Questions for Reflection: •What ways have you found effective in bringing a peaceful solution to volatile situations? • How do you quiet yourself in times of great disturbance? Discuss this month's Questions for Reflection from "God in Our Midst."

Being a peacemaker is just part of the job description for parents. Squabbles over who gets the last cookie, who pushed whom first and whose turn it is on the computer are normal household occurrences. The secret to peace on the home front is finding solutions that strengthen relationships.

Peace is not the opposite of conflict. It is a way of solving disagreements without hurting each other physically or emotionally—and certainly without resorting to violence. In their book, Parenting for Peace and Justice, Jim and Kathy McGinnis offer a four-step approach to bringing about peaceful solutions in volatile situations.

They tell us that unless children are threatening or engaging in abusive actions, stay out of the argument. Children need to learn how to broker their own disagreements. When someone is being hurt or threatened, however, you need to step in and separate the youngsters. Send them to different spots to cool down and think over the situation. After a little time, go to each child and listen (without comment) to his or her story. Bring the children together with the understanding that they will have a certain amount of time to solve the problem by themselves before you impose your own solution. The McGinnises report that because their solutions were almost always less tolerable than their children’s, mutual solutions were usually found.

Learning to deal with conflict in a peaceful way is a valuable, lifetime skill—certainly one the world is much in need of. And by teaching our youngsters to be peacemakers we are helping them realize their call to be children of God.

For Family Response: Using each of the letters in the word "peace," think of something (a word or phrase) that might bring peace to the world. Discuss this month's FAMILY CORNER.

My mother would not let me read comic books as a child, fearing they would corrupt my morals. I don’t think she would have had a problem with Spider-Man, the Marvel comic now on the big screen.

From the beginning Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) yearns for the love of the beautiful and unattainable girl next door, Mary Jane (Kirsten Dunst). But when Peter the science nerd is transformed into Spider-Man and finally wins Mary Jane’s love, he chooses the more perfect pursuit: saving the world from evil.

With Spider-Man, computer-generated graphics merge seamlessly with human acting to create spectacular freedom of movement in space, allowing impossible angles and the wonderful overstatement that we expect of comic superheroes.

In a nice modern twist, teenager Tobey Maguire is bitten by a genetically modified spider. He wakes to experience new physical powers ranging from superhuman strength to incredible agility. He first uses his newfound talents to defeat the bully who torments him at school. This is before he discovers the spider’s talent for ejecting web filaments that allow him to attach himself to any surface and swing through the air.

Spider-Man’s talents mature quickly when he chases down a burglar who has killed the uncle (Cliff Robertson) who raised him. Peter remembers his uncle’s last words: “With great power also comes great responsibility.” He sets out to fight crime and right wrongs. He electrifies the press with his rescues, but is not always seen as a benevolent force.

In the meantime, another biogenetic accident, with a nod toward Frankenstein, has created a different monster. An extremely ambitious but generally upright CEO of a military contracting company is transformed into the Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe). A technologically unstoppable fiend with a one-man, fully-armed flying machine, the Green Goblin realizes that the only challenge to his power can be Spider-Man. He must win him to the side of evil or destroy him.

In the conflict that follows both men must make choices. Spider-Man, discouraged by negative perceptions of him in the press, is briefly tempted, but mostly the battle is set for the requisite ultimate and explosive battle between good and evil.

The Green Goblin decides that the way to defeat Spider-Man is by attacking his heart—through the people he loves. He seizes Mary Jane and taunts Spider-Man with a choice between saving her or a gondola full of children he has just cut loose.

We Americans have always loved movies that champion the victory of good over evil, and comic book superheroes satisfy this without the sticky gray areas of reality. In this world there is no greater love than Spider-Man’s.

For Media Watch: What values did you find in the film "Spider-Man"? Discuss Frank Frost's film review in this month's MEDIA WATCH.

Headstrong: That’s only one way to describe the young woman from a wealthy family in Assisi who, at age 18, quietly stole away from the home of her parents one evening in favor of a life of prayer and poverty. They had hoped she would marry, but the sermons Clare had heard Francis of Assisi preach convinced her that she, like him, was called to follow the gospel in a radical way.

Making her way to a small chapel where Francis and others were waiting for her, Clare cast the world aside. She exchanged her fine clothes and jewels for a simple woolen habit. She welcomed the sound of the scissors Francis used on her long, golden hair. She prepared to spend the night in a nearby convent. And when, shortly thereafter, her family and friends found her and demanded she return home, Clare held firm. She had chosen to embrace a new life that, in time, God would make known to her.

Many others joined Clare in that new life—including two of her sisters and, ultimately, her widowed mother. They became known as the Poor Clares, women who lived lives of poverty, prayer and austerity and in complete seclusion from the world. Most striking, perhaps, was their emphasis on poverty. They owned no property and relied solely on contributions.

From age 21 onward, Clare served as abbess at the convent of San Damiano in Assisi. Though she never left its walls, people sought her wisdom and counsel, including popes, bishops, Francis himself.

For the last 27 years of her life, Clare suffered many illnesses, perhaps brought on by her many penances. She was canonized in 1255, only two years after her death. Her feast day is August 11.

Francis and Clare: In the popular mind, in written accounts of their lives, even in movies, the two are inevitably linked—always with Francis in the lead.

Yes, but, says Franciscan Sister Margaret Carney, 61.

“Indeed, their destinies were linked, but Clare had tremendous personal strength and authority on her own,” Sister Margaret told Every Day Catholic. Clare lived almost 30 years after Francis and, in that time, “took stands to defend the original vision she and Francis had embraced,” says the Franciscan sister and author of Clare: The First Franciscan Woman. For the past three years Sister Margaret has served as director of the Franciscan Institute, based at St. Bonaventure University.

Her interest in Clare grew slowly over the years. But as she pursued doctoral studies on Clare and unearthed more and more about the saint so often in the shadow of Francis, she saw “an autonomous woman of fortitude and sanctity” come to life. She cites Clare’s insistence that she and her sisters live in real poverty despite pressure from two popes to adopt the more comfortable lifestyle common in convents of the day. Clare spelled out her Franciscan principles in the Rule of life she wrote.

People who have read Sister Margaret’s book on Clare see it as filling in the missing pieces about the origins of the Franciscan family. It’s a family to which Sister Margaret, a native of Pittsburgh, has belonged for 40 years. At the Franciscan Institute she continues to fill in the gaps as teacher and administrator. She also welcomes the “new voices” of Franciscan scholars unearthing fresh insights into “the most important woman” to emerge from the movement Francis inspired.

The following material is available at www.AmericanCatholic.org:

"Community of the Beatitudes," St. Anthony Messenger, March 2002
"The Forgotten Art of Blessing," St. Anthony Messenger, October 2000

The following products can be ordered from St. Anthony Messenger Press/Franciscan Communications (1-800-488-0488):

"Lessons from the School of Suffering: A Young Priest With Cancer Teaches Us How to Live" (book)
"Jesus' Plan for a New World: The Sermon on the Mount" (book) "Breaking Open the Gospel of Matthew: The Sermon on the Mount" (book) "Sermon on the Mount" (audiocassette)
"The Beatitudes: Finding Where Your Treasure Is" (Catholic Update)

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