This week, I’m featuring short excerpts from my book, A Well-Built Faith, focusing on the 4 pillars of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Here’s a brief look at the third pillar: the Moral Life. Country and Western songs tend to be filled with heart ache, telling tales of good loving gone bad. Two people in love are supposed to treat each other in a certain way and when that doesn’t happen, relationships faith. Just […]
This week, I’m featuring short excerpts from my book, A Well-Built Faith, focusing on the 4 pillars of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Here’s a brief look at the second pillar: the Sacraments. To be sacramental is to express beyond words. Catholics are sacramental because human beings are sacramental. Humans express love in a variety of ways beyond words. We do not feel that our love is fully expressed unless we can reach out […]
This week, I’m featuring short excerpts from my book, A Well-Built Faith, focusing on the 4 pillars of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Here’s a brief look at the first pillar: the Creed. Believing is something that we do, not only with our heads, but with our hearts. The following story illustrates this. A stunt man was thrilling crowds gathered at the Niagara Falls, making his way across a tightrope that stretched from one […]
One of the best discussions we had at the Being, Knowing, and Doing seminar in Seattle, WA, last week and Rockville Centre, NY, this week centered around the questions of “who taught you to pray? and what are your earliest memories of prayer?” These are good questions to spark a discussion with catechists to get them thinking about how they pray as an adult (so that they in turn are more conscious of how they […]
I spent a very enjoyable and productive day today with about 45 DREs in the Diocese of Rockville Centre, NY, talking about caring for our catechists. We looked specifically at how we can offer them formation in the areas of being, knowing, and doing, as outlined in the General Directory for Catechesis. In the course of our day, the folks offered lots of thoughts and comments. Here is a summary of just a few thoughts […]
Over the next couple of days, I’ll be spending time with a number of catechetical leaders in Rockville Centre, NY, talking about how to take care of our catechists! At least I don’t have to worry anymore about where and how I’m gonna catch the next Blackhawks’ playoff game while I’m on the road. The only thing I may miss is a Cubs game and, with the way they’re playing this year, that’s not a […]
I enjoyed my first visit to Seattle and spent the day with about 100 catechetical leaders talking about how to care for our catechists. I had a wonderful time and I’d like to thank all the good folks in Seattle who welcomed me and made me feel so at home. Thanks also for all of the wonderful participation in this day of formation. You inspired me greatly! Here are the smiling faces that I got […]
I found the following article to be very interesting. Basically, it is saying that kids who grow up surrounded by lots of books grow up smarter! http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2010/06/02/summer_book_giveaway/ As always, I think of the ramifications for religious education. I wonder what we could do to expose our students to more age-appropriate books about the Catholic faith to help them be smarter Catholics. For example, wouldn’t it be cool if we catechists had access to a box […]
I’ve written about this before, but every year the issue comes up again when teams are playing for championships. The matter touches very close to home this year with the Chicago Blackhawks battling the Philadelphia Flyers for the Stanley Cup. A friend of mine who grew up in Chicago, is a big Hawks fan, but now lives in Princeton, NJ, not far from Philly, sent me the following, which is about a nun and priest […]
Last night, we had our end-of-the-year grade level meeting with Arlene, our DRE, and we talked about how things went this year and what we can do better next year. One of the main issues that came up was our concern over the kids’ behavior in church when we go over for prayer services or Mass. Each year, we go to the church probably five or six times: opening prayer for the year, Advent Reconciliation, […]
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