Real Life Prayer Gardening

Last updated on: August 25, 2015 at 9:16 pm By Jennifer Fitz

What your prayer life needs is a Frisbee dog.

My first luminous mystery this week went to Margaret Rose Realy, the Catholic Gardening Lady. She’s the author of A Garden of Visible Prayer: Creating a Personal Sacred Space One Step at a Time, which is the book that helped me create what you see in this very attractive cell phone photo. I think of her a lot this time of year, because I pray poorly indoors, so I end up going outside, and sometimes even end up in the official “prayer garden” part of my yard.

What you see:

Plants that aren’t dead. Took a lot of trial and error, and finally a husband who installed an irrigation system, to discover species that could survive this particular corner. It faces southeast and is not shaded, and thus in the summer average morning temperatures are in the triple-digits. Early spring is the only time it looks quite this cheerful — in part because there’s a preponderance of early-spring-blooming plants, since nothing put in the ground after May 15 is likely to survive, and the garden store always sells in March – April that which blooms in March – April.

Seashells. That’s the blurry mass of white stuff in the center. The first time we went to the beach with the kids, several years ago, I collected a bazillion seashells. I can’t help myself, they’re all so interesting, even the broken the ones. Especially the broken ones. So I had all these grocery bags of damp, salty, seaweed-y seashells. And of course I live in a very small house, if you calculate size by creating a ratio of junk-to-square-feet. So where to put the seashells? And then I remembered that seashells come from outside, and thus . . . they can stay outside.

This makes me happy, because it means when I go to the beach, I can bring home as many shells as I want. You can’t say that about many things.

A garden gnome. Thus far I’ve failed in my efforts at acquiring a suitable piece of sacred art for the prayer garden. Meanwhile, we had this gutter running right through the view from our screen porch. I kept trying to hide the gutter, which is not attractive even by people-who-collect-junk standards. Finally I gave it up, and claimed the spouse’s garden gnome from another corner of the yard. He (the gnome, not the spouse) was appointed master of the waterworks. He’s got a large overturned flower pot, broken just right, for a cottage, and a collection of overturned broken tea cups for his various pets. The place is so much homier now that there’s someone to keep company the toad that lives behind the bush.

Rosary Dog. I’m a sucker for a good ball dog, always have been. So now the dog knows that when she hears me grab a plastic rosary off the hook in the kitchen, it’s time to bolt outside and find a toy. In this photo she’s posing with her chewed-up Frisbee, but FYI it’s actually easier to pray while throwing a tennis ball.

***

So that’s my report. Cheer up Margaret Rose Realy (who could use it) by reporting in with your garden updates. Thanks!

Divine Mercy Sunday – What’s it all about??

Last updated on: November 11, 2016 at 2:12 pm By Jennifer Fitz

The first Sunday after Easter is “Divine Mercy Sunday”. It’s new observance, since the devotion itself only dates from the 1930’s. (God’s mercy, of course, is much older. Eternal even.) You can learn how to pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and pile of other stuff, here. The Chaplet is my go-to recommendation for prayer for folks who either:

Are too recently arrived from the anti-Mary corner of Protestant-world to be comfortable saying all those Hail Mary’s in a regular Rosary, or
Only have a short amount of time to spare.

Also, it happens to be a very good prayer.

To learn more about Saint Faustina Kowalska, and how to say a few names in Polish, you might try Saint Faustina Kowalska, Messenger of Mercy from Pauline Media. I’ve read a pile of the saint books in that series, and have not been disappointed yet.* Written for children, ideal for busy adults.

John Paul II, who will be canonized this very Divine Mercy Sunday, was the key man in getting all things Sr. Faustina & Divine Mercy put on the calendar. So, double Divine Mercy this year.

*I take exception to the Kowalska sisters’ habit of taking turns attending Sunday Mass because they only had one presentable dress for multiple girls to share. I think you should go to Mass every Sunday you can, no matter how dreadful your wardrobe. But their family produced a saint and mine hasn’t, so what do I know? In any case, the author doesn’t endorse this practice, she just tells it like it was. Thus, good book if you’ve recently said, “I have nothing to wear!” but actually you do.

General update on me: I had a lovely Easter, thanks for asking. Living the up-down life here, and hit a few days of down earlier in the week. But overall, things are up-ish. I’ll take it.

Modesty as the Language of Virtue

Last updated on: November 11, 2016 at 2:09 pm By Jennifer Fitz

I was watching a detective show recently (doesn’t matter which one) featuring a smart, competent, nerves-of-steel female lead. A genuinely likeable character. I was irritated that while the male characters all dressed like the serious business-types they were, there seemed to be a mandatory minimum of exposed flesh for all their female colleagues. It was as if the female characters were being cast for their cleavage.

I like detective shows, so I set aside my feminist indignation and watched anyway. The bad guys captured one of the stars, and now they are following the happily-married male co-lead; they snap a picture of him meeting with his female colleague. “Who’s that?” the bad guys ask their hostage, pointing to the photo.

Hostage doesn’t want to give away the female lead’s identity, so he thinks fast and floats a lie: “She’s a prostitute.”

How on earth could such a lie be expected to succeed? It wasn’t because the two in the photo were doing anything unchaste. Neither character had a reputation for loose morals. It was the clothes.

Aquinas in the World of the Over-Dressed

When Thomas Aquinas writes about modesty, scantily-clad ladies aren’t the main topic. He mentions the lust-situation, but spends more ink on questions of humility: Is the clothing ostentatious? Attention-seeking? The sins of pride and vanity are more a concern than sins of the flesh. You might conclude that this is because modesty has nothing to do with sex; the Catechism says otherwise. Firmly.

I’d propose that Aquinas’ failure to worry to about short skirts and tight pants had something to do with the bit about how short skirts and tight pants weren’t all that fashionable in his day. The immodesty problem in clothing was, in the 1200’s, mostly a question of elaborate displays of wealth.

(And when tight pants did come into style in subsequent years, it was chic young men displaying their masculine glory. Dear Gentlemen: Please. Unless you’re singing soprano, we assume you’re adequately equipped in the manhood department, kindly skip the tights. Sopranos, you skip the tights too. Thanks.)

Modesty concerns far more than clothes, of course. It involves our actions, our words, the things we buy, and the way we live. It can’t be boiled down into little snippets of snark, as if everything hinged on “fitting in” or “avoiding leading others into sin”. It is complex. It is a language.

You Can’t Be Immodest Alone in the Shower

I can commit all kinds of sins locked alone in the bathroom, but immodesty isn’t one of them. Even though immodesty concerns my personal intentions and actions, immodesty can only occur in the context of community. Immodesty requires an audience.

Modesty is the language of virtue. It is the things I do, or don’t do, that communicate my intentions and values. It can involve clothing, certainly; think of how putting on a tuxedo communicates something that putting on a pair of overalls does not. It can also involve my actions: A peck on the cheek communicates something different than a passionate kiss on the lips. There are 10,000 kinds of smiles, some of them friendly, some of them deadly. Am I laughing with you, at you, or in utter disregard of you?

As in any language, we can use modesty to lie. He plays the part of the devoted husband, but he’s sleeping with his secretary.

As in any language, we can say one thing and communicate another. There’s the apocryphal nun so pure she could walk down the street naked in perfect modesty; in real life, we’re far more likely to meet the character at the other end of that spectrum, the one who manages to make Amish look sleazy.

As in any language, the same exact word, action, or gesture can have different meanings in different parts of the world. Think of the astonished nervousness with which American teenagers learn the French word for “arm”. Am I really expected to say that word out loud in class?

When we travel, we play a game of give-and-take with our manners, finding the balance between our native sensibilities and respect for the customs of our hosts. Allowances are made for outsiders, but not always the allowances we hoped. Do I tolerate the brusque manners of that native Chicagoan because I know that up north people act that way without meaning to be rude? Or do I tolerate it because I suspect that despite their other virtues northerners are in fact hopelessly rude — they don’t know how to act, bless their hearts.

Could I Pass the Slander Test?

Let us assume, for a moment, that you and I are virtuous people wishing to behave modestly. Imagine it’s Sunday morning, and we’re sitting at church. Across the aisle, the parish gossip Mrs. Slander spies us with a gleam in her eye. She leans close to the ear of her pewmate Mrs. Nicely, that venerable church lady you know from seven different committees. And she whispers the worst of kind of lies you can imagine. Did you hear what Jennifer and her friend did? Horrid stuff. Things you and I would never do. Sins we’re not even creative enough to imagine, let alone commit.

What is Mrs. Nicely’s reaction? Does she think Mrs. Slander is at it again with her ridiculous stories? Or does she glance our way and think maybe the accusations are believable this time? How well does what she hears match what she’s seen us do?

Modesty doesn’t answer the question are the accusations true? I can behave modestly and yet be guilty of all kinds of horrid sins. (Only up to a point: Sooner or later the bonnet comes off, so to speak, or there is no sin.) Likewise, I can behave immodestly, and yet never cross the line from communicating to doing — I may sin in my immodesty, but without committing the sins my immodesty advertises.

The Language of What Country?

Over the past century, standards of modesty in dress and action with respect to chastity have changed dramatically. We could say the language of chastity has changed — think of ourselves as living through the great vowel shift of western fashion.

Some of that shift had nothing to do with changes in morals — a recent parody piece at the Eye of the Tiber fell flat for me not because it wasn’t true in certain circles two decades ago, but because lately among NFP-using, chastity-teaching Catholic homeschooling moms, this just isn’t the topic. We’re not there anymore, not in my corner of the (formerly?) ultra-conservative evangelical Christian world.

But some of the fashion change does have to do with morals. (With respect to chastity, that is; with respect to ostentation, I’m afraid there’s been very little change these last 100 years — new customs, same old sins.) In light of these dramatic changes, how are we to know what modesty looks like anymore?

I’m reminded of an anecdote from Brother Andrew. As the young man prepares to travel to England for missionary training, his school teacher takes him aside and apologizes. She’d taught him English as best she could, but now she must confess: She’s never actually heard the English language. She had to guess on the pronunciation. Sure enough, he arrives in England and can’t understand a word being said.

I can dabble in a language on my own, but if I wish to master it, I need to learn from a native speaker. If I want to learn the language of modesty, where do I look? To those who are virtuous.

Evangelical Poverty, Fasting, and the Foods We Eat

Last updated on: November 11, 2016 at 2:07 pm By Jennifer Fitz

We’ve been graced with a delightfully candid neighbor boy, and a few years ago he asked us point blank, “Are you poor?”

No, most certainly not. The appalling situation in which some of our children must share a bedroom not withstanding, let’s be clear: I live luxuriously. Hot water, indoor plumbing, coffee, books, very many shoes . . . everywhere you look, my home is the very picture of superabundance. Elizabeth Scalia shares a letter from a mom who actually tried the $1.25/day grocery challenge from Billy Kangas. She reports what you may have suspected: Destitution is no fun.

The Paradox of Uncluttered Living

Pope Francis or no Pope Francis, Christians do have a calling to share our wealth with the poor. I know some people who pull that off better than I do; they live frugally and avoid accumulating any excess. The irony: If you visited their homes, you might think they were rich.

The reason? Really rich people have clean houses. They don’t have bunches of junk stuffed into every spare corner. If you take that Christian ideal, and combine it with an eye for durable furniture, good housekeeping habits, and a few pretty objects artfully displayed, it creates the illusion of luxury.

Probably one of the reasons the neighbor kid inquired about our circumstances is that we’ve always got the Sanford & Son thing going on in some corner or another — but that has nothing to do with wealth or a lack of it, and everything to do with a penchant for creating toys out of cardboard boxes. It’s a hobby. A trashy hobby.

Christian Poverty in a Nutshell

Fr. Thomas Dubay’s book Hapy are You Poor lays out the argument for evangelical poverty in considerable and enthusiastic detail, and one of his opening observations is that we aren’t talking destitution. The working principle is that we use what we need, and pass on the rest. The tendency, in rejecting this aspect of Christian spirituality, is to make a list of things we can’t live without, and say, “How can you expect me to live without ________?!” And the answer is: No one expects that. If you need it, have it.

(My tendency in rejecting this aspect of Christian spirituality is to just hit the “submit order” button, and put off worrying about it for some other time. I need a rubber bracelet that says TGFP – Thank God for Purgatory.)

If you want a shorter and easier read, Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s post “Benedictine and Franciscan Poverty” hits the key points – read the whole thing, or you’ll miss my favorite bit:

My Dad was a Christian businessman. Sometimes people would criticize him for making a decent mark up on goods he sold in his store.

His answer was, “I want to make as much money as possible in order to further the Lord’s work!” He did too. He and my mom were wealthy, but lived modestly and gave much money to good Christian causes. This is the way the laypeople are called to detachment: to realize what the money is for: it’s for God’s work. It’s for the good of the gospel. It’s for the kingdom of heaven.

For a look at what benedictine poverty, architecture-version, looks like, visit Clear Creek Monastery. Or Fr. L’s church-building plans page. Or Europe.

For an idea about franciscan poverty, here’s the Rule and Constitutions of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal. (The Rule of St. Benedict can be found here, and it’s pretty interesting too. And the FFR guys have a nice vocations-discernment page here, take a look.)

Luxury & Junk Food

So I did, after reading Fr. Dubay’s book, spend some time thinking about the whole “What do we really need?” problem. And here’s our situation: We try to buy good food at my house.

Good food is not cheap.

In America, the going thing is to eat trashy food. So much so, that Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry recently felt called to write about how Catholics need to eat better. Which means that if you read labels, or buy organic, or generally try to eat like a 19th century farmer actually ate, only without doing the farming . . . your Cheetos-eating compatriots may well accuse you of gluttony. You’re eating too daintily, or too luxuriously.

Now let’s review: I do live luxuriously. So much so that I feel the need to warn you that Equal Exchange switches over to its summer shipping policy on May 1st, so if the best you can do in your efforts at Christian poverty is to eat fair-trade chocolate, order before melting season sets in.

(I don’t have a particular reason for favoring EE, by the way, it just somehow worked out for me. Catholic Relief Services has a pile of links to other reputable sources for this ‘n that. And they fail to mention Mystic Monk, so I will, because I’m not sure you can be a Catholic blogger unless you mention the monks every now and again.)

But if your idea of luxury is to eat bread that contains things like flour and water in it, but not chemicals you’d have to get special clearance to use in high school lab science, that’s the sound of your brain on American groceries.

Buying expensive cheeses imported from another continent? Luxurious. (I do that.) Buying cheese that has only ingredients like “milk” and nothing that can only be had by prescription? Not luxurious. If the cow /pig /chicken now on your plate ate grass and saw the sky at some point in its life, that does not make you a glutton. It makes you humane.

How’s that Religious Freedom Thing Working Out These Days?

Last updated on: August 25, 2015 at 9:14 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Let’s not delude ourselves: The United States has never quite lived up to her ideals in the civil liberties department. Compared to the competition, of course, the US Constitution was and remains quite the breakthrough. If we’re going to have to constantly fight the oppressiveness-reflex, give me a country where we can do it via lawsuits any day.

But why is it so, so hard to just live and let live? Let’s do a test. I’ll list a contemporary challenge to a civil liberty, and we’ll see how many comboxers insist that the government is *absolutely right* to coerce the citizenry on that particular topic:

What we teach in the public schools. The voters, or the administration, or the local moral majority is just certain that the poor children are languishing for lack of _______________ contentious religious or moral teaching being included in the public school curriculum. It must be taught! Otherwise children won’t learn what to think!

What children must be taught, anywhere at all. Heaven forbid that parents be trusted to educate their own children. Parents are lazy, stupid, and dangerous. The state can be trusted. The state will preemptively ensure that your children are properly reared.

What products a business must sell, and to whom. Now now, let’s not get carried away. It’s perfectly okay for business owners to deny services to certain customers under certain situations, for all the approved reasons. It’s okay not to stock pre-approved you-don’t-have-to-stock-it items. The important thing is that you, the business owner, don’t get to decide what business you conduct. The government will tell you.

Am I keeping this dangerously open-ended? Yes I am. Because I’m so mean. Because if you tell me “freedom of religion”, I don’t think to myself, “Freedom to practice the approved religions, and restrictions on practicing the weird religions those wrong-headed people subscribe to.”

That’s what freedom is. It’s radical. It includes the right to be wrong.

Quick Interlude: There’s “Freedom” and there’s “Freedom”

In Christian thinking we distinguish between license and freedom. “I have a right to kick puppies” is license: Taking upon yourself the right to do something evil. Freedom, in the license-vs.-freedom conversation, has more the sense of “emancipation”. Think: “I’ve been freed from the desire to kick puppies.” The puppy-kicking-lust no longer dominates me. I’ve been liberated from my slavery to this temptation.

That’s not the sort of freedom I’m talking about just yet. But we’ll come back to it.

(PS: I have no desire to kick puppies, and never have. You might say I was preserved from puppy-related sins from my very beginning. For which I am grateful.)

Back to our Topic: The Oppression Impulse

The kind of freedom I’m talking about right now is the free-will kind of freedom. That radical freedom that brings so much suffering on the world. You and I, made in the image of God, are endowed with the ability to choose right or wrong, life or death. It is dangerous and scary. It is also supremely good, in that it is the thing that makes virtue possible.

Without radical freedom, that precious homemade birthday card given to you by that dear little child, the card with the weird stick figures on it that probably do resemble you more than you’d like to imagine, that card has no meaning. Radical freedom is what makes it a gift from the heart, a sign of love. That same radical freedom allows you to be the person who’d jump in front of a bus in order to save the giver of that card.

(Mostly you use that freedom to politely listen to one more senseless attempt at a knock-knock joke. Which, after a while, begins to make the bus increasingly appealing. But you use your choice muscle to resist that base urge to check the bus schedule.)

The trouble being that radical freedom gives us the option to be wrong and to do wrong.

What Place for the State in Protecting Us from Ourselves?

We mostly understand that the role of governments is to govern: To keep things under control. We have laws against many of the kinds of murder, because we know that killing innocent people is wrong. We have laws against slavery, under our new improved efforts at living the constitutional life, because we know that keeping people as chattel is wrong. The law exists to assert morals, there’s no way around it.

The US Constitution is different than other forms of government in that it rejects the notion of preemptively saving us from ourselves. Murder is illegal, but the Constitution says that the state may not preemptively swoop in and deprive you of all your could-be murder weapons, on account of how you might maybe choose to use them badly because other people sometimes do. There’s a direct link between the right to bear arms and the notion of “innocent until proven guilty.”

Good law also strikes a balance in the severity of the moral infractions it enforces. Lying is evil, but not every lie is illegal. The law restricts itself to prohibiting certain kinds of lies — perjury, forgery, breach of contract — but does not involve itself in your duplicitous dealings concerning the Easter Bunny and who ate the last slice of cheesecake.

Much of the debate over religious liberty, or any other civil liberty, comes down to deciding: How serious is this matter?

The Current Challenge to Religious Freedom

The United States is going through a phase, culturally, where what we want is for everything to be fixed, and we want it fixed our way. Rampant STD’s? Let’s fix it via a massive mandatory vaccination campaign, since telling people not to sleep around would impinge on our dearly held value of sleeping-around-is-important. Low graduation rates? Let’s fix it via a bigger, meaner, stricter compulsory education program . . . these programs have never actually succeeded in causing restless, immature teens to value education, but the thought of letting a 16-year-old work for a few years until he comes to his senses* is unthinkable.

[Yes, now I’m getting specific in my combox testing. You’re going to tell me that it’s important we mandate your favorite cause, because There’s No Other Way. Thank you for proving my point. We are a fix-it culture, and we want it fixed our way.]

It is currently unthinkable that a woman could be given a health care savings account into which to funnel some of her wages, and be trusted with the choice as to whether she wanted to spend that money on contraceptives or not. We must have employers buy her the contraceptives directly! It is the only way! The method of paying people money and letting them decide how to spend it is not an option!

That’s the threat. Previous generations of Americans worried that their fellow citizens were not religious enough. This generation worries they are too religious — or more accurately, the wrong kind of religious. We’ve traded out one religion for another, in our trendy faith-that-must-be-embraced thinking. That the New Think isn’t called “religion” doesn’t change what it is: A set of beliefs about the world and about morality.

Do you believe in religious freedom? Probably not. It always was a crazy idea.

*It was not unthinkable a century ago. Time was, public high school graduation ages varied from as young as 14 to as old as early-twenties. You went when you could, and graduated when you’d mastered the material. I know. Crazy. Knowledge of history will do that to you.

Does Your Work as a Catechist Matter?

Last updated on: August 25, 2015 at 9:07 pm By Jennifer Fitz

The Sower at Sunset by Vincent van Gogh — Vincent van Gogh [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Do click through and view the image in zoom, the detail on the brushwork is lovely.

Elizabeth Duffy poses the question, “When Will My Work as a Catechist Bear Fruit?” Take a look at her post, and then I’d like to answer that question with a story I first shared a couple years ago, and which is no less true today. In other reprints apropos to Betty Duffy’s post: For those who didn’t see it when it first ran, here’s my answer to the “slacker parents” situation. And here I am again, arguing not just for parents but for everyone who darkens the door of your parish. There’s no “us” against “them” in religious education. There just isn’t.

Last night I answered one last question about eternal salvation with a real quick “Yes.” Under my breath I promised my stricken sidekick, who no doubt cringed to see me treat the subject so briefly, “We’ll cover ‘perfect contrition’ next week.”

We needed to keep moving with the class. “Yes” was an accurate answer; “Perfect Contrition” was the detailed version. We will cover it. I assure you. Do not think, dear junior theologian, that I would for a moment water down the faith. No way no how.

***

Very late at night, I remembered where it was I learned those words: Perfect Contrition.

I was 17, somewhat Catholic, and way behind on sacraments. A beleaguered pair of faithful, practicing Catholics was tasked with the job of turning slackers like me into confirmandi. Fast. We met once a week in a small group, and they walked us through the most essential essentials of the Catholic faith. What do you do if you are bleeding to death by the side of the road and you are guilty of a mortal sin? Perfect Contrition.

I can’t remember the name of the couple who taught me those words; I do remember their daughter was my friend (she went to a different school), and that she gave me a rosary for my confirmation, because I’d never had one and I’d told her how much I wanted one.

It eventually broke from excessive use, but that was later. Also, I went to college and left the Church.

***

The parable of the sower popped up this week. Several years ago my pastor helped me greatly (and presumably everyone else who heard his homily), by pointing out the gardening solution to the problem: Compost. If the soil isn’t so great, keep working on it.

There’s something else, though, that Perfect Contrition brought to mind: Weeds. And wanted plants that act just like ‘em.

Have you ever completely given up on a plant . . . determined it was dead and gone, and never to be seen again . . . and then it pops up one summer when you’d given up all hope? That’s weediness. The ability of one lone seed to sit hidden in the ground for years, and then when the time is right, it shoots up and takes over.

That’s what those words, Perfect Contrition, were to me. That little good-weed seed.

***

Catechists, don’t lose heart when everything you say seems to get lost. When you watch a student who was once so eager to learn about God suddenly grow up and move out and completely walk away from the Catholic faith. It wasn’t that you did nothing. It wasn’t that all your work was a failure.

The human heart is not some tiny little square of the garden, stuck with its rocks and thorns. It is a vast and varied territory. What you teach becomes these tiny grains of faith that spread everywhere into your students’ souls. There’s good ground somewhere in that garden. Somewhere in a corner you didn’t even see, didn’t even realize your words had reached.

And twenty years later, your very words — words like Perfect Contrition – come sprouting out of a mouth you’d had every reason to assume was a lost cause. And they come out, and your long-ago student who can’t even remember your name, who might have once even said, “I didn’t learn anything in religious ed,” your student knows exactly where that seed came from, and who it was who cooperated with the grace of God to put it there.

***

Also, God knows. And He does not lose track. Not ever.

Ignorant Kids, Slack Parents, Tepid Culture . . . What’s a Catechist to Do?

Last updated on: August 2, 2015 at 3:28 pm By Jennifer Fitz

We Patheos Catholics received a letter recently from a distressed catechist: The kids don’t know a thing about the faith, the parents just want the First Communion party, and everyone seems happy to settle for a platter of American Culture with Catholic Dressing on the Side.

Christian LeBlanc ably answers the question of how to teach the last few classes of the year. I’d like to back up and answer the question from a different angle. Take a deep breath and get a cup of water ready, because the medicine might be a tad unpleasant going down. But I promise: If you take it, you’ll feel better in the morning.

I’ve got these kids and this class, now what?

You can have all the theories in the world about the ideal way to evangelize and catechize, but at this very moment the question is: What am I going to do with these people for an hour a week in my classroom?

The answer, and yes I’m shaking your shoulders, and staring you in the eye, and yelling just a little, is this: You are going to teach them the Catholic faith.

Are they a bunch of ignorant slackers who don’t even know the Sign of the Cross? Then you pick up your hand, and you put it on your forehead, and you very slowly walk them through: “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Good. Let’s do it again. Good. And again. It’s a prayer kids, pray it like you mean it. Good.”

Yes, that’s your life. You told God you’d do anything for Him, and what He wants is for you teach a bunch of tired, cranky, fidgety kids how to make the Sign of the Cross. Or what Christmas is about. Or why they really, really, ought to ask Mom and Dad to please take them to Mass on Sundays. I’m sorry God didn’t give you a mission field in Haiti or a convent full of future St. Dominics, but hey, God loves jaded suburbanites with nasty cases of affluenza just as much. The physician is for the sick, not the well.

You have to love the kids, and like them too.

In a workshop once, a young, single catechist asked me for suggestions on ways to chit chat with parents after class. What should she talk about? I stink at chit-chat, so I was sympathetic to her plight. I suggested maybe she say something good about their child. Parents like that. She asked, with a few likely culprits in mind, “But what if there’s nothing good about that kid?”

I try to be a nice person, but don’t pull that line in my workshop. “Honey, there’s something good about that kid — there’s a lot of good about that kid — and it’s your job to find it.” Just don’t even walk through the door of that classroom until you are resolved to fall madly in love with every single bratty, bored, back-talking precious child of God in there. That student was made in the image of God, thank you very much. God doesn’t screw up His work. Don’t you screw it up either.

You have to love Jesus more than anything else in the whole wide world.

One of the troubles with catechesis is that it attracts good people. Organized people. Diligent people. The kind who follow instructions. People who have it together. “Good flesh,” as I heard a preacher call it once. When it comes to teaching wretched sinners, it pays to have lousy flesh. I might know one or two good catechists who are generally on the up-and-up, but the ones who do it best are the ones who know what horrid failures they are, and how desperately they rely on the love of God just to get their teeth brushed in the morning.

(Yes, troll friends, the sinner needs to be vetted scrupulously. The right sinner for the job, and all that. If you’re unclear on the concept, read this post here.)

If you have a room full of eager disciples, you could ask Siri to read the Catechism for you, and they’d hang on every word. Thanks, Siri! You need a human in the room when it comes to proclaiming the Gospel. That human is you. You can’t just know the faith, you have to be madly in love with the Author of that faith.

Teaching religious education can’t be that thing you do because you’re supposed to do it. It has to be that thing you do because there’s nothing more important in the world to you than helping other souls find their way to Jesus.

Love won’t make you teach well. But it will make you teach enthusiastically, and that’s a start.

The rest of teaching is a skill you can learn. With hard work, you can get better it at over time, even if you stink at it now. Suggestions below on where to learn how to do that.

Why yes, your parish has a problem.

You’ve got a discipleship crisis on your hands. Your one class, no matter how well taught, is not going to fix everything.

(And yes, you can safely assume that the kids are never, ever, going to do the homework. Send home study guides, but visualize them dropping straight into the recycle bin the moment that child walks through the front door. It probably won’t happen. They’ll probably be blowing around the church parking lot. But the recycle bin is a nice image for planning purposes.)

The long term solution is for your parish, under the leadership of your pastor, to get serious about real, grown-up, soul-at-a-time evangelization. Until then, your religious education class is a tiny water cooler in the middle of the desert. So be it. Ask someone who’s living in a drought: Would you rather have five more gallons of faith, or none at all? Five gallons every time.

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I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a few practical resources to get you started:

Christian LeBlanc’s book is an excellent primer on the art of teaching well, highly recommended.
Here’s an article I just posted at AmazingCatechists.com that discusses how to overhaul your class in light of a serious mismatch between what the kids know and what the book says you’re supposed to be teaching.
For a handful of specific teaching techniques that work well in the pressing conditions typical of many American parishes today, you might consider a look at my book. Technically it’s about classroom discipline, but the easiest way to get good behavior is to teach a really good class. So I spend a lot of chapters on ways to teach a good class under trying conditions.

Good luck!

Photo: By Jeuwre (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons