The Benevolence of Babies

...Whose teensy hand is this, whose little ear and eye and nose...

...Each Christmas we get the chance for another birth...

...at child is this...

...They will grow up freer and more morally responsible than others who are less fortunate...

...Face to face with the Bambino we must confront anew the implication and mystery of the Incarnation...

...We tremble at the sight because of God's recklessness in this self-giving...

...More puzzling still are those babies who seem to start out in good families with every advantage, grow up, and yet choose to do evil...

...Taking care of infants once again produces a renewed and frightening awareness of how small and utterly dependent babies are...

...Babies are thereby freed to accomplish their primary mission-growing up...

...But infants do have amazing cognitive powers and give every evidence of a range of complex emotions...

...Here, too, within each baby there are thought to rage deep unconscious aggressive, sexual, and sadistic drives...

...Can it really be true that the second person of the Holy Trinity, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, is born of woman and becomes a baby, a baby really human and thoroughly divine...

...It may be hard to believe but Hitler, Stalin, and your garden-variety sadistic serial killer started out as innocent babies, a point lucidly evoked in Nobel prize winner Wislawa Szymborska's poem, "Hitler's First Photograph...

...When we succumb to the magnetic drawing power of infants, we can be sure that this indulgence needs no apology...

...certain Freudian and neo-Freudian theories of the infant's nature echo Augustine's pessimistic perspective...

...Can we also dare to discern in this Christmas mystery that God desires us to respond to God's self as a mother does, to comfort and meet the needs of the newborn Jesus as Mary, the first disciple, does...

...then there follows the choice against God and goodness...

...At the baby's distress the mother (and today we would add the father) becomes more anxious and less effective in her care...

...To begin to concentrate upon some of the questions accompanying our faith in the human-divine Christ Child, you should turn to the babies of your acquaintance...

...Not enough development of self, as yet...

...Then, too, the evil structures and powers of an unjust world oppress and harass families, especially when they belong to poor and powerless groups of people...

...The little Lord Jesus should not be laid away in the manger without extended reflection on the meaning of our Lord's existence as infant...

...We can know that the reign of sin and death over humankind is decisively defeated by the victory of Jesus Christ, the firstborn of many...

...American culture, obsessed with the body as a sanitized, controlled object of display, does not warm up to artistic depictions of a bare-breasted Mary nursing her infant, nor are Nativity scenes that show baby Jesus' uncovered penis chosen for Christmas cards...

...ble conscious self there comes a time when sin becomes possible, and, with the pervasiveness of human anxiety, perhaps inevitable...

...But do infants really have an unconscious mind with enough cognitive equipment, motivation, and purposeful self-continuity to engage in such complex, convoluted, and elaborated unconscious responses as murderous hate and envy...

...The wages of sin are death, and evildoers can become ever more habitually deadened and deadly...

...The primordial love affair of each infant with its devoted caretakers only begins a baby's love affair with the world...

...As with Augustine, these theories explain the evil unleashed in adulthood as unsocialized monsters acting out sadistic infantile urges...

...Lingering before paintings of the Christ Child in his itty-bitty swaddling clothes, we cannot escape the awareness of the dark night looming beyond the light...

...Always, genetic heritage, environmental conditions, and familial nurturing will interact with the responsible self's freely willed acts...

...Reading the life histories of prisoners on death row might lead you to an environmentally determined view of criminal violence...

...are that any noncatatonic person within earshot of a baby's serious cry of anguish will rush to relieve the baby's distress...

...Or closer to home, every day we read newspaper accounts of parents who torture and inflict every form of abuse upon their own children...

...Surely Christians struggling to be peacemakers can feel renewed and heartened by being reminded once again of God's decidedly nonviolent method of bringing peace on earth: Out-nurture your opponents...

...Not likely...

...Each infant while awake is oriented to reality and avidly takes in, orders, and encodes vast arrays of information from the social and physical surroundings...

...I feel your acceptance, your empathy and love for me and so I feel safe...

...First there is the death of trust or a fall into fearful anxiety...

...They are without guile, pride, envy, lust, vengeful acts of ill will, deception, or self-deception...

...Sullivan believed that a new mother inevitably will be anxious about being a good mother, and her anxiety will be empathetically felt by her baby who will then become anxious and distressed...

...From whence a Hitler or soldiers and concentration camp guards who cut babies from their raped mothers' wombs...

...This results in making the baby even more anxious, making mother, in turn, yet more anxious, and so on...

...Your normal baby in "an average/expectable environment" is bent on conquering and understanding the world as fast as possible...

...But everyone who starts out as a good baby does not increase in grace and wisdom...

...this instinctual response can be aesthetically, morally, and intellectually justified...

...The existence of such evil within human beings has convinced many observers that only mushy sentimentalists could possibly see infants as innocent, or consider human nature to be intrinsically good...

...It is right and good that adorable beings be adored, especially when the practice ensures that vulnerable members of the human family are given the protection they need...

...Virtuous spirals of faith and love can transform human relationships positively, beginning with a baby and its caretakers...

...Painful suffering, distress, and discomfort also occur but are instantly protested against in vigorous vocalizations...

...Not only do evil desires lurk latently within the selfish, proud, and fallen human nature of every infant, but powerful demonic forces in the service of Satan tempt human beings to increase the spread of sin and corruption...

...infanticide, especially female infanticide, may be among the most ancient and prevalent human practices...

...A baby's joy and delight run the gamut from drowsy and sated contentment to aroused ecstasy...

...As the magi depart, King Herod began slaughtering the innocents, a policy he no doubt justified as a tragic choice forced upon him by political necessity...

...Like other royal personages, infants have no difficulty accepting as their due the prompt arrival of comfort, food, clean diapers, personal attention, and round-the-clock service...

...Babies may startle in fear but they don't appear anxious...

...I can identify with you and then take into myself your confidence and trustworthiness...

...After watching our new babies, it is no mystery to me why heaven has been imagined as an endlessly absorbing beatific vision, or an ongoing celebratory feast, or a dance among the stars harmonizing in a heavenly choir...

...Onward, upward, outward toward whatever is the next stage in developing new skills and capacities...

...When you assent to the astounding claim that the Word becomes flesh, one of us and one with God, you are catapulted into deep and mysterious waters...

...Can we think new thoughts and expand our hearts to experience new hope...

...What can look like severe attention deficit disorders in a baby-bored by a toy after ten seconds-is but a sign of how quickly babies process data...

...Holy persons have greater inner freedom of choice than other people...

...I am not sure whether conscience ever dies completely, but defensive measures against its threatening condemnation can escalate...

...Still, during this time before the final advent of God's coming kingdom, sin retains its power...

...Babies possess incredible cognitive and socio-emotional powers, but these innate infant programs appear to be focused upon learning and mastering the external reality as well as solidifying positive human attachments with caregivers...

...This Christmas as thousands of nativity scenes materialize across the land, we do well to focus our gaze and think on that baby in the creche...

...Odds Sidney Callahan, the mother of six, grandmother of two, and author of many books, is a Commonweal columnist...

...Why not...

...Indeed many negative emotions are contagious...

...Here is basic trust in action...

...Other new evidence of a baby's built-in abilities to learn can only inspire awe...

...Babies refresh the spirit because they enjoy a life incapable of sin...

...More mentally impaired persons may bear less moral responsibility for their actions...

...Babies are doomed because as human beings descended from Adam and Eve they inherit the fatal flaw of Original Sin passed down in every conception by sexual intercourse...

...Inflicting terror and pain on other living beings‚ cats, dogs, or helpless humans‚ may quell for a moment gnawing pangs of anxiety and fear...

...But this denies the reality of human freedom...

...Where indeed...

...Even charismatics speaking in tongues sound like they are enjoying an exalted form of happy baby babble...

...mother nurses and baby eats, cries, spits, soils, and gets cleaned...

...If our sinning is inevitable and springs from our defenses against anxiety, then how do we first become anxious...

...This is why, for example, the sexual, erotic, and wedding imagery of the Song of Songs works so well to describe spiritual moments of consolation and joy...

...Ergo, Bosnia and the sadistic torture of innocent children...

...How many hearts' messages there are to be found in this divine self-communication...

...Excelsior...

...Ironically, in my view, those babies who are given the greatest gifts of mind, body, and nurture will be the most capable of truly sinning...

...Innate human empathy for the weakest and handicapped in any group always struggles against utilitarian moves that favor the survival of the strong...

...Augustine is not alone in this view...

...The psychoanalyst Harry Stack Sullivan once averred that no one can escape anxiety because the existence of human empathy makes anxiety contagious...

...Humans are created in the image of God...

...To Augustine, in a world he called "this hellhole," it is no surprise that babies grow up to become evil...

...work is play...

...Infusions of love and trust between people can heal psychic wounds...

...Where will those tootsy-wootsies finally wander...

...Experience in taking care of our own beloved babies reveals the surprising truth that, yes, it is possible all at the same time to protect, comfort, serve, enjoy, love, and reverently obey the call of a miraculously given new life...

...Emotional contagion is a fact of human social life...

...Who can smash in the skulls of toddlers or hurl living children into burning bonfires...

...As we begin to observe babies we are immediately struck with wonder...

...Certain neopsychoanalytic thinkers believe that an infant at the breast can harbor murderous, envious, and punishing attitudes aimed at the mother...

...The Christ Child...

...Worse still, once a person is morally socialized and can feel guilt and shame, then the more anxiety he or she can feel over breaking the rules or failing to keep them...

...Reacting with anxious self-loathing, persons can choose to drown out the moral voice of conscience by engaging in still more desperately violent, cruel, and destructive acts...

...Can we conclude then that it is the amount of sin and evil that surround an innocent baby which will determine whether that child will grow up to become an evildoer...

...A series of innocent questions are asked of a snapshot in hand: "And who's this little fellow in his itty-bitty robe...

...Herod's deed is not exceptional...

...Christian belief in the Incarnation can be seen as the crux of many theological and, I would add, psychological controversies...

...Infants are also graced because they exist as members of that human estate and family that God loves and enters...

...This Noel, can we really absorb these wonderful tidings of comfort and joy...

...Gazing again at the Holy Child and Holy Mary, Mother of God, we view a miraculous implosion of human freedom in history...

...For a start we can be thankful for the affirmation of the dignity of the human body...

...But if empathy is universal and innate among humans, why and how do some babies become adults who can so suppress empathy that they violate natural and socialized taboos against violence...

...Saint Augustine, for one, believed that babies come into the world wailing over their miserable and damned condition...

...Human blood (preferably male) and human tears (preferably female) appear to be the only bodily emissions that escape from the veil of censorship...

...God only knows who sins and why, because only God knows the hearts of human beings and everything in their intricate and unique history...

...Individual sins and social structures of sin diminish the chances for each new baby to survive and flourish...

...Recent research devoted to infants emphasizes their dynamic cognitive and social capabilities...

...Once they "get it" they want to move on...

...Sins of the fathers and mothers will tend to distort a child's development...

...Play is work...

...Eventually in adulthood, love of a cherished mate replays these foun-dational scripts...

...We may be wounded but are not depraved...

...Lacking trust in God and feeling anxious and fearful, a human being may react by angrily striking out, or by reactively aggrandizing the self, or defensively closing down mind and feelings, or retreating into inertia, or abusing power over others, or even self-destructing...

...Of those who have been given much, much will be required...

...As for the problem of sin and inherited Original Sin, con-sider this basic insight of The Catechism of the Catholic Church in describing the first sin: "Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God's command...

...hearts burn with love as celebrants make merry, with nothing to dismay...

...The Christ Child...

...In the general run of human families and in most environments in which human beings struggle to survive, anxiety and sin will abound...

...This infant and mother are flesh like all other flesh...

...I am a new and typically besotted grandparent of two (Liam and Perry Ann, pictured below), and baby-oriented Christmas thoughts come easily...

...Baby devotion may be one of those deeply programmed primate responses, honed by eons of selective evolution, to ensure group survival...

...Curiosity and delight reign supreme when a baby is loved and well cared for...

...Surely these negative spirals of contagious anxiety in infant caretaking exist-as well, alas, as in many other human relationships...

...Once the infancy iron curtain was breached by imaginative experimental methods (videos, microre-corders, conditioned sucking, and eyegaze techniques), it became possible to see how infants initiate and shape social interactions with their caretakers...

...Those who see abortion as a form of early infanticide should not be surprised at how hard it is to eradicate...

...But at birth, I would confidently affirm, each baby begins life in innocence...

...Surely some intuitive recognition of the powerful influence of loving empathy and faith upon a baby's development is one reason the church proclaims that Mary would have to be a person uniquely preserved from Original Sin (or, in my interpretation, distrustful anxiety) in order to accept and trust wholeheartedly and freely in her role as mother of the Messiah...

...Perhaps the greatest saints express so much guilt and fear of falling into sin because as holy persons they have become so morally sensitive and developed so much inner self-possession...

...Mutual delight infuses ardent unions...

...Learning to accept our body's redemption may take a lifetime...

...Babies cannot sin, but somewhere in every normal individual's development into a responsiFace to face with the Bambino, we must confront anew the Implication and mystery of the Incarnation...

...What child is this...

...But then human emotions of joy and love are also contagious and can provide the em-pathetic means to overcome anxiety and fear...

...There are many other babies who start life in circumstances similar to those of the worst criminals, grow up, and yet never do grievous harm...

...There, there now, is that better...

...Enraptured lovers and babies at the breast abide in the sacrament of the present moment just as mystics do...