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August 22, 2020 - Pastor Message

03/29/2024

INTERGENERATIONAL DISCIPLESHIP FAITH AT HOME

Minister: In asking for baptism for your child, you are undertaking the responsibility of raising him/her in the faith, so that, keeping God’s commandments, he/she may love the Lord and his/her neighbor as Christ has taught us. Do you understand this responsibility?

Parents: We do.

The above exchange from the Order of Baptism of Children points out the centrality of the family in the faith formation of children in the Church. Since at least the mid19th century, the dominant model of the faith formation of children in our country has been the classroom model, either in Catholic schools or in catechism classes. Parents fulfilled their promise at their children’s baptism to raise them in the faith by entrusting them to Catholic schools and parish religious education programs, and this approach worked while the culture in which these families lived was also thoroughly Catholic. What the children learned at school or in catechism was also what they learned at home and in their community because that was simply the way their families and communities lived.

But, in the latter half of the 20th century, things began to change. American culture began to change, becoming more secular and less religious. Catholics, previously a persecuted minority in our country, became more integrated into American culture, adopting the trends around them. That meant that Catholic families and communities also became more secular. They still believed in the faith and still believed it was important for their children to learn it, but they relied more and more on the parish and the schools to provide their children’s faith formation and integrated it less and less into their families’ daily lives. This mixed message, now in its third or fourth generation, has weakened not only children’s understanding of the faith but also their adherence to it, and thus we find ourselves where we are today, with declining numbers of young people who even identify as Catholic, much less practice the faith.

Let me be clear, I am not blaming parents. I put the blame squarely where it belongs on the Church’s leaders, including me. We saw what was happening, and yet we did nothing to address it. We Just kept piling on the requirements in the old classroom model you must do this, you need to do that as if we were still living in the 1850’s. We failed to address the root of the problem because we lacked the imagination. We forgot who was really at the center of children’s faith formation, not the school or the parish, but the family. While Catholic schools and parish religious education programs provide invaluable support to families in their efforts to raise their children in the faith, if children aren’t being formed in the faith in the home, nothing we do in the schools or parish will matter. It will just go in one ear and out the other, and, once the children are confirmed, if they get confirmed, we never see them again. That is not the failure of parents; that is the failure of Church leaders.

That is why we at St. Boniface have said enough. For the past three years we have been working toward a new model of faith formation, one that recognizes that we can’t just keep doing what we’ve always done and expect different results. We need to refocus faith formation away from the classroom model and put it back squarely where it belongs, and always has with the family. We have moved tentatively in this direction for the past three years, but this year, with all of the restrictions of COVID19, we believe it is finally time to dive fully into the pool. That is why we are introducing our “Faith at Home” initiative. I will explain this in more detail in next week’s column, but, in the meantime, please check out the faith formation column from our Faith Formation Director, Jeanne Yaple, and give her a call or email her for more information. I’m excited about this new direction, and I hope you are too as together we take the next big step in family-centered faith formation here at St. Boniface.

Fr. Marc Stockton

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