{"id":176,"date":"2014-11-07T12:14:05","date_gmt":"2014-11-07T16:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/waterintowine\/?p=176"},"modified":"2014-11-07T12:14:05","modified_gmt":"2014-11-07T16:14:05","slug":"honor-their-fathers-and-their-mothers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/waterintowine\/2014\/11\/honor-their-fathers-and-their-mothers\/","title":{"rendered":"Honor Their Fathers and Their Mothers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"honor\"<\/a>\u201cHonor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.\u201d (Exodus 20:12 NIT)<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to suggest that, as we approach the holiday season, we offer a particular gift to the Christ child that will bear fruit for eternity in beautiful ways.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s make a new and passionate commitment to pray for and love the parents<\/em> of our students.<\/strong><\/p>\n

NOTE:<\/strong> If you want to skip past my pontificating, there are seven practical tips at the end of this post.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what I\u2019m thinking. <\/strong>I teach workshops for catechists, and I\u2019ve had a number of conversations with DREs and catechists that indicate that they feel a real and understandable frustration with some of the parents they meet. They don\u2019t take their children to Mass\u2026 they don\u2019t know their own prayers\u2026 they skip religious ed whenever it conflicts with (fill-in-the-blank)!<\/em> Some of them are so blaz\u00e9 about religion that, if catechists and DREs were not so dedicated, they\u2019d be tempted to ask, \u201cWhy do you bother bringing them to the parish at all?\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a huge problem<\/strong>, but I have great sympathy for those parents, having once been like them. After Vatican II, the emphasis in\u00a0catechesis was primarily\u00a0on\u00a0having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. On the surface, it was a very\u00a0good thing. Too much emphasis had been on facts and rules, many thought,\u00a0with not enough heartfelt living of the Christian message.<\/p>\n

But the change in emphasis opened the flood gates<\/strong> to\u00a0a lot of well-meaning experimentation that\u00a0resulted in religious education being dumbed-down and sugar-coated for the masses\u2013as if Jesus were not our complex and awesome eternal God, full of mystery and power, who made demands and took time to patiently teach the faith that would save us from our sins. A plush-toy, nice-guy Jesus took his place, and he simply didn\u2019t inspire conversions.\"plushtoy\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the mad rush<\/strong> to welcome young people<\/strong> to the Christian message, out went rote learning and study that might have equipped\u00a0teens to understand and defend their faith in an increasingly conflicted and challenging culture. Out went the traditions and prayers of the Church, as hand-holding and folk songs took hold of liturgies, robbing generations of Catholics of much of the transcendent beauty that is our spiritual inheritance.<\/p>\n

The anti-authority movement of the sixties<\/strong> and the \u201cme\u201d and \u201cmoney\u201d generations of the seventies and eighties\u00a0finished the job, as they\u00a0gutted our culture\u2019s connection with the teaching authority of the Church. Many went the way of the culture and generations of Catholics\u00a0were lost to ignorance of the sacramental and theological treasures of the Church.<\/p>\n

As a result, the parents of many of our students have been robbed of their religion,<\/strong> but they don\u2019t know it. They don\u2019t have a fire for the Faith, don\u2019t understand why they feel like they\u2019re on the outside looking in, and don\u2019t have a clue what they\u2019re missing. They are the spiritually poor among us and they need our help.<\/em><\/p>\n

Some parishes are addressing the problem<\/strong> through whole-parish catechesis and other innovative models designed to educate parents along with children. But most of us are handed a child-centered curriculum and asked to fight what seems an uphill battle. So what do we do?<\/p>\n