Your Child – Lying, Stealing, etc., by Rev. George A. Kelly

26 Tuesday Oct 2021

Posted by Leanevdp in Catholic Family Handbook, Rev. George A. Kelly, Parenting

The Catholic Family Handbook – Father George Kelly, 1950’s

Father Kelly helps to get it into perspective:

Lying and stealing

Minor transgressions can be expected of every pre-school child; if nothing more, they indicate his desire to learn exactly what penalty will be imposed if he violates your rules. The three or four year-old probably cannot understand that all of us must obey God’s laws. Later, of course, he must be taught that lying and stealing are sins because they violate that law.

It takes a wise parent to understand the difference between a young child’s imagination and his lying. When children learn that speech has the power to affect others, they often make up stories simply to notice the effect upon adults. In such cases, you probably need not do any more than indicate your mild disbelief.

Untruths affecting others are a different matter, however. If your child lies deliberately about a serious matter, you should point out to him that his action is sinful; that it harms those about whom he lies; and that it harms him by causing people to lose confidence in him.

The best way to discourage lying is to encourage truthfulness. The child who admits the truth and is willing to face the consequences of his actions displays a fine sense of maturity and deserves to be complimented for it. But do not carry your commendation for truthfulness to extremes, as though it were a novelty.

Whenever one little boy did something wrong, he ran to his father and confessed. The father invariably praised him for his honesty and neglected to punish him for his actions “because he told the truth.” The youngster, now sixteen, is the most truthful boy in town–and the greatest mischief-maker. He firmly believes that simply telling the truth absolves him of all blame for his conduct.

Children also do a certain amount of stealing. Vinnie, three years old, sees a toy which Billy is playing with and takes it as soon as he can so that he too may enjoy it. He is simply doing what comes naturally; he wants the toy and sees no reason why he should not have it. Obviously, he commits no sin. He must be taught in a calm way, however, that he must not take things which do not belong to him.

You can strengthen your child’s resistance against the impulse to steal by strengthening his own sense of possessiveness. If you treat his possessions with respect, making it plain to him that you would not use them without his permission, you make it easier for him to comprehend his obligations to others.

Probably all children pass through a “stealing” stage during which you can impress upon them the importance of not taking what belongs to others. This tendency to pilfer others’ possessions usually decreases and ceases to be a source of difficulty by the time the child is seven.

If he continues to steal after that, it may indicate that some of his strong and legitimate desires are not satisfied. For instance, the parents of a ten-year-old boy habitually compared him unfavorably with others of his age. He had a compelling urge to show that he was their superior, and he began to steal watches and other jewelry and to flaunt them before his classmates as presents he had received from his rich, admiring relatives.

Other youngsters may steal to relieve their boredom: boys who raid a fruitstand may simply crave excitement. If your child steals after he has reached the age of reason and is morally responsible for his actions, do not minimize the fact that he has sinned; but also seek to determine whether any psychological reason may have been important in causing him to act as he does.

A child should always be required to pay for objects he has stolen, even if he must work on Saturdays or forgo his allowance for months to do so.

Early sex experimentation

A child cannot commit sin until he reaches the age of reason. It follows that no moral guilt is associated with his early sex experimentation. Some parents might mistakenly regard as masturbation a baby’s holding of his sex organ, but it is as natural for him to display this interest as it is for him to examine his hands, feet or other parts of his body. He may experience pleasure when he touches his genitals, but this act has no greater moral significance than has sucking his fingers.

The normal child generally discontinues his sex experimentation when he finds other interests–and you can help him do so by giving him rattles to hold or toys to play with. However, if he continues to touch his genitals habitually after he begins to walk, he may be developing a pattern which will make masturbation more difficult to resist in later years.

You should gently and casually remove his hands each time you see him doing so. It is best to discourage this conduct in a matter-of-fact way, much as you might prevent him from picking his nose. Do not overemphasize its importance; otherwise you may accentuate his interest instead of changing it.

Sometimes two and three year-olds display a curiosity about the organs of the other sex. This interest also is natural and no evil intent is involved, but it is not proper and should not be permitted. Likewise, the little girl who lifts her dress in company is not guilty of any moral wrong, but she should be told not to do it.

By the time boys and girls are about three years old, their training in modesty should begin. They should learn that certain parts of the body must not be exposed before anyone except their parents.

A young child usually can be easily trained to be modest if his mother will tell him in a calm, unemotional way what is expected of him. Much difficulty with children in this regard results from the inability or unwillingness of parents to discuss the process of elimination without a sense of shame, and without giving it an undue importance in the child’s mind.

Sex experimentation usually ceases well before the child reaches the age of reason, and sex does not emerge as a serious problem in his development until adolescence. If your child continues to touch his genitals habitually after the age of six or seven, perhaps he seeks the pleasure which he derives from the action to compensate for some sense of insecurity. If your efforts to stop the practice fail, you should discuss his case with a doctor.

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Train Your Children to See Christ in Others

11 Monday Oct 2021

Posted by Leanevdp in Parenting

≈ 3 Comments

by Mary Reed Newland, How to Raise Good Catholic Children

This detachment in respect to nature offers no very big problem. It’s in the complicated relations with humans that problems arise. And if we teach the way to detachment in relation to nature by helping children see all things against a background of God, we teach them detachment in relation to people by helping them see all men as other Christs.

It need not, indeed should not, be a matter of preaching a sermon every hour on the hour, but it’s good to remember that these problems have to be treated some way, and if not this way, some way that is less good.

The alternative is a far vaguer conception of goodness for the sake of being nice. And don’t tell me this formless niceness that people hold up to one another as the measure for behavior is more convincing than Christ.

At times it may be easier to live with, but the easier it is to live with, the less effect it usually has, and it’s apt to end up being mightily confusing and meaning nothing.

Some people think that birth control is nice. And some think euthanasia is nice.

We can start children off on the lifelong struggle to live reverently with their fellowman by teaching them how to see Christ in one another. This is not hard, because our Lord explained it so simply Himself: “Whatsoever you do to these, the least of my brethren, you do unto me.”

It is also very evident in the story of St. Paul thrown from his horse on the way to Damascus. Our Lord had ascended into Heaven. Paul had never known Him. And yet, when he lay there whimpering in the dust, blind and frightened, the voice he heard said to him: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?”

What else can it mean than that we are to see Christ in all men? He wasn’t personally hiding in Damascus. Paul had no confusion in his mind about whom he was after.

We can explain this to our children, and they’re delighted to discover it. But the process of getting it straight in their heads leads into some strange and winding ways.

For instance, there was the time John was helping Peter get into his sneakers. As it happened, Peter was fresh from a long talk with his mother about seeing Christ in his brothers. What with the fat feet and the limp sneakers, the red hair and the bad temper, they were getting nowhere fast.

Finally John yelled, “Get your feet in!”

And Peter said, smiling smugly, “Remember, I’m Baby Jesus.”

Providentially his mother was within earshot, or I shudder to think of Peter growing up identifying himself so intimately with deity.

So we had to get it explained again; and after a deep breath and a good try, John helped Peter into his sneakers as though he were helping Baby Jesus, and Peter cooperated the way Baby Jesus would have cooperated.

But these things are really ironed out very easily, and children do get it straight. Although, like everything else, they need constant reminding, it’s a far more direct way to go after kind, patient, loving ministrations between brother and brother, brother and sister, our children and the neighbors’, than the old worn-out, “Now, be nice.”

Then there are hurt feelings, which can be much more effectively handled through Christ than with mere purring sympathy.

For instance, one day Monica was getting off the bus with a group of children, when one of them kicked her scuffed shoes and sneered, “Ugh! What shoes!” To be publicly scorned by the neighborhood fashion plate was a bitter blow. She came home close to tears and poured out her woe over the bread and butter.

So we got to talking about our Lord, and how He had walked many miles either barefoot or in dusty, and probably badly scuffed, sandals. One has that to share with Him when she has to wear beat-up shoes until it’s time for her to have new ones, and it will help her understand a bit how things were with Him — because, of course, people made fun of Him, too.

There was the time the soldiers scourged Him and then put the crown of thorns on His head and the purple robe over His shoulders, handed Him a reed for a scepter, and then mocked Him, bowing and scraping and saluting Him as king.

It was all a joke; they never realized that all the time He was their King, silent and loving them, and offering His suffering for them in the hope that one day grace would help them understand, and be sorry.

“Instead of hating someone who makes fun of you, you can remember what you learned: ‘Whatsoever you do to these, the least of my brethren, you do unto me.’ And then you see that they hurt our Lord even more than you by their unkindness.

And here’s a thought: perhaps God permitted it to happen because this child doesn’t know how to love, and it will remind you to pray for her and ask Him to teach her how to love Him, too.”

Sooner or later it occurs to them to ask, “But how can you see Christ in really bad people?” And this, it’s true, is very hard.

But we can see the price Christ puts on bad people right there on the crucifix hanging on the kitchen wall. So we cannot hate them, even when we fear them and hate the things they do.

Our Lord took particular pains to teach from the Cross how we are to feel about the “bad people”:

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

Now and then, children will bring this up when they see some news broadcast or headline concerning people who have acted wickedly. Because they have no firsthand knowledge of these people, they accept quite easily the explanation that they must pray for them with love because they are precious to God and, as long as they are alive, might still one day be saints. It has happened to men just as bad.

But when it is someone real, someone who, perhaps, has humiliated them in front of the schoolroom, or has bullied them cruelly in neighborhood play, there is the challenge. With such a one, they cannot drum up any emotion of loving, any very real pity, or even much understanding, and the only wholesome way to go about healing a fear or a hurt of that sort is by remembering the price Christ paid for these “bad ones.”

He loves them, so He can help us to learn to love them too, and if we can help our children forgive them by even the driest act of the will, and pray for the grace to love, it will come — even though it will be long and hard and seem to be impossible.

The end of all this, one day, is that death to self which our Lord said must take place if we are to live in Him, and He in us. In the meantime, it’s the preparation of a soul that can look around itself at the world and the people in it and evaluate it all with God as the measure.

It’s the key to all the tense relationships within households where too many live in too small a space, where older people must bear the difficult noise and distraction of youngsters, and where youngsters must bear the carping and irritation of the much older.

It can be a lifeline for a child suffering at the hands of a sarcastic teacher, a persecuting neighbor, or a difficult bus driver.

A little boy we know learned to conquer his fear of teasing by each day accepting it silently as Christ did His tormentors’, praying for those who teased him. To help him endure, he marked each day’s victory over fear and self-pity with a counter in a jar.

One day he put no counter in the jar. When his mother asked him why, he said, somewhat surprised, “But they don’t tease me anymore.”

Working at his problem spiritually, he had leveled the valley of his fear and, ceasing to react to the teasing, he had removed the motive for it. When the others found they could no longer irritate him, it was no fun to try.

This is the most practical approach to all sorts of trying problems in human relations. It’s the beginning of the end of self-pity, frustration, pessimism, and all the things we must rid ourselves of if we’re going to try to be saints.

There are heavy burdens for children to bear if they are to take part in restoring the world to Christ, burdens that demand great faith and charity.

They will have to practice fortitude, patience, chastity, kindness, justice, mercy — all the virtues carried to a heroic degree. Only if they lose themselves in God will they ever be able to do it, and losing oneself in God is detachment.

The family should wield its influence and give a good example as a unit, particularly within its parish. This will be possible only if all the members have practiced the humbler virtues within the sanctuary of the home. – Fr. Lovasik, The Catholic Family Handbook http://amzn.to/2vDp3jp (afflink)

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Your Child’s Spiritual Training

20 Monday Sep 2021

Posted by Leanevdp in Family Life, Parenting

≈ 3 Comments

by Father George A. Kelly, The Catholic Family Handbook

A mother once asked her pastor when she should begin teaching her five-year-old about God. The pastor replied that she was already five years late. What he meant, of course, was that your child’s religious training should begin almost as soon as he is born.

As Sister Mary de Lourdes states so beautifully in her guide for mothers, “Baby Grows in Age and Grace,” the child held in the arms of a confident and competent mother and who is surrounded by the happiness of a good Christian family has a natural start for the spiritual life.

At seven to ten months, a baby begins to listen to sounds intently. He does not know what words mean, but he gets an impression from the tone of your voice, your facial expressions, and your gestures.

It is not too soon to begin teaching him a prayer. Such a prayer should be as simple as possible, and preferably repetitive–with the same sounds repeated over and over. Sister de Lourdes cites this one:

Thank you, God, for Jimmy,
Thank you for Jimmy’s bread,
Thank you for Jimmy’s smile,
Bless Jimmy in his bed.

As soon as your child can speak in syllables, you can teach him simple prayers. For example, carry him to a painting or statue depicting the Baby Jesus in His Blessed Mother’s arms, and point out to him that the Infant Savior also had a mother who loved Him.

Before he reaches his first year, he may be able to enunciate the name of Jesus. He can be encouraged to say good night to the Savior of the painting or statue.

When the family eats together, the baby in his high chair will observe that grace is said before and after meals. He will join in the prayers automatically as soon as he is able.

Pictures have a powerful appeal for the one-year-old and two-year-old. You can encourage his interest in religion by showing him paintings of great events in the life of Our Lord. You will find him an interested viewer and listener if you show him pictures of Baby Jesus, and the Holy Family, and of Biblical incidents.

He will also be a rapt listener as you narrate the stories which the pictures illustrate. At Christmas time especially, you can impress upon him that this great feast commemorates the birth of the Infant Savior: your telling of the Christmas story can begin to implant a reverence for this great feast that will last throughout his life.

In his third year, your child will probably be ready to learn about the creation by God of the world and everything in it. You will have opportunities to teach him as a matter of course that God made the flowers, the trees, the dog whose back he pats, and every other thing that he sees about him.

Express your own appreciation for God’s many gifts–the beautiful flowers, the lovely sunset, the water you drink, the food you eat. In this way, he too will recognize that God is a loving Father to Whom we owe gratitude for all things.

By the time he is three, he should be sufficiently advanced mentally to begin practicing simple acts of self-denial. If he is given a piece of candy before dinner, he will probably understand if he is told that he must not eat it until after his meal. This is his first realization that satisfaction of present desires must often be deferred for our own good.

At the age of four, he should be ready to take a more active part in family prayers. In some families, father, mother and children pray together in the evening before the first child goes to bed. His attendance at night prayers will impress the importance of this devotion upon him and enable him to learn the words sooner than he perhaps would ordinarily.

Four-year-olds usually do not have a long attention span, however, and the average child may become distracted after a few minutes. The night prayers in which he joins may be kept short at first and gradually lengthened as he grows older.

At this time, your child is old enough to understand certain moral principles: that he must obey his parents because God wishes him to do so; and that lying, stealing and disobedience are not in accordance with God’s will.

You can teach these principles by giving him the image of God as his Eternal Father. If he has a loving trust in his own father, he will not find it difficult to visualize God as the loving Father of all mankind.

He is also ready to learn of his Guardian Angel; many childish fears can be removed if he knows that his Guardian Angel always watches over him, and he will feel secure in new experiences when he knows that he has a protector.

From ages four to six, you can intensify in many different ways the moral training you began earlier. Through family prayer and other devotions, when you read to him, and through little talks when you perform his daily routines with him, you can inculcate the great truths of our religion.

In particular, do not overlook opportunities to instill high ideals through reading. Many excellent books recount Bible stories in attractive pictures and text and they stress vividly the importance of practicing virtue in our lives.

For example, the story of Adam and Eve can be a means of teaching him why he must obey God and his earthly parents. The story of Abraham may teach him that we must be ready to sacrifice all we possess if God requires it. From the parable told by Jesus of the widow’s mite, he can learn that we must always show our gratitude to God; from the parable of the talents, that we must always do our best for His glory.

Many devotions and religious observances can now be made an intimate part of your child’s daily life.

Our Lord taught that the love of God is the first and greatest commandment, but He also said that a second commandment was like it–the commandment that we must love our neighbor as ourself. You probably can best teach this commandment by example.

More powerful than your words will be your courteous attitude toward those who visit your home; toward peoples of other races and creeds; toward those less privileged in a spiritual or material sense than yourself. Christ’s teaching that all men are brothers under the Fatherhood of God will have greater meaning for your child if he notices that you always treat others with respect.

Before your child is seven, you will probably notice the formation of his conscience. He may show by expressions of guilt or shame when he has done wrong. This development of conscience indicates that you now can appeal to him more and more on the grounds of reason, rather than on the weight of your authority.

The seven-year-old normally is sufficiently developed to take responsibility before God for his actions. By the orderly and constructive training you have provided, he should be able to recite his morning and night prayers; he should know the important laws of God and Church–the necessity to attend Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation and of abstaining from meat on Friday, for example; and he should be ready to begin preparations for his First Communion.

Obviously, your child’s moral training at home does not stop when he enters parochial school. Rather, it continues throughout his lifetime.

Every morning, we may be tempted to put off our prayers until “later” or skip them altogether because we have much to do and action is where it is at. If we allow the devil to win in this very first struggle of the day, he will win many more of the battles throughout the day. Our Morning Prayers, whether they be said while nursing a baby or changing a diaper, need to be a priority and the very foundation of our daily life. -Finer Femininity

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The Pupils’ Success ~ The Catholic Teacher’s Companion

17 Friday Sep 2021

Posted by Leanevdp in Catholic Teacher's Companion, Education, FF Tidbits, Parenting

≈ 1 Comment

This excerpt is a lesson for all educators…including, and especially, mothers and fathers. There aren’t many schools nowadays that are reputable (there are some, indeed), so mothers and fathers have had to take much of burden of educating their children, especially in their religion. Take heart, your reward will be great in heaven!

Some readers may be tempted to restrict the idea of the pupils’ success to what is seen on the night of the school commencement. But we have in mind the school commencement merely as the scene whence the graduates must pass to the larger stage of the world to play their parts.

The Rev. Daniel A. Lord, S.J., has brought out vividly the part that the Sisters play in both phases of the pupil’s success:

Back stage, hot in heavy habits that were never designed for work among canvas wings, the Sisters, tired, flushed, but happy, watched the end of their year’s work.

The next day they too were to leave; some for the motherhouse, some for the summer courses at Catholic colleges, all eventually for the annual retreat.

The curtain dropped for the last time, and the boys and girls surged out to greet happy relatives, some with a quick good-by to their teachers, others thoughtless and forgetful of all except that for them school was at an end and they were free.

Yet, though few children came to thank them, and fewer still of that seething audience gave a passing thought to the Sisters backstage, all that was epitomized in the entertainment just concluded, and the diploma just conferred was credited by a higher Power to them.

Because of their patient drilling some boy would rise higher in life. Later on some girl would come with the man who loved her, to seek out the Sister who had kept her feet straight in her youthful days.

Some boy in the grip of temptation would remember her insistent lessons of loyalty to God and put sin ruthlessly behind him. Perhaps in some distant day a wanderer from the faith of his fathers would on his deathbed murmur the act of contrition she taught him, and by that childhood prayer open for himself the gates of eternal bliss.

And perhaps before God’s altar some young priest, in the full tide of his newly-received priesthood, would pause at the Memento to whisper the name of the nun whose lessons and prayers had first turned his eyes toward the service of the Sanctuary.

Her work, unrecognized, unappreciated, but heroic with the heroism of patient unselfishness and devotion to a high ideal, is one of the loveliest things in the Church today.

She is the greatest asset of Catholic education. I crave your thanks for the teaching Sister.

The Rev. Robert Schwickerath, S.J., relates an incident of the life of Father Bonifacio, a distinguished Jesuit educator, who for more than forty years taught the classics.

One day he was visited by his brother, a professor in a university, whom he had not seen for many years. When the professor heard that the Father had spent all the years of his life in the Order in teaching Latin and Greek to young boys, he exclaimed:

“You have wasted your great talents in such inferior work! I expected to find you at least a professor of philosophy or theology. What have you done that this post is assigned to you?”

Father Bonifacio quietly opened a little book, and showed him the list of hundreds of pupils whom he had taught, many of whom occupied high positions in Church or State, or in the world of business.

Pointing at their names, the Father said with a pleasant smile:

“The success which my pupils have achieved is to me a far sweeter reward than any honor which I might have obtained the most celebrated university.”

Father Schwickerath justly adds to this account that “not all teachers have the consolation of seeing their pupils in high positions. It happens that the best efforts of a devoted teacher seem to be lost on many pupils. Even this will not discourage the religious teacher.

He will remember that his model, Jesus Christ, did not reap the fruit which might have been expected from such a Master. Not all that He sowed brought forth fruit a hundredfold, not even thirtyfold. Some fell upon stony ground, and other some fell among the thorns, and yet He went on patiently sowing.

So a teacher ought not to be disheartened if the success should not correspond with his labors. He knows that one reward is certainly in store for him, the measure of which will not be his success, but his zeal; not the fruit but his efforts.”

It is the prospect of this reward that inspires the devoted service of our Sisters.

Not long ago, in distant Algiers, an American tourist visited the lepers’ colony out of pure curiosity. These poor lepers were cared for by a Community of Sisters. The man was attracted by one of these self-sacrificing women because of her youth, beauty, and refinement, and to his surprise he learned that she was an American girl.

Being introduced to her, he said: “Sister, I would not do this work for $10,000 a year.”

“No,” said the Sister, “nor would I do it for $100,000 nor a million a year.”

“Really,” said the stranger, “you surprise me. What, then, do you receive?”

“Nothing,” was the reply, “absolutely nothing.”

“Then why do you do it?”

The Sister lifted the crucifix that was pending from her rosary and, sweetly kissing it, said, “I do it for the love of Him, for Jesus who died for the love of them and for the love of me. In the loathsome ulcers of these poor lepers I see the wounds of my crowned and crucified Savior.”

For the rest, we believe that the very choicest reward will be meted out to the School Sisters for that portion of their work that to human seeming is generally in vain. Our School Sisters may gain honor from their talented pupils; they will earn their bread (in a certain sense) by training the vast body of mediocre children; but they will merit heaven by the patient labors they devote to the dullards in their schools.

A holy house is one in which God is truly King; in which He reigns supreme over the minds and hearts of the inmates; in which every word and act honors His name. One feels on entering such a house, nay, even on approaching it, that the very atmosphere within and without is laden with holy and heavenly influences. -True Womanhood, Rev. Bernard O’Reilly, 1894 https://amzn.to/2PsM94w (afflink)

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With his facile pen and from the wealth of his nation-wide experience, the well-known author treats anything and everything that might be included under the heading of home education: the pre-marriage training of prospective parents, the problems of the pre-school days down through the years of adolescence. No topic is neglected. “What is most praiseworthy is Fr. Lord’s insistence throughout that no educational agency can supplant the work that must be done by parents.” – Felix M. Kirsch, O.F.M. https://amzn.to/2T06u28 (afflink)

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The Christian Mother

15 Wednesday Sep 2021

Posted by Leanevdp in Motherhood, Parenting

≈ 1 Comment

Without getting discouraged, without worrying about past mistakes, going forward, we need to always remember the dignity and the importance of our role as….mother.

This excerpt is from a book called The Christian Mother, The Education of Her Children and Her Prayer. A Catholic book published in 1880.

The Christian mother has been charged by God with a two-fold mission with respect to her children; namely, the securing to them the nourishment of both soul and body.

For if she has been fitted by nature to give to her children the milk which sustains the life of their bodies, so likewise has she been peculiarly designed by the God of nature to dispense to them for the nourishment of their souls the rational milk of which the apostle speaks, and which will make them grow unto salvation.

Nor is this latter responsibility less imperative than the former. If she would consider herself derelict of duty to leave her offspring without the nourishment which sustains their natural and temporal life, still more guilty would she be were she to deprive them of the nourishment which will insure their supernatural and eternal life.

And how admirably is she not fitted for this latter mission, of the two more important and more noble!

She is by excellence the teacher of her children. Now we all know that much of the progress of a pupil depends not only on his natural gifts and talents, but also on the degree of confidence inspired by his teacher.

But who shares the affection and confidence of the child like the mother? Does he not believe every word she says?

And how firmly, therefore, and how deeply may not the Christian mother instill into his young mind those religious truths which will ever remain a pure and wholesome nourishment for his soul, giving it strength to reject the poison of unbelief so temptingly offered to it at some later day.

And if the mother is a true Christian – if she shows forth in her own life the habit of the virtues which she desires to instill into the hearts of her children – how nobly and how successfully will she fulfill her mission!

The child is by nature an imitator. If the model set before him is good there is reason to hope that the copy will be so likewise. Do mothers realize this?

And when later in life they fail to see in their children the Christian virtues of humility, patience, charity, and forgiveness, do they not also fail to trace the absence of these virtues to its true and legitimate cause?

Oh! That all mothers would bear in mind that if they desire their children to become true Christians they must present in their own lives the models of which the children will be the living copies.

Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows (September 15th)….

Our Lady’s Seven Sorrows has its origin in Christian devotion which finds it fitting to associate her with the Passion of her Son. The Church, commemorating Mary’s suffering, emphasizes her great and courageous love, which caused her to be so closely associated with the work of our Redemption. She was in very truth who, like Judith, faced with the distress and tribulation of her people, spared nothing to save us from ruin. By offering her Son for us, she became our Mother and we became her children. ~Portrait of Saints

All 6 Maglets! Young Lady’s Maglet, Wife’s Maglet, Mother’s Maglet, Sunshiny Disposition, True Womanhood and Advent/Christmas!

Finer Femininity is a small publication compiled to inspire Catholic women in their vocations. It consists of uplifting articles from authors with traditional values, with many of them from priests, written over 50 years ago. These anecdotes are timeless but, with the fast-paced “progress “of today’s world, the pearls within the articles are rarely meditated upon. This little magazine offers Catholic womankind support and inspiration as they travel that oftentimes lonely trail….the narrow road to heaven. The thoughts within the pages will enlighten us to regard the frequently monotonous path of our “daily duties” as the beautiful road to sanctity. Feminine souls need this kind of information to continue to “fight the good fight” in a world that has opposing values and seldom offers any kind of support to these courageous women. Inside the pages you will find inspiration for your roles as single women, as wives and as mothers. In between the thought-provoking articles, the pages are sprinkled with pictures, quotes and maybe even a recipe or two. Available here.

Father weaves a tapestry of the Church’s teaching on the unity of the members of Christ’s Mystical Body using profound and picturesque meditations on the seven sorrows of the Blessed Mother:

• The Prophecy of Simeon,
• The Flight Into Egypt,
• The Loss of the Young Christ,
• Mary Meets Jesus on the Road to Calvary,
• The Crucifixion,
• The Pieta, and
• The Burial of Jesus.

His thoughts are enriched by references to original color etchings of John Andrews. Ideal for Lent and Holy Week.

9 Considerations to Impress Upon Your Children

14 Tuesday Sep 2021

Posted by Leanevdp in Catholic Family Handbook, Rev. George A. Kelly, Parenting, Youth

≈ 2 Comments

The Catholic Family Handbook – Father George Kelly, 1950’s

Father James Keller, M.M., director of the Christophers has made millions of Americans aware of the tremendous amount of good that one dedicated person can do.

The Christophers aim to encourage each individual to show a personal, practical responsibility in restoring the love of Christ to the marketplace and to government, education, literature, entertainment and labor unions.

They emphasize the importance of positive, constructive action and have adopted the slogan, “Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”

Father Keller has encouraged countless thousands to undertake less glamorous, lower-paying jobs in order better to serve in Christ’s name. “Individuals who pursue this unpopular path receive a recompense which is a foretaste of the everlasting joy of heaven,” he states.

He lists nine considerations which you should strive to impress upon your children and which you yourself might apply. These are:

You are important. You, as a distinct human being, have been created in God’s image. All of humanity is nothing more than you over and over again.

No substitute for you. God has assigned to you a special mission in life which He has given to no one else. No matter how small it may seem to you or others, it is important in His sight.

Don’t cheat others. The Lord sends blessings to some people through you. If you fail to pass them on, you deprive others of what is rightfully theirs.

You are needed. If everyone figured “I don’t count,” imagine what disastrous consequences could result.

Spiritualize your least efforts. Begin to be a Christopher or Christ-bearer by serving others in small ways. Remember Christ said that if you do no more than give a “cup of cold water” for his sake (Matt. 10:42) you shall gain an everlasting reward.

Start in your home. If you develop a sense of personal responsibility in your own home, school, business and every other place, you will soon wish to reach out to wider horizons.

Don’t bury your talent. Even if God has given you only one talent, put it to work for the good of others. Don’t be like the man in the Gospel who said: “And being afraid I went and hid the talent in the earth.” (Matt. 25:25)

For better or worse. What you do–by prayer, word and deed–to see that God’s will is done “on earth as it is in heaven” affects the well-being of everyone to some degree. Yes, the world itself can be a little better because you have been in it.

You count as one. When tempted to play down your own individual importance, recall this old saying: “I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. What I can do, I ought to do. And what I ought to do, by the grace of God, I will do.”

“And you, too, must stand by your convictions at the cost of things you love. An ideal is worth little if it is not worth wholehearted, honest effort. Nothing is more pitiful than a woman whose mind admires purity and right, yet whose will is too weak to choose them and whose life is blighted by sin and mire about her. Be true, be noble, aim high, and God will give you strength to keep your ideals.” – Mabel Hale, Beautiful Girlhood

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In What Consists True Independence of Character ~ True Womanhood, Fr. Bernard O’Reilly

13 Monday Sep 2021

Posted by Leanevdp in Parenting, True Womanhood, A book of Instruction for Women of the World, Rev. Bernard O'Reilly, L.D., 1893

≈ 1 Comment

Painting by Adolf Eberle

In this article, Father is adamant about taking care to monitor what your children are reading and the companions they have. As parents forming our children in the modern world, we add on top of that the movies they watch and the internet they are allowed to dabble in. Let us pray to Saint Isidore of Seville (560-636), patron of the internet, to guide us in this daunting task…

from True Womanhood – Rev. Bernard O’Reilly, 1894

In what consists True Independence of Character

To no one more than the child of the hard-working mother is true independence of soul,—that is, true nobility of character,—necessary and useful. Indeed, the all-seeing Author of our nature, who governs all our ways, has made every element of greatness in our souls and conduct necessary because He knew they would be useful; and He made them all the more necessary that He foresaw they would be more useful.

In what does this independence of soul and character consist? In this: that a boy or a girl brought up by a truly God-fearing mother, is so filled with the fear of that Great Majesty, in whose hands we are at every moment, and into whose hands we are sure to fall after death, that they look up to Him in everything, seek to please Him in all they do, and find it impossible to do anything which is wrong in His sight and contrary to the voice of their own conscience.

Let us understand this well. You rear your boy and your girl, from the very first moment you can make them understand anything, in the conviction that God’s truth, God’s word, God’s will is to be the sole measure by which they are to weigh and estimate everything; so that it will be practically impossible for them to do anything contrary to His truth, His law, or His will.

We say every day that such a man is a noble man, a truly independent man, because he is incapable of doing wrong to any one, of violating truth or honor or honesty, of going in anything whatever against his conscience and his known duty.

Hence it is—and this is the golden lesson which our forefathers learned so well and practiced so nobly, that they made their moral greatness and independence consist in depending on God alone and their conscience.

They were poor in this world’s goods,—for they had been stripped of everything,—they were deprived of civil and religious liberty and honor, and were thus, in the eyes of men, degraded to the level of the serf or the slave. But nothing could shake their dependence on God, or their implicit and invincible obedience to the voice of their conscience and their faith.

Now such are the noble men and women that can in our days,—in this generation as in the next,—go forth from the home of every laboring man among us, as they went forth in past generations; men attached to conscience, to honesty, to honor, to truth, to duty, to righteousness, and to God in all things and above all things, everywhere, in all employments and positions, though never so high or never so lowly.

Let us have men and women incapable of telling a lie, of wronging the neighbor in thought or word or deed, of wronging their employer in the meanest trifles or the weightiest matters, of betraying the trust placed in them, whether in the last place in lowliest office or in the highest that can be given in city, State, or Church; men and women who fear God alone, and, after Him, fear only what is contrary to truth, honor, and purity!

Dear mothers who read this, you may never be able to give your boys and girls at your death wherewith to buy a suit of clothes or to pay for their meals on the morrow. But if you labored morning, noon, and night till your dying day—because you would allow no dishonesty to taint your lives, and for the sole purpose of making of your children such godlike men and women as this,—you have left them a treasure ten thousand times more precious than all the hoarded millions of our wealthiest.

Make them Choose their Companions Well

In order to do this, you must be careful about two things: the choice of what your boys and girls read, and that of their companions at home or in the street. Choose well the books which you put in their hands, or which you permit them to bring home with them.

Public libraries are like druggists’ shops or public dispensaries; they are like them in this, that they contain all manner of poisons as well as healthful medicines; and they differ from them in this, that, whereas conscientious druggists will give what is healthful to all, they will only deal out what is poisonous in small quantities and to responsible and properly authorized persons;—while libraries and librarians have no conscience, and let the innocent child take away and devour what kills purity, innocence, and conscience forever.

Scarcely less baneful are, taken and read promiscuously, the daily and weekly papers. They are not only dangerous and hurtful to the young mind and heart as mere newspapers, because they reveal in their hideousness and obscenity what should never be known to youth, and what were better ignored by age itself; but they are still more hurtful as teachers and dogmatizers on religion and morality, either reducing the doctrines and practices of revealed religion to the same level with infidelity, and thus producing practical indifference toward divine truth; or they affect and profess to have an authority which can judge the Church of Christ herself, and enlighten her as to the way she ought to teach and to govern.

Thereby the mind is imperceptibly but inevitably filled with prejudices or preconceived opinions distrustful of the Church or hostile to her, and which act on the intelligence as the foul and poisonous air of coalmines acts on the lungs: they fill the organs with deadly exhalations which prevent the entrance into them of God’s pure vital air.

Just as you are careful of what books or papers your children read, even so be watchful over the companionships they form. It is impossible to take kindly to the low-minded, corrupt-hearted, or ill-bred and ill-mannered, without laying aside one’s own good manners, good breeding, purity of feeling, and innocence of mind in habitual intercourse with them.

There are worse consequences, as you know, which soon follow this familiarity with the low and the unworthy. Precisely because the great majority of young people around you are without sound moral education,—untruthful, intemperate, and as careless of honor and honesty as they are of decency,—it is your most pressing interest and duty to keep your treasures away from such contact.

“When we hold that tiny bundle in our arms for the very first time, a flood of hopes and dreams emerges like a great blue whale cresting to spout his spray into the air. But somewhere in the day-to-day busyness of life, encouraging words can get lost among the to-dos and not-to-dos. We need to take a fresh look at motherhood and recapture the commitment to be the great encouragers along a child’s journey toward adulthood.” -Sharon Jaynes, The Power of a Woman’s Words (Painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau)

Painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905)

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All Day At School? -Questions People Ask About Their Children, Fr. Daniel A. Lord, 1950’s

31 Tuesday Aug 2021

Posted by Leanevdp in Parenting, Questions People Ask About Their Children - Fr. Daniel A. Lord

≈ 1 Comment

From Questions People Ask About Their Children, Fr. Daniel A. Lord, 1950’s

If the home is such a powerful factor in the future of the children of a nation, why are such powerful groups in the nation arrayed against the home?

Precisely because the home is powerful. If it were not an important institution, the enemies of God and of man would leave it alone.

Because the people who control the home control the future, because parents are the first representatives of God on earth, because within the home is the hope of morality . . . . for these reasons the men who wish to control the future, who hate God, and who would for their own selfish purposes wipe out morality attack the home openly or subtly.

I am thinking of adopting a child. What about the risks of heredity?

Nowadays, if you are considering the adoption of a child from any reputable orphanage, you won’t find it too difficult to make some check on the ancestry of the child. You can learn a good deal without ever discovering the name of the parents.

You run a risk with any child. You would run risks with children of your own. There are strange things that crop up in the best-bred boys and girls. Science is a long way from having mastered all the details and facts involved in heredity.

But environment is the more powerful factor in the shaping of a human being. If you will give this adopted baby love and affection and a good home and careful training and wholesome food . . . . if you will lead it into the faith and see that it comes to know God and distinguish right from wrong . . . . if you will be a careful and devoted parent, neither spoiling it with kindness nor warping it with neglect . . . . you will have a first-class chance of seeing the baby grow into an adult of whom you will be proud and who will give you real happiness.

Did not the poverty-stricken environment of Abraham Lincoln help make him a success?

Both the environment and the heredity of Lincoln seem to have been somewhat in the nature of mixed blessings (to put it gently). No rules, I’ll admit, normally cover the development of genius, at least none that are yet adequately understood.

Extreme poverty and extreme wealth are normally notable handicaps to a child. The best environment is the one that offers enough, but not too much, with the need to struggle — without starvation.

The genius is not always however a happy man. He may do a wonderful job along one line or another. He may become a great musician. He may leave immortal poetry when he dies — in his garret. He may prove to be a one-sided wizard who knows all about electricity and nothing much about anything else.

I do not recall that heredity and environment collaborated to make Abraham Lincoln personally a happy man. It seems to me that he was our American Hamlet — except that, unlike Hamlet, he did great things for all of us.

He was troubled, confused, often terrifyingly tragic, usually lonesome, and apparently always a little sad as he questioned his own soul.

Do you approve of children’s attending a convent school from nine to five o’clock? Very little time remains for parental supervision of the children.

Correct me if I’m wrong. I don’t think the convent schools started this system. As I recall, some of the secular fashionable schools of our cities initiated the system.

They took the children off the parents’ hands from rosy dawn to dewy eventide.

Several factors may have inspired this:

A desire to relieve the parents of as much responsibility for their children as possible and to give the parents more time to do the really important work of the world — make money, attend clubs, become bridge experts, and maintain adult life and contacts.
A sneaking conviction on the part of many an educator that children should be separated from their parents’ pernicious and untutored influence — to the children’s ultimate and probably immediate good.

There are many educators who think the child vastly better if he is taken from his parents early and kept late. Socialism and communism had some such ideas. So the situation of an all-day school arose.

What to do? Catholic children were being taken into these secular schools. The convent authorities saw the trend, knew that some children would be so parked or checked for the day, and, preferring the lesser of two evils, offered to take the children into a Catholic educational atmosphere — on the same time basis that the secular schools offered.

I suppose all schools are an admission that parents cannot properly educate. The all-day-long school seems to proclaim that parents cannot educate at all.

But since the trend existed, I’m glad that the sisters stepped in to give the youngsters Catholic education and training . . . . and a Catholic atmosphere throughout their day’s absence from home and parents.

In this time of turmoil in our Holy Mother Church, we remain firm and hold fast to our Faith. We cling to the Ark, the Church, as it gets tossed about in the waves, bruised and battle-weary. We pray for a return to the days of former glory, when the Church was a beacon of light, a comfort to us sinners, who could find refuge in its steadfastness. St. Joseph, pray for us! www.finerfem.com

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When my children were young I loved to read to them stories, poems and nursery rhymes! They knew those rhymes inside and out and it was such a happy pastime! I did yearn, at times, for little ditties that had more meaning…….So I decided to write a book myself for the generation after me….especially thinking of my grandchildren, but for all Catholic children everywhere!

Who can resist those little ditties, those lovely little sing-song verses called Nursery Rhymes!? Songs and rhymes for young children have been passed down from generation to generation. They are fun, children love them, and they provide a warm, nurturing experience for the whole family.

Nursery Rhymes can be very valuable in a child’s reading development. They are short and easy to repeat and they become some of the child’s first sentences. They also help the child practice the rhythm of language….pitch, volume and voice inflection.

Our own children grew up learning and repeating Nursery Rhymes. It was very enjoyable and it was an easy way to teach the children the use of rhythm and rhyme. How much more meaningful those little poems would have been if there had been more depth in the considerations behind each little verse!

That is where this book comes in. It gives us some lovely rhymes that can, and should, be committed to heart by your children. Not only will it provide all the benefits of reading and memorizing, but it will supply some simple reflections that will turn those little minds to what is most important in their life….their Catholic Faith.

Research shows children learn more in their first eight years than they do in the rest of their lives. This is a powerful time to teach them.

Most important, it is a crucial time for us, as those devout Catholic parents of old, to teach our children their Faith as they sit at our feet and learn from us.

So, parents, here is a teaching tool that can help! These are meaningful little rhymes that will provide an enjoyable way to teach your children and will enrich your home with Catholic culture!

Encourage your children to learn the poems in this book. Let them peruse the pages and look at the pictures. You will find that it will be a meaningful experience for all!

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This is a unique book of Catholic devotions for young children. There is nothing routine and formal about these stories. They are interesting, full of warmth and dipped right out of life. These anecdotes will help children know about God, as each one unfolds a truth about the saints, the Church, the virtues, etc. These are short faith-filled stories, with a few questions and a prayer following each one, enabling the moral of each story to sink into the minds of your little ones. The stories are only a page long so tired mothers, who still want to give that “tucking in” time a special touch, or pause a brief moment during their busy day to gather her children around her, can feel good about bringing the realities of our faith to the minds of her children in a childlike, (though not childish), way. There is a small poem and a picture at the end of each story. Your children will be straining their necks to see the sweet pictures! Through these small stories, parents will sow seeds of our Holy Catholic Faith that will enrich their families all the years to come!

This revised 1922 classic offers gentle guidance for preteen and teenage girls on how to become a godly woman. Full of charm and sentiment, it will help mother and daughter establish a comfortable rapport for discussions about building character, friendships, obedience, high ideals, a cheerful spirit, modest dress, a pure heart, and a consecrated life.

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True Education (Part Two)

27 Friday Aug 2021

Posted by Leanevdp in Education, Parenting, Virtues

≈ 1 Comment

Stuart, Janet Erskine, The Education of Catholic Girls, 1912

The following are points very necessary in Catholic education (Part Two)…

Part One is here.

5. Proper views of Jesus Christ and His mother. For Catholic children this relationship is not a thing far off, but the faith which teaches them of God Incarnate bids them also understand that He is their own “God who gives joy to their youth”—and that His mother is also theirs.

There are many incomprehensible things in which children are taught to affirm their belief, and the acts of faith in which they recite these truths are far beyond their understanding.

But they can and do understand if we take pains to teach them that they are loved by Our Lord each one alone, intimately and personally, and asked to love in return.

“Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not,” is not for them a distant echo of what was heard long ago in the Holy Land, it is no story, but a living reality of today.

They are themselves the children who are invited to come to Him, better off indeed than those first called, since they are not now rebuked or kept off by the Apostles but brought to the front and given the first places, invited by order of His Vicar from their earliest years to receive the Bread of Heaven, and giving delight to His representatives on earth by accepting the invitation.

It is the reality as contrasted with the story that is the prerogative of the Catholic child. Jesus and Mary are real, and are its own closest kin, all but visible, at moments intensely felt as present.

They are there in joy and in trouble, when everyone else fails in understanding or looks displeased there is this refuge, there is this love which always forgives, and sets things right, and to whom nothing is unimportant or without interest.

Companionship in loneliness, comfort in trouble, relief in distress, endurance in pain are all to be found in them.

With Jesus and Mary what is there in the whole world of which a Catholic child should be afraid. And this glorious strength of theirs made perfect in child-martyrs in many ages will make them again child-martyrs now if need be, or confessors of the holy faith as they are not seldom called upon, even now, to show themselves.

There is a strange indomitable courage in children which has its deep springs in these Divine things; the strength which they find in Holy Communion and in their love for Jesus and Mary is enough to overcome in them all weakness and fear.

6. Thoughts of the faith and practice of Christian life.

And here it is necessary to guard against what is childish, visionary, and exuberant, against things that only feed the fancy or excite the imagination, against practices which are adapted to other races than ours, but with us are liable to become unreal and irreverent.

We must guard against too vivid sense impressions and especially against attaching too much importance to them, against grotesque and puerile forms of piety, which drag down the beautiful devotions to the saint.

In northern countries a greater sobriety of devotion is required if it is to have any permanent influence on life.

But again, on the other hand, the more restrained devotion must not lose its spontaneity; so long as it is the true expression of faith it can hardly be too simple, it can never be too intimate a part of common life.

Noble friendships with the saints in glory are one of the most effectual means of learning heavenly-mindedness, and friendships formed in childhood will last through a lifetime.

To find a character like one’s own which has fought the same fight and been crowned, is an encouragement which obtains great victories, and to enter into the thoughts of the saints is to qualify oneself here below for intercourse with the citizens of heaven.

To be well grounded in the elements of faith, and to have been so taught that the practice of religion has become the atmosphere of a happy life, to have the habit of sanctifying daily duties, joys, and trials by the thought of God, and a firm resolve that nothing shall be allowed to draw the soul away from Him, such is, broadly speaking, the aim we may set before ourselves for the end of the years of childhood, after which must follow the more difficult years of the training of youth.

The time has gone by when the faith of childhood might be carried through life and be assailed by no questionings from without.

A faith that is not armed and ready for conflict stands a poor chance of passing victoriously through its trials, it cannot hope to escape from being tried.

“We have labored successfully,” wrote a leading Jewish Freemason in Rome addressing his Brotherhood, “in the great cities and among the young men; it remains for us to carry out the work in the country districts and amongst the women.”

Words could not be plainer to show what awaits the faith of children when they come out into the world.

For faith to hold on its course against all that tends to carry it away, it is needful that it should not be found unprepared.

The minds of the young cannot expect to be carried along by a Catholic public opinion, there will be few to help them, and they must learn to stand by themselves, to answer for themselves, to be challenged and not afraid to speak out for their faith, to be able to give “first aid” to unsettled minds and not allow their own to be unsettled by what they hear.

They must learn that, as Father Dalgairns points out, their position in the world is far more akin to that of Christians in the first centuries of the Church than to the life that was lived in the middle ages when the Church visibly ruled over public opinion.

Now, as in the earliest ages, the faithful stand in small assemblies or as individuals amid cold or hostile surroundings, and individual faith and sanctity are the chief means of extending the kingdom of God on earth.

But this apostleship needs preparation and training. The early teaching requires to be seasoned and hardened to withstand the influences which tend to dissolve faith and piety; by this seasoning faith must be enlightened, and piety become serene and grave, “sedate,” as St. Francis of Sales would say with beautiful commentary.

In the last years of school or school-room life the mind has to be gradually inured to the harder life, to the duty of defending as well as adorning the faith, and to gain at least some idea of the enemies against which defense must be made.

It is something even to know what is in the air and what may be expected that the first surprise may not disturb the balance of the mind.

To know that in the Church there have been sorrows and scandals, without the promises of Christ having failed, and even that it had to be so, fulfilling His word, “it must needs be that scandals come” (St. Matthew XVIII. 7), that they are therefore rather a confirmation than a stumbling-block to our faith, this is a necessary safeguard.

To have some unpretentious knowledge of what is said and thought concerning Holy Scripture, to know at least something about Modernism and other phases of current opinion is necessary, without making a study of their subtleties, for the most insecure attitude of mind for girls is to think they know, in these difficult questions, and the best safeguard both of their faith and good sense is intellectual modesty.

Without making acquaintance in detail with the phenomena of spiritualism and kindred arts or sciences, it is needful to know in a plain and general way why they are forbidden by the Church, and also to know how those who have lost their balance and peace of mind in these pursuits would willingly draw back, but find it next to impossible to free themselves from the servitude in which they are entangled.

It is hard for some minds to resist the restless temptation to feel, to see, to test and handle all that life can offer of strange and mysterious experiences, and next to the curb of duty comes the safeguard of greatly valuing freedom of mind.

Curiosity concerning evil or dangerous knowledge is more impetuous when a sudden emancipation of mind sweeps the old landmarks and restraints out of sight, and nothing has been foreseen which can serve as a guide.

Then is the time when weak places in education show themselves, when the least insincerity in the presentment of truth brings its own punishment, and a faith not pillared and grounded in all honesty is in danger of failing.

The best security is to have nothing to unlearn, to know that what one knows is a very small part of what can be known, but that as far as it goes it is true and genuine, and cannot be outgrown, that it will stand both the wear of time and the test of growing power of thought, and that those who have taught these beliefs will never have to retract or be ashamed of them, or own that they were passed off, though inadequate, upon the minds of children.

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Women historically have been denigrated as lower than men or viewed as privileged. Dr. Alice von Hildebrand characterizes the difference between such views as based on whether man’s vision is secularistic or steeped in the supernatural. She shows that feminism’s attempts to gain equality with men by imitation of men is unnatural, foolish, destructive, and self-defeating. The Blessed Mother’s role in the Incarnation points to the true privilege of being a woman. Both virginity and maternity meet in Mary who exhibits the feminine gifts of purity, receptivity to God’s word, and life-giving nurturance at their highest.

You’ll learn how to grow in wisdom and in love as you encounter the unglamorous, everyday problems that threaten all marriages. As the author says: If someone were to give me many short bits of wool, most likely I would throw them away. A carpet weaver thinks differently. He knows the marvels we can achieve by using small things artfully and lovingly. Like the carpet weaver, the good wife must be an artist of love. She must remember her mission and never waste the little deeds that fill her day the precious bits of wool she s been given to weave the majestic tapestry of married love.

This remarkable book will show you how to start weaving love into the tapestry of your marriage today, as it leads you more deeply into the joys of love.

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True Education (Part One)

25 Wednesday Aug 2021

Posted by Leanevdp in Education, Parenting, Virtues

≈ 1 Comment

Stuart, Janet Erskine, The Education of Catholic Girls, 1912

The following are points very necessary in Catholic education…

“These are qualifications that are never attained, because they must always be in process of attainment, only one who is constantly growing in grace and love and knowledge can give the true appreciation of what that grace and love and knowledge are in their bearing on human life: to be rather than to know is therefore a primary qualification. Inseparably bound up with it is the thinking right thoughts concerning what is to be taught.”

1. To have right thoughts of God. It would seem to be too obvious to need statement, yet experience shows that this fundamental necessity is not always secure, far from it.

It is not often put into words, but traces may be found only too easily of foundations of religion laid in thoughts of God that are unworthy of our faith. Whence can they have come?

Doubtless in great measure from the subtle spirit of Jansenism which spread so widely in its day and is so hard to outlive—from remains of the still darker spirit of Calvinism which hangs about convert teachers of a rigid school—from vehement and fervid spiritual writers, addressing themselves to the needs of other times—perhaps most of all from the old lie which was from the beginning, the deep mistrust of God which is the greatest triumph of His enemy.

God is set forth as if He were encompassed with human limitations—the fiery imagery of the Old Testament pressed into the service of modern and western minds, until He is made to seem pitiless, revengeful, exacting, lying in wait to catch His creatures in fault, and awaiting them at death with terrible surprises.

But this is not what the Church and the Gospels have to say about Him to the children of the kingdom.

If we could put into words our highest ideals of all that is most lovely and lovable, beautiful, tender, gracious, liberal, strong, constant, patient, unwearying, add what we can, multiply it a million times, tire out our imagination beyond it, and then say that it is nothing to what He is, that it is the weakest expression of His goodness and beauty, we shall give a poor idea of God indeed, but at least, as far as it goes, it will be true, and it will lead to trustfulness and friendship, to a right attitude of mind, as child to father, and creature to Creator.

We speak as we believe, there is an accent of sincerity that carries conviction if we speak of God as we believe, and if we believe truly, we shall speak of Him largely, trustfully, and happily, whether in the dogmas of our faith, or as we find His traces and glorious attributes in the world around us, as we consider the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, or as we track with reverent and unprecipitate following the line of His providential government in the history of the world.

The need of right thoughts of God is also deeply felt on the side of our relations to Him, and that especially in our democratic times when sovereignty is losing its meaning.

There are free and easy ideas of God, as if man might criticize and question and call Him to account, and have his say on the doings of the Creator.

It is not explanation or apology that answer these, but a right thought of God makes them impossible, and this right thought can only be given if we have it ourselves.

The Fatherhood of God and the Sovereignty of God are foundations of belief which complete one another, and bear up all the superstructure of a child’s understanding of Christian life.

2. Ideas of ourselves and of our destiny. It is a pity that evil instead of good is made a prominent feature of religious teaching.

To be haunted by the thought of evil and the dread of losing our soul, as if it were a danger threatening us at every step, is not the most inspiring ideal of life; quiet, steady, unimaginative fear and watchfulness is harder to teach, but gives a stronger defense against sin than an ever present terror; while all that belongs to hope awakens a far more effective response to good.

Some realization of our high destiny as heirs of heaven is the strongest hold that the average character can have to give steadiness in prosperity and courage in adversity.

Chosen souls will rise higher than this, but if the average can reach so far as this they will do well.

3. Right ideas of sin and evil. It is possible on the one hand to give such imperfect ideas of right and wrong that all is measured by the mere selfish standard of personal security.

The frightened question about some childish wrong-doing—”is it a mortal sin?” often indicates that fear of punishment is the only aspect under which sin appears to the mind; while a satisfied tone in saying “it is only a venial sin” looks like a desire to see what liberties may be taken with God without involving too serious consequences to self.

“It is wrong” ought to be enough, and the less children talk of mortal sin the better—to talk of it, to discuss with them whether this or that is a mortal sin, accustoms them to the idea.

When they know well the conditions which make a sin grave without illustrations by example which are likely to obscure the subject rather than clear it up, when their ideas of right and duty and obligation are clear, when “I ought” has a real meaning for them, we shall have a stronger type of character than that which is formed on detailed considerations of different degrees of guilt.

On the other hand it is possible to confuse and torment children by stories of the exquisite delicacy of the consciences of the saints, as St. Aloysius, setting before them a standard that is beyond their comprehension or their degree of grace, and making them miserable because they cannot conform to it.

It is a great safeguard against sin to realize that duty must be done, at any cost, and that Christianity means self-denial and taking up the cross.

4. Thoughts of the four last things. True thoughts of death are not hard for children to grasp, to their unspoiled faith it is a simple and joyful thing to go to God.

Later on the dreary pageantry and the averted face of the world from that which is indeed its doom obscure the Christian idea, and the mind slips back to pagan grief, as if there were no life to come.

Thoughts of judgment are not so hard to give if the teaching is sincere and simple, free from exaggerations and phantoms of dread, and on the other hand clear from an incredulous protest against God’s holding man responsible for his acts.

But to give right thoughts of hell and heaven taxes the best resources of those who wish to lay foundations well, for they are to be foundations for life, and the two lessons belong together, corner-stones of the building, to stand in view as long as it shall stand and never to be forgotten.

The two lessons belong together as the final destiny of man, fixed by his own act, this or that. And they have to be taught with all the force and gravity and dignity which befits the subject, and in such a way that after years will find nothing to smile at and nothing to unlearn.

They have to be taught as the mind of the present time can best apprehend them, not according to the portraiture of medieval pictures, but in a language perhaps not more true and adequate in itself but less boisterous and more comprehensible to our self-conscious and introspective moods.

Father Faber’s treatment of these last things, hell and heaven, would furnish matter for instruction not beyond the understanding of those in their last years at school, and of a kind which if understood must leave a mark upon the mind for life.

Establishing clear-cut family rules requires complete agreement between father and mother. Few things disturb a child more than when his father establishes one standard of conduct and his mother makes continuous exceptions to it. Once a father and mother agree, neither should change the rules without consulting the other, or the child will not know what is expected of him. And both father and mother must share in enforcing them. – Rev. George Kelly, 1950’s

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To the modern mind, the concept of poverty is often confused with destitution. But destitution emphatically is not the Gospel ideal. A love-filled sharing frugality is the message, and Happy Are You Poor explains the meaning of this beatitude lived and taught by Jesus himself. But isn’t simplicity in lifestyle meant only for nuns and priests? Are not all of us to enjoy the goodness and beauties of our magnificent creation? Are parents to be frugal with the children they love so much?

For over half a century, Catholic families have treasured the practical piety and homespun wisdom of Mary Reed Newland’s classic of domestic spirituality, The Year and Our Children. With this new edition, no longer will you have to search for worn, dusty copies to enjoy Newland’s faithful insights, gentle lessons, and delightful stories. They’re all here, and ready to be shared with your family or homeschooling group. Here, too, you’ll find all the prayers, crafts, family activities, litanies, and recipes that will help make your children ever-mindful of the beautiful rhythm of the Church calendar.

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Finer Femininity

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Category Archives: Parenting

Your Child – Lying, Stealing, etc., by Rev. George A. Kelly

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True Education (Part Two)

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True Education (Part One)

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