Posted: Jun 06, 2021 6:06 pm
hackenslash wrote:Keep It Real wrote:(Julia Sweeny relayed that her father told her that age was 7 years, according to God, IIRC
I suspect this is a muddling (by somebody, not necessarily you) of a quote by Father Francisco Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, an order closely associated with teaching and indoctrination, who famously said 'show me the boy until he is seven and I will show you the man'. A statement about the ease of inculcating young minds.
I have a sneaking suspicion than somewhere in the telling and retelling of that anecdote, it's morphed from Loyola's notion into somthihng else. It's not like we don't have oodles of examples of that happening.
It's in her (hilarious and awesome) one woman stage show "Letting Go of God." The dialogue goes (roughly) like this:
"My dad said to me on my 7th birthday: "now you've reached the age of responsibility and are capable of committing all sins against God and man." I replied: "wait, so all this time I've been good and God didn't notice?!" My mother interjected: "Well I noticed!"" LOLZ
IIRC she relayed in that same show that her father had indeed considered becoming a Jesuit priest, so you could well be correct in your tracing of the 7 year milestone as opposed to some other marker.