many ways.

In our family we've built a lot of social camaraderie around music and humor. Our four children play piano as well as other musical instruments. They have fun together and often entertain us with their repertoire.

We also have a number of hilarious movies and every now and then watch them together and have the funniest times. Everyone enjoys them immensely.

Humor puts things in perspective so you don't take yourself too seriously. You don't get hung up on small issues or other little irritating things that can be divisive and create polarization in the family. Sometimes it takes only one person to inject a little humor into the situation and change the entire course of an event.

Learning together

There are so many opportunities to learn and do things together as a family. And this can be tremendously renewing in all dimensions. For example, singing in the car when our family went on trips together. Sharing in a family member's particular hobby or interest is another example.

Learning together is socially and mentally renewing. It gives you a shared inte