As the director of religious education at Our Lady of Hope Church in Potomac Falls, Jackie Regan knows the importance of teaching children about the faith. But as a parent of high schoolers, she knows that imparting the faith isn’t always easy.
“Most parents — and I’m guilty as well — shy away from those tough conversations because we don’t know what to say, or because we don’t know what the church’s position is,” she said.
So, this year, Our Lady of Hope is offering adult catechesis for parents and religious education classes for more than 100 students. The parish joins several others in the diocese in moving away from a religious education program tailored to children, and toward faith formation for the whole family.
Regan hopes the monthly adult catechesis, which is mandatory for parents of sacramental-age children but open to anyone in the parish, helps parents start faith-filled conversations with their children. “Getting the dialogue started between parent and child will really help a lot, because I think kids, especially older kids, have questions that they don’t ask,” she said. “They start questioning the faith and if we don’t answer these questions, they’re going to get the answers somewhere else and it’s probably going to be the wrong answer.”
Last year at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Lake Ridge, religious education classes were replaced by small groups for parents and their kids. The biweekly Sunday morning gatherings consist of prayer, discussion of that Sunday’s Gospel, a catechetical lesson and other activities. Though the new format was a big shift, almost all of the RE families from the previous year returned, and 266 children were part of the program, said Mylene Garcia, coordinator for family faith formation.
Before the transition, parents generally were disengaged from religious education, said Garcia. But this more hands-on approach has led to a growth in Mass attendance year-round as well as other benefits. “The children are more focused and the children participate because they see their parents participating in the discussion,” said Garcia. “What a better way to grow in your faith than in the family?”
A University of Notre Dame report spurred Father Keith M. O’Hare, pastor of St. Louis Church in Alexandria, to rethink his parish religious education approach. “A Report on American Catholic Parenting” asserts that parents play the biggest role in whether or not their children ultimately practice the faith. “Before children need catechism or theology, they require witness. Parents fulfill their role as witnesses by sharing the faith that they love,” it states. “Young adults arrive at a sense of their fundamental identity and worldview not by weighing all possible intellectual arguments for and against a proposed way of life, but rather by roughly adopting the worldview of those mentors who left the deepest impression upon them — and who loved them and cared for them the most.”
Now, after an opening prayer together in the church, St. Louis parents and their sacramental-age children attend break-out sessions every other week, said Ryan Farrell, director of faith formation. Between the Spanish- and English-speaking groups, there are 300 kids plus their parents in the program. Farrell hopes the adult education helps empower parents to be the primary educators of their children. “I think Father Mike Schmitz says the average Catholic has a second-grade education in the faith,” he said. “Some might not feel worthy or knowledgeable enough to teach their children.”
But more than teaching parents the facts of the faith, Farrell hopes to inspire them to regularly share their own experience of God’s love with their children. “We have to reach the parents, we have to build them up because what they do is having a way bigger impact than whatever we can do with the kids week in and week out,” he said. “What catechists do is essential but what the parents are doing is irreplaceable.”
Maraist is a freelancer from Reston.
