Family Life

Catholic Catechism teaches us:  2207 "The family is the original cell of social life. It is the natural society in which husband and wife are called to give themselves in love and in the gift of life. Authority, stability, and a life of relationships within the family constitute the foundations for freedom, security, and fraternity within society. The family is the community in which, from childhood, one can learn moral values, begin to honor God, and make good use of freedom. Family life is an initiation into life in society."

We are in unchartered territory as a culture. Never before have fewer people been active in their religion, with the Millenials abandoning the faith in astounding numbers. This is not good for everyone as simultaneous to this growth of "Nones," or unaffliated, is a significant rise in depression, anxiety, suicide and overdoses. There is a huge hole in too may people's hearts!
We also know that the average age that people report as when they left the faith is 13. 
This means that family faith life has been lacking and needs to be rejuvenated; quickly and dramtically!

WARNING: Sending your child to Religious Ed once a week is no match for the 24/7 barage of secular, humanist, often-anti-Christian misinformation that is bombarding him or her at school, on-line, on TV, in music, at the movies, or while playing with friends.

FAITH FORMATION IS A FAMILY AFFAIR!!
14 Questions to About the Family

A 2016 study published in the American Medical Association JAMA Psychiatry journal found that Americans who attended a religious service at least once a week were five times less likely to commit suicide.  

So what can we do? Here is an excellent article: Home is the Cradle of Order. 

A good family resource, blog and podcast: Catholic Sprouts
Another one is 5 Sparrows

Here are common Catholic Prayers
Prayer is vital!

Good Reads
The Beginning Guide to Roman Catholic Faith
Simple Catholic Truth
My Catholic Life
Catholic Parents

Video Resources for answering your questions and your children's:
Catechism: Real and True
Faith and Science: Science Uprising
Faith and Culture Issues: What Would You Say?
Faith, Culture and History Issues: Prager University

For video-based exporations of your faith, try these great resources:
Wildgoose.tv (Free)
Formed.org (Free: Sign up as "Parishioner" and Choose St. Catharine or St. Denis (or your parish)
Ascension Press (Most studies have a small cost)

YOUTUBE CHANNELS 
Ascension Presents
Pints with Aquinas
Dynamic Catholic
Bishop Barron's Word on Fire
Chris Stefanick Real Life Catholic
Counsel of Trent
Catholic Minute
The Good Catholic
Christopher West (Theology of the Body)
Renewal Ministries (Charismatic)
How to be a Christian
Capturing Christianity

PODCASTS (FOR ALL)
The Bible in a Year
You Were Born for This
They That Hope
Ask Father Josh
The Catholic Patriot
GEARED TO WOMEN
Abiding Together
Girlfriends
GEARED TO MEN
Anchored in Hope
Catholic Men
The Catholic Gentleman

and for a great series on the Life of Christ and Hs Gospel, try, The Chosen

A GREAT PLACE TO START FROM OUR FRIENDS AT FORMED: Faith at Home
Dynamic Catholic is also offering content for free during these troubling times, with programs for the young, the teens, the expectant parents, couples, and more!

Contact us for more information and resources or to just talk!!

HAVE RITUALS- Kids love stability. They are comforted by predictability.
1.  Pray before meals, at home and in the world. Let them see YOU pray.
2.  Have meals together. Make this a priority! It is where so much teaching and learning happens.
3.  Keep Sunday Mass vital! This is a very simple and family friendly explanation of the Mass.
4. Pray to their Guardian Angels

READING ALOUD- A family that reads together stays together.
5.  Read Bible stories and other virtue building stories

SHARE TIME and ACTIVITIES- Builds lifetime memories and security.
6.  Have "down time" without distraction (No Cell Phones!)
7.  Play games together. Do puzzles. Watch wholesome, virtuous, movies together.
8.  Socialize with other strong, faithful families.

MAKE THEIR JOURNEY REMARKABLE- Kids love moments of awe and wonder.
9.  Make Sundays, the Sacraments, Advent, and Lent REALLY special! 
10.  Do charitable acts as a family, or as parent and child.
11.  Celebrate the anniversary of their Baptisms and/or their Saint days.
12. Have a Holy Space in the home, and have your home blessed. 

BE THEIR ROCK and THEIR LIFESOURCE- Your marriage is the nuclear reactor that fuels the family.
13. Love and laugh often!
14. Set a good example for Christian love and behavior: Express gratitude and forgiveness.
15. Husbands: "Love your wives as Christ loved His Church.." (Ephesians 5:25)
16. Be generous in expalining the faith, its rituals, sacraments, and their importance.
17. Be clear and steadfast in your expectations, loving in your delivery, and compassionate as they journey.

Helpful websites
Cautionary tale: How to raise your children to be atheists

The difference a dad makes in the future of his children is staggering:

Read this and this

Here is a helpful resource: Catholic Dads

It’s not a stretch to say that the writings of Pope St. John Paul II can fill a library. But for us, one slender volume stands out in a sweeping 26- year pontificate that saw 14 encyclicals, 16 books and thousands of homilies, speeches and addresses. Celebrating 40 years this Nov. 22, the apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio (“The Community of the Family”) was characterized by papal biographer George Weigel as one of St. John Paul II’s “personal favorites.” Familiaris Consortio, issued Nov. 22, 1981, has been called a plan of action, a road map and strategy for the Christian family; it is also a forerunner to Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy of Love”). This quick read (three hours, give or take) is not only our personal favorite from the saint; it’s a bracing vision that explodes with insights and strategies for the challenges every Christian family faces today. The following is a list of five takeaways that we hope will inspire you to sit down and read the full document — one that might just become one of your personal favorites as well.
1. Your example is where everything starts “The future of humanity passes by way of the family,” wrote Pope St. John Paul II (No. 75). By extension, the future of your family passes by way of … yes, your own personal example. Do our children see us as parents who are leading them consistently and lovingly in prayer? “Only by praying together with their children,” John Paul II writes in a striking passage, “can a father and mother — exercising their royal priesthood — penetrate the innermost depths of their children’s hearts and leave an impression that the future events in their lives will not be able to efface” (No. 60). When life gets difficult — when the inevitable temptations and hardships are encountered by our children — will the “innermost depths” of their hearts bear a permanent, convincing impression of God’s tender care for his people and of our faithfulness in mirroring that care for our children? Please God, yes!
2. You can’t outsource your role as primary educator and first herald “You have asked to have your children baptized,” we heard from the priest at the baptism of each of our children. “In so doing, you are accepting the responsibility of training him/her in the practice of the Faith. … Do you clearly understand what you are undertaking?” “We do,” we answered as parents. But then what? Nature abhors a vacuum, and sadly, too many parents today have — through whatever combination of woundedness, neglect and distraction — created a vacuum of authority and formation. Familiaris Consortio is a wake-up call that no, we are not primarily our children’s chauffeur for curbside drop-off at CCD or Catholic school. In fact, we are the “first and foremost educators” and “first heralds of the Gospel” of our families, which St. John Paul II calls “the first and vital cell of society,” “a school of humanity,” an “educating community,” “the first school of the social virtues,” and a “society in its own original right.”
3. Your family is a ‘Little Trinity’ “Families, become what you are,” John Paul II writes. The family, he continues, is the “living image of God,” “a communion of persons.” To a culture that has forgotten the blueprint for the family, Familiaris Consortio invites us back to the Holy Trinity. Our family is a little icon or image of the Trinity. If each person of the Trinity is focused not on himself, not on material things, but on others, then our family is called to image this other-centered, “self-giving” way of life. As St. John Paul II writes, the “experience of communion and sharing should characterize the family’s daily life.” “As a community of love,” he writes, “it finds in self-giving the law that guides it and makes it grow” (No. 37). Becoming who we are as families, Familiaris Consortio reminds us, means a constant turning toward the Trinity in our daily life.
4. Your family is a ‘Little Church’ If we’re honest, we know that our culture defaults to a thin, reductionist view of “home” as a place to drop our stuff before we run off to the next activity. Our homes easily slip into “entertainment centers” where each member of the family pursues his or her own individual interests. Familiaris Consortio instead outlines the vision for the family’s “church in miniature” or “domestic church.” “The dignity and responsibility of the Christian family as the domestic church,” St. John Paul II writes, “can be achieved only with God’s unceasing aid, which will surely be granted if it is humbly and trustingly petitioned in prayer” (No. 59). Like a majestic cathedral, our homes ought to offer our children an immersive experience in the Faith. A beautiful home altar or prayer corner, icons, a crucifix — these and other visuals, suffused in “a family atmosphere so animated with love and reverence for God,” will help to deepen our families’ “fidelity and intensity of prayer” and “actual participation in the mission of the Church” (No. 62).
5. Your family is on mission If our family is a “communion of persons,” an image of the Trinity, and a “domestic church,” then it only follows that we have been entrusted with what St. John Paul II calls a “missionary task.” “The future of evangelization,” he writes, “depends in great part on the Church of the home” (No. 52). No pressure, Mom and Dad! By “radiating the joy of love” and the “certainty of the hope for which it must give an account,” he writes, “the Christian family loudly proclaims both the present virtues of the Kingdom of God and the hope of a blessed life to come” (No. 52). St. Joseph, Pillar of Families, pray for us! St. John Paul II, pray for us! Soren and Ever Johnson are the founders and directors of Trinity House Community, with a mission “to inspire families to make home a little taste of heaven for the renewal of faith and culture.” Parents of five, they live in Leesburg, Virginia.

We are blessed with four grown children who actively practice their faith. We are often asked, "How did you do it?" We honestly didn't know. So I asked each one, and I even prompted them; "Was it because we had dinners together? Because we sometimes prayed, and often said grace together? Because Mom read you Bible stories? " They each pondered and independently said something like this: "All that was important, but the reason I go to Mass and keep that at the center of my life is that I found when I was off to college, travelling the country or the world, living and working on my own, Sunday Mass was the time I could "touch" home, to be united with my family, because I knew my mom and dad, my siblings, would be celebrating the same Mass, hearing the same readings, and receiveng the same Eucharist as me. It's comforting that I have that constant in my life."

Building a Catholic culture at home (the Domestic Church) and crowning it with Sunday Mass are the keys. I think of it like this: