#127 - Ann Garrido

What is happening this Sunday, Jan. 7th at 2:15PM here at CTR?

So glad you asked! We have a very special guest joining us - professor, author & theologian Ann Garrido will be with us to speak on the topic of Speaking to Children about God. All are welcome.

(You can listen to Dr. Garrido's talk at this link: http://www.ctredeemer.org/we-form/education/adults/)

If you are able to attend, your time will be very well spent. Ann is a remarkable speaker and teacher. Most of our Office of Family Ministry staff had the pleasure of gleaning her wisdom, vast knowledge and wit for over 40 hours of Level Two CGS training this past summer. We couldn’t recommend her more enthusiastically.

Here are some potential resources she has recommended for our parish to review together.

Cavalletti, Sofia. The Religious Potential of the Child. Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications. A little denser read, but very substantive understanding of the spirituality of the child and how to nurture it within the Catholic tradition. There are two volumes – one for children under age of 6 and one for children between 6-12. Both are very good and available to borrow from our CTR library, or you may order your own copy here: http://www.ltp.org/

Krista Tippett’s On Being, interview with Rabbi Sandy Sasso:

http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2010/spirituality-of-parenting/transcript.shtml

Ms. Sasso: We know from research, that all children by the time they are age five have a conception of God, whether or not we've talked about God to them as parents. And we also know that children ask these really large questions. And there seems to be an innate spirituality, a great sense of wonder, spontaneity, imagination and creativity, and a connection to something larger than themselves. What children seem to lack is a language to give expression to that sense of something deeper. And I think, as parents, our responsibility is to provide them with a language, an opportunity to have a conversation about these matters that they care very deeply about. Because I think what happens is, if we don't provide the language and if we don't encourage the conversation, then children stop asking. If you don't exercise your muscles, they atrophy. If you don't exercise your soul, I think your soul atrophies as well.

Wolf, Aline D. Nurturing the Spirit in Non-Sectarian Classrooms. Hollidaysburg, PA: Parent Child Press, 1996. A solid description of what constitutes spirituality and ways to nurture spirituality in children even if parents aren’t comfortable with organized religion or you feel you aren’t sure what to say about God/Church questions. Originally written for Montessori teachers, but has broader application for family life. Has a broad bibliography of additional resources in the back.

Robbins, Patience Leiden. Parenting: A Sacred Path – A Reflection Booklet for Personal or Group Use. Washington, DC: Center for Children & Theology, 2008

(http://www.cctheo.org/catalog1.html#Parenting) Parenting is a challenging call. Many resources for parents focus on the child, but Parenting: A Sacred Path is for parents to reflect on their experience, with all of its joys and struggles, as an invitation to grow in faith, love, trust and compassion. Each of six chapters provides an opening reflection for personal or group use, followed by a week of quotes for reflection and prayer.

Contact Lisa Brown at dre@ctredeemer.org if you would like to be part of a group discussion of any of the above texts. FYI: Our greatest need at the moment, to help grow our Faith Formation program and keep it strong and effective for our CTR children, are trained catechists. If you are interested in taking the training please visit www.cgsusa.org for more information.

#126: Suicide

Crazy Catholic Question#126: I’m struggling to understand the suicide of a friend. Any thoughts?
This time of year especially, suicide seems to touch so many of our lives. We just passed the anniversary of a dear friend of mine’s death by suicide, and even 10 years later, I still have pangs of confusion and guilt when I think of her. I don’t understand how, as a trusted friend, I could have missed the signs. I still think that if I somehow had done a little more, been more attentive and present…what if?

Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes once a year on the topic of suicide and his column remains balm to my soul when I think of losing my friend Evelina. Below are some quotes and paraphrasing of his wise words that I hope you find as comforting as I do. (FYI: his columns are archived and available on his website at www.ronrolheiser.com.)

Suicide is the most misunderstood of all diseases. We tend to think that since suicide is self-inflicted that somehow it is a choice; voluntary and avoidable in a way that physical illness or accidents are not. But, for most suicides, this isn’t true. Suicide is a disease that takes people out of life against their will. It is the emotional equivalent of a heart attack. Suicide is a fatal emotional breakdown, an emotional stroke, emotional cancer – not something the victim chooses. The act that ended their lives was not a freely chosen one. They were a victim of a deadly illness, so there is no sin to be forgiven. Moreover, since some suicidal depressions are treatable with medication, then clearly some suicides are caused by biochemical deficiencies, like many other diseases that kill us.

And though, it should go without saying but it helps to hear it, Fr. Ron says “We need not worry about the eternal salvation of those who die in this way. God’s understanding and compassion infinitely surpass our own. Our lost loved ones are in safer hands than ours. If we, limited as we are, can reach through this tragedy with some understanding and love, we can rest secure in the fact that, given the width and depth of God’s love, the one who dies through suicide meets, on the other side, a compassion that’s deeper than our own and a judgment that intuits the deepest motives of their heart.

God’s love is not as helpless as our own in dealing with this. We, in dealing with our loved ones, sometimes find ourselves helpless, without a strategy and without energy, standing outside an oak-like door, shutout because of someone’s fear, wound, sickness, or loneliness. Most persons who die by suicide are precisely locked inside this kind of private room by some wound through which we cannot reach and through which they themselves cannot reach. Our best efforts leave us still unable to penetrate that private hell. But, as we see in the resurrection appearances of Jesus, God’s love and compassion are not rendered helpless by locked doors. God’s love doesn’t stand outside, helplessly knocking. Rather it goes right through the locked doors, stands inside the huddle of fear and loneliness, and breathes out peace. So too for our loved ones who die by suicide. We find ourselves helpless, but God can, and does, go through those locked doors and, once there, breathes out peace inside a tortured, huddled heart.”

SPECIAL NOTE: For those among us who may be called to provide the initial help to someone showing symptoms of mental illness or a mental health crisis, Common Ground offers an AMAZING “Mental Health First Aid” training program (www.commongroundhelps.org). With enough interest, we could even hold the training here at CTR…

#125 - Politics

With all that is going on in politics and my family, I’m not even sure what proclaiming to be a Christian even means anymore. What does sincere faith “look like”?

On Thanksgiving, over pie & coffee, my sister threw down the gauntlet and told both of my parents that she doesn’t believe in Jesus anymore. They both gasp and tears were shed. Some heated words of disbelief and disappointment were spoken, but eventually the pie called us back to our senses and we talked and listened to one another.

My parents’ primary concern was whether my sister would “make it to heaven.” Her individual salvation was what they saw as the real danger. But my sister and I thought more like Fr. Tomas Halik who writes “I can’t help thinking that God doesn’t particularly care whether we believe in him or not. What really does matter to God, however (as Jesus said in Matt 25), is whether we love. Or more precisely: God doesn’t care about our faith in the sense of that the term is often used, namely, that to believe in God is to be convinced of God’s existence. I don’t think our salvation depends on our religious opinions, notions, and convictions…What can we truly ‘know’ about God except that God radically transcends all our knowledge?

What really matters to God are not our opinions but the nature and degree of our love...Faith without love is hollow; indeed, it is often no more than a projection of our wishes and fears, and in that respect many atheist critics of religion are right…I know no better translation of the statement ‘God exists’ than the phrase ‘love makes sense’” In other words, being a Christian is not about whether we believe that God exists or not, but rather if we believe “God is Love” and participate to the best of our ability in that mystery. As Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner once said “The number one cause of atheism is Christians. Those who proclaim Him with their mouths and deny Him with their actions is what an unbelieving world finds unbelievable.”

What we celebrate on this feast of Christmas is the mystery of the incarnation; the deep, abiding conviction that God is somehow “with us” in this messy experience we call life – to be found most readily in the concrete acts of love between us. Jesus made the outcasts of society — women, poor people, tax collectors, those who were physically or mentally ill — the very cornerstone of his message about God’s Kingdom. When asked what brings eternal life, Jesus said love God and love your neighbor as yourself. When we love someone we are not indifferent to their struggle, right? It becomes our own. We carry their pain. We hurt too. By caring for one another in our suffering, we give each other hope. This togetherness is our greatest remedy for suffering. Jesus said when you do this for the least of these, you do it for me, so when we care for one another we are both loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Jesus’ violent end was the price he paid for living a life of love, because we have fashioned a world in which it is dangerous and sometimes even fatal to be a compassionate, courageous and loving person. The fact that Jesus never broke, never became bitter, never gave up or gave in to the violence he suffered; his endurance in this love, even as we were nailing him to the cross, is what saves us and continues to show us the way.

Seeing all the suffering in the world, the man prayed, “Great God, how is it that a loving Creator can see such things and yet do nothing about them?” And out of the long silence, God said, “I did do something. I made you.”

Visit www.crazycatholicquestions.blogspot.com to review past articles or send your question/comment to Lisa Brown at dre@ctredeemer.org.

#124 - Family Members

Why don’t my family members go to church anymore?
Ah, the holidays have arrived! If Catholic means “here comes everybody” (ala James Joyce) than the holidays must mean “here comes all the crazy relatives!” I’m not claiming any special exemption here – I know Kip and I, no doubt, are raising our girls with their own “special brand” of crazy. But, the conversations at our extended family gatherings! Wowza! Especially those around religion or politics - O…M….G. Memorable to say the least. Downright baffling at worst.

It used to be, when I was a child, everyone was Catholic, or at least Christian, around our family holiday table and - for the most part – everyone agreed on what that meant. But in these days of the likes of Roy Moore among others, this is not the case anymore. There seems to be some very serious confusion about what it means to call oneself a Christian.

I have no idea why your family members are not attending church any more, but these are the reasons I hear most from mine. Let me know if these resonate with what you have heard and experienced…

First off, our tradition’s proclamations about people who are homosexual are a major stumbling block, especially for our young people who quite simply will not hear of it. Period.

Secondly, the inability of dull and uninspiring liturgy to draw us away from St. Mattress on Sunday mornings. We don’t have this problem here at CTR, so we will just say a quick and sincere “thanks be to God” for Fr. Joe & Mari’s leadership and move along.

Third is the rigor and busyness of the culture we have created. The pace of our lives is simply not conducive to spiritual knowing. And as a result, our values do not match our choices. We are spiritually starved – but dang if we aren’t moving really, really fast! As Thomas Merton once said “Set me free from the laziness that goes about disguised as activity when activity is not demanded of me.”

But I think our biggest culprit is a misconception about what it actually means to be a Christian; what belief in Christ actually entails. Theologian Tomas Halik writes “When we hear the word Christianity, our minds immediately assign the concept to the handy cultural compartment of religion or faith…but faith in God in the biblical context doesn’t mean “believing in the existence of God” but rather “believing that God is love.” One doesn’t become a Christian by believing that “God IS” but by believing that “God is LOVE.”

When we say we believe in Jesus, it means we believe his teaching about God is valid. We believe that love (agape) is the only force in the world with the power to bring about lasting change. We listen to Jesus’ theology of radical love, inclusion, forgiveness and look at the way he lived his life – and we believe in Him and try to live out all that he advised (admittedly, sometimes in rather wonky ways. I’m always convicted when I hear the Rahner quote “The number one cause of atheism is Christians. Those who proclaim Him with their mouths and deny Him with their actions is what an unbelieving world finds unbelievable.”)

As our Holy Thursday hymn goes Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est – where there is real love, God is present. This is what we believe as Christians. Not exactly what I would deem fighting words, but yet we manage. But despite evidence to the contrary, I still hold great hope that this love is going to save us from our own destruction. Real, tangible, active love is an essential step in our evolutionary growth; the stuff of God, beckoning us. Merton goes on to pray “Give me the strength that waits upon You in silence and peace… possess my whole heart and soul with the simplicity of love.”

#119-123: Distinguishing Characteristics of CGS

What are the distinguishing characteristics of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd style of faith formation?

Over the next few bulletins we would like to share with you 21 distinguishing characteristics of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd (CGS) as they have emerged after more than fifty years of research and work with children of different countries, cultures and socio-economic backgrounds. We offer the following points of reflection as an invitation to dialogue or simply to ponder and delve deeper, as a community, into this good work with our children….

1. The child, particularly the religious life of the child, is central to the interest and commitment of the catechist of the Good Shepherd. The catechist observes and studies the vital needs of the child and the manifestations of those vital needs according to the developmental stage of the child. The catechists live with the child a shared religious experience according to the teaching of the gospel: “Except you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 18:3) The catechist attends to the conditions which are necessary for this life to be experienced and to flourish.

2. With this aim in mind, the catechist embraces Maria Montessori’s vision of the human being and thus the attitude of the adult regarding the child; and prepares an environment called the atrium, which aids the development of the religious life.

3. The atrium is a community in which children and adults live together a religious experience which facilitates participation in the wider community of the family, the church and other social spheres. The atrium is a place of prayer, in which work and study spontaneously become meditation, contemplation and prayer. The atrium is a place in which the only Teacher is Christ; both children and adults place themselves in a listening stance before his Word and seek to penetrate the mystery of the liturgical celebration.

4. The transmission of the Christian message in the atrium has a celebrative character. The catechist is not a teacher, remembering that the only Teacher is Christ himself. The catechist renounces every form of control (such as quizzes, texts, exams, etc.) in the spirit of poverty before an experience whose fruits are not her/his own.

5. The themes presented in the atrium are those to which the children have responded with depth and joy. These themes are taken from the Bible and the liturgy (prayers and sacraments) as the fundamental sources for creating and sustaining Christian life at every developmental stage and, in particular, for illuminating and nourishing the child in his/her most vital religious needs.

See next week’s bulletin for #6-10 or visit www.cgsusa.org. The first draft of these points was done May, 1993; Latest done October, 1996.) 

6. The Word is proclaimed in the most objective manner possible, so that the words of the adult do not impede the communication between God who speaks and God’s child who listens. The only aim of the words of the adult is to discreetly serve the listening to God’s Word, in accordance with Jesus’ own statement in the gospel: “My teaching is not mine but his who sent me.” (John 7:16)

7. The catechist of the Good Shepherd does not incorporate into the catechesis themes other
than those which emerge from the essentiality and specificity of the vital needs of the children and our work with them.

8. The atrium gatherings should last at least two hours, of which a small part is often dedicated to the catechist’s presentation, and the majority of the time is reserved for the personal work of the child.

9. In harmony with the universal church, the life in the atrium follows the liturgical year;
therefore, moments which are particularly intense are those of Christmas/Epiphany and Easter/Pentecost.

10. Eucharist is central to the life of the atrium at every level, according to the various
denominations of the Christian church in which the atrium is located.

11. A material is placed at the disposal of the children. The children’s personal work with the material aids their meditation on and absorption of the theme presented. In settings where it is not possible to have an atrium yet, another valid instrument for announcing the Christian message consists in the workbooks and catechists’ guidebooks: “I Am the Good Shepherd”. The voice of the Good Shepherd can reach the child through different instruments, but regardless of the particular instrument, the voice of the Shepherd resounds in the depths of the heart.

12. The material must be attractive but “sober” and must strictly adhere to the theme being presented. In making the material, the catechist refrains from adding superficial embellishments which would distract the child from the essentials of the theme being presented. In other words, the material must be simple, essential and “poor” in order to allow the richness of the themes content to shine through. This same guideline applies to the atrium environment itself. 

13.  The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd can be realized in any social or cultural setting.

14. The materials prepared by catechists for the atrium are faithful to the experimental models of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. The designs of these models are the result of a long, collaborative work of observation and experimentation and have been developed according to the needs of the child at each developmental stage.

15. The material makes it possible for the catechist to assume his/her proper “post” as “the useless servant.” (Luke 17:10) This expression indicates that the catechist has a task to perform, a role to fulfill, whose results, however, go much farther from what he/she does, because the only Teacher is Christ.

16. The catechists work together in a spirit of unity and harmony, in tune with God’s plan for communion in the history of salvation and in keeping with the themes of unity so strongly expressed in the parables of the Good Shepherd (John 10:1ff) and the True Vine. (John 15: 1ff) They generously offer their talents and experience for the good of all.

17. The attitude of the adult has to be marked by humility before the capacities of the child, establishing a right rapport with the child, that is to say, respecting the personality of the child, and waiting for the child to reveal himself/herself.

18. The tasks of the catechist include: to go deeper into the Christian message through the knowledge of the biblical and liturgical sources and of ongoing living tradition of the church, including the theological, social and ecumenical movements which enliven the church today; preparing and maintaining order in the atrium so that it fosters concentration, silence and contemplation in both the child and adult; preparing the materials oneself as much as possible while collaborating with others in areas that are beyond one’s abilities.

19. The reasons why the catechist is requested to make the materials with his/her own hands are: to absorb the content more deeply; to combat hurry, consumerism and even excessive “efficiency”; to pace oneself more to the rhythm of the child and thus also - or so we believe - to the working of the Holy Spirit; to try to reach the integration of hand, mind and heart.

20. The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd is also concerned with helping adults open their eyes to the hidden riches of the child, especially to the child’s spiritual wealth, so that adults will be drawn to learn from the child and to serve him/her. The guiding principles in this endeavor are: The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd does not seek success. It does not set about to be important or to impress others (Isaiah 10:33-11:10). It is faithful to the spirit of the mustard seed (Matthew 13: 31). It stands in solidarity with the least in the church.

21. The Catechesis of the Good Shepherd especially honors the spiritual values of childhood and wishes to nurture the formation of a consciousness which is oriented to the construction of the history of salvation in justice and solidarity.

NOTE: Some edits to these points where necessary to fit our bulletin space. The first draft of these points was done by the Rome Association, May, 1993. Latest revision was done by the International Council, October, 1996 and can be viewed in their entirety at www.cgsusa.org.