Fr. Thomas M. Pastorius September 10, 2017 Spiritual Ponderings Seven Steps to Bring Your Child Home to the Faith
I have dedicated this month’s Spiritual Ponderings to reflect on ideas of how best to bring fallen away Catholics back to the Catholic Church. Brandon Vogt’s article: “Seven Steps to Bring Your Child Home To the Faith” is providing us with the structure we need for this important topic that always has the possibility of derailing into many different tracks of thought if we are not capable. Quotes from Brandon’s article will be in bold and my commentary will be in the normal font.
2. Equip yourself You can’t give what you don’t have. You may be excited about sharing the Faith, but enthusiasm and goodwill won’t get you far. You need to know your faith. The two go-to sources are the Bible and the catechism. Become familiar with them and read them each day, in small doses. Then find good Catholic books that will help you explain and defend the Faith so you’re ready when your child reveals his main hang-ups with the Church.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said “There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate The Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be.” I want to say three things on this topic.
The first thing is that you do not have to know everything about every topic to be a good Catholic but if you do not know anything about the Catholic faith how can you convince people that you truly love the Catholic Church. For example, I like baseball a lot, but I would have a hard time convincing anyone of that fact if I did not know who Jackie Robison was, the name of the local baseball team, or how many strikes it takes to make an out. The more you take something seriously the more you show how much you care about the subject material. Do you know the name of your bishop (archbishop)? Do you know why Catholics should not live together before marriage? Do you know why Catholic go to Mass each week?
The second thing is that you do not need to know everything. I used to think that I had to know everything and this would become very discouraging because there is just so much information about there. Now when I don’t know something, I at least know where to look. For example the other day someone asked me a question about Scripture and I did not have the answer to therefore I encouraged the person to contact the Scripture teacher at the seminary.
Finally, each Catholic should find something that he or she does not naturally agree with the Church with and then struggle to figure out why the Church’s teaching is what is and why do we oppose it. If we do those two things, we will witness to others how a person can take the Catholic faith seriously.
3. Plant the seeds Even before you start discussing God or the Church with your child, you need to plant small seeds of faith and trust in his life. One seed is unconditional love. Your child needs to know that you’ll love him no matter what — no matter his moral choices or whether he stays away from the Church. He must know that you totally will his good. Only then will he listen to you. You should also begin planting “seed gifts” in his life. These are DVDs, books or CDs that can lead him to reconsider the Church. Many people who come back to the Church point to a resource like this that sparked their return. Leave a booklet on his desk, mail him a DVD or drop a CD in his car.
Planting seeds is always good when done in the right context. I would not present faith gifts in a public context (for example a Christmas gift exchange). Allow the person a chance to save face. Allow them to explore the faith inspiring gift in an environment where he or she does not have to reject the gift in front of others in order to still appease their current crowd of friends.