Advice to Parents of Incarcerated Children
By Russell L. Ford
For the decade I have written for this magazine, Karl Keating has always been most kind in letting me share with you the ups and downs of prison evangelization. Throughout this time, I have received hundreds of letters from kind readers, and God knows I have cherished each and every one—even those that attacked me for one reason or another. Yet there is one particular type of letter that has caused me no end of torment, and this article is intended to answer that type of letter.
Over the last ten years, I’ve received probably fifty letters from Catholic parents whose children are in prison. Nothing has broken my heart more than to read these letters begging for some sort of remedy they can use to fix their broken child. The only thing comforting about those letters is that I cannot see the faces of the parents who write them. The agony in their words is almost unbearable to me, so I know I could not cope with looking into their eyes.
Several times over the years I have attempted to answer a few of these letters, but that was folly on my part. What could I possibly tell them to remedy their situations or ease their pain? I finally decided to figure out what I could tell these grief-stricken parents, and what follows are six suggestions that I hope will do some good.
By no means do I claim infallibility here, but I do know from experience that these six suggestions have worked for me. Let me explain. I have no children in prison, but I do have sixty godsons, many of whom are in prison. I am old enough to be the father to most of my godsons, and many have told me I am the closest thing to a dad they have ever known. These suggestions may not work for everyone, as no two people are alike. However, human nature is universal, and the creative parent can adapt these suggestions to make them applicable to their wayward child.
Time to backtrack: This first item is an edict, not a suggestion, and it is absolute. One theme common to all the letters from parents of incarcerated children, whether implicit or explicit, is guilt. The edict is this: Parents whose child is in prison must stop feeling guilty.
My father was a tough and abusive man. He pushed me hard, and he could be downright cruel. No matter his flaws, though, Dad loved me. It wasn’t a perfect love. More often than not, it wasn’t anything even resembling a normal love. But it was love nonetheless. I was incarcerated sixteen months before my father died. He and I spoke on the phone almost every week, and he wrote me nearly every day. With only one exception, each time we spoke on the phone, that tough epitome of manhood who had been my father wept until he could no longer talk. Why did Dad cry? He felt responsible for me being in prison.
Pay very close attention to this, Mom and Dad. You did not, repeat not, put your child in prison. Did you fail him in some way in the way you reared him? Maybe. Did you unwittingly contribute to his malformation in some way? Possibly. An unfortunate reality of life is that kids don’t come with a set of instructions on how to rear them. If you did the best you could do, the best you knew how at the time, you have absolutely nothing for which you should feel guilty. No matter what your child did to go to prison, you did not make his decision for him. God gave your child free will when he decided to commit his crime.
It’s natural, I suppose, for parents to feel guilty when their child goes to prison. After all, we dream of our children becoming doctors, and engineers, even priests—but not convicts. However, you are not responsible for your child’s incarceration, so stop the guilt. It will be impossible for you to ever help your child until you clear your mind of undeserved guilt and place the responsibility where it belongs—firmly on his shoulders.
The next thing to discuss is how to love your incarcerated child. I am not an advocate of tough love, nor am I an advocate of soft love. Rather, I am an advocate of true love.
King St. Louis of France, for whom the city in Missouri is named, became a saint in large part because of his mother, good Queen Blanche. She began teaching the little prince all about God and his Catholic religion while he was still a toddler. Throughout his childhood, Queen Blanche would pull Louis onto her lap and say, "I love you, my son. No mother has ever loved her son more than I love you, but I would rather see you a thousand times dead at my feet than to know that you had offended God with one mortal sin." That is not tough love, and it certainly isn’t soft love. That is true love.
It is with true love that you must love your incarcerated child. If he wants you to buy him a subscription to a magazine you think will not help him to become better, don’t buy it. Get him a subscription to This Rock instead. If you have reason to suspect the money you send him is used for immoral purposes, cut him off. Truly love him into heaven; do not falsely love him into hell.
One of my prison godsons had lapsed. I continued to love him. I continued to pray for him. I continued to try to persuade him. One Friday, my godson and a friend who had been a bad influence on him sat at my table in the chow hall. Noticing that I hadn’t touched the meat dish on my tray (and not noticing it was a Friday in Lent), my godson asked if he could have my meat. I told him no, then offered it to his friend on my right. My godson got up, slammed down his tray, and called me things no human should be called. I calmly continued to eat.
Some of the other inmates said I was being mean to my godson. I believed I was loving him. I still believe that. I love my prison sons, just as surely as if they were my real sons. It hurt me to deny my godson the food he wanted. Love is often painful, though. Stick to your moral and principled guns; love your incarcerated child into heaven.
Sacrifice on your part will go a long way toward helping your incarcerated child. No, I am not talking about the sacrifices of weekly visits and sending him money. I refer instead to your spiritual sacrifices. If you really want to help your incarcerated child, I implore you to make three sacrifices regularly.
First, arrange your schedule so you can go to daily Mass. You can offer Mass in reparation for his sins and for the sanctification of his soul. Your own soul will greatly benefit as well.
Second, make a daily hour of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, whether it is exposed or in the tabernacle. Christ is largely forgotten today in his eucharistic presence if he is believed in at all. Your kind devotion in remembering him will no doubt be rewarded in ways far beyond anything you can imagine.
The final sacrificial suggestion is that you cultivate a close personal friendship with your guardian angel. This is neither silly nor difficult. Your angel, whom God assigned to you when he created your soul, is very real and most anxious to develop a friendship. All you have to do is develop the habit of praying to your angel, talking to him as would your closest friend but even more candidly.
People who are devoted and pray to their angels learn to love silence. It is through silence that our angels speak to us. And they do speak to us. You will not hear any sort of audible voice, but you will learn to sense and understand the inspirational communications your angel sends you.
I began cultivating a friendship with my guardian angel in 1990, and today I can understand the inspirations he sends me just as clearly as if he spoke them to me in plain English. This will happen for you too. You will be able to ask your angel to guide you in dealing with your incarcerated child. You will also be able to ask him to communicate your prayers to your child’s angel, which will dramatically increase the subsequent providential events.
My fourth suggestion has to do with trading. When St. John Bosco was building his Salesian order and its childcare network, the great priest would utilize every bit of leverage he could. Indeed, he began this practice while still a youth. For example, young Giovanni would put on an elaborate circus act for neighbors from near and far, but he would make them agree in advance to sit through one catechism lesson. As a young priest, many people would ask him for a favor. More often than not, the favor seeker would hear the saint reply, "I will do this favor for you, but you must agree to do a favor for me in return." Of course, John Bosco would call upon the favor-seeker to attend Mass, or go to catechism class, or even go to confession.
The point is, the saint was happy to meet any need (from hunger to the desire to be entertained) any person had, but he was also quick to make the needy pay in some spiritual way for what he provided. This is something you should do for your incarcerated child. If he wants money (and it does take money to survive in prison) or a visit, require a favor from him in return. If he fails to keep his end of the bargain, then deny him any additional favors until he does. Perhaps you could require that he read a spiritual book (Frank Sheed’s To Know Christ Jesus comes immediately to mind), then send you a book report as proof that he read it.
At this point I have some bad news for you. There is a reality you must face and accept: Your child is a criminal. You may not view him as a criminal, but your subjective opinion in no way alters objective reality. Society, its laws, a judge, a prosecutor, a grand jury, and a trial jury all agreed that your child is a criminal, and he has been duly labeled for life.
With that truth firmly established, you must now learn some universal truths about criminals. We criminals are undisciplined, manipulative, demanding, and terribly self-centered. Therefore, set conditions and limitations in your relationship with your incarcerated child, and then be consistently loyal to these limitations and conditions.
Some may argue that a parent should love unconditionally. Baloney. There must be conditions and limits in all relationships. The parent of an incarcerated child who fails to place limits and conditions on the child will only perpetuate the attitudes and thought processes that put him in prison in the first place. In short, the parent becomes part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
It is difficult to be specific about what sort of limitations and conditions need to be present in your relationship with your incarcerated child. Specificity can only be achieved when the specifics of the relationship itself are known. So try to be objective in how you view your relationship to your child, and then get creative (and realistic) on the limitations and conditions.
Finally, get your child to learn our holy and ancient faith. Have you ever noticed that most converts to Catholicism are ecstatically excited about the faith? Why do you suppose that is? The answer is simple. The Catholic faith as given to us by the Church’s magisterium is a roaring lion, an irresistible force, a divine bolt of lightning that will energize anyone’s senses. Not only does the convert get excited about what he learns, he seems not to be able to learn enough. He constantly thirsts and hungers for more.
I have taught the catechism evangelistically for nearly thirteen years. I’ve catechized hundreds, if not thousands, of convicts. It has been my privilege and honor to participate directly in the conversion process of almost two hundred prisoners, sixty of whom are my godsons. Of those converts who have gone free, less than one percent have returned to prison, despite the statistic that seventy to eighty percent of them should have returned. What does it? That roaring lion called Catholicism.
Many is the time I have taught about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the mercy of God in the confessional, or the immense love his Majesty shows us through purgatory and watched the convict I’m teaching begin to weep as Christ’s reality begins to soak in. But even more exciting is to see this same reaction from a twenty-five-, thirty-, thirty-five-, or forty-year-old cradle Catholic who is getting the meat of his faith for the first time in his life.
Alter your incarcerated child’s life permanently by getting him to learn the catechism. The most sure fire way to do this is to enroll him in a correspondence course written by Fr. John Hardon, S.J., and distributed by Inter Mirifica. The basic catechism course is free to prisoners, and it is excellent.
As supplemental material, I recommend that you obtain two additional books for your incarcerated child. The first is Karl Keating’s Catholicism and Fundamentalism. The other is my own The Missionary’s Catechism. Both may be obtained from Catholic Answers. Both of these books are necessary because everyone from your son’s bunkmate to the prison chaplain will be trying to get him to "unpope," and diligent use of these books (along with prayer) will prevent that.
In summary, then, these are my six suggestions to the parents of incarcerated children: stop feeling guilty; give your child true love; give the threefold sacrifice of daily Mass, daily adoration, and developing a personal friendship with your guardian angel; trade favors your child wants for spiritual favors; learn to set conditions and limitations; and get the child adequately catechized.
As I stated earlier, I have spent over a decade being a dad to many of the younger convicts. What I did not mention is that I am the father of four grown sons of my own. Furthermore, it has been over eight years since I have seen any of them. I am told that my eldest son, who is twenty-three years old (just six years shy of my age at incarceration), has made several horrendously bad decisions. He is without a doubt on the path that will lead him to prison. I have not been there for my sons to do what is necessary to prevent it.
So, Mom and Dad, I understand your pain, your guilt, and your tears. I’m not a self-proclaimed convict specialist who wishes to meddle in your family life and tell you how to live. I’m just a dad, passing on a little of what I’ve learned. God love you.
Russell Ford, a longtime contributor to This Rock, is an inmate in an Alabama prison.
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