Innocence and children - Some thoughts I had watching some children during Mass

[fpb]

Anyone who thinks that children are "innocent" in the moral, let alone the theological, sense of the word, has never spent ten minutes in the company of a real live child; and, what is worse, does not remember, or refuses to remember, his/her own childhood. Certainly children do not have the idea of the depth and extent of evil, of the many ways

Comments

[noblesandwich]

So are you saying that children are innocent or that they aren't? That they're not innocent but represent innocence, maybe? It's almost five in the morning where I am, so I'm afraid my reading comp. isn't quite up to your rambling, incoherent text-walls.

Super-sweet childhood anecdote, by the way. I remember learning how to ride a bike when I was like ten, it was pretty good times.

[fpb]

It sounds to me like your willingness to understand, rather than your ability, is not. Otherwise you would not use insulting language ("rambling, incoherent text-walls").

[noblesandwich]

My apologies for the insult, it was unnecessary and unjust. However, though my assumption was that you meant the latter, I would still like to hear some clarification.

[fpb]

It doesn't seem so hard to understand to me. Children are not innocent in the sense of being incapable of willing and doing evil; to the contrary, their behaviour is, within its own parameters, easily comparable to that of adults who will and do evil. But they are free of the great burden of personal failure, self-doubt and various kinds of shame that goes with adulthood. They have a future rather than a past, and their abundant energy and directness feel like clean mountain water and light as compared with the constant burden of unstated or neglected doubts and weariness of the adult. This freedom from doubt and weariness is a positive fact, something that most children have and that can be felt. It also means that we need, not to preserve that innocence - because that is impossible - but to lead them along a path where there is less of the weariness and self-doubt that we suffer from.

If you still find this hard to understand, I give up.

[sabethea]

Is there some point at which we need to make a distinction between 'naughty' and 'wrong'? Children often know that they are doing something that Mummy and Daddy would say was naughty, but they don't actually know WHY it is bad, just that they're "not supposed" to be doing X. (Yes, on other occasions they know perfectly well that something is wrong and do it anyway, undoubtedly!)

And, of course, there has to be a disctinction between ages of children. Babies, for example, have no idea of right from wrong. But I think there's a learning process where first children think "this is naughty because I know Mummy and Daddy think so" before they get to "this is wrong and I know for myself that it is wrong".

There is an age in childhood where kids who are asked whether it's naughtiest to break one plate ON PURPOSE or ten BY ACCIDENT. The age at which they say the first one is naughtier is a sign of an understanding of accountability. Littler children will always say breaking more is worse.

[fpb]

Figures that it should be a practicing member of the trade of Mother who would ask the most pointed questions. Well, of course by "children" I meant those who were able to speak articulately but younger than puberty - say five to twelve, although I don't want to be too neat. But I have to ask you whether adults are ever more conscious of the grounds on which an action can be said to be wrong than any child. We have a longer and more elaborate notion of the harm it does. But if the average adult should be asked why incest or theft are wrong independently of their final results - that is, if the incest would still be wrong if it resulted in a loving couple and a brood of children with no genetic malformations, or if a theft would still be wrong if the victim - say, a very rich man or a large corporation - never realized it or felt the want, and if the thief got away with it and lived a long and otherwise useful life - if the average adult, even the average intelligent and educated adult, were asked the question in these terms, I doubt