This past weekend was flowing with graces in the Sammons household. On Saturday, my oldest daughter was confirmed. For the past year I have been preparing her and a group of homeschoolers for their confirmation. I was not only extremely proud of my own daughter, but also the wonderful young souls who were excited to become full members of the Church.

With our daughter after Confirmation

My Confirmation Class

Then on Sunday my son received his First Communion (and it was also his birthday – what a great gift!). I still remember his excitement two years ago when one of my daughters was making her First Communion – I don’t think then he thought he could wait two whole years until he received Jesus sacramentally!

My son receiving his First Communion

Needless to say, I was busting at the seams this weekend in thanksgiving for all the graces and gifts our Lord has bestowed upon my children. Praise be to God!

One of the most iconic images in sports history is Carlton Fisk’s walk-off home run to win Game Six of the 1975 World Series. The Boston Red Sox, with the Curse of the Bambino hanging over them, had not won a World Series in almost 60 years. They were down 3 games to 2 to the Cincinnati Reds in Game Six, which went to extra innings tied 6-6. Carlton Fisk hit a home run in the bottom of the 12th inning to win it for Boston and send the Series to Game 7 (which, as a devoted Reds fan, I’m happy to report Cincinnati won). The image of Fisk waiving the home run fair is embedded in American sports history:

I was recently reading an account of Game Six and I was struck by a quote from Fisk regarding this home run:

Other than being the father of two children, this was the greatest thrill of my life.

Think about what Fisk said for a moment. He just compared something that only 14 men have ever done – end a World Series game with a home run – with something that millions of men throughout history have done. Hitting a walk-off World Series home run takes a unique combination of skill, hard work and luck; having a child takes no special skill or ability. Just about every boy dreams about hitting a home run to win a World Series game – and Fisk did it in one of the most thrilling situations – yet the Red Sox catcher said that one of the most common activities known to man – having children – was more thrilling. So what does that tell us about parenthood?

We are made in the image and likeness of God, and God is a Creator. He created the heavens and the earth, and He created man. We, too, are fundamentally creators. We create things every day – meals, notes, pictures – and each creation of ours reflects us in some way. But our greatest privilege is that we are cooperators with Him in the creation of new life. Nothing reflects us more than our own children. And without our participation, God would not create any human persons – souls who are destined to spend eternity with Him. As Carlton Fisk realized on some level – what can be more thrilling than that?

For all you parents out there, always remember that your participation in the creation of new life is more thrilling than anything possible on this earth – even more thrilling than a World Series walk-off home run.

Today is the feast of the Presentation, and when contemplating this event, I often marvel at the faith of Mary and Joseph as parents. They were given a great gift from God in the form of a miraculous baby, and the first thing they do is to give him back to the Lord!

Now this might not seem too impressive, considering the events surrounding Christ’s birth, but if you are a parent, you might recognize the great faith involved in such an action. Every parent is given a great gift that we don’t deserve every time we are blessed with a child. An eternal soul is placed in our care and we are graced with that child’s presence in our lives. Our capacity to love is expanded and through the sacrifices we are required to make for that child, we are given a sure means to holiness if we just take it.

But what do we often do in the face of such a gift? We cling our children with a miserly grip. We act like these precious children are “ours” and that we deserve them. Instead of presenting each and every one of them to the Lord, we refuse to let them go, trying to control their destinies and ultimately afraid that God will not take care of them like we will.

This can be most obvious when we discourage religious vocations in our children, either explicitly or implicitly. Most people reading this blog would never outwardly reject a religious vocation for their child, but we can often do things to subconsciously lead our children to a “safe” vocation, i.e. married life with a nice comfortable job.

But there are other ways we cling to our children. Whenever we do not trust in the Lord to take care of them – when we are anxious about their futures, when we hold them back from their God-given dreams because they don’t conform to what we want for them, or when we try to direct their life path – we act as if these children are our own, instead of realizing that they are simply on loan from God.

Let all of us parents look to Mary and Joseph as perfect examples of how we should raise our children – they are not our own, let us present them to the Lord!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past decade, you are aware of the meteoric rise in homeschooling during that time. What was formally the reserve of a few fundamentalists and hippies has now gone mainstream. Just this week it was reported that over 2 million children are homeschooled, which constitutes approximately one in every 25 children currently in school today.

Catholics have not missed this bandwagon, as many Catholic families (including my own) have decided that homeschooling is the best way to educate their children. But what does the Church have to say in her magisterial documents about homeschooling? Is it allowed or prohibited? If no definitive word has been pronounced, is it encouraged or discouraged?

The first place to look to answer this question is Gravissimum Educationis (GE), Vatican II’s “Declaration on Christian Education.” In this document the Council Fathers address the importance of education and the need for every child to be educated. At first glance, it appears that homeschooling is clearly approved:

Parents who have the primary and inalienable right and duty to educate their children must enjoy true liberty in their choice of schools (GE 6).

If parents have the “primary and inalienable right and duty to education their children” and they must “enjoy true liberty in their choice of schools,” then surely they should be able to educate their own children in the home, correct? However, another passage should be examined as well:

The Council also reminds Catholic parents of the duty of entrusting their children to Catholic schools wherever and whenever it is possible and of supporting these schools to the best of their ability and of cooperating with them for the education of their children (GE 8 emphasis added).

In the context of GE and other contemporary Church documents related to education, it is clear the Council is thinking of traditional Catholic schools here; in other words, it is not thinking of a Catholic family homeschooling as a “Catholic school.” So what does this mean? Are homeschoolers violating Vatican II by not “entrusting their children to Catholic schools wherever and whenever it is possible” and not “supporting these schools to the best of their ability and of cooperating with them for the education of their children”? Should all Catholics send their children to Catholic schools if they are available to them?

To answer this question we must first consider what the Church considers proper education. According to GE,

a true education aims at the formation of the human person in the pursuit of his ultimate end and of the good of the societies of which, as man, he is a member, and in whose obligations, as an adult, he will share (GE 1).

But this is not the only objective of education. All the baptized also have the right to a Christian education, which

does not merely strive for the maturing of a human person as just now described, but has as its principal purpose this goal: that the baptized, while they are gradually introduced the knowledge of the mystery of salvation, become ever more aware of the gift of Faith they have received, and that they learn in addition how to worship God the Father in spirit and truth (cf. John 4:23) (GE 2)

So parents, who have a “primary and inalienable right and duty to education their children,” must take into consideration both of these aspects when determining their choice of schools – they must both consider a child’s formation as a human person as well as his formation as a Christian. But this also means that Catholic schools need to fulfill these two aspects of a Christian education – if they do not, then they are not truly “Catholic schools,” thus making it impossible for parents in their area to send their child to an outside Catholic school, as GE hopes every parent will do.

But I think we can go a step further than just saying that homeschooling is an option when the local Catholic schools are failing in their mission to offer a Christian education. To do this, we must consider the context in which Vatican II occurred. At that time, there was, for all intents and purposes, no such thing as Catholic homeschoolers as we would define them today. Homeschooling as a movement didn’t really start until the 1970’s and it didn’t become “mainstream” until this century. So the Council Fathers had no way to consider homeschooling as even an option. It should be remembered that ecumenical councils are protected by the Holy Spirit from error, but they are not given the gift of precognition. Faced between the choice of public, government schools and Catholic schools, it is no surprise that they urged that Catholic parents send their children to Catholic schools “wherever and whenever it is possible.” That was the only possible way for a child to receive a true Christian education as the Council Fathers envisioned it.

However, since the time of Vatican II, it has become clear that Catholic homeschooling has become a viable type of “Catholic school”, offering a fully Christian education as defined by the Council Fathers. Thus, I would argue that homeschooling can be a legitimate response to Vatican II’s call that Catholics entrust their children to “Catholic schools wherever and whenever it is possible” – even if there are good Catholic schools in the area. In today’s world, this fulfills the Council’s wishes that children receive a Christian education and that parents enjoy “true liberty” when choosing a school for their children.

It should be clear that I am not saying that all Catholics should homeschool their children. Each family is different and every child unique – what works for one situation might not work for others. But I do believe that Catholics who choose to homeschool their children – even if there is a good Catholic school available – are not violating the intention of the Council Fathers behind their desire that parents entrust their children “to Catholic schools wherever and whenever it is possible.”

Update: Esteemed Catholic canon lawyer Dr. Edward Peters alerts us to an informative article he wrote about 10 years ago addressing this issue from a canon law perspective.

This coming year I will have one child receive her confirmation and another receive his first confession and first communion. As a parent of five young children, one of the greatest responsibilities I have is to prepare my children for their reception of the sacraments. It is a maxim of the Catholic Faith that a saintly life is a sacramental life – one simply cannot become a saint without the help of grace, and the sacraments are the best way to receive that grace. So I take very seriously the need to have my children ready when it comes time for them to receive a sacrament for the first time.

One of the best ways to do this is to give them books which explain the sacraments in such a way that they can understand better the reality of what is happening when they go to confession or receive communion or are confirmed. I have not found a lot of good books out there, but one great book is offered by Precious Life Ministries, called “The Little Butterfly Who Loved Jesus.” Precious Life also offers other books on the Faith, and they have been aggressive in getting their books into the hands of missionaries around the world to help Catholics everywhere to instruct their children in the Faith.

Precious Life Ministries is run by three sisters who each have large families and have been very active in pro-life work through the years. Their purpose in running this apostolate is not to make money, but to bring children everywhere closer to Christ in his sacraments. I highly recommend them and I encourage you to buy some of their books or just give them a donation to help their worthy cause.

Any mature Christian knows that the path to sanctity travels through suffering. No servant is greater than his master, and our Lord suffered to bring us salvation, and suffering is part and parcel of being a follower of Christ. Likewise, any good parent wants their child to grow in holiness and become a saint. But how many parents want their children to suffer?

Thus the dilemma of the parent: we want our children to be saints, and we know saints must suffer, but we don’t want our children to suffer. What is the parent to do?

I think this is where many modern parenting methods fall woefully short. Countless times I have seen parents employ what I call the “switcheroo” method of parenting; by this I mean that if they want to deny their child something he or she wants, they simply switch that item with something else the child wants. “Johnny, you can’t play with that knife, but here play with this remote control instead.” In order to prevent the child from a negative reaction (i.e. screaming his head off), the parent avoids this by immediately satisfying the child’s desires in another way. In doing so, however, they are often missing the opportunity to teach the child a lesson in self-denial. If they just said, “Johnny, you can’t play with that knife”, period, they would demonstrate to the child that not all of his or her personal desires must be fulfilled (although the child will still scream his head off).

Another problem with modern parenting is the decline of chores. I admit that growing up in a suburban neighborhood in the 70’s I had few chores myself (and I can see the negative results of that fact in my own life even today), but today it seems that few children have any significant chores to speak of. But giving a child responsibility over certain age-appropriate tasks is a great way to build the discipline into their life necessary for the Christian life.

I’m not saying that parents should go around finding ways to deny their children the pleasures of life or to work them to death. But life is not about satisfying one’s personal desires, it is about taking up our cross and following Christ. If a child is never denied any of his or her desires in their youth, how is he or she going to one day be able to practice the self-denial necessary to pursue holiness?

If we truly want our kids to be saints, we need to acknowledge that their life will require self-denial and will contain suffering. As parents, we should not impose suffering on them, but we should give them the foundation for handling suffering in a mature, Christian fashion and for denying themselves for the sake of Christ.

(A great resource for practical ways to raise kids to be saints is Good Discipline, Great Teens by Dr. Ray Guarendi.)

Recently, the Archdiocese of Washington had a “Seminarian Family Day” in which current seminarians and their families gathered to celebrate Mass and enjoy a picnic. The purpose of the day was to recognize the importance of the family in a young man’s decision to pursue the call to the priesthood. Our diocesan paper reported on the event, and something struck me about the families of the three seminarians they profiled:

Doug Powell, the father of seminarian Jonathan Powell, said he is proud of his son’s decision to explore a vocation to the priesthood…

He and his wife, Tam, the parents of 12 children, have tried to foster vocations in their home by being open about faith, committing to family prayer and homeschooling their children, he said…

Kimberly Schnitker, the mother of seminarian Max Schnitker and a parishioner of St. John Vianney Parish in Prince Frederick, said her family fosters vocations by attending daily Mass, praying the rosary, homeschooling their children and maintaining friendships with priests who are an “inspiration to them.”

Michael Berard, a parishioner of St. Hugh Parish in Greenbelt whose son, Jack Berard, is a seminarian at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, said he and his wife, Pat, fostered vocations in their home by striving to be living examples for their 10 children.

Did you notice what I highlighted? One seminarian family has 12 kids and homeschools, another homeschools, and the third has 10 children. What is common about these three families? They are counter-cultural.

In today’s society, there is probably nothing more counter-cultural than a religious vocation. Choosing to be celibate, obedient and poor is the trifecta of counter-cultural choices in the over-sexed, rebellious and materialistic culture of death in which we live. Those who are immersed in our culture are going to have an extremely hard time hearing the call to the religious life, which is why parents need to live in counter-cultural ways. Do your kids watch the same TV shows, wear the same clothes, go to the same schools, have the same number of siblings and entertain themselves the same way as every other child? Not every Catholic family is going to homeschool or have a large number of children, but every Catholic family is called to counter the culture of death in which we live in some way. Along with giving their children a more solid path to holiness, parents may very well be helping to solve the vocations crisis in our country as well.

Some people criticize Natural Family Planning (NFP) as just “Catholic birth control.” It is fundamentally no different, according to critics, than condoms, birth control pills, or other means to prevent pregnancy. These are obviously people who have never actually used NFP in their own lives, for if they did, they would know how different it really is.

The great thing about NFP is that using it helps one to recognize the great gift of marital sexuality as well as the great blessing of children in a marriage. Whereas artificial birth control focuses exclusively on preventing the natural consequence of sexual relations, NFP helps a couple focus on the two primary purposes of sexual relations: procreation and marital unity. This often leads them to a deeper marriage and a greater openness to children – and even a greater appreciation of the Catholic Church, as can be seen with this couple:

Couple credits NFP for changed worldview

Chris and Christelle Hagen weren’t Catholic when they decided to use natural family planning instead of artificial birth control.

Christelle was initially attracted to NFP for health, not moral, reasons, she said. At first, Chris was surprised she didn’t want to use birth control pills, but he was happy to oblige.

Now, 13 years into their marriage, the Hagens, members of St. Michael in Stillwater, say using NFP has positively affected not only Christelle’s health, but also the way they view their marriage, intimacy and children.

NFP also opened the door to the couple’s exploration of the Catholic faith, and their eventual conversion to Catholicism from the Evangelical faith in 1999, said Chris, 34.

Learning to trust

Unlike contraception, which uses barriers or hormones to prevent the marital act from producing life or, in some cases, can act as an abortifacient, NFP ensures the couples’ marital act is always open to life. When a couple does not want to become pregant, they abstain from sex when the wife is fertile.

According to the Catholic Church, NFP is the only moral way to regulate pregnancies.

Christelle, 37, first learned of NFP while living with a Catholic family after college, and she explained it to Chris, whom she was dating. They made a decision to use NFP after they married.

But, out of fear of pregnancy, the Hagens used condoms during their honeymoon. A few nights later, however, they had a spiritual experience — something Chris said is difficult to describe.

“We both felt an intense amount of fear, we felt very vulnerable, and we both had the sense — we were experiencing this at the same time — that it was because we were using condoms,” he said.

They didn’t use a condom after that night and tried better to trust God, they said.

Their Evangelical church didn’t teach contraception was wrong, and initially, the Hagens thought that, while it was wrong for them, contraception wasn’t wrong for everyone, Christelle said.

They eventually changed their minds. Chris was persuaded by the fact that no Christian denominations approved artificial birth control until the 20th century. Although Christelle had already changed her mind, a miscarriage eight months after their wedding confirmed her beliefs, she said.

“That experience for me was really a turning point emotionally for NFP, because I realized more of what was at stake with sexuality — that it had incredible power to it, the power to create life, and after that, I’ve never looked back,” she said.

They started to teach NFP, which they did for eight years as a couple through Couple to Couple League. When Chris became too busy to co-teach, they retired from Couple to Couple League, and Christelle focused on her growing interest in childbirth and parenting.

Practicing NFP deepened their appreciation for children, they said, and today they have four, ranging in age from 2 to 9.

Continue reading…

Recently I ran across this profound and insightful statement by Joseph Ratzinger, written in 1977:

[In] the very structure of modern society the corporate life of the family is increasingly displaced by the logic of production and the specializations which it has developed. As a result, the family home frequently seems no more than a sleeping-bag. In the daytime it effectively dematerializes. No more can it be that sheltering space which brings human beings together in birth and living, in sickness and dying. (Eschatology, pp. 69-70, emphasis added)

Two hundred years ago in this country, the vast majority of families had all their members stay close to home throughout the day. The mother stayed at home to tend the house and raise the kids, and the father either worked the farm or at a local shop nearby. Family life revolved around the house, making it a “sheltering space,” as the future Pope Benedict noted. Today, however, nothing could be further from reality. As Ratzinger writes, during the daytime, our homes “dematerialize.”

It is amazing how my own neighborhood becomes a virtual ghost town during the day, even during the summer. Although plenty of families have young children, you never see any during working hours, as they are all away at day care or summer camp (at night, it is little better, as yards are still empty and most homes seem to have a TV-blue glow emanating from their homes). The days of children playing with their siblings and the neighborhood children are long gone, as are many of the deep bonds that unite a family together and to their community.

It would be easy to point the finger at individuals and blame them for this epidemic. But, as Ratzinger points out, such a situation is due to the very structure of modern society. Everything about our modern economy and society pushes families to become two-income households, and drives families to live farther and farther away from work-centers, thus adding to the total time away from the home. And the process is self-perpetuating: as more families become dual-income, their total income rises, thus rising the cost of homes, which in turn pushes more families to become dual-income and to live farther from work-centers. The devil has done a wonderful job in modern times in preventing homes from becoming “sheltering spaces” as long commute times and mothers having to work outside the home are destroying any sense of the family home being anything more than a “sleeping-bag.”

All of these factors make me more and more appreciative of stay-at-home mothers. I understand that there are situations in which a mother must work outside the home, but I still cannot but praise those families who make the great sacrifices necessary to have the mother stay at home with their children. I am very grateful to my parents for many things, but one of things I’m most thankful for is that my own mother stayed at home throughout my childhood years. By doing so, she made my home a “sheltering space.” Without exception, there is no job I admire more than mothers who stay at home with their children. This feeling of admiration even is greater than the one I have for priests, of whom I have great admiration. In my estimation, stay-at-home moms have an even more noble – and thankless – task. As grace builds on nature, so too does the work of the priest build on the work of the mother, the first educator in the school of love for any child. A loving mother does more to help a priest in his work to sanctify souls than any other person.

The greatest human person who ever lived – the Blessed Virgin Mary – was a stay-at-home mom, and her task was a humble one, although it was also the most important one given to a human person in the history of mankind: to raise the God-man, Jesus Christ. In the fifth glorious mystery, we contemplate the coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth: here is a simple stay-at-home mom made the Queen of men and angels! I often think that there will be countless other unknown stay-at-home mothers who will one day be glorified in heaven because of their work to make their homes sheltering spaces and not just sleeping-bags.

Our Lady, Mother of God, pray for us!

My oldest daughter is now 13, and as any parent of a teenager will understand, my thoughts have begun to contemplate college. Well, not college as much as college tuition. The cost of higher education has gone through the roof over the past few decades and it has far outstripped inflation. When I went to college in the early 1990’s, the total annual costs for both room and board for me was less than $5,000. Now that would barely cover your book fees at some places. Some are saying that college expense are in a “bubble” which may soon burst. Whatever the case may be, it is a serious issue for all parents.

As a Catholic parent, there are other factors as well. I don’t have any inclination to help pay for tuition at a state-college which is anti-Catholic in its teachings and campus life. Nor will I send my hard-earned money to a “Catholic” college which thinks the Catholic tradition started in 1968 with the rejection of Humanae Vitae. So I’d prefer to help pay for a college that is authentically Catholic. Yet those colleges are not cheap (I can’t afford to pay the whole tuition), and I don’t want to saddle my children with huge amounts of debt as they go out into the world.

So what is a middle-class Catholic parent to do? I don’t have any answers (I wish I did!), and I think every option has its positives and negatives.

Option 1: Send my child to an authentically Catholic college for four years and allow them to get into significant debt.
The advantage here is that the child gets four years of life in a great incubator for real life. They are away from the home learning how to live on their own, yet are also in an environment that supports living the Catholic Faith. However, if they are in serious debt when they graduate, they add significant stress to their lives which will affect their career, even vocational, choices and their marriages. This should not be taken lightly.

Option 2: Send my child to a community college for two years and then allow them to finish their degree at an authentically Catholic college.
This has the advantage of being significantly less expensive. I know of families who chose this route and their kids were able to completely pay for their first two years on their own through working, and then the parents were able to completely (or almost completely) pay for their final two years. Thus the children were not saddled with excessive debt going into life. But the disadvantage is that they miss much of the “college experience” of living at an authentically Catholic college, and this could have a great impact on how they live their lives as Catholics going forward.

Option 3: Skip college or only go to community college.
To most middle-class Americans, this seems like a terrible decision. But is it? The “value” of college has in many ways been overblown, and as Catholics, we should not be making our decisions based solely on how much mammon we can gather in our lives. There are many solid careers that one can have without a four-year degree, and for the entrepreneurial among us, college might just slow them down. But of course the child would lose many of the benefits of an authentically Catholic college, such as the deep bonds they form with their fellow students that can last a lifetime.

In my own case, I don’t know what we will do. There is a good chance, in fact, that we might do something different for each child, depending on their personality and life goals. But no matter what we choose, I’m going to always remind myself that the most important goal in life is getting into heaven, not Harvard.

One of the distinct features of many practicing Catholic families is its size. In my Catholic homeschool group, our family – with five children – hovers around the median in regards to family size. But how do you know if you have a “big family?” Here is a guide to help you:

You might have a big family if…

1) You don’t park your van, you dock it.

2) When you go out for a family walk in the neighborhood, you need a traffic cop.

3) Even your parents ask you “are they all yours?”

4) The army asks for your advice about logistics regarding food distribution.

5) You have been asked hundreds of times, “don’t you know how they are made?”

6) There is nothing “mini” about your van.

7) You are constantly asked the name of the day care you run when you go out.

8) You don’t have a shoe rack in your house, but instead a shoe room.

9) You have to reserve the party room whenever you go to a restaurant.

10) You have grandchildren older than some of your own children.

We are a Dodge Caravan family and have five kids, not two, but other than that, this is how the Sammons family rolls:

H/t: Marcel

The Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church has strong words regarding the relationship between a country’s population growth and its overall health as a nation:

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia stresses the importance of solving Russia’s demographical problems and improving nation’s health.

“What’s the good of having economy, if our nation is sick? How will we reclaim these boundless spaces, vast lands, not only in European part of Russia, but in Siberia as well?” the Primate said at organizational meeting of the Belgorod branch of the World Russian People’s Council.

He reminded that birth rates had recently grown in Russia.

“We hope this tendency will be stable and our people rather than strangers with alien culture and alien faith will inhabit our vast lands inherited from God and our hardworking forefathers and this greatest treasure – our land – will be cultivated by descendants of those who merged it to the great Russian state,” Patriarch Kirill said.

Would that all religious and political leaders realize that a nation’s best resource is its people, and the more children we are having, the better. For those who believe that overpopulation is a problem, check out these videos:

…is now Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family:

Cardinal: Stay-at-Home Moms Need to Be Paid

Of course, considering that stay-at-home moms work 24/7, even paying just the minimum wage would work out to over $60,000/year. Where do we sign up?

Last week I took my teenage daughter to a special Mass which I hoped she would find especially appealing. It included inspiring worship music, elaborate visual stimulation and inspired preaching. And afterward, when I asked her what she thought, she enthusiastically told me that she liked it. Here is a description of this “teen-friendly” Mass from the parish’s website:

A Solemn High Mass in the Extraordinary Form for the Feast of the Purification (Candlemas) with a blessing of the Candles and Procession with polyphonic propers composed by William Byrd, and the Ordinary from his Mass for Four Voices, sung by Chantry.

Now I admit that I am not an “Old Mass-only” Catholic. Nor do I think the Mass needs to be in Latin; I prefer the vernacular, truth be told. However, I can’t help but marvel at the fact that we have spent countless hours and enormous amounts of energy over the past 40 years trying to create a Mass that is “relevant” and engaging to our teens, when perhaps it was collecting mothballs in the closet the whole time?