Franciscan at Home

Most Catholic parents are so far removed from a rich Catholic culture that living a liturgical season—let alone the liturgical year—can seem impossible.

In the book Speaking the Truth in Love, Dr. Petroc Willey offers a triadic framework for transmitting the faith: the heart, head, and hand, where hand is the process of “handing on” the Deposit of Faith.[1] I hope he won’t mind if I borrow this triadic framework and modify it slightly for teaching St. John Paul II’s theology of the body (TOB) to the very young by changing “hand” to refer to “hands-on teaching,” i.e., manipulatives. In this way, all three—head, heart, and hand—can come together in forming the young child’s Trinitarian-Catholic identity.

A Mini-Scripture Study

Where did my inspiration for teaching young children TOB arise from? It started with my son, Michael, at age ten. We were sitting at the dinner table, and the parental catechist in me decided to take him through a mini-Scripture study of Genesis 1 and 2. We started with Genesis 1:27 about being made in God’s image and likeness; then continued with Genesis 2:7, on imaging God by being both body and spirit; and capped it off with Genesis 2:23–24 with an explanation of how we’re made for union and communion through a gift of self.

His ten-year-old eyes immediately told me I’d overshot his ability to comprehend. So, I grabbed what I had at hand, my hands, and created my first TOB visual aid: I put my hands together in a prayer position and said, “We’re made from one nature” and then I dropped both hands down with two fingers protruding from each hand (like two legs) “embodied in two ways”, then interlaced my fingers while saying “for the purpose of union and communion” and turned my hands outward as if giving a gift and said with a triumphant finish “through a sincere gift of self!” By George, I think he got it! I’d “handed on” a critical portion of the faith in a seminal way to a ten-year-old.

Twenty-four years later, I’ve graduated from merely using my hands (although I’ve taught thousands of people this “gift formula” using the hand motions) to a bevy of visual aids that can double as manipulatives for preschool age. And my favorite among them are gift bows. But just how young can we begin to teach TOB? Enter my one-year-old granddaughter, Sutton.

In modern culture, relativism reigns supreme. Consequently, the transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty no longer seem to transcend beyond the subjective whims of every autonomous individual self. Truth is a matter of one’s opinion. Goodness is relative to each person. Beauty is a matter of personal preference.

Catechists and Catholic educators have been given a great opportunity to lead the young people entrusted to their care to encounter objective truth, consistent moral laws that lead to the flourishing of goodness, and to appreciate authentic beauty. Although the three transcendentals are inseparable, I would like to focus on the role of beauty in teaching, evangelization, and formation.

Bishop Robert Barron frequently exhorts the faithful to “lead with beauty.” Images are powerful means of conveying both the truth and distortions of the truth. Images have been used well to market products and lead people astray into ideology. The Church has employed the use of sacred art to convey the truth in a powerful and formative way. In the introduction to the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger explains the rationale for using sacred images within the Compendium:

Images are also a preaching of the Gospel. Artists in every age have offered the principal facts of the mystery of salvation to the contemplation and wonder of believers by presenting them in the splendor of color and in the perfection of beauty. It is an indication of how today more than ever, in a culture of images, a sacred image can express much more than what can be said in words, and be an extremely effective and dynamic way of communicating the Gospel message.[1]

The beauty within art, architecture, music, and film is a visible manifestation of a truth being communicated by the artist. Beauty, when used well, can lead the faithful to encounter the face of Christ the Incarnate Word.

In order to renew catechesis and Catholic schools with beauty, first we must discuss the definition and nature of beauty. Second, we need to examine what role beauty plays in our lectures, presentations, and classrooms. Finally, we must work toward greater manifestations of beauty within the liturgy.

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Several years ago, I was working as a parish Coordinator of Youth Ministry, and one of my responsibilities was teaching a high school religious education class. The class was arranged by the parish DRE and met as part of her programming each Wednesday night. There was no set textbook or program. We had a wide range of topics and materials available, and we were able to move as the class needed. The class was comprised of a diverse range of students with varying backgrounds and levels of catechetical formation. Mid-year, a new family moved to the parish. The parents only spoke Spanish, and they had two sons in high school who had very little formal religious education.

The older of the sons was in eleventh grade. He didn’t speak much. I’ll refer to him as “Frank.” You could tell by what few personal stories he shared that Frank’s life was a hard one. He lived in a bad neighborhood. He adored his parents, who were hard-working, but recognized that they were consumed by the preoccupation of the family business and were also not as devout as they expected their children to be. The boys completed that school year and came back the following fall.

My Experiences with the Come, Follow Me Curriculum

Several years ago, I read an excerpt from an address of Bl. Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus that changed the way I approach children’s catechesis.[i] In The Child’s Potential for Contact with God, Bl. Marie-Eugene, a Carmelite friar and founder of the Notre-Dame de Vie Institute in France, described the young baptized child’s capacity for a relationship with God: “The [child’s] use of his theological virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit are not hampered by all the layers that will come later, caused by selfishness and all the rest, all the sins ... there can be communication with God that is all the more intimate … since the child’s heart is pure and uncomplicated.”[ii]

Taking this purity into account, he said that the catechist’s role in teaching young children is to help them develop “spiritual reflexes that will carry him toward God later on, as if they were second nature.”[iii] Noelle Le Duc, a member of Notre-Dame de Vie, did just that in her catechetical work that became the foundation of the Come, Follow Me curriculum used around the world. The more I learned about this program, the more I saw how it fit into my community’s charism and apostolic work to “teach spiritual things spiritually” (see 1 Cor 2:13).

In the United States, approximately “1,000,000 children a year experience their parents’ divorce.”[i] This is a staggering statistic, and it does not account for children whose parents are still married but separated, or who were cohabiting and have gone their separate ways. As catechists, it is certain that we will minister to people from broken families, if we have not done so already. As we encounter these people, we may find ourselves asking whether the experience of parental divorce impacts the faith of children of divorce.[ii] And if so, how can we as catechists respond to their needs? As a child of divorced parents, I have been pondering both of these questions for some time. In sharing my reflections, I am inviting you to ponder these questions with me in order to discern what answers the Holy Spirit leads you to in your particular ministry.

Before going further, I want to clarify that I am not condemning parents who divorce. Divorce is painful for everyone involved and parents never intend for their divorce to negatively impact their children. The hard truth is that it does. Through personal experience and research, I have learned that divorce can affect one’s faith profoundly.

A helpful analogy for understanding the impact of divorce is that of a culture. Children of divorce experience a different “culture” than people from intact families. Addressing the issues arising from parental divorce catechetically involves a process of inculturation. In this process, the threefold catechumenal model—with its pastoral, liturgical, and catechetical aspects—provides a helpful framework for addressing the needs of children of divorce.

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