As we all prepare for a snowy Wednesday and Thanksgiving this week, I want to give you a "short and sweet" message about our Confirmation parent meeting and a few program updates.
First, thank you to all of the parents who were able to make it out to the parent meeting. These meetings are incredibly important, as the Church continues to remind us that you as parents are the primary educators of your children in their faith. If you were unable to make it, please make an extra effort to attend our meeting in the spring.
At the meeting, I mentioned a variety of updates on the progress of our program this year. Briefly, they are as follows:
1) So far, so good. Students have remained largely faithful to our stronger emphasis on attendance this year and have seemed to approach the program with a heightened level of seriousness from years past. As one staff member explained it, when the 7th through 10th grades are hear on Sunday nights it just seems like a more of a "learning" environment.
2) In addition, students from grade 7 all the way through Confirmation continue to exhibit a stronger engagement and interest in the program than in years past. They are asking a lot of questions, and most importantly they seem genuinely interested in the answers. This is an enormous blessing. Along the lines of "with great power comes great responsibility" idea, this also means that we need to take an extra step to make sure that the kids are actually taking away the right things from our answers and everything else that they are learning. Over the years in Faith Formation programs in different parishes and working in the public schools, I have noticed that the more information kids take in, the greater chance that from time to time misunderstandings crop up. I asked parents to be willing to speak with their kids about what they learn to try to reinforce the Church's teachings!
3) Going through the "Confirmation Catechetical Checkups" that the kids took on November 16th is a long process, but so far there is one consistent trend: regardless of how much knowledge a student was able to demonstrate, virtually none of them really know what a Sacrament is or about the Sacraments. This is certainly concerning, because Sacraments are more than just ideas to know about our faith; they are the things that we do - they are a very important way that we live our faith as Catholics. At the same time, it is a blessing, because with one major area of difficulty we can easily make can effort in the remaining months of the program to put a lot of emphasis on teaching about the Sacraments at every grade level. We will be doing so, and we hope that you will reinforce this at home as well. The single most impactful (and easiest!) way that you can do this is by making sure to get to Mass with your child.
That is really the general thrust of what we discussed at the meeting. I wish you and your families a wonderful and blessed Thanksgiving. Be sure to keep us in your prayers, as you are in ours!
God bless,
Shane Coombs
Director of Faith Formation
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Catechetical Checkup, and Why Knowing the Faith Matters
Week 6
As parents of our Confirmation students are aware, this Sunday all Confirmation students in grades 9 and 10 will be taking what we are calling a "Catechetical Checkup." This checkup will consist of 31 questions on the basics of the Catholic faith and is intended to help us ensure that every young person who is preparing for the Sacrament of Confirmation understands at least the bare minimum of the Church's teaching. This of course raises an important question for all of us: why does it matter whether we understand or know the beliefs and teachings of our faith? There are at least three basic reasons.
First and perhaps most obvious, there is a responsibility that we have towards the Church as a community that we wish to belong to. We might call this an organizational responsibility, and it's by no means unique to the Church. Virtually every organization that we might wish to belong to expects us to have some sense of what the organization stands for and how the organization works, and to have the knowledge to be able to represent it well. This is true of the companies we work for, the schools we attend, and even the country we live in, which famously requires those seeking citizenship to pass a very thorough and challenging test. How much more should the Church — which is concerned with eternal realities that don't merely go away when we clock out, graduate, or even die — ask us to know what it believes and teaches. Simply put, if we want to belong to the Church, we should have at least a basic understanding of what it is and stands for.
Less obviously, but much more importantly, we have a familial responsibility towards God — Who loves us perfectly and totally, teaches us to call Him "Father," and even died for us in the person of Jesus Christ. Scott Hahn, a prominent Catholic author and theologian, is fond of pointing out that while God does forgive our sins like a judge, no judge invites the acquitted home to join the family. The Church is not simply symbolically, but truly the family of God, and we have a responsibility towards God to know Him and to listen to what He has to say to us just as we should any member of our family. Imagine spending years of your life giving everything you had emotionally, physically, spiritually, financially, and in any other way possible simply to love and help a family member — while all the while they ignore you and make no effort to even know you. We don't want to do this to God. He gave us everything — even His very life — out of love for us. The least we can do is pay attention to what He says!
Finally, it's important to know what the Church believes and teaches because we have a right to. Pope St. John Paul II wrote about this right in a document called Catechesi Tradendae, saying that "the person who becomes a disciple of Christ has the right to receive 'the word of faith' not in mutilated, falsified or diminished form but whole and entire, in all its rigor and vigor." Pope Francis has recently made similar statements. Jesus spoke about those seeking God's teachings as "sheep without a shepherd," and of course was born on Christmas day precisely to be our Good Shepherd. The Lord loves us, created us to be happy, and established the Church in order to ensure that we would always have access to that happiness and to all that He has taught. If God Himself offered a teaching that He intends us to hear, then we should certainly make sure to hear it! Moreover, we can be certain that a teaching from God is an important teaching: nothing should get in the way of our hearing it.
Thus far this year, the kids of our Faith Formation program have had many opportunities to work with our catechists to make sure that they know what the Church believes and teaches - that is, what Jesus Christ wants us to know. I hope that they are very well prepared for this checkup, and would encourage you to do your best this weekend to make sure that they do any last minute preparations that may be necessary. More importantly, I would encourage you to consider the example of these kids who have in many cases gone above and beyond what was asked of them, asking question after question in an effort to truly understand their faith — basics and beyond. May we all do the best that we can to take advantage of our right, and fulfill our responsibility, to hear all that God has to speak to us.
As parents of our Confirmation students are aware, this Sunday all Confirmation students in grades 9 and 10 will be taking what we are calling a "Catechetical Checkup." This checkup will consist of 31 questions on the basics of the Catholic faith and is intended to help us ensure that every young person who is preparing for the Sacrament of Confirmation understands at least the bare minimum of the Church's teaching. This of course raises an important question for all of us: why does it matter whether we understand or know the beliefs and teachings of our faith? There are at least three basic reasons.
First and perhaps most obvious, there is a responsibility that we have towards the Church as a community that we wish to belong to. We might call this an organizational responsibility, and it's by no means unique to the Church. Virtually every organization that we might wish to belong to expects us to have some sense of what the organization stands for and how the organization works, and to have the knowledge to be able to represent it well. This is true of the companies we work for, the schools we attend, and even the country we live in, which famously requires those seeking citizenship to pass a very thorough and challenging test. How much more should the Church — which is concerned with eternal realities that don't merely go away when we clock out, graduate, or even die — ask us to know what it believes and teaches. Simply put, if we want to belong to the Church, we should have at least a basic understanding of what it is and stands for.
Less obviously, but much more importantly, we have a familial responsibility towards God — Who loves us perfectly and totally, teaches us to call Him "Father," and even died for us in the person of Jesus Christ. Scott Hahn, a prominent Catholic author and theologian, is fond of pointing out that while God does forgive our sins like a judge, no judge invites the acquitted home to join the family. The Church is not simply symbolically, but truly the family of God, and we have a responsibility towards God to know Him and to listen to what He has to say to us just as we should any member of our family. Imagine spending years of your life giving everything you had emotionally, physically, spiritually, financially, and in any other way possible simply to love and help a family member — while all the while they ignore you and make no effort to even know you. We don't want to do this to God. He gave us everything — even His very life — out of love for us. The least we can do is pay attention to what He says!
Finally, it's important to know what the Church believes and teaches because we have a right to. Pope St. John Paul II wrote about this right in a document called Catechesi Tradendae, saying that "the person who becomes a disciple of Christ has the right to receive 'the word of faith' not in mutilated, falsified or diminished form but whole and entire, in all its rigor and vigor." Pope Francis has recently made similar statements. Jesus spoke about those seeking God's teachings as "sheep without a shepherd," and of course was born on Christmas day precisely to be our Good Shepherd. The Lord loves us, created us to be happy, and established the Church in order to ensure that we would always have access to that happiness and to all that He has taught. If God Himself offered a teaching that He intends us to hear, then we should certainly make sure to hear it! Moreover, we can be certain that a teaching from God is an important teaching: nothing should get in the way of our hearing it.
Thus far this year, the kids of our Faith Formation program have had many opportunities to work with our catechists to make sure that they know what the Church believes and teaches - that is, what Jesus Christ wants us to know. I hope that they are very well prepared for this checkup, and would encourage you to do your best this weekend to make sure that they do any last minute preparations that may be necessary. More importantly, I would encourage you to consider the example of these kids who have in many cases gone above and beyond what was asked of them, asking question after question in an effort to truly understand their faith — basics and beyond. May we all do the best that we can to take advantage of our right, and fulfill our responsibility, to hear all that God has to speak to us.
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