Raising Catholic Kids

Dear Martin Saints community,

At many admissions open houses, I mention an academic study about effectively passing our faith along to the next generation.

If you've been to one of those events, you probably remember. I cite researchers who learned that having "five other faithful adults" in a child's life, in addition to mom and dad, is often decisive. Our kids need mentors. Our kids need to see adults, including but in addition to their families, who live the faith. Here at MSC, our teachers want to be those "five other adults" for our students. In this way, what we do at school supports what parents do at home.

Recently I read a new but similar study. This one says that "Catholics who grew up daily saying grace before meals are 34% more likely to go to Mass weekly than other Catholic adults."

Does this mean that if you say grace before meals, your son or daughter is more likely to grow up and remain in the faith? Maybe. But as the researcher also said, "It would be a mistake to attribute that entire difference to the frequency with which people said grace before meals. It is instead likely that this difference of family practice is a marker for a way of life in which faith is practiced in a more everyday fashion."

In other words, it matters whether a family lives the faith in daily life. Grace before meals is just a symptom, one way of revealing whether that's really happening. When it happens, what parents do at home supports what we're doing at school.

Last week I had a long Zoom call with one of my mentors, a respected elder at a Catholic classical school in Wisconsin. We talked about how there are so many competing voices in our world today, vying for our children's attention and loyalty. We talked about how teachers and parents need to create an environment where the kids see that our faith has credibility, where they look at the way we live and think "hmmm, this seems to work, this faith creates fully alive adults."

So: amen to home and school co-operating in offering a faithful witness to our children. Perhaps especially with the holidays approaching, let's think about the example and culture we create in our homes and at school.

While we're on this topic, here's my favorite ever short article on how classical homes and school can co-operate. I've shared it before, but it's great and worth re-reading.

Pax Christi,
Deacon Roberts