Uncles and Aunts

It is in the offering of uncles and aunts that we first use our priestly powers. Long before we can see our parents, we look with gladness upon their brethren. There is no greater historical gift than a brace, a set—a baker's dozen, if at all possible—of uncles. (Dutch uncles will do as well as blood uncles; indeed the inequities of nature make them alsmost indispensible. No boy's priesthood should be imperiled just because his grandparents failed to have enough children.)

...Any ten-year-old boy who would not rather live with his Uncle Henry is a boy to be watched with the gravest suspicion: his priesthood should have been operative long since. He will not be able to choose his own father for years, but, if he cannot offer his uncles now, we may well have an unhistoric monster on our hands. Such a boy should not, of course, be banished. He needs help, therapy, treatment. Accordingly, he should be provided, perhaps at the government's expense, with a deluxe set of uncles for oblation. A 210-pound water skier, for a start, and a 140-pound model locomotive builder to go with him. And, if available, a poetry reader, a crane operator, an amateur violinist and a judge of good whiskey. And, above all, an uncle who can tell jokes which will grow hairier as the the boy grows taller. His cure would not be long coming. The therapy is well-nigh infallible.

-Robert Farrar Capon, An Offering of Uncles, 131-132.

The Emergence of a Priestly Agent

The portrait of a young couple with their first baby is still an elegant one. But the snapshot of a pair of beaten forty-five-year-olds surrounded, overshadowed and stymied by a handful of teen-agers and a clutch of elementary school pupils has less to recommend it on the level of intelligibility. Somewhere in between, elegance left by the back door. Around the end of toddling and the beginning of talking, a second and unnoticed pregnancy began; another and quite painless delivery was accomplished. A person was born. A piece of history began to distinguish itself and quietly proceeded to start a history of its own. A new priest was ordained sub rosa and sent back to his old haunts, with no collar and no letters of ordination, but with all the powers of the priesthood of Adam.

From there on, the story of childhood is the classic story of the unrecognized prince in his rightful kingdom. His poor parents are totally unprepared for his claim. With immense good will, they struggle like peasants and villagers to find out what is going on, but they are always several episodes behind the story. The pains of childhood—the agonies of the teens—are due precisely to the emergence of a priestly agent among beings that are not ready to have him arrive so soon.

-Robert Farrar Capon, An Offering of Uncles, 125-126.