Dégénération of family?

The song "Dégénération" made a big stir here in Québec recently: even to the extent that it was used by a group of extreme right wing 'pro-traditional-family' fanatics as an anthem for their cause.
However, the artists wrote it as satire pure and simple - of both the horrors of traditional families in a rigidly catholic society and the 'changes' that have happened over the last two generations.
From the days when the curé would go around demanding that women produce ever more children to now when woman are liberated from such direct traditional exploitation.

This photo is of the old family farm-house of Cayen's mother's family. They left the land, decreased the size of their families, indulged in divorce and all kinds of other 'degradations' - to use a term I bumped into today.

In other words they have evolved
- to the extent that Cayen and I (non-traditional exponents of degraded values that we are) are a focus for the family here: supplying not only a place to gather, eat, celebrate and crash but it is also us who help a number of the aging members of the clan in their day to day life.
Even taking Cayen's mother to mass - the Pope definitely feels we are part of the 'culture of death' and therefore degrading to traditional family values. There are virtually no priests left here and it is interesting to hear the nuns in the family, the women who all but replace the priests, speak of the stupidity of these traditional values and how irrelevant they are to life today. One of the priests has noticed our care for the ladies and has also suggested that we ignore the injunctions of the traditional church!

All this to say that there are new and wonderful expressions of familial love developing here - even with the ex-parents-in-law of Cayen. It has fallen to me to plant and harvest their year's supply of potatoes - and believe me, they eat potatoes!

Quite simply there is a shared love!

A lot of these elders are deeply catholic individuals but they realize how strong their families still are and how 'deviants' like us have enriched their lives.

Maybe I will indulge my newly acquired Canadian right and ask Cayen to marry me!
(Nah, not the marrying kind - too traditional for me).