Category Archives: Parenting

Christ Speaks to Us ~ Catholic Home Schooling

12 Friday Aug 2022

Posted by in Education, FF Tidbits, Parenting

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by Father John Hardon, S.J.

I would like to address the subject of Catholic home schooling in the tradition of the Catholic Church, and my plan is to cover three areas of a large subject.

What has the Catholic Church considered as home schooling in the Church’s history? Secondly, why is home schooling necessary? And thirdly, how should home schooling be done most effectively?

The focus I would like to take is of home schooling as authentically Catholic. I would like to begin first with a general definition of Catholic home schooling, and then distinguish various kinds of home schooling in the Church’s history.

Catholic home schooling is the planned and organized teaching and training of children at home, for their peaceful and effective life in this world, and for their eternal salvation in the world to come.

I distinguish teaching from training, for I say that teaching addresses itself mainly to the mind, and training to the will; indeed, the training of the mind is in order to motivate the will.

We get our principles for authentic Catholic home schooling from Christ’s closing directive to His apostles: “To teach all nations” — that’s the mind — “to observe all that I have commanded you” — that’s with the will. Home schooling, therefore, addresses itself to the mind in order that the will might be motivated to do God’s will. It is the teaching and training of children at home that distinguishes it from teaching and training in formal school situations.

Having said that, we must immediately distinguish among the different forms that Catholic home schooling has taken over the centuries, depending on the conditions of the Church at any given time in her history.

The conditions are as follows: first in missionary times before the Church had been established in any particular country or locality; second, home schooling once the Church had been firmly established third, home schooling where the Church is strongly opposed; and finally, where the Church has been disestablished, especially by civil authority.

I will identify the Church’s condition in our country: the Church under opposition and not yet formally disestablished.

Home schooling in the United States is the necessary concomitant of a culture in which the Church is being opposed on every level of her existence and, as a consequence, given the widespread secularization in our country, home schooling is not only valuable or useful but it is absolutely necessary for the survival of the Catholic church in our country.

Home schooling, in our country, is that form of teaching and training of children at home in order to preserve the Catholic faith in the family, and to preserve the Catholic faith in our country.

Our second reflection is why. There are four principal reasons why Catholic home schooling is necessary. . . . Home schooling has been necessary in the Catholic Church since her foundation.

The necessity, therefore, is not the necessity that is the result of an emergency. No, Catholic home schooling is necessary — period. And one reason is that it was so widely neglected before. So many parents practically abdicated their own obligation to teach their own children, and then found out, sadly, their children were not being given a Catholic education.

How do we know that home schooling is necessary? First, we know it from divine revelation. The early Church is normative, not only on what we should believe as Catholics but on how we ought to learn our faith . . . and live it.

There were not established Catholic schools in the Roman Empire back in the first 300 years of the Church’s history. Except for parents becoming, believing, and being heroic Catholics in the early Church, nothing would have happened. The Church would have died out before the end of the first century.

CHURCH’S TEACHING AND HISTORY

There is no single aspect of religious instruction that, over the centuries, the Church has not more frequently, or more insistently, taught the faithful, than of the parents on how to provide for the religious, and, therefore, also human, education and upbringing of their offspring.

So true is this that it is the second and co-equal purpose for Christ instituting the Sacrament of Matrimony, for the procreation and the education of children. By whom? By the parents! That is why Christ instituted the Sacrament of Matrimony. So how do we know that home schooling is necessary? Because the Church has always taught it.

Where has the Church survived? Only and wherever — and this is historically provable — home schooling over the centuries by the Catholic parents has been taken so seriously that they considered it their most sacred duty, after having brought the children into the world physically, to parent them spiritually.

The necessity for home schooling is not only a natural necessity, it is a supernatural necessity. Have parents over the centuries, in all nations, from the dawn of human history, in every culture, had the obligation to teach and train their children?

Yes, the same ones who brought the children physically into the world have a natural obligation, binding in the natural law, to provide for the mental, moral, and social upbringing of their offspring. Yet since God became man, the necessity, and therefore the corresponding obligation, becomes supernatural.

What do we mean when we say that Catholic home schooling is a supernatural necessity? We mean that in God’s mysterious but infallible providence, He channels His grace from human beings who already possess that grace. It is a platitude to say that we cannot give what we do not have. Nobody would ever learn the alphabet. We would not know how to read or write, or even know how to eat.

We have to be taught everything we know. The real necessity for Catholic home schooling is not because we naturally need someone else to bring us into the world, nor to teach us what we need to know and do as human beings. Since the coming of Christ we are no longer mere human beings.

BECOMING CHANNELS OF GRACE

At baptism, we receive the life which is the very life of God shared by Him with His creatures. And just as no one give himself natural life, so no one receives or nurtures or develops or grows in that supernatural life that we receive at baptism.

The main reason for home schooling is that only those who have God’s grace are used by Him as channels of grace to others.

Over the centuries, our principal Jesuit apostolate has been teaching. And we are told, in the most uncompromising language, “You will be able to teach others, you will share with them, only what you are yourselves.”

No one else can teach the faith…except the person who has it. But possessing divine grace, beginning with the virtue of faith, is not only a condition, it is also the measure for the communication of grace. Weak-believing parents will be weak conduits of the grace of faith to their children. Strong-believing parents will be strong conduits of the grace of faith. This is not good psychology and it is not good example. This is Divine Revelation.

In the mysterious providence of God, this is the law: Only those who possess the supernatural life and the measure of the possession of faith, hope and charity will God use as the channels of His grace to their children.

LIVE OUR HOLY FAlTH

How are parents to provide for the Catholic home schooling for their children? First, the principal and most fundamental way is by living strong Catholic lives. All the academic verbiage and planned pedagogy are useless. Only persons who have God’s grace will He use as the channels of His grace to others, and no one, but no one, cheats here.

What then is the first way to be an effective home schooling parent while living a good Catholic life?

For Catholic parents to live good Catholic lives in our day requires heroic virtue. Only heroic parents will survive the massive, demonic secularization of materially super- developed countries like America.

And consequently, far from being surprised, parents should expect that home schooling will not be easy. Any home schooling in the U.S. which is easy today is not authentic Catholic home schooling. If it is easy, there is something wrong.

Today, Catholic parents must not only endure the cross, resign themselves to living the cross, but they are to choose the cross. In case no one has told you, when you chose home schooling, you chose a cross-ridden form of education.

This is the age of martyrs . . . and a martyr is one who suffers for the profession of his faith. There is red martyrdom and white martyrdom. There is bloody martyrdom and unbloody martyrdom.

You have to live a heroic Catholic life in America today. God will use you and provide you with the knowledge and the wisdom, providing you are living the authentically heroic Catholic life.

KNOW AND IMPART THE FAITH

Secondly, if you want to teach and train your children, you must know your faith. You must grasp and understand the faith. Read the 14th chapter of St. Matthew where Our Lord tells the parable of the sower sowing seeds.

Seeds fell on four kinds of ground. The first three kinds were unfruitful. As Jesus said, birds came along and picked up the seed, and nothing grew. The disciples asked Jesus for the meaning. The Lord explained that the seeds falling on the wayside are those persons who have received the Word of God into their hearts and fail to understand it, and therefore the evil one comes along and steals it from their hearts.

That is why America now has millions of ex-Catholics. They have never understood their faith.

I have strong encouragement from the Holy See to train parents. You are all welcome to learn your faith so that you grasp and understand your faith. Then God will use you to teach your children as a channel of faith. Teach, not only by rote memory, but to grasp the faith.

Many Catholics, before they finish college, discard their faith as a remnant of childhood. They don’t understand. I myself had 16 years of Jesuit education, and 15 more years before I started teaching. There are oceanic depths to our faith, and you must learn as much as you can, so that God will use you as an effective channel of grace so you can communicate your faith to your offspring.

TRUE SCHOOLING and THE SACRAMENTAL LIFE

Next, Catholic home schooling must be schooling. There must be organization, administration, a pattern, a schedule, and a program. Somebody has to be in charge. Mother and father must cooperate in the home schooling.

Home schooling must be sacramental. In other words, the Church that Christ founded is the Church of the Seven Sacraments, especially the Sacraments of Eucharist and Confession.

You, yourselves, should receive the sacraments of Holy Communion and Confession. Train your children to live a sacramental life.

Finally, to be authentically Catholic, home schooling must be prayerful. The single most fundamental thing you can teach your children, bar none, is to know the necessity and method of prayer.

You must pray yourselves. Without prayer, all the schooling in the world will not produce the effect which God wants home schooling to give, because home schooling is a communication of divine grace, from Christ to the parents to the children. And the principle way parents communicate from Christ to their children, the grace upon which those children will be saved, is prayer.

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Mental Hygiene ~ The Catholic Teacher’s Companion

11 Thursday Aug 2022

Posted by in Attitude, Catholic Teacher's Companion, Education, Health and Wellness, Parenting

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This book, The Catholic Teacher’s Companion, has been a real gem! It was written for teaching sisters and this excerpt touches on the mental state of a person and how it affects one’s physical health….

From The Catholic Teacher’s Companion, 1924

In his helpful book Health through Will Power, Dr. James J. Walsh has drawn attention to the surprising power of the will for preserving or recovering one’s health.

The author draws on his wide reading and long experience to prove that the simple exercise of natural will-power is all that is required to cure half the ills of life. All the “dreads” can be cured by scientifically strengthening the will, and recovery from such diseases as pneumonia and tuberculosis depends largely on the patient’s vigor of will.

He counsels the use of the saints’ ascesis, in hours of stress and strain, instead of the “good cry,” which, in his opinion, only weakens the character.

The teacher has a double duty to perform in this respect, one toward herself and another toward her pupils.

Professor La Rue therefore demands justly in his book Psychology for Teachers, that the teacher live a life of mental health in the presence of her pupils; she must daily show them a living example of a big, strong, purposeful, well-poised, good-humored, sympathetic soul.

To this end he gives the following rules of mental hygiene:

1. Look at life in the large. Take a big view of things.

2. Pursue a great purpose. Whoever seeks his own selfish will is traveling toward zero; but he who seeks to serve mankind and her God in the children, is facing toward infinity.

3. Practice mental hardening. Children should be taught to meet and conquer all their ordinary worries and troubles, and not to shun them.

4. Keep your poise. Many people fail because of over-anxiety lest they fail.

5. Form good mental habits:

I. Habits of the intellect:

(1) Planning: there should be an ideal for life, a plan for the year, a program for the day.

“The difficulty,” says Judd, speaking of over-worked teachers, in Genetic Psychology for Teachers, “is not so much in the fact that teachers have to think and plan, as that they come to their work in a state of mental confusion and excitement which renders any task difficult.”

(2) Concentration, unit-mindedness, the one-thing-at-a-time attitude, distinguishes the master mind. Work when you work and play when you play. One must concentrate on recreation as well as on work.

Don’t spoil your game or your walk by carrying all through it a load of anxious thought.

And on going to bed, learn to turn off consciousness as you do your electric light.

Observe that the child in school is prevented from planning the larger features of his work, and that school conditions often favor distraction rather than concentration.

It is sad to think how many children are probably contracting bad mental habits in school.

II. Emotional health requires that we kill off the feelings that are bad for us and practice those that are good for us.

There is reason to believe that a large proportion, if not the major portion, of those who lose their positions do not lack either intellect or skill, but emotional control.

Many are egocentric, paranoid, have too much self-feeling; others are emotionally unstable; and still others, emotionally weak.

One’s prevailing mental state should be that of happiness and humor. It is surprising to find how much can be accomplished by just setting the mind to be happy whatever the circumstances.

Humor is like an application of mental massage which flushes out fatigue poisons and limbers one up all through. It lets loose the tensity of mental currents. The mind seems to relax, straighten up from its work, and take a long, fresh breath.

III. Quiet but effective determination must keep the mental machine running smoothly, rousing us to kill off some thoughts and feelings and promote others.

God’s grace coupled with natural will-power can accomplish wonders with a frail body.

Almost every Religious Order has cases similar to that of the Master General of the Dominicans, Father Cormier, who being professed as a preparation for death, outlived all his fellow-novices, and having joined the Order to efface himself, was from the beginning put upon the candlestick to be a light for his brethren.

But even the confirmed invalid has a real mission to perform in the Religious Community.

Canon Sheehan contended that there should be an invalid and an incurable one in every Religious Community, if only to bring God nearer to the Brothers or Sisters in His great love.

“Every effort we make to forget self, to leave self behind us, and to devote ourselves to the labor of making every person with whom we are bound to live, happy, is rewarded by interior satisfaction and joy. The supreme effort of goodness is,—not alone to do good to others; that is its first and lower effect,—but to make others good.” Rev. Bernard O’Reilly The Mirror of True Womanhood, 1893 https://amzn.to/2o35uN3 (afflink)

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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.

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Your Privilege of Parenthood ~ Rev. George Kelly

05 Friday Aug 2022

Posted by in Parenting

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by Rev. George Kelly, The Catholic Marriage Manual

Your Privilege of Parenthood

If you constantly keep in mind the origin of the word “matrimony,” you will have a clear understanding of your vocation as married man or woman: your primary job is to perform the function of parenthood.

In the first chapter of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, it is recorded that God created man and woman for parenthood, The Bible states: “And God created man to His own image: To the image of God He created him: Male and female, He created them. And God blessed them saying: Increase and multiply and fill the earth.” (Genesis, 1:27-28)

Man takes too much for granted the magnificent power which God has given him to reproduce human life. Every parent receives a gift far surpassing any other that humans may possess. For example, when the great Michelangelo completed his magnificent statue of Moses, he was so impressed with its lifelike nature that he threw his hammer at it and commanded: “Speak!” Of course, this creation of one of the most gifted of all men remained mute.

As a parent, however, you are a creative artist who can produce an actual human being. Great as is the privilege of bearing children, it is only a small part of your total privilege of parenthood. You are your child’s first and most important teacher—the means through which he will learn how to live on earth and to prepare for his lifetime in eternity.

As Pope Pius XI taught us, “God wishes men to be born not only that they should live and fill the earth, but much more that they may be worshipers of God, that they may know Him and love Him and finally enjoy Him forever in heaven.”

It is obvious then that your work really begins only when your baby is born. Your home becomes a miniature church; your function is to teach, rule, and sanctify in Christ’s name.

Never underestimate your power. You are the most important influence your child will ever know.

The Pleasures of Parenthood

In our materialistic age, emphasis is often placed upon sacrifices which parents must make to care properly for their children. Persons with a “birth-control mentality” stress that the family with more than a token number of children often must live in an older home in a less exclusive section; must drive an old car that lacks up-to-date conveniences; must patch up and wear clothing that richer people might discard.

Obviously, having children involves sacrifices. But the proponents of contraception ignore the truth that the joys of bearing and caring for children far outweigh the disadvantages.

Parenthood is the normal state for a married man and woman. The child is the natural fruit of their love for each other. Moreover, the desire to procreate is inborn. Even in pagan countries, the man who dies without a son and heir is an object of pity; the woman who cannot produce a child is cast away.

In your children, you will find your own happiness. As we have seen, true love can blossom only in a spirit of self-sacrifice and in a willingness to forego selfish objectives for the sake of another human being.

In performing your duties of parenthood, you perfect yourself in self-sacrifice and therefore in love. But your sacrifices are like bread cast upon the waters; they return to enrich your life a hundredfold. For children are a pleasure in themselves, a source of comfort and consolation.

Consider the home filled with happy children at Christmas; compare it with one in which the sound of childish laughter is not heard.

Your children give you a worthy goal to work for in marriage. Like the gardener tending rare seedlings in his garden, you watch each stage in your child’s development with amazement. You see results today of your efforts of weeks or months ago, and you are encouraged to look ahead to a further blossoming a few months from now.

The process of growth continues in a pattern that never ceases to delight and inspire you. The infant who has just learned to gurgle and coo now becomes the toddler taking his first step into a strange new world; soon he asks his first innocent questions about God and life; then he sits by your side, his first reader in his hands.

You see him at the altar rail as a first communicant, then with his school diploma. He undertakes his first job; soon he is no longer your dependent son, but a bright-eyed, mature bridegroom.

In all of these many stages, you as a parent can feel an unparalleled joy in the part you have played in developing this greatest of all God’s creatures—a life more precious than the most exquisite flower ever grown, more beautiful in God’s sight than the greatest painting, more inspiring than the most complex machine.

“God has thus put into the hand of the parents at their own hearthstone, a power greater than that which kings and queens wield, and which must issue in either the weal or the woe of their children. It would surely seem to be worth while to make any sacrifice of personal comfort or pleasure—to transmit a legacy of holy memories which shall be through all the years, like a host of pure angels hovering over those we love, to guard and guide them.” J.R. Miller

Some prayers for you….

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The saints assure us that simplicity is the virtue most likely to draw us closer to God and make us more like Him.

No wonder Jesus praised the little children and the pure of heart! In them, He recognized the goodness that arises from an untroubled simplicity of life, a simplicity which in the saints is completely focused on its true center, God.

That’s easy to know, simple to say, but hard to achieve.

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Training in Purity ~ Christ in the Home

03 Wednesday Aug 2022

Posted by in Parenting, Virtues

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Article by Father Raoul Plus, S.J., Christ in the Home

The child is naturally innocent. Moreover, if baptized, it possesses with infused faith a special quality of innocence which comes to it from the presence of the Holy Spirit in its soul. We must avoid any diminishing of this innocence.

It is a great mistake to think that because the child is innocent, “it doesn’t understand,” and consequently to take no precautions; to be lacking in vigilance over the child’s bathing and dressing, to let it run about without clothes, unsupervised before its brothers and sisters.

The adults of the family, too, should avoid any immodesty either in posture or dress before the little one; they should keep out of its way pictures of questionable decency.

True, at the time, the harm may be slight or even negative, but the child has eyes and a memory; it registers everything, stores it all away.

Great care should be exercised for bodily cleanliness to prevent the formation of bad habits that might result from discomfort. It is best to separate the sexes for sleep.

As the children grow older, we must be vigilant over their choice of playmates. We should protect them from any pictures, statues, advertisements or entertainment that can disturb them.

We are wise if we keep the children busy even to the point of fatigue, but a fatigue in keeping with their age and strength. We ought also to inspire them to absolute confidence. In addition we must seize every opportunity to show them positively the grandeur of purity.

People sometimes attempt to rear children as if they were without sex. Children are either little boys or little girls.

Long before the awakening of their sex instincts, in fact from their babyhood, their personality is distinctly individual and gives foreshadowings of fatherhood or of motherhood.

Sex, although its characteristic functions do not become active until the onset of puberty, impregnates the whole physical and moral being from the beginning.

Consequently, it is important to foresee long in advance the unfolding of that providential power which is still dormant yet capable of being influenced beneficially or detrimentally at this early stage according to the wisdom of the folly of its training.

We should not, however, be satisfied with a purely negative training to holy purity, a training made up for the most part of wise precautions.

There is need, too, for positive training in this beautiful virtue.

This positive training will in part consist of education in true facts, a discreet and chaste explanation of the functions of the generative organs according to God’s plan; an explanation as complete as the age of the child permits or requires.

The duty of giving this instruction falls largely upon the mother who only too often finds herself inadequately prepared.

It is a fact that even very young children become curious about the difference of the sexes as well as the mystery of generation and they express their curiosity with embarrassing candor and directness in blunt questions: “Where do babies come from?”

In general, no one is better qualified than the mother to give the initial instructions and information delicately, without wounding innocence or troubling and shocking the child’s keenly susceptible soul by confronting it too brusquely with disturbing new concepts.

It is better for the father to instruct the boys. Parents have the grace of state; furthermore, they know or they ought to know how to speak to their children and exactly what to say according to what the child already knows or does not know, according to its impressionability, its probable emotional reaction, its intelligence, its imagination.

The initial instruction must always be strictly individual, never group instruction. Such instruction should be given early enough, in time, but never prematurely.

Rarely should a mass of information be given at once, but nearly always imparted progressively.  One must never give any false information, but neither is one obliged to tell all there is to be told at one blow.

Only such knowledge should be given as is necessary to clarify the present difficulty, to satisfy the child’s curiosity at the time. Later when occasion offers to complete the information, it can be completed.

The introduction of the child to the facts of life must be made with simplicity, without excessive preambles and beating about the bush, objectively without clumsiness; they must be presented as something quite natural but explained in an atmosphere of earnestness, dignity and respect.

There must be nothing affected or borrowed in one’s manner or tone, only calmness and a natural everyday voice uncolored by emotionalism.

The child, however, must be made to realize that he has been given no new subject for chatter with his playmates and friends; if there is something he wishes to speak of later regarding his new information or if there is something he does not understand, he will always be able to ask mother or father about it; he should speak to them about it.

A very sensible mother concluded the instructions she gave her little one with these few words:

“What I have just told you is a secret, our secret. Now that you know it, give me your hand and promise me that you will not question other people about it or ever speak to anyone else about it, but only to me.”

A little child will be flattered by such a mark of confidence and being naturally pure will sense the reason for this recommendation as clearly as if it had been expressed.

In addition, if the child is used to living in an atmosphere of filial trust and abandonment, of respect for itself, of training in sacrifice, supernatural generosity, daily contact with the invisible world through prayer and love of God, its instruction will prove singularly easy.

We cannot overemphasize the fact that “training to purity must be set in the framework of a solid all-round training of the will, the conscience, the emotions, the imagination and the whole body.”

To enlighten the child regarding sex will serve for nothing and can even be harmful if it has not first been established in fidelity in the light of spirituality, and in energy of will.

In other words, formal training to purity must be preceded by training pure and simple. It will be possible to speak clearly to a child who lives in an environment that is deeply impregnated with Christianity.

In his tranquil soul, innocent and disciplined as it is, useful initiations can take place with profit and without causing any trouble; his delicate conscience will understand; his refined and mortified emotions will yield readily to the requirements of modesty, and he will not be stimulated to an unhealthy curiosity.

We can change the world within our own families. We do not need heroic deeds, exceptional intelligence or extraordinary talents. Every day, our daily duties, our interactions with our family, our living out the Faith in the small ordinary things, will be the thread that weaves the beautiful rug that future generations will be walking upon and building upon…. Finer Femininity

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Discourage Greed / Serving God & Family ~ New Podcast! The Qualities of True Love

01 Monday Aug 2022

Posted by in Parenting, Podcasts - Finer Femininity

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We were always careful about paying our children for jobs they did for the running of the home. We never did allowances…but if done correctly, I think it could work. We don’t want to raise children who are entitled and who expect money for everything or just that their services are worth more than they actually are. Gift-giving was moderate and so our children and our grandchildren are grateful for the smallest gift!

by Mary Reed Newland, How to Raise Good Catholic Children

Discourage Greed in Your Child

I heard a mother say, “I never allow other people to take advantage of my child. Send him on their errands!” This is the beginning of “let George do it.”

Children should be encouraged to do work for others, and not just for pay. We are our brothers’ keepers. How else are children to discover what it is to serve Christ in their neighbor?

When they’re little, they don’t even want to be paid. They like to do things for people because it gives them a feeling of usefulness. Pay for such tasks should be primarily satisfaction, perhaps a piece of cake and a glass of milk. Maybe, on rare occasions, a very small amount of money.

Too many youngsters overpaid for work in the years of elementary school emerge from high school and face the world with one idea only about work: “How much am I going to get?”

There’s time enough to earn money, and there are jobs for the high school years that involve real work and a just wage for it. But spoiling a child’s opportunity to experience the real satisfaction of working for love of neighbor is doing him a grave injustice, and it’s rarely undone.

Overpaid, he will not work well, and he will work only until he has what he set out to get — not until a job is finished. He’s a clock watcher in the making, and he will so overrate his worth as a workman that he will never be satisfied to do anything for a just wage. It won’t be entirely his fault.

Parents of children who work for their neighbors should make it clear they don’t want them overpaid. Character training, learning to respect a job for its challenge, is far more valuable than a little extra money.

Paid baby-sitting is another custom that has made great inroads on the doctrine of neighborly charity. Responsible baby-sitters deserve just wages, and there are many who have no other way of earning money that’s badly needed.

But in the rush to grow up and join the ranks of the wage earners, many young girls are being deprived of their opportunity to serve with love, of even the idea that there are deep rewards in service for love.

Mothers are now so frantic for baby-sitters, at whatever wages, that they’re on the defensive. It’s no longer a privilege to sit with a neighbor’s baby; it’s an act of condescension, and if — as has happened from time to time in our town — local industries slow down and family wages are reduced, mothers and fathers who are vitally needed members of a PTA or a church society cannot afford to pay babysitters and so drop out of organizations in which their talents are needed for the common good.

A better way of breaking in potential baby-sitters (when mothers are timid about accepting service for no pay) is baby-sitting for barter. I have paid baby-sitters with coffee cake, with homemade bread, with drawings, and with baby-sitting myself. (Learn how to make homemade bread: all baby-sitters are dead ducks within sniffing distance of homemade bread.)

We have two baby-sitters extraordinaire whom we love with all our hearts, worth every nickel of their pay (and when you baby-sit with seven children, you deserve your pay). They endeared themselves to us for all time this past Christmas.

One said, “I’m not going to take any money from my friends for sitting anymore. I get a wage, and I don’t need their money, and they have families and more expenses than I.” Another gave us a Christmas box with a fat bow and inside a year’s baby-sittings “for free.” There is joy in serving, but only those who try it find out.

Help Your Child to Find Joy in Serving God and Family

Allowances, when a family can afford them, raise another question. Should children be paid for the week’s work, or should they receive it in any case?

Our feeling about this is that allowances are, in part, a sign of appreciation for cooperating with the work of the entire family. They’re also a token share of the family wealth, when there’s any wealth to share.

But there are certain restrictions as to how they may be spent, what portion should go into the Sunday offering at Mass, and so on. Obligations incurred through carelessness, such as the lost screwdriver or a broken window that resulted from playing ball in the house, must be paid for out of allowance money.

Children are encouraged to share their allowances with the poor, sending some off to the missions or to some particular family that we know is in need.

Such things as second-hand wheels needed for homemade jalopies, material and pattern for a skirt, seeds for planting one’s special stand of corn, are bought with allowance money. And, of course, there are weeks when things are very tight, and there’s no money for allowances at all; then everyone goes without.

Then there’s the problem of the child nearby who doesn’t have to do any work. “Why doesn’t she, and why do I?” This isn’t always easy to handle. In the face of a living example of someone who’s quite happy without having to do any work, all the high-minded theory seems to break down.

The value of training in work, the joy of service, the serving of God are attractive ideas until someone else is waiting outside to play while you still have to wipe the dishes and feed the baby. But they are the answer, just the same.

It’s hard to apply them to this situation without seeming to make ignoble comparisons, and we mustn’t do that. We have found the most convincing persuasions to be loyalty to the family cause (we all need to do our share so that the family will be happy and things go smoothly) and using the work for a heroic intention.

“Remember the children in poor countries, who need your prayers and your love. Remember our missionaries, who are trying to do so much with so little. It won’t take long to do these few dishes, and then you may play. Do them for the love of children who have no homes to work in, no lovely outdoors where they may play, who don’t even have dishes to wash or the food to put on them.”

Inviting the guest in to wait, or, if she wishes, to help, often solves the problem. Indeed, children who do not have to work at home frequently discover that it’s fun to help at the home of someone who does.

If I am not capable of great things, I will not become discouraged, but I will do the small things! Sometimes, because we are unable to do great things, heroic acts, we neglect the small things that are available to us and which are, moreover, so fruitful for our spiritual progress and are such a source of joy: “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful over a few things, I will now trust you with greater. Come and share your Master’s joy.” (Matthew 25:21) -Fr. Jacques Philippe, Searching For and Maintaining Peace

“Sacrifice means compromise. Maybe you’d always be willing to subjugate your own wishes because of your love, but your partner, in turn, should be willing to deny his (or her) wishes so that you can have your way. Thus the act of giving is shared, and the act of taking is shared too.” -Rev. George Kelly, 1950’s

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Without condescension, Fr. Garesché shows how to maintain a healthy mind, resist temptations, grow temperate, practice fortitude, think kindly of others, and choose worthwhile amusements. He even explains how to accept criticism graciously and how to develop the kind of confidence that is not rooted in pride, but is the necessary foundation for any life that will be productive and holy. Once you assimilate the wisdom here, you’ll know how to find genuine success the success that transcends money, fame, and pleasure.

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Family Spirit ~ Christ in the Home

01 Friday Jul 2022

Posted by in Christ in the Home - Fr. Raoul Plus S.J., Parenting

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From Christ in the Home, Fr. Raoul Plus, S.J., 1950’s

Parental Responsibility

It is worth considering more than once the responsibility that can rest with the parents when some children do not achieve their full possibility or even turn out badly.

Let us of course give due blame to the evil concupiscence which can provoke a painful transformation in children even when the parents have done everything possible.

It remains true just the same that in a good number of cases, the father and the mother or one or the other must plead guilty.

A boy is sent to college. He gets along fine until the sophomore year. From then on he bungles everything, abandons right conduct, falls in with dangerous companions, carries on high to such an extent that he has to be expelled.

And when a professor expresses astonishment, the dean will give this explanation: “It’s his background; unfavorable heredity; his brothers were just the same.
The mother is a saint, but the father is one of those unfortunate individuals who is ruled by his senses; he has caused much suffering to his wife. It is just the traces of the father showing up in the children.”

The explanation can be taken for what it is worth. The law of heredity is not a mathematical law. There is no doubt, however, that it is operative, more operative than one thinks.

When heredity is not to blame, it can often be a matter of bad training. How good parents are, how very good, too good, too weak!
It is their own formation which is faulty; it should be done over.

A mother brought her young son to the doctor for an examination.
The doctor prescribed a remedy. “The medicine was not pleasant to take but it was very potent,” he said. Well and good; they had the prescription filled.

Sometime later they returned to the doctor.

–“Well, now, how’s our patient?”

–“Not any better, doctor.”

–“How’s that? Didn’t the medicine take effect?”

–“No, doctor, it was too hard to take; he wouldn’t touch it!”

How much botch-work of that kind goes on! Parents satisfy the child’s every whim. They recoil before the first tears, before the mere signs of an outburst, before less than that–a frown, a pout, or a dejected look. They are lost!

Reversing the scriptural phrase, “Cain, where is thy brother Abel?” an author speaking of social problems, which can well be duplicated in the family and in education asked, “Abel, what have you done with Cain?”
In other words: “You good people, are you not responsible through your faults or your incapacities that some good individuals have become bad?”

I have charge of a soul; I may have a plural charge–several souls.
What has been my conduct until now? Do I not have to reproach myself with many faults or at least many weaknesses? And I am surprised at the results obtained! Are they not the logical outcome of my bungling?

Let me examine myself; consider the whole problem seriously; if it is necessary, let me reform.

The Family Spirit

Before the war, family spirit was on the decline and on the verge of being lost. There were exterior and interior reasons.

Exterior reasons: Means of travel had become easier and encouraged people to go out as much as possible. At times, the whole household would take the train or auto for an excursion but more often than not one or other member of the family would go off for himself with the car.

Young girls began to leave home more than formerly for purposes of study, Red Cross causes, Social Service training or simply to take a position. Many who had no such need at all left home for no other reason than not to have to remain at home. Anything rather than stay home!

Various activities and organizations were always sufficient excuse or pretext for absence. Household activities held no appeal for these young women and often repelled them. The remembrance of confidences from their mother in some of their intimate sessions frightened some of them.

The world with its perpetual and superficial and useless activity drew many young men and even more young women into its crazy dance and encouraged the desertion of the home.

Interior Reasons: Some homes make no attempt to be attractive; life in them seems too austere to the children; the mother is too busy, the father is always grouchy, upset by the least noise, easily irritated and perhaps, even without knowing it, frigid and abrupt in his manner of speaking . . .

Sometimes there is an unfortunate lack of harmony between the parents. The atmosphere is always charged with a threatening storm. There is no relaxing, no peace, no trust . . . Each one wants his liberty, to go his own way.
The children caught between two fires do not know to which saint they should dedicate themselves. Therefore they too go away, or if they can’t they close up within themselves . . . Each one in the house stands on his dignity.

It is quite true that children have become more difficult to train.
They always have been difficult but they are more of a problem today than in the past. A tendency developed to give them greater leeway which created a greater distance than was wise between fathers and sons and especially between mothers and daughters; it was an imaginary difficulty rather than a real one in many cases but only too frequently it gave rise to a cruel estrangement.

No one can prevent the difference of twenty years more or less between father and son or mother and daughter; that it should be a difference is to be expected; but that it should be a barrier, no! And while there are parents who cannot remember that they were once twenty years old, most of them can.

“I dream of a daughter who will be like me but also very different,” wrote a mother; “because I should not like to produce only a duplicate but neither should I like to be only a rough draft of a more perfect pattern.”

Then she continues to explain that her daughter will be able to come to her in all confidence to tell her about her first infatuation; she will understand her and will even tell her how she herself at about the age of eighteen fell madly in love with a violinist of exceptional talent and that her own mother so completely entered into sympathy with her that she helped her daughter compose the burning letter of admiration in which her newly-born ardor was poured out . . . Together mother and daughter waited for the fervent response . . . which had never come!

Poor children, who feel that their parents do not understand them!
But if they do understand! It is their duty not to approve of everything, but they understand!

Then they are ready to help, not always by writing a love-letter, but to encourage, to warn, to support the children in their undertakings, to sustain their enthusiasm, to lead them to their goal.

“A desire to be beautiful is not unwomanly. A woman who is not beautiful cannot properly fill her place. But, mark you, true beauty is not of the face, but of the soul. There is a beauty so deep and lasting that it will shine out of the homeliest face and make it comely. This is the beauty to be first sought and admired. It is a quality of the mind and heart and is manifested in word and deed.” – Beautiful Girlhood, Mabel Hale http://amzn.to/2pOKmtj (afflink) Illustration by http://www.genevievegodboutillustration.com/

“I have tried to show you , that you cannot become good and strong men and women, that is, men and women of character, unless you have Will-power, and further that you will be of little or no use to your country if you are weak-willed. It has been well said that ‘the only way to be a patriotic American is to do your best to become a perfect man.’ and a perfect man you will not be unless your Will is strong.”

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Singing and Acting in the Family Setting

30 Thursday Jun 2022

Posted by in Baby Charlotte, Catholic Home Life, Parenting

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We like to take part in our annual Talent Show at the parish. It is good for the kids to discipline themselves to practice and it is (mostly) fun! 😀

It builds confidence in the children and helps them to get out of themselves to perform. And if mistakes are made….well, it’s character-building!

From How to Raise Good Catholic Children by Mary Reed Newland

As a family we know very little about singing except how to sing. We have a modest collection of albums, and we can read music well enough to pick out tunes with one finger on the piano.

There’s the radio (pretty carefully supervised), and a little sheet music we’ve bought, and some we’ve been given.

Our friends who go to the Trapp Family Music Camp have sung for us the things they learned, and given us help with our attempt to interpret chant notation. And our school music supervisor, who teaches charming songs at school, gave us a lovely Huron Indian carol (which the neighborhood children are learning for the next carol sing).

Then there are the books of Christmas carols and the songs in Laughing Meadows, the Grailville song book, and there are many fine American folk songs recorded.

All these things satisfy the appetites of children for good songs, and vastly minimize the temptation to pick up the sophisticated and often very vulgar lyrics of popular music. Even in homes where radio and TV are carefully supervised, it’s futile to think children can be kept from hearing these tunes and memorizing the lyrics, but we can help them form judgments about singing in the same way as we can about dancing, by having them sing what is good to please God.

Several years ago, a popular recording star had youngsters all over the country singing with her, “Lover, it’s immoral, but why quarrel with our bliss?” And we wonder why youth centers with their supervised dances to such music as this don’t help as much as we had hoped to keep the barriers to moral danger intact.

A voice is a gift from God, and we can teach our children to listen not only to songs, but with reverent wonder to voices, and to judge whether the voice and the song are reflecting any of the glory due to God, who gave the gift.

Listening to fine recordings of great choral music can help them develop a sense of the anonymity which should mark group singing, where soloists are a distraction rather than an addition to all-together singing the praises of God.

And we discover now and then that fine operatic recordings communicate to them audibly ideas they have struggled to put into visual form.

Such is the Whistling Aria from Boito’s Mephistopheles. After debating which of the pictured forms of the Devil was probably most like him, hearing that eerie whistle dart about so diabolically left no doubt in their minds as to how he sounds and how fast he gets about.

When children sing all their songs for God and sing together often in our families, they’re creating, just as surely as when they use their hands to draw or their bodies to dance, and our homes are warmer and more full of love for the harmonies we’ve created with our voices.

Acting should be part of a child’s creative activity, too, because it’s such a happy way to learn, to develop his observation of the nature of simple things and explain in a combination of all the arts the many things children want to explain.

Little children love to act out spontaneously the things they see around them, like a chair, or a table, or a clock, or a cat; and little boys profit enormously from special occasions for indulging their animal spirits.

John does a magnificent imitation of a goat chewing her cud — more goaty than even the goats. When this is his contribution to a session of “What am I?” the screams and howls are lovely satisfaction for the goat in him and he behaves better in public for it — well, for a few days, anyway.

One year on Mardi Gras, we had family charades to describe what fault each one would give up for Lent. This is a good way to make fun of yourself, admit your weakness, and face up seriously to the kind of mortification that would be most important for you.

One child came in chewing on a thumb. Another slugged imaginary playmates with such abandon that we were moved to great compassion for the real playmates. Another carried a pillow and a dinner plate, symbols of the two daily chores most repugnant and most successfully avoided.

One grown-up came in jawing silently and wagging a finger this way and that, and another grown-up said, “Oh! I was going to do that!”

We were properly overcome to see our faults displayed publicly, and as not one act was greeted with any dissent, it was a penitent group who wagged their way to bed that night, well aware that Lent had come just in time.

Charades are never-ending fun for children; I’ve never heard them say they had too much of them.

Puppets they love, too, and they’re easy to make and use. Our easiest puppets have been hand puppets, made with stuffed socks, faces painted or embroidered, costumes designed from leftover scraps of material, yarn, beads, buttons — anything that’s around.

Our Puppet Show

We’ve had them for liturgical feasts, such as Epiphany, the three elegant Magis with jeweled crowns, oriental hairdos and robes, and for ordinary Punch and Judy shows, and one for Thumbelina, made with a really live thumb.

Our stage is an old threefold screen. We took each panel apart, slip-covered it with sprigged yellow calico, cut a square window in the middle panel for the stage and tacked gray flounces with red ball fringe across the top and sides for a curtain.

Rehinged so that the wings fold back, it’s easily stored away when not in use, and even portable when we want to lend it to other puppeteers. Friends of ours devised a stage with two deep flounces to tack across the top and middle section of a doorway, with a space open in between for the performers.

Even tiny children can maneuver hand puppets, and the illusion is so complete that all they need to do is wag the puppets to a folk song or a Christmas carol in order to carry their part in a family entertainment.

One of the reasons puppet shows are especially successful with small children is that they submerge their self-consciousness in the antics of a tiny little person they do not identify with themselves, and the laughter of the audience never seems to be directed at them — a puzzlement many small actors find it hard to understand when they appear in person.

Songs such as “Old MacDonald Had a Farm,” and “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” which the audience can sing with the puppet, are a great success.

Graduating from these to reciting nursery rhymes and little poems provides plenty of material for small fries who are not able to memorize lines of plays or carry on dialogues between two puppets at once.

Older children can write their own scripts and invent stage business that they’re sure is hysterically funny; for these it’s especially profitable to suggest tableaux and simple recitatives relating to the liturgical feasts.

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One of Hannah and Gemma’s acts in the past….

“We can change the world within our own families. We do not need heroic deeds, exceptional intelligence or extraordinary talents. Every day, our daily duties, our interactions with our family, our living out the Faith in the small ordinary things, will be the thread that weaves the beautiful rug that future generations will be walking upon and building upon….” Finer Femininity

I was looking for a good family shot in my photos and ran across these ones. Z and “kids”

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Author Mary Reed Newland here draws on her own experiences as the mother of seven to show how the classic Christian principles of sanctity can be translated into terms easily applied to children even to the very young.

Because it’s rooted in experience, not in theory, nothing that Mrs. Newland suggests is impossible or extraordinary. In fact, as you reflect on your experiences with your own children, you’ll quickly agree that hers is an excellent commonsense approach to raising good Catholic children.

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Health and Holiness

27 Monday Jun 2022

Posted by in Catholic Teacher's Companion, Education, Parenting

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A balanced approach to the subject of health written for Catholic teachers….

From The Catholic Teacher’s Companion, 1924

An ounce of sanctity with exceptionally good health does more for the saving of souls than striking sanctity with an ounce of health.—St. Ignatius

Carlyle remarks that health and holiness are etymologically first cousins. And Dr. James J. Walsh has pointed out that health and holiness “have many surprising relations, and some of them contradict current notions; but it must not be forgotten that they are really coordinate functions.

For while we talk about the influence of the mind on the body, and the body on the mind, we must not forget that these two constitute one being; and there is quite literally no idea which does not make itself felt in the body, and no emotion which does not make itself felt in the mind. Wholeness of body and soul that is, health and holiness—work together for good in that mysterious compound we know as man.”

The Claims of Body and Soul

Body and soul are twin gifts from God, and bring with them responsibilities, and it is no sign of superior care of the soul to be slothful and neglectful in regard to the body.

Asceticism is another and quite a different thing. It is one thing to discipline one’s body; it is quite a different thing to neglect one’s teeth, or wash one’s body, or see that one’s food is digestibly prepared, or masticate it properly, or take reasonable exercise and fresh air.

Habits of this sort may quite as easily be owing to slothfulness as to superior spirituality. The distinction is not always observed. The wisdom of the ancient sages proclaiming the demand of the sane soul for a sane body has been further established by the insistence of the Christian saints, notably the founders of Religious Orders, Sts. Benedict and Ignatius, of Bernards, the Franciscans, and the Teresas.

St. Benedict’s Rule contains wise provisions for the bodily as well as the spiritual well-being of its followers. If the monks were to work, they were adequately to eat.

Think of it! “A pound of bread daily and two dishes of cooked food at each meal!”
“The habits that are to be worn are to fit the wearer, be sufficiently warm, and not too old.”
Again, each of the brethren is to take “from six to eight hours of unbroken sleep daily, with the addition of a siesta in summer”; each likewise is to have “a blanket, a coverlet, mattress and a pillow!”

St. Francis of Assisi strictly enjoins the Superiors of his Order to “take special care to provide for the needs of the sick and the clothing of the friars, according to the places, seasons, and cold climates.”

Health and Long Life

These are some obvious illustrations of how wisely the saints provided for the body—other folks’ bodies especially: they did not seem always to mind so much for their own.

Our sisters should take their teachings to heart for, as a rule, they neglect unduly the care of their bodily health. The Rev. Arthur Barry O’Neill, C.S.C., has made a thorough study of this subject and we shall follow him as a reliable guide in the matter.

We agree with him that an examination of the mortality statistics of our Religious Communities of women will probably show that the longevity of Sisters is by no means so notable as one should expect.

It may sound somewhat extravagant in the statement, but it is probably verifiable in fact, that from thirty to forty percent of American Sisters die before “their time comes,” their death being of course, subjectively, entirely in conformity with God’s will; but being, objectively, merely in accordance with God’s permission, which is quite another matter.

Now, long life is a blessing. As Spirago says, “It is a great boon, for the longer one lives, the more merits one can amass for eternity.”

So precious a boon is it that God promised it as a reward for keeping the fourth commandment, a fact of which St. Paul reminds the Ephesians, “Honor thy father and thy mother . . . that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest be long-lived upon earth.”

Accordingly, any procedure, any scheme of life, which contributes even indirectly to the shortening of one’s days assuredly needs unusually strong reasons to justify it; and, with all due deference be it said, such procedure, negative if not positive, is not uncommon in our convents.

Neglecting to take daily exercise out-of-doors may appear a small thing in youth or early middle life, but there is nothing surer that such neglect is seriously detrimental to health; and, exceptional cases apart, poor health is correlative of a truncated career rather than of normal length of days.

Underlying this disregard of the open-air exercise which all physicians declare to be essential to bodily well-being, there is probably in the minds of many Sisters an inchoate, if not fully developed, conviction that vigorous, robust health is more or less incompatible with genuine spirituality, that an occasional illness of a serious nature and a quasi-chronic indisposition at the best of times are, after all, quite congruous in professed seekers after religious perfection, incipient followers of the saints.

That is a pernicious fallacy of which their spiritual directors and confessors should strenuously endeavor to rid them.

Ill-health directly led by God is doubtless a blessing; but it is also an exception. In the ordinary course of God’s providence, men and women, in the cloister as in the world, are in duty bound to take such care of their bodies as will result in the greater efficiency of their minds and souls, and in an increasingly acceptable service of their whole being to their Heavenly Father.

Health is to be sought for, not as an end, but as an excellent means, most frequently indeed an indispensable means, of attaining the true end of both religious and laity, which is holiness, or sanctity.

Theory and Practice Among the Saints

The saints themselves thoroughly understood this truth, and their preaching frequently emphasizes it, even though the practice of some of them, in the matter of austerities and penances, does not apparently conform thereto.

Apparently, for in many a case it was precisely the superb health of the saintly body that rendered the austerities and penances possible.

Like the trained pugilists of the present day, those old-time spiritual athletes could “stand punishment” to an extent that would permanently disable physical weaklings.

It is to be remembered, also, that some of these unmerciful castigators of their bodies–St. Ignatius and St. Francis of Assisi, for instance-frankly avowed in their later years that they had overdone the business of chastising the flesh.

St. Ignatius took good care to offset the influence of his Manresa example in this matter by making due provisions, in his rule and his counsels to his Religious, for proper heed of bodily health.

Time and time again he gave, in varied phrase and amplified form, the advice stated in this, his general precept: “Let all those things be put away and carefully avoided that may injure, in any way whatsoever, the strength of the body and its powers.”

Since sanctity is, after all, only sublimated common sense, it is not surprising to find other saintly founders, reformers, and spiritual directors of Religious Orders giving the same judicious counsel. “If health is ruined how is the Rule to be observed?” pertinently asks St. Teresa.

Writing to some of her nuns who were inclined to follow their own ideas in the matter of prayer and penance, the same great Carmelite advises: “Never forget that mortification should serve for spiritual advancement only. Sleep well, eat well. It is infinitely more pleasing to God to see a convent of quiet and healthy Sisters who do what they are told than a mob of hysterical young women who fancy themselves privileged. . .”

“Govern the body by fasts and abstinence as far as health permits,” says the Dominican Rule. “I have seen,” writes St. Catherine of Siena, “many penitential devotees who lacked patience and obedience because they studied to kill their bodies and not their self-will.”

To every Religious Order and its members may well be applied the words of a Jesuit General, Father Piccolomini, to his own subjects: “It may be said that an unhealthy Religious bears much the same relation to the Order of which he is a member as a badly knit or dislocated bone does to the physical body. For just as a bodily member, when thus affected, not only cannot perform its own proper functions, but even interferes with the full efficiency of the other parts, so when a Religious has not the requisite health, his own usefulness is lost and he seriously interferes with the usefulness of others.”

Health – A Great Good

Were further testimony needed to expose the fallacy that health is something to be slighted, rather than cultivated, by a fervent nun, it could be furnished in superabundance. “Health,” says Cardinal Newman, “is a good in itself, though nothing came of it, and is especially worth seeking and cherishing.”

In 1897, Pope Pius X, then Cardinal Sarto, reported to Rome concerning his seminary in Venice: “It is my wish, in a word, to watch the progress of my young men both in piety and in learning, on which depends in a great measure the exercise of their ministry later on, but I do not attach less importance to their health.”

A distinguished director of souls in our times, the late Archbishop Porter, favored one of his spiritual children, a nun, with the following sane advice:

“As for evil thoughts, I have so uniformly remarked in your case that they are dependent upon your state of health, that I say without hesitation: begin a course of Vichy and Carlsbad. . . Better far to eat meat on Friday than to be at war with every one about us.

I fear much, you do not take enough food and rest. You stand in need of both, and it is not wise to starve yourself into misery. Jealousy and all similar passions become intensified when the body is weak. . . Your account of your spiritual condition is not very brilliant; still, you must not lose courage. Much of your present suffering comes, I fear, from past recklessness in the matter of health.”
This is merely repeating in other words what St. Francis of Sales, three centuries before Archbishop Porter, wrote to a nun of his time: “Preserve your physical strength to serve God within spiritual exercises, which we are often obliged to give up when we have indiscreetly overworked ourselves.”

What has been said should disabuse some minds of the idea that disregard of bodily well-being is a condition, if not an essential, of holiness; or the other no less dangerous prejudice that adequate reasonable care of the body, if carried out with the proper spirit and intention, does not of itself include thorough discipline of the soul.

Francis Thompson has well said in the preface to his Health and Holiness: “The laws of perfect hygiene, the culture of the ‘sound body,’ not for its own sake, but as the pliant, durable instrument of the soul, are found more and more to demand such a degree of persevering self-restraint and self-resistance as constitutes an ascesis, a mortification, no less severe than that enjoined by the most rigorous masters of the spiritual life.”

Supernaturalized as it surely will be by the purity of intention so characteristic of Sisters, such mortification will be no less a spiritual asset than a physical boon.

What Bishop Hedley says in his Spiritual Retreat for Religious is very much to the point: “There are certain things which are the best promoters of health and cheerfulness—viz., fresh air, exercise, and recreation.

They are duties, too, in a Religious Community. In such houses it is a very common thing to meet with nervous complaints which entirely arise from the neglect of these three powerful tonics of the human system.

I do not say that this is the case with all. But it is a remarkable fact that those members of a Community who have the most active duties are usually the most healthy in mind and body, while the others are the reverse.

These two things, fresh air and exercise, are of the utmost importance even from a spiritual point of view. They are not material, but really supernatural matters. The same is true of recreation. The three ought to be combined.”

“Who shall blame a child whose soul turns eagerly to the noise and distraction of worldliness, if his parents have failed to show him that love and peace and beauty are found only in God?” – Mary Reed Newland

Here is a simple outline to ensure we are carrying out our daily duties as best we can on this road we travel as Catholic women. This is my own list of what I deem the basics of a successful day. It is an ideal I strive for. You may have your own plan, and I hope you do. If this can help in any way, then I have accomplished my goal with this video…

Every minute counts! Let Saint Joseph remind you of the time with this beautiful Saint Joseph pocket watch. Available here.

Dear Young Lady, You are at a very important crossroad in your life. In the next short while your vocation will be settled and you will roll up your sleeves and fulfill God’s will in that role. This will, ultimately, be your means to happiness in this life and in the next.

The decisions you make in this short interim before that will greatly affect your whole life.

That is where this journal comes in. All of the quotes deal with your time in life….whether it is courtship, religious vocations, modesty and just a better spiritual life in general.

You will be disciplined in the next 30 days to write down positive, thankful thoughts in this journal. You will be thinking about good memories, special moments, things and people you are grateful for, etc.

This will help you to work on that inner happiness that needs to be developed even before you find your vocation. Now is the time to improve your life!

The pages in this maglet (magazine/booklet) is for the Catholic wife…to inspire her in the daily walk as a Godly, feminine, loving wife. As wives, we have a unique calling, a calling that causes us to reach into our innermost being in order to give ourselves to our husbands the way Christ would desire.We, as women, have the awesome responsibility AND power to make or break our marriages and our relationships. Let’s not wait to fix it AFTER it is broken.It is all about self-sacrifice, thankfulness, kindness, graciousness, etc.The articles in this maglet reflect these virtues and will serve to inspire and encourage. It is a Catholic maglet, based on solid Catholic principles.

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“Heartlessness” ~ The Effect of a Wrong Education

17 Friday Jun 2022

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

≈ 1 Comment

Painting by Henry John Yeend King ~ (English: 1855-1924)

From True Womanhood by Fr. Bernard O’Reilly

There is no such thing as natural heartlessness. Cold as certain grown-up women, as well as men, seem to be by nature,—we may be certain that neither nature nor its Author is to blame for this lack of genial warmth and affection.

No child is born without the disposition to love and the power of loving warmly: this may be not so apparent at the surface in some children as in others, or exist in the same degree of energy; or, again, this coldness in some may be only such as contrasted with the passionate and impulsive fervor of others.

But let mothers rest assured that the heart is there, with its natural and essential powers of returning love for love, and of practicing, not only the virtue of supernatural charity so indispensable to the sanctity and salvation of the adult Christian, but all the other charities of private and public life, with the many virtues which never fail to adorn the soul in which true charity reigns.

Indeed were it possible (which is not so) that any human being could be born without natural affection, the Creator Spirit, coming into the soul in baptism, would most surely repair the defect.

But comparatively feeble (and we use this expression most reluctantly) as the power of loving maybe supposed to be, — it is there in the soul for the mother’s tender hand and fostering charity to nurse into fullness of life, into perfect bloom and fruitful maturity. And God’s abundant and unfailing help is secured to the mother in this training of her child’s heart.

But the real heartlessness which shows itself so offensively in the girl and in the woman is, you may be sure of it, the result of neglect in the parent, or of a training in every way vicious. For this heartlessness is but undisguised selfishness obtruding itself upon us in all its own repulsive deformity.

The mother’s eye had failed to detect this weed in her child’s soul, or allowed it to grow up during infancy and girlhood, under the delusive hope that the good qualities in her girl’s nature would choke out the bad when she grew up to womanhood. But it is the contrary which happens, unless God should interfere and perform a miracle in favor of the neglected or petted child.

Selfishness is pretty sure, when continually ministered to and nursed by all around it, to absorb and draw to itself all the vital energies of the soul.

In the tropical forests,—in the West Indies particularly, there is a formidable species of parasite creeper whose power becomes fatal to the mightiest trees in the forest. It first shows itself like a little green plant on a sturdy branch of the forest tree, or a hole in the trunk, whence it sends down thread-like feelers to the ground.

There they take root and reascend along the trunk, increasing in number and size, till not one feature of the parent-tree is visible. The whole is now enclosed in a network of serpentine forms so firm, so robust, and so vigorous, that the tiny plant has become a giant, strangling in its embrace the generous trunk which fed and supported it, and hanging high in mid-air, above the topmost branches of its dead benefactor, its brilliant clusters of flowers.

Thus does selfishness prosper and flourish!

The wise wife recognizes her need of God. Frequently she tells Him of her insufficiency. To inspire her husband, to be patient, to be unselfish and loyal, to be the dozen and one other wonderful things a desirable wife must be –all this postulates the presence of God always at her side. – The Wife Desired, Fr. Leo Kinsella

Where I discuss the dynamics of Catholic family life that helped them to form their children into God-fearing, joyful Catholics.

Graceful Religious Pendant and Earring Sets…Wire-Wrapped, Handcrafted. Get it blessed and wear it as a sacramental!

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A very valuable book for the guys plucked out of the past and reprinted. It was written in 1894 by Fr. Bernard O’Reilly and the words on the pages will stir the hearts of the men to rise to virtue and chivalry…. Beautifully and eloquently written!

A very beautiful book, worthy of our attention. In it, you will find many pearls of wisdom for a woman striving to be the heart of the home, an inspiration to all who cross her path. You will be inspired to reconsider the importance of your role of wife and mother! Written by Rev. Bernard O’Reilly in 1894, the treasures found within its pages ring true and remain timeless…

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Work ~ Beginning at Home (Part Two)

13 Monday Jun 2022

Posted by in Parenting

≈ 1 Comment

Part One is here.

by Mary Perkins, Beginning at Home

One of the deepest and most glorious truths of our faith certainly is that what is only waste and loss in terms of temporal value–mistakes, suffering, failure, and death itself–can, in Christ, have the greatest possible value, individual and social, for all eternity.

But our attempts to realize this should not make us forget that ordinary human work which does produce temporal results can also have, in Christ, its eternal value.

No normal man wants to spend his time and strength and energy on mere busy-work or boondoggling. And normal men resent, at least subconsciously, that so-called Christian view of work which would make of it only a punishment, or a kind of busy-work to keep us out of trouble during our earthly exile.

But this is, of course, nowhere near the glorious Christian truth. The fact is that all rightful human work duly satisfies a real God-given or God-permitted human need, has the eternal value of helping to build up the kingdom of God, the Body of Christ, to its full and everlasting perfection.

The City of God is “not made with hands,” the houses and statues we make will not last for eternity, neither will the books we write, the laws we frame, the institutions we establish. But the effects of all these things on the human beings who are to be the living stones of God’s eternal temple will last forever.

The way in which a man is fed, clothed and housed, the way in which he is taught, ruled, and entertained, given the tools and conditions under which he himself does his work–all this affects the quality of his human living (and so of the meritorious value of his actions); all this aids or hampers his achieving his final perfection as the unique member of Christ’s Body that God means him to be for all eternity.

When our Lord said: “Whatever you do to these My least brethren, you do to Me,” He meant it as a fact, not as a mere manner of speaking, for in feeding, clothing, comforting, advising, guiding one another, we are actually ‘edifying,’ that is, building up the members of Christ’s own Body.

Only God himself knows, of course, when and to what extent His grace makes up for our mistakes and failures and mistreatment in fulfilling each other’s needs, so that somehow in spite of all this, ‘all manner of things shall be well’ and the perfection of the mystical Body and each of its members finally and beautifully achieved.

But we do know that we shall be judged and given our place for all eternity on how we have tried to fulfill each other’s needs…”Come,” or “Go” as we fed, clothed, housed, comforted Him in His brethren.

We can easily see that a well-planned and well-built house, for instance, contributes to the possibility of men’s living a good and Christian life. The lack of proper housing is one of the chief occasions of sin and discouragement today a poorly planned and built house is a source of irritation; of waste of thought and energy that might have been put into prayer or study or needed relaxation or the fruitful service of others.

But a house planned for the needs of those who live in it and built as well as a house can be, conduces to contentment, to hospitality, to good human living and so to the more effective service of God and our neighbor.

Clearly, then, the work of the architect, of the contractor, of all the craftsmen who gave their time and strength and skill to building such a house, in actual fact contributes objectively to the building up of the kingdom of God. So too, for all other forms of work.

But if our work is to have such an everlasting value (as well as a real temporal value), it must satisfy duly a true human need. This means that it must be done both charitably and skillfully, so that we try to find out and satisfy our neighbor’s real needs rather than to seek our own gain, and that we try to satisfy these needs as well as possible, rather than try to get away with whatever a patron or customer will take.

For, obviously, if the work we do is actually for the purpose of pandering to our neighbor’s vices, of hindering him from leading a good life, it is serving not Christ, but the devil. And as we would certainly not offer careless, shoddy work to Christ Himself, so neither should we offer less than the best we can, or could learn to do, to Christ in our neighbor.

If we look at the list of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, we see that it adds up to a summary catalogue of human needs in an acute form. The only difference, then, for a Christian between performing a work of mercy and doing the work by which he earns his daily bread should be that he expects no return from the work of mercy, while he expects, in justice, to receive from his daily work either enough of its products, or a fee, salary, or wage sufficient to enable him to continue to satisfy his neighbor’s need by means of his own particular skill, and to support his family and bring up his children to take their due part in the work of mankind, the work of Christ.

How fruitful and how wonderful, therefore, every rightful form of human work might be! As things are, few people besides priests and religious realize that they are co-workers with Christ and that their daily work has an eternal value of its own. And so the vast majority of Christians have lost the joy of this realization, and, what is worse, have lost the norms of what constitutes true and fruitful work.

Here is one of the chief causes for the desperate state of things in the world today. For the Christian truth is only the fulfillment and perfection of the true human idea of what work should be, and today we have almost completely lost both.

While, thank God, many a doctor, many a small-town storekeeper or banker, many a farmer and craftsman still works primarily for other people’s welfare, yet in general all kinds of vicious and artificial wants are mistaken for true “needs,” the efficiency of machines and not the true welfare of the worker or the customer is the norm for what should be made, keeping up with or getting ahead of other people are the norms for success, rather than the true service of others.

Now, surely, it is the full Christian truth about work that we must be ready to give to our children. For if they are called to any form of lay life, they will have the double vocation of carrying out their own daily work as Christians, and of doing whatever they can to re-establish their chosen profession or occupation “in Christ”; to make it easier for others to work as Christians and to produce the full effects of Christian work and so leaven the whole of society.

Or, if God calls our children to be His priests or religious, a part of their vocation will be to teach and lead and guide others by work and prayer toward the Christian idea of work.

And, of course, we are reminded, “A desire to be beautiful is not unwomanly. A woman who is not beautiful cannot properly fill her place. But, mark you, true beauty is not of the face, but of the soul. There is a beauty so deep and lasting that it will shine out of the homeliest face and make it comely. This is the beauty to be first sought and admired. It is a quality of the mind and heart and is manifested in word and deed. A happy heart, a smiling face, loving words and deeds, and a desire to be of service, will make any woman beautiful.” – Mable Hale, Beautiful Girlhood, Painting by Albert Lynch

This journal is for the single lady who is in the interim before finding her vocation in life. At this very important crossroad in life, this journal can help with discipline, inspiration and encouragement.

All of the quotes deal with a young lady’s time in life….whether it is courtship, religious vocations, modesty and just a better spiritual life in general. A form of Morning and Night Prayers that I have used personally through the years is included at the beginning of the Journal.

This 30~day journal is a tool that will help the young woman to be disciplined in the next 30 days to write down positive, thankful thoughts. It will help her focus on the true and lovely by thinking about good memories, special moments, things and people she is grateful for, etc., as she awaits the time her vocation is made manifest to her.

The journal will assist the young lady as she works on that inner happiness that needs to be developed before she finds her vocation.

NOW is the time to improve our lives!

Available here.

The good news is that a beautiful home doesn’t require too much money, too much energy, or too much time. Bestselling author and home-management expert Emilie Barnes shows readers how they can easily weave beauty and happiness into the fabric of their daily lives. With just a touch of inspiration, readers can

  • turn their homes into havens of welcome and blessing
  • build a lifestyle that beautifully reflects their unique personalities
  • enrich their spirits with growing things (even if their thumbs are several shades shy of green)
  • make mealtimes feasts of thanksgiving and kitchen duty fun
  • establish traditions of celebration that allow joy to filter through to everyday life

Home management expert and bestselling author Emilie Barnes comes to the aid of every clutter keeper with 101 simple ideas to rid rooms of piles, stacks, and disarray. Readers will rediscover space and peace in their home as they

  • stop making excuses for the useless items they keep
  • eliminate junk mail before it junks up a drawer
  • take back control over “stuff” and taste freedom
  • subtract an item before adding an item
  • reap the rewards of prioritizing time and space

Better than a how-to show, this compact resource can go anywhere a reader needs a little encouragement and lots of tips to transform clutter to cleaner at home, a friend’s house, church, or the office.

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