“WHY I LIKE TEACHING” – The Catholic Teacher’s Companion

Every mother and every father is a teacher. How important it is to have enthusiasm for this noble profession, in spite of the bumps, which inevitably follow our instructing footsteps.

What a legacy we leave behind!

This book was written at the turn of the 20th century for Catholic teaching nuns. It is called The Catholic Teacher’s Companion  – A book of Inspiration and Self-Help by Rev. Felix M. Kirsch, O.M.C. (1924). The lessons between the covers are valuable for parents, educators and all who work with children.

“WHY I LIKE TEACHING”

Our teachers may derive inspiration from the prize essay on this subject written by Mr. John Dixon, school superintendent of Columbus, Wisconsin:

“I like teaching because I like boys and girls, because I delight in having them about me, in talking with them, working with them, and in possessing their confidence and affection.

“I like teaching because the teacher works in an atmosphere of idealism, dealing with soul and heart, with ideas and ideals.

“I like teaching because of the large freedom it gives. There is abundance of room for original planning and initiative in the conduct of the work itself, and an unusual time margin of evenings, weekends, and vacations in which to extend one’s interests, personal and professional.

“I like teaching because the relation of teacher to learner in whatever capacity is one of the most interesting and delightful in the world.

Teaching is attractive because it i-poses a minimum of drudgery. Its day is not too long, and is so broken by intermissions, and so varied in its schedule of duties, as to exclude undue weariness or monotony. The program of each school-day is a new and interesting adventure.

“Teaching invites to constant growth and improvement. The teacher is in daily contact with books, magazines, and libraries, and all the most vital forces of thought and leadership, social and educational.

It is work that stimulates ambition and enhances personal worth. There is no greater developer of character to be found.

Also, teaching includes a wide range of positions and interests, extending from kindergarten to university, covering every section where schools are maintained and embracing every variety of effort, whether academic, artistic, industrial, commercial, agricultural or professional.

“There is no work in which men and women engage which more directly and fundamentally serves society and the state.

Teaching is the biggest and best profession in the state because it creates and molds the nation’s citizenship. It is the very foundation and mainstay of the national life.

“The true teacher is, and may well be, proud of the title, for his work is akin to that of the Master Builder, the creation of a temple not made with hands.”

In the following poem Mr. Louis Burton Woodward answers a question frequently asked but seldom as beautifully answered:

WHY I TEACH

Because I would be young in soul and mind

Though years must pass and age my life constrain,

And I have found no way to lag behind

The fleeting years, save by the magic chain

That binds me, youthful, to the youth I love,

I teach.

Because I would be wise and wisdom find

From millions gone before whose torch I pass,

Still burning bright to light the paths that wind

So steep and rugged, for each lad and lass

Slow-climbing to the Heights above,

I teach.

Because in passing on the living flame

That ever brighter burns the ages through,

I have done service that is worth the name

Can I but say, “The flame of knowledge grew

A little brighter in the hands I taught,”

I teach.

Because I know that when life’s end I reach

And thence pass through the gates so wide and deep

To what I do not know, save what priests teach,

That the remembrance of me men will keep

Is what I’ve done; and what I have is naught,

I teach.

To preserve and increase her first love for teaching the Sister must be on her guard lest her interest in her work be based on other than idealistic grounds.

It is only with an enthusiasm based upon these grounds that she will be able to bear the thousand disappointments that every teacher is heir to.

But with an abiding love for teacher all labor will be light: Ubi amatur, non laboratur; aut si laboratur, labor amatur—”Where there is love, there is no labor; or if there be labor, it will be a labor of love.”

The teacher imbued with deep-seated enthusiasm for her profession will not think of the school-room as a field to work in, but as a force to work with.

“The study of Religion should be a regular part of the curriculum and taught just as thoroughly as Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and other subjects.

The child gains a deep and reverent understanding of the principles of his faith, and practicing his religion becomes second nature to him.

Parents who believe that Sunday School instruction is adequate for a religious education would protest vigorously if their child were instructed only one hour each week in geography, history or some other subject of considerably less importance in the long view.” -Fr. George Kelly, Catholic Family Handbook https://amzn.to/2ovgHpU (afflink)

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Drawing on the experience of dozens of saints, Fr. Plus explains sure ways we can recollect ourselves before prayer so that once we begin to pray, our prayers will be richer and more productive; he teaches us how to practice interior silence habitually, even in the rush and noise of the world; and he explains each of the kinds of prayer and shows when we should and should not employ each.

We all pray, but few of us pray well. And although that’s troubling, few of us have found a spiritual director capable of leading us further along the path of prayer.

Fr. Raoul Plus, S.J., is such a director, and reading this little book about the four types of prayer will be for you like hearing the voice of the wise and gentle counsellor you long for but can’t find: one who knows your soul well and understands its needs.

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The Spirit and Personality of the Teacher (Part Two)

Photo from the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

This book was written at the turn of the 20th century for Catholic teaching nuns. It is called The Catholic Teacher’s Companion  – A book of Inspiration and Self-Help by Rev. Felix M. Kirsch, O.M.C. (1924). The lessons between the covers are valuable for parents, educators and all who work with children.

Part One is here.

MODERN IRRELIGION

Especially in these latter days when religion has been crowded almost entirely even out of Catholic homes, must we turn to our Catholic teachers to imbue our children with a deeply religious spirit.

The Catholic teacher must largely take, in this regard, the place of a Catholic mother. The children in our schools must therefore not be put on starvation diet, getting but little bits and scraps now and then, but must wax strong on wholesome, substantial spiritual nourishment, and must, above all, breathe continually the ozone of a truly religious atmosphere.

Now, who will charge the classroom with religious influences if not the Sister who there presides? And how can she do so unless she first of all has been fully charged with this spirit?

It is an old-time truism, Nemo dat quod non habet—”No man can give that which he has not himself.” Teachers cannot impart what they themselves do not possess: For they must have the truth themselves, If they the truth would teach.

We shall realize the urgency of this problem when we consider how much of the temporal and eternal welfare of the pupils depends upon the teacher’s example and instruction:

A pebble on the streamlet bank

Has shaped the course of many a river,

A dewdrop on the baby plant

May warp the giant oak forever.

The teacher is unconsciously an object lesson to her pupils. From morning till evening occasions are constantly arising that will put to the test her patience, her gentleness, her prudence, her charity, her self-control, and a number of other virtues which are the natural offspring of a good religious character.

Nor is it simply in the more important actions of the day, when she is supposed to be more on her guard, that she will thus have a chance to reveal herself, but even in the most minute actions, in her every stir, and look, and word, and gesture, even in the very tone of her voice, will she proclaim whether she is a deeply spiritual woman or still amenable chiefly to natural and human impulses.

Corresponding impressions and lasting impressions, favorable or unfavorable, will naturally be produced on those who are the constant witnesses for years of every detail of her conduct. All this calls, on the part of the teacher, for unceasing efforts of self-education.

The teacher, however, who does not consider self-education and self-improvement part of her daily task, can never hope to understand the import of the education of others. The fundamental aspect of the matter was grasped by the devout and relatively unlearned religious teacher whose motto was “Since to make saints is my mission, I must be a saint myself.”

We gladly admit that, all else being equal, the teacher of religion, for instance, who knows a great deal about biology and child psychology and dogmatic theology has an ad-vantage over her learned sister; but there is not one of us who, commissioned to select a teacher of religion for a given class, would prefer a biologist or a theologian to a zealous and unassuming saint.

We all realize that the best woman to teach religion is the woman who lives religion, and that though her methods be antiquated or uncertain she still has a power in the Catholic school because she is possessed of the spirit of religion and the spirit of Jesus Christ.

THE TEACHER’S MAINSTAY

But it is not only for the sake of her pupils that the teacher must cultivate a deeply religious spirit. She needs this spirit for herself. Only great women can weather the great storms of the soul. And the great women are they who cherish the high aspirations, the visioning dreams, the deep yearnings that spring from religion.

Religion must be the mainspring of the teacher’s life. What the spring is for the watch, that religion must be for her life. Of what use a gold case, a jeweled set of works, artistic engravings, etc., if the spring be missing, or broken?

Professor Frederick Paulsen, though not a Catholic, confesses that a truly religious life is the only foundation of assured peace of soul. And the celebrated educationist, Frederick William Foerster, admits that Christ Crucified is the best solution of a teacher’s difficulties. But a greater Teacher than these has said.: “Cast all your care on Him, for He hath care of you.”

It might be well for the teacher to give special attention to what St. Francis of Sales calls the little virtues: humility, patience, meekness, benignity, bearing one another’s burdens, condescension, mildness of heart, cheerfulness, cordiality, compassion, forgiving injuries, candor, and simplicity.

Would that all our teachers would practice the virtue mentioned last, in the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi! Yes, Franciscan simplicity would mean the end of so many needless worries.

Here is a teacher breaking her head over many problems. The Superior seems to be displeased with her. The Pastor, too, evidently has a bone to pick with her. Then, one of the Sisters did not greet her this morning with her usual cordiality. Many of the pupils are likewise, as it seems, losing confidence in her. And so the weary list continues, and robs the distressed Sister of all her peace of soul.

St. Francis was not disturbed by any such vanities. He would under the circumstances regard his Superior with the same reverence as before. He would cooperate with the Pastor as though nothing had happened. He would treat his fellow-Religious with the same brotherliness as heretofore.

He would continue to regard the pupils with ever increasing affection. He would, in a word, be disturbed by nothing. He would continue ever the same Brother Joy. For in his eyes all was infinitely simple.

Let the teacher act likewise. Let her not bother about others, but be herself. There will always be some to approve and some to disapprove, no matter what she does or does not do. In all her needs the religious teacher should have recourse to prayer.

Sr. M. Giralomo, a successful teacher of teachers, was in the habit of telling the candidates for the profession: “A Christian teacher should speak a hundred times as much to God about her pupils, as to her pupils about God.”

Another teacher worded the same advice thus: “When in doubt play trumps.” One with God is a majority, and as long as the Sister prays she need fear no difficulties no matter how formidable.

Shakespeare paid his tribute, in Measure for Measure, to the potency of the Sister’s prayer:

Not with fond shekels of the tested gold,

Or stones, whose rates are either rich or poor

As fancy values them: but with true prayers,

That shall be up at heaven, and enter there,

Ere sunrise: prayers from preserved souls,

From fasting maids, whose minds are delicate

To nothing temporal.

Yes, the praying School Sister is a wonderful power for good, and her influence endures long after her boys and girls have passed out of her schoolroom. It is she who inspires letters like the one written by a soldier-boy on the eve of his departure from France: DEAR SISTER:

I have seen much of the evil side of life. I have come close to things that you know nothing of. But I want to tell you that I haven’t done one thing of which you would be ashamed.

The memory of such a Sister has been the mainstay of thousands of men and women fighting the grim battle of life. Hence we do not find it strange that a British Inspector of Schools expressed his conviction that “it would be ideal if all England could be taught by nuns.”

If our Catholic young men and women, who are aiming to lead a virtuous celibate life in the world, understood how much spiritual comfort, strength and consolation they would derive from the monastic or conventual life, by consecrating themselves to it in lowliness of mind and uprightness of heart, our monasteries and convents would not have to be clamoring for candidates to do the work of God and religion they are most eager to do, much of which must be left undone because of the lack of laborers. -Rev. Fulgence Meyer, 1924, Painting Ferdinand Georg Walmuller, 1700’s

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A Frank, Yet Reverent Instruction on the Intimate Matters of Personal Life for Young Men. To our dear and noble Catholic youths who have preserved, or want to recover, their purity of heart, and are minded to retain it throughout life. For various reasons many good fathers of themselves are not able to give their sons this enlightenment on the mysteries of life properly and sufficiently. They may find this book helpful in the discharge of their parental responsibilities in so delicate a matter.

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Self-Reliance & Reverence – The Catholic Teacher’s Companion

This book was written at the turn of the 20th century for Catholic teaching nuns. It is called The Catholic Teacher’s Companion  – A book of Inspiration and Self-Help by Rev. Felix M. Kirsch, O.M.C. (1924). The lessons between the covers are valuable for parents, educators and all who work with children.

SELF-RELIANCE

The children of today must be trained to stand on their own feet. The temptations of the present age are so numerous, and the moral support that the young people receive from their environment is all too often practically nil so that the pupils must upon leaving school he fortified to stand four-square to all the winds that blow.

Here again the teacher’s personality is an important factor. If her life and conduct are governed by the teachings of Christ, if she acts on principle and is not subject to the whims of the moment, she may hope to make true Catholic men and women of her boys and girls.

Our age needs boys and girls who have back-bone enough to lead Catholic lives amid frightful temptations, who are trained to practice virtue and shun vice even if the watchful eye of the teacher, priest, or parent is not observing them. But they cannot be trained to such independence of conscience if the teachers will not give their pupils more liberty as they grow up to the beginning of manhood and womanhood.

Put your pupils therefore on their honor; give them motives other than working for good marks and gold medals; let them obey and be industrious at their books because they will thus serve their own best interests.

Teach them the principles of manhood, and give them opportunities to translate these principles into their daily lives. In the higher grades of the elementary school and throughout the high school the teacher has many opportunities for allowing her pupils scope for the exercise of self-reliance. But even in the primary grades she should be on the alert to train the pupils to be self-active.

When assigning tasks, she should afford opportunities for the pupils’ initiative; for instance, when giving themes for compositions, or when controlling the reading of authors. She may also train the pupils to self-reliance by encouraging them to make collections of stamps, plants, insects, bugs, butterflies, etc.

Another means for training them to be self-reliant is to encourage them to tutor some of the weaker pupils of the class. By placing mite boxes for the missions or by starting a school savings bank, she will encourage her pupils to make sacrifices of their own accord, and to deny themselves the enjoyment of sweets or the use of tobacco.

It goes without saying that the campus and the playground offer untold possibilities for the development of self-reliance, and the teacher should make her influence felt in this direction also.

The charge is sometimes made that boys brought up in orphan asylums fail as soon as they are given the liberties of the world. The boys will undoubtedly fail if they have not been trained to use the liberties aright.

Though guarded scrupulously against all that might prove a temptation, they are not prepared for the battle that is unavoidable in the world at large, and hence in their later lives are at the mercy of the snares that beset their path on every side.

The boys and girls attending our schools are exposed to dangers enough, but what must be insisted upon is that they be trained in self-help for the greater struggle that is certain to be theirs.

Let them be taught the practice of living in the presence of God. Let their minds be impressed with the idea that we all are soldiers, that life is a warfare, where each must face for himself the eternal enemy of our souls and his accomplices among wicked men and in our own lower nature.

Men keep sacred the memory of those teachers of their boyhood days who appealed to them to be little men, little soldiers against the devil and his wily temptations. Act in this way with your pupils, and in their adult lives they may be bruised and scarred in many a battle, but they will bless the memory of their teachers for training them to stand to their guns.

It might be mentioned in this connection that the teacher should not neglect to train her pupils’ sense of honor. She will do this most effectively by giving praise and blame in just proportion. She must use praise and blame more frequently with very young pupils, as they are not capable of judging themselves, and have no standard other than the teacher’s word for evaluating their work or conduct. But the more mature pupil must be habituated to perform his tasks out of a sense of duty.

While a judicious admixture of praise and blame will probably produce the best results, we feel safe in saying that praise is, on the whole, more effective than blame.

REVERENCE

Educators are complaining quite generally about the decay of reverence among young people. There is therefore need for training our pupils to practice reverence. They should learn to reverence their fellow-men, who are made after the image of God, and are prospective citizens of heaven.

They should be taught to reverence themselves as being temples of the Holy Ghost. They owe special reverence to their father and mother; to their teachers, who are their foster-parents; and to their priests, who are their fathers in God.

The reverence that our pupils owe to their superiors is grounded on the principle that human authority takes the place of God among men.

Special laws were passed in ancient Sparta to enforce the reverence due to the aged. When an aged man entered the room, a youth who might happen to be present had to give up his seat to him, and was not permitted to speak except when asked.

At Athens an old man came into the theater after all places had been taken, yet none of his fellow-citizens offered him a seat. But when he approached the Spartan ambassadors, they all arose to offer him a seat in the most honored place.

The Athenians applauded the respect of the Spartans, but one in the audience remarked truly enough: “Though the Athenians know what is right, they fail to practice it.”

Reverence, like all other virtues, must be taught by doctrine, practice, and example. Teachers should inculcate reverence by practicing it toward their pupils.

A Latin proverb tells us, Maxima debetur puero reverentia, “We owe very great reverence to the child.”

Every teacher must therefore in her own conduct be a model of politeness and refinement. She must, indeed, demand respect for herself, but if the precept is reinforced by her own refined demeanor and due reverence for all, she will undoubtedly receive universal respect.

She must, therefore, be courteous when asking pupils for service, and must not neglect to acknowledge their kindness. Thus she will prepare the way for insisting that the pupils, too, should be courteous to one another.

This will require special efforts in the case of boys as it is not ignorance or that is generally responsible for their bad manners, but merely the dread of being considered a “sissy” by the “other fellows.”

Punctuality exacts self-discipline and detachment; it often asks us to interrupt some interesting, pleasant work in order to give ourselves to another kind, perhaps less attractive or less important.
However, it would be a great mistake to esteem our duties and to dedicate ourselves to them according to the attraction we have for them or according to their more or less apparent importance.
All is important and beautiful when it is the expression of the will of God, and the soul who wishes to live in this hole he will every minute of the day, will never omit the slightest act prescribed by its rule of life. -Divine Intimacy

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My Disclaimer: This book is, in general, appropriate for ages 14 and up.

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Women historically have been denigrated as lower than men or viewed as privileged. Dr. Alice von Hildebrand characterizes the difference between such views as based on whether man’s vision is secularistic or steeped in the supernatural. She shows that feminism’s attempts to gain equality with men by imitation of men is unnatural, foolish, destructive, and self-defeating. The Blessed Mother’s role in the Incarnation points to the true privilege of being a woman. Both virginity and maternity meet in Mary who exhibits the feminine gifts of purity, receptivity to God’s word, and life-giving nurturance at their highest.

You’ll learn how to grow in wisdom and in love as you encounter the unglamorous, everyday problems that threaten all marriages. As the author says: If someone were to give me many short bits of wool, most likely I would throw them away. A carpet weaver thinks differently. He knows the marvels we can achieve by using small things artfully and lovingly. Like the carpet weaver, the good wife must be an artist of love. She must remember her mission and never waste the little deeds that fill her day the precious bits of wool she s been given to weave the majestic tapestry of married love.

This remarkable book will show you how to start weaving love into the tapestry of your marriage today, as it leads you more deeply into the joys of love.

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The Pupils’ Success – The Catholic Teacher’s Companion

This excerpt is a lesson for all educators…including, and especially, mothers and fathers. There aren’t many schools nowadays that are reputable (there are some, indeed), so mothers and fathers have had to take much of burden of educating their children, especially in their religion. Take heart, your reward will be great in heaven!

Some readers may be tempted to restrict the idea of the pupils’ success to what is seen on the night of the school commencement. But we have in mind the school commencement merely as the scene whence the graduates must pass to the larger stage of the world to play their parts.

The Rev. Daniel A. Lord, S.J.,  has brought out vividly the part that the Sisters play in both phases of the pupil’s success:

Back stage, hot in heavy habits that were never designed for work among canvas wings, the Sisters, tired, flushed, but happy, watched the end of their year’s work.

The next day they too were to leave; some for the motherhouse, some for the summer courses at Catholic colleges, all eventually for the annual retreat.

The curtain dropped for the last time, and the boys and girls surged out to greet happy relatives, some with a quick good-by to their teachers, others thoughtless and forgetful of all except that for them school was at an end and they were free.

Yet, though few children came to thank them, and fewer still of that seething audience gave a passing thought to the Sisters backstage, all that was epitomized in the entertainment just concluded, and the diploma just conferred was credited by a higher Power to them.

Because of their patient drilling some boy would rise higher in life. Later on some girl would come with the man who loved her, to seek out the Sister who had kept her feet straight in her youthful days.

Some boy in the grip of temptation would remember her insistent lessons of loyalty to God and put sin ruthlessly behind him. Perhaps in some distant day a wanderer from the faith of his fathers would on his deathbed murmur the act of contrition she taught him, and by that childhood prayer open for himself the gates of eternal bliss.

And perhaps before God’s altar some young priest, in the full tide of his newly-received priesthood, would pause at the Memento to whisper the name of the nun whose lessons and prayers had first turned his eyes toward the service of the Sanctuary.

Her work, unrecognized, unappreciated, but heroic with the heroism of patient unselfishness and devotion to a high ideal, is one of the loveliest things in the Church today.

She is the greatest asset of Catholic education. I crave your thanks for the teaching Sister.

The Rev. Robert Schwickerath, S.J., relates an incident of the life of Father Bonifacio, a distinguished Jesuit educator, who for more than forty years taught the classics.

One day he was visited by his brother, a professor in a university, whom he had not seen for many years. When the professor heard that the Father had spent all the years of his life in the Order in teaching Latin and Greek to young boys, he exclaimed:

“You have wasted your great talents in such inferior work! I expected to find you at least a professor of philosophy or theology. What have you done that this post is assigned to you?”

Father Bonifacio quietly opened a little book, and showed him the list of hundreds of pupils whom he had taught, many of whom occupied high positions in Church or State, or in the world of business.

Pointing at their names, the Father said with a pleasant smile:

“The success which my pupils have achieved is to me a far sweeter reward than any honor which I might have obtained the most celebrated university.”

 Father Schwickerath justly adds to this account that “not all teachers have the consolation of seeing their pupils in high positions. It happens that the best efforts of a devoted teacher seem to be lost on many pupils. Even this will not discourage the religious teacher.

He will remember that his model, Jesus Christ, did not reap the fruit which might have been expected from such a Master. Not all that He sowed brought forth fruit a hundredfold, not even thirtyfold. Some fell upon stony ground, and other some fell among the thorns, and yet He went on patiently sowing.

So a teacher ought not to be disheartened if the success should not correspond with his labors. He knows that one reward is certainly in store for him, the measure of which will not be his success, but his zeal; not the fruit but his efforts.”

It is the prospect of this reward that inspires the devoted service of our Sisters.

Not long ago, in distant Algiers, an American tourist visited the lepers’ colony out of pure curiosity. These poor lepers were cared for by a Community of Sisters. The man was attracted by one of these self-sacrificing women because of her youth, beauty, and refinement, and to his surprise he learned that she was an American girl.

Being introduced to her, he said: “Sister, I would not do this work for $10,000 a year.”

“No,” said the Sister, “nor would I do it for $100,000 nor a million a year.”

“Really,” said the stranger, “you surprise me. What, then, do you receive?”

“Nothing,” was the reply, “absolutely nothing.”

“Then why do you do it?”

The Sister lifted the crucifix that was pending from her rosary and, sweetly kissing it, said, “I do it for the love of Him, for Jesus who died for the love of them and for the love of me. In the loathsome ulcers of these poor lepers I see the wounds of my crowned and crucified Savior.”

For the rest, we believe that the very choicest reward will be meted out to the School Sisters for that portion of their work that to human seeming is generally in vain. Our School Sisters may gain honor from their talented pupils; they will earn their bread (in a certain sense) by training the vast body of mediocre children; but they will merit heaven by the patient labors they devote to the dullards in their schools.

A holy house is one in which God is truly King; in which He reigns supreme over the minds and hearts of the inmates; in which every word and act honors His name. One feels on entering such a house, nay, even on approaching it, that the very atmosphere within and without is laden with holy and heavenly influences. -True Womanhood, Rev. Bernard O’Reilly, 1894 https://amzn.to/2PsM94w (afflink)

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Hands Free Mama is the digital society’s answer to finding balance in a media-saturated, perfection-obsessed world. It doesn’t mean giving up all technology forever. It doesn’t mean forgoing our jobs and responsibilities. What it does mean is seizing the little moments that life offers us to engage in real and meaningful interaction. It means looking our loved ones in the eye and giving them the gift of our undivided attention, living a present, authentic, and intentional life despite a world full of distractions.

With his facile pen and from the wealth of his nation-wide experience, the well-known author treats anything and everything that might be included under the heading of home education: the pre-marriage training of prospective parents, the problems of the pre-school days down through the years of adolescence. No topic is neglected. “What is most praiseworthy is Fr. Lord’s insistence throughout that no educational agency can supplant the work that must be done by parents.” – Felix M. Kirsch, O.F.M. https://amzn.to/2T06u28 (afflink)

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Purity, Humility – The Catholic Teacher’s Companion

This is an excerpt taken from a treasure of a book published in 1924 called The Catholic Teacher’s Companion – A Book of Inspiration and Self-Help.

I found and bought this particular leather-bound old book at a Catholic garage sale and am sharing some of it with you today. It spoke to me…as we are all teachers, whether it is of our own children, those around us or a teacher in an actual school.

It was originally written for teaching Sisters….

PURITY

This is a virtue which the teacher has much at heart, and yet she may often be puzzled about the best means for inculcating it.

The Rev. Dr. John M. Cooper has therefore rendered a real service not only to our young people but to our teachers as well by treating the delicate subject so very well in his book, Play Fair.

In order to induce the teacher to take up the book, we shall quote a few passages from the chapter on Purity.

“And God created man to His own image: to the image of God He created him: male and female He created them.”

We are men and proud of it. But God, who treats us as men, not as babies, expects us to play the man’s part. God trusts us. He puts us on our honor in the field of purity as in other fields of our lives.

Our sex nature and powers were given us as a sacred trust for the founding of homes and the protection and upbringing of helpless and defenseless childhood. Around these things cluster like stars many of the glories of life, above all, the hallowed name of mother.

But purity, fallen and dragged in the slimy sewers of sin, turns into something more hideous than rotting leprosy. “Here is a champion swimmer. Look at his broad massive shoulders, his deep chest, his muscles of iron.

Every stroke of his mighty crawl drives him through the water with engine – like force. Trained to the very pink of condition, his sun-tanned, brawny, robust body is a sight that makes you glad to look upon.

One day he ventures out in the river too near the falls, is sucked into its powerful draw, and is swept over the brink. A week later there floats up to the surface from down in the depths a bloated Thing with glassy, mud-filmed eyes, reeking with the stench of decomposition.

So changes purity sucked into the draw of sin.

“Be a man, and chaste,” challenged the old pagan writer. And a modern poet has put a still more stirring challenge into the mouth of the noblest of the knights of poetry, Sir Galahad:

My strong blade carves the casks of men:

My stiff lance thrusteth sure.

My strength is as the strength of ten,

Because my heart is pure.

“Your body is like a frisky, spirited colt or bronco. Treat it kindly and fairly and it will carry you galloping toward your goal in life. Give it a chance. But do not let it throw you or run away with you. Make good in the bronco-busting game. Either you must break the bronco, or the bronco will break you.

Any mollycoddle can get himself thrown over a horse’s head. It takes a man to break in a worthwhile colt.

Be a man, and chaste!”

“Unchaste thoughts and images will come at times, invited or without an invitation. Three things will help keep them out or shoo them away.

First, keep busy—with hobbies, collections, pets, sports, athletics, live games, books with much action in them, anything. It will be time to mope and daydream when you are ninety years old. Keep on your toes.

Secondly, if wrong thoughts come, say a short prayer to Our Lord, His Blessed Mother, your Guardian Angel, then turn your attention to some of the things just mentioned and in which you are interested.

Thirdly, stick to frequent Confession and Communion, weekly if possible. Be master of your thoughts and your tongue as well as of your body. Otherwise a boy becomes master of neither and the cringing flunkey of both.”

HUMILITY

Humility is the foundation of all virtuous living, and hence is of basic importance for character training. The normal child is predisposed to humility, as may be seen from the words of Christ wherewith He made the humility of the child the condition for entering into heaven: “Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, he is the greater in the kingdom of heaven.”

But if the teacher should discover that a pupil is conceited, she must set about to correct the defect.

In the first place, she will insist on prompt obedience. She will also insist on the child’s showing proper respect to all his superiors.

1. W. Foerster maintains that it is important in this connection for the children to arise when their elders address them, never to interrupt the conversation of their elders, and not to sing or whistle in their presence.

Religious education offers still more helpful means. The habit of prayer, insistence on original sin with its tragic consequences, consideration of our many sins and frailties, proper preparation for Confession and Communion—all these are means to impress upon the child the need of deep humility, and afford him an opportunity for practicing this very important virtue.

However, while training, her pupils to humility the teacher must be on her guard lest she teach them diffidence and faint-heartedness instead of humility.

Outside of religious motives, there is, indeed, no set of principles that will safely guide her pupils in observing the golden mean between pride and faint-heartedness.

The wisdom and training you give to your child will determine the outcome. It is not the time to give in to weariness, indifference, laziness or careless neglect. Their souls are in your hands…. Painting by Tasha Tudor

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Mental Hygiene – The Catholic Teacher’s Companion

This book, The Catholic Teacher’s Companion, has been a real gem! It was written for teaching sisters and this excerpt touches on the mental state of a person and how it affects one’s physical health….

From The Catholic Teacher’s Companion, 1924

In his helpful book Health through Will Power, Dr. James J. Walsh has drawn attention to the surprising power of the will for preserving or recovering one’s health.

The author draws on his wide reading and long experience to prove that the simple exercise of natural will-power is all that is required to cure half the ills of life. All the “dreads” can be cured by scientifically strengthening the will, and recovery from such diseases as pneumonia and tuberculosis depends largely on the patient’s vigor of will.

He counsels the use of the saints’ ascesis, in hours of stress and strain, instead of the “good cry,” which, in his opinion, only weakens the character.

The teacher has a double duty to perform in this respect, one toward herself and another toward her pupils.

Professor La Rue therefore demands justly in his book Psychology for Teachers, that the teacher live a life of mental health in the presence of her pupils; she must daily show them a living example of a big, strong, purposeful, well-poised, good-humored, sympathetic soul.

To this end he gives the following rules of mental hygiene:

1. Look at life in the large. Take a big view of things.

2.Pursue a great purpose. Whoever seeks his own selfish will is traveling toward zero; but he who seeks to serve mankind and her God in the children, is facing toward infinity.

3.Practice mental hardening. Children should be taught to meet and conquer all their ordinary worries and troubles, and not to shun them.

4.Keep your poise. Many people fail because of over-anxiety lest they fail.

5.Form good mental habits:

Habits of the intellect:

(1) planning: there should be an ideal for life, a plan for the year, a program for the day.

“The difficulty,” says Judd, speaking of over-worked teachers, in Genetic Psychology for Teachers, “is not so much in the fact that teachers have to think and plan, as that they come to their work in a state of mental confusion and excitement which renders any task difficult.”

(2) Concentration, unit-mindedness, the one-thing-at-a-time attitude, distinguishes the master mind. Work when you work and play when you play. One must concentrate on recreation as well as on work.

Don’t spoil your game or your walk by carrying all through it a load of anxious thought.

And on going to bed, learn to turn off consciousness as you do your electric light.

Observe that the child in school is prevented from planning the larger features of his work, and that school conditions often favor distraction rather than concentration.

It is sad to think how many children are probably contracting bad mental habits in school.

II.Emotional health requires that we kill off the feelings that are bad for us and practice those that are good for us.

There is reason to believe that a large proportion, if not the major portion, of those who lose their positions do not lack either intellect or skill, but emotional control.

Many are egocentric, paranoid, have too much self-feeling; others are emotionally unstable; and still others, emotionally weak.

One’s prevailing mental state should be that of happiness and humor. It is surprising to find how much can be accomplished by just setting the mind to be happy whatever the circumstances.

Humor is like an application of mental massage which flushes out fatigue poisons and limbers one up all through. It lets loose the tensity of mental currents. The mind seems to relax, straighten up from its work, and take a long, fresh breath.

III.Quiet but effective determination must keep the mental machine running smoothly, rousing us to kill off some thoughts and feelings and promote others.

God’s grace coupled with natural will-power can accomplish wonders with a frail body.

Almost every Religious Order has cases similar to that of the Master General of the Dominicans, Father Cormier, who being professed as a preparation for death, outlived all his fellow-novices, and having joined the Order to efface himself, was from the beginning put upon the candlestick to be a light for his brethren.

But even the confirmed invalid has a real mission to perform in the Religious Community.

Canon Sheehan contended that there should be an invalid and an incurable one in every Religious Community, if only to bring God nearer to the Brothers or Sisters in His great love.

“Every effort we make to forget self, to leave self behind us, and to devote ourselves to the labor of making every person with whom we are bound to live, happy, is rewarded by interior satisfaction and joy. The supreme effort of goodness is,—not alone to do good to others; that is its first and lower effect,—but to make others good.” Rev. Bernard O’Reilly The Mirror of True Womanhood, 1893 https://amzn.to/2o35uN3 (afflink)

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Health and Holiness

A balanced approach to the subject of health written for Catholic teachers….

From The Catholic Teacher’s Companion, 1924

An ounce of sanctity with exceptionally good health does more for the saving of souls than striking sanctity with an ounce of health.—St. Ignatius

Carlyle remarks that health and holiness are etymologically first cousins. And Dr. James J. Walsh has pointed out that health and holiness “have many surprising relations, and some of them contradict current notions; but it must not be forgotten that they are really coordinate functions.

For while we talk about the influence of the mind on the body, and the body on the mind, we must not forget that these two constitute one being; and there is quite literally no idea which does not make itself felt in the body, and no emotion which does not make itself felt in the mind. Wholeness of body and soul that is, health and holiness—work together for good in that mysterious compound we know as man.”

The Claims of Body and Soul

Body and soul are twin gifts from God, and bring with them responsibilities, and it is no sign of superior care of the soul to be slothful and neglectful in regard to the body.

Asceticism is another and quite a different thing. It is one thing to discipline one’s body; it is quite a different thing to neglect one’s teeth, or wash one’s body, or see that one’s food is digestibly prepared, or masticate it properly, or take reasonable exercise and fresh air.

Habits of this sort may quite as easily be owing to slothfulness as to superior spirituality. The distinction is not always observed. The wisdom of the ancient sages proclaiming the demand of the sane soul for a sane body has been further established by the insistence of the Christian saints, notably the founders of Religious Orders, Sts. Benedict and Ignatius, of Bernards, the Franciscans, and the Teresas.

St. Benedict’s Rule contains wise provisions for the bodily as well as the spiritual well-being of its followers. If the monks were to work, they were adequately to eat.

Think of it! “A pound of bread daily and two dishes of cooked food at each meal!”
“The habits that are to be worn are to fit the wearer, be sufficiently warm, and not too old.”
Again, each of the brethren is to take “from six to eight hours of unbroken sleep daily, with the addition of a siesta in summer”; each likewise is to have “a blanket, a coverlet, mattress and a pillow!”

St. Francis of Assisi strictly enjoins the Superiors of his Order to “take special care to provide for the needs of the sick and the clothing of the friars, according to the places, seasons, and cold climates.”

Health and Long Life

These are some obvious illustrations of how wisely the saints provided for the body—other folks’ bodies especially: they did not seem always to mind so much for their own.

Our sisters should take their teachings to heart for, as a rule, they neglect unduly the care of their bodily health. The Rev. Arthur Barry O’Neill, C.S.C., has made a thorough study of this subject and we shall follow him as a reliable guide in the matter.

We agree with him that an examination of the mortality statistics of our Religious Communities of women will probably show that the longevity of Sisters is by no means so notable as one should expect.

It may sound somewhat extravagant in the statement, but it is probably verifiable in fact, that from thirty to forty percent of American Sisters die before “their time comes,” their death being of course, subjectively, entirely in conformity with God’s will; but being, objectively, merely in accordance with God’s permission, which is quite another matter.

Now, long life is a blessing. As Spirago says, “It is a great boon, for the longer one lives, the more merits one can amass for eternity.”

So precious a boon is it that God promised it as a reward for keeping the fourth commandment, a fact of which St. Paul reminds the Ephesians, “Honor thy father and thy mother . . . that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest be long-lived upon earth.”

Accordingly, any procedure, any scheme of life, which contributes even indirectly to the shortening of one’s days assuredly needs unusually strong reasons to justify it; and, with all due deference be it said, such procedure, negative if not positive, is not uncommon in our convents.

Neglecting to take daily exercise out-of-doors may appear a small thing in youth or early middle life, but there is nothing surer that such neglect is seriously detrimental to health; and, exceptional cases apart, poor health is correlative of a truncated career rather than of normal length of days.

Underlying this disregard of the open-air exercise which all physicians declare to be essential to bodily well-being, there is probably in the minds of many Sisters an inchoate, if not fully developed, conviction that vigorous, robust health is more or less incompatible with genuine spirituality, that an occasional illness of a serious nature and a quasi-chronic indisposition at the best of times are, after all, quite congruous in professed seekers after religious perfection, incipient followers of the saints.

That is a pernicious fallacy of which their spiritual directors and confessors should strenuously endeavor to rid them.

Ill-health directly led by God is doubtless a blessing; but it is also an exception. In the ordinary course of God’s providence, men and women, in the cloister as in the world, are in duty bound to take such care of their bodies as will result in the greater efficiency of their minds and souls, and in an increasingly acceptable service of their whole being to their Heavenly Father.

Health is to be sought for, not as an end, but as an excellent means, most frequently indeed an indispensable means, of attaining the true end of both religious and laity, which is holiness, or sanctity.

Theory and Practice Among the Saints

The saints themselves thoroughly understood this truth, and their preaching frequently emphasizes it, even though the practice of some of them, in the matter of austerities and penances, does not apparently conform thereto.

Apparently, for in many a case it was precisely the superb health of the saintly body that rendered the austerities and penances possible.

Like the trained pugilists of the present day, those old-time spiritual athletes could “stand punishment” to an extent that would permanently disable physical weaklings.

It is to be remembered, also, that some of these unmerciful castigators of their bodies–St. Ignatius and St. Francis of Assisi, for instance-frankly avowed in their later years that they had overdone the business of chastising the flesh.

St. Ignatius took good care to offset the influence of his Manresa example in this matter by making due provisions, in his rule and his counsels to his Religious, for proper heed of bodily health.

Time and time again he gave, in varied phrase and amplified form, the advice stated in this, his general precept: “Let all those things be put away and carefully avoided that may injure, in any way whatsoever, the strength of the body and its powers.”

Since sanctity is, after all, only sublimated common sense, it is not surprising to find other saintly founders, reformers, and spiritual directors of Religious Orders giving the same judicious counsel. “If health is ruined how is the Rule to be observed?” pertinently asks St. Teresa.

Writing to some of her nuns who were inclined to follow their own ideas in the matter of prayer and penance, the same great Carmelite advises: “Never forget that mortification should serve for spiritual advancement only. Sleep well, eat well. It is infinitely more pleasing to God to see a convent of quiet and healthy Sisters who do what they are told than a mob of hysterical young women who fancy themselves privileged. . .”

“Govern the body by fasts and abstinence as far as health permits,” says the Dominican Rule. “I have seen,” writes St. Catherine of Siena, “many penitential devotees who lacked patience and obedience because they studied to kill their bodies and not their self-will.”

To every Religious Order and its members may well be applied the words of a Jesuit General, Father Piccolomini, to his own subjects: “It may be said that an unhealthy Religious bears much the same relation to the Order of which he is a member as a badly knit or dislocated bone does to the physical body. For just as a bodily member, when thus affected, not only cannot perform its own proper functions, but even interferes with the full efficiency of the other parts, so when a Religious has not the requisite health, his own usefulness is lost and he seriously interferes with the usefulness of others.”

Health – A Great Good

Were further testimony needed to expose the fallacy that health is something to be slighted, rather than cultivated, by a fervent nun, it could be furnished in superabundance. “Health,” says Cardinal Newman, “is a good in itself, though nothing came of it, and is especially worth seeking and cherishing.”

In 1897, Pope Pius X, then Cardinal Sarto, reported to Rome concerning his seminary in Venice: “It is my wish, in a word, to watch the progress of my young men both in piety and in learning, on which depends in a great measure the exercise of their ministry later on, but I do not attach less importance to their health.”

A distinguished director of souls in our times, the late Archbishop Porter, favored one of his spiritual children, a nun, with the following sane advice:

“As for evil thoughts, I have so uniformly remarked in your case that they are dependent upon your state of health, that I say without hesitation: begin a course of Vichy and Carlsbad. . . Better far to eat meat on Friday than to be at war with every one about us.

I fear much, you do not take enough food and rest. You stand in need of both, and it is not wise to starve yourself into misery. Jealousy and all similar passions become intensified when the body is weak. . . Your account of your spiritual condition is not very brilliant; still, you must not lose courage. Much of your present suffering comes, I fear, from past recklessness in the matter of health.”
This is merely repeating in other words what St. Francis of Sales, three centuries before Archbishop Porter, wrote to a nun of his time: “Preserve your physical strength to serve God within spiritual exercises, which we are often obliged to give up when we have indiscreetly overworked ourselves.”

What has been said should disabuse some minds of the idea that disregard of bodily well-being is a condition, if not an essential, of holiness; or the other no less dangerous prejudice that adequate reasonable care of the body, if carried out with the proper spirit and intention, does not of itself include thorough discipline of the soul.

Francis Thompson has well said in the preface to his Health and Holiness: “The laws of perfect hygiene, the culture of the ‘sound body,’ not for its own sake, but as the pliant, durable instrument of the soul, are found more and more to demand such a degree of persevering self-restraint and self-resistance as constitutes an ascesis, a mortification, no less severe than that enjoined by the most rigorous masters of the spiritual life.”

Supernaturalized as it surely will be by the purity of intention so characteristic of Sisters, such mortification will be no less a spiritual asset than a physical boon.

What Bishop Hedley says in his Spiritual Retreat for Religious is very much to the point: “There are certain things which are the best promoters of health and cheerfulness—viz., fresh air, exercise, and recreation.

They are duties, too, in a Religious Community. In such houses it is a very common thing to meet with nervous complaints which entirely arise from the neglect of these three powerful tonics of the human system.

I do not say that this is the case with all. But it is a remarkable fact that those members of a Community who have the most active duties are usually the most healthy in mind and body, while the others are the reverse.

These two things, fresh air and exercise, are of the utmost importance even from a spiritual point of view. They are not material, but really supernatural matters. The same is true of recreation. The three ought to be combined.”

“Who shall blame a child whose soul turns eagerly to the noise and distraction of worldliness, if his parents have failed to show him that love and peace and beauty are found only in God?” – Mary Reed Newland

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Christ Speaks to Us – Catholic Home Schooling

by Father John Hardon, S.J.

I would like to address the subject of Catholic home schooling in the tradition of the Catholic Church, and my plan is to cover three areas of a large subject.

What has the Catholic Church considered as home schooling in the Church’s history? Secondly, why is home schooling necessary? And thirdly, how should home schooling be done most effectively?

The focus I would like to take is of home schooling as authentically Catholic. I would like to begin first with a general definition of Catholic home schooling, and then distinguish various kinds of home schooling in the Church’s history.

Catholic home schooling is the planned and organized teaching and training of children at home, for their peaceful and effective life in this world, and for their eternal salvation in the world to come.

I distinguish teaching from training, for I say that teaching addresses itself mainly to the mind, and training to the will; indeed, the training of the mind is in order to motivate the will.

We get our principles for authentic Catholic home schooling from Christ’s closing directive to His apostles: “To teach all nations” — that’s the mind — “to observe all that I have commanded you” — that’s with the will. Home schooling, therefore, addresses itself to the mind in order that the will might be motivated to do God’s will. It is the teaching and training of children at home that distinguishes it from teaching and training in formal school situations.

Having said that, we must immediately distinguish among the different forms that Catholic home schooling has taken over the centuries, depending on the conditions of the Church at any given time in her history.

The conditions are as follows: first in missionary times before the Church had been established in any particular country or locality; second, home schooling once the Church had been firmly established third, home schooling where the Church is strongly opposed; and finally, where the Church has been disestablished, especially by civil authority.

I will identify the Church’s condition in our country: the Church under opposition and not yet formally disestablished.

Home schooling in the United States is the necessary concomitant of a culture in which the Church is being opposed on every level of her existence and, as a consequence, given the widespread secularization in our country, home schooling is not only valuable or useful but it is absolutely necessary for the survival of the Catholic church in our country.

Home schooling, in our country, is that form of teaching and training of children at home in order to preserve the Catholic faith in the family, and to preserve the Catholic faith in our country.

Our second reflection is why. There are four principal reasons why Catholic home schooling is necessary. . . . Home schooling has been necessary in the Catholic Church since her foundation.

The necessity, therefore, is not the necessity that is the result of an emergency. No, Catholic home schooling is necessary — period. And one reason is that it was so widely neglected before. So many parents practically abdicated their own obligation to teach their own children, and then found out, sadly, their children were not being given a Catholic education.

How do we know that home schooling is necessary? First, we know it from divine revelation. The early Church is normative, not only on what we should believe as Catholics but on how we ought to learn our faith . . . and live it.

There were not established Catholic schools in the Roman Empire back in the first 300 years of the Church’s history. Except for parents becoming, believing, and being heroic Catholics in the early Church, nothing would have happened. The Church would have died out before the end of the first century.

CHURCH’S TEACHING AND HISTORY

There is no single aspect of religious instruction that, over the centuries, the Church has not more frequently, or more insistently, taught the faithful, than of the parents on how to provide for the religious, and, therefore, also human, education and upbringing of their offspring.

So true is this that it is the second and co-equal purpose for Christ instituting the Sacrament of Matrimony, for the procreation and the education of children. By whom? By the parents! That is why Christ instituted the Sacrament of Matrimony. So how do we know that home schooling is necessary? Because the Church has always taught it.

Where has the Church survived? Only and wherever — and this is historically provable — home schooling over the centuries by the Catholic parents has been taken so seriously that they considered it their most sacred duty, after having brought the children into the world physically, to parent them spiritually.

The necessity for home schooling is not only a natural necessity, it is a supernatural necessity. Have parents over the centuries, in all nations, from the dawn of human history, in every culture, had the obligation to teach and train their children?

Yes, the same ones who brought the children physically into the world have a natural obligation, binding in the natural law, to provide for the mental, moral, and social upbringing of their offspring. Yet since God became man, the necessity, and therefore the corresponding obligation, becomes supernatural.

What do we mean when we say that Catholic home schooling is a supernatural necessity? We mean that in God’s mysterious but infallible providence, He channels His grace from human beings who already possess that grace. It is a platitude to say that we cannot give what we do not have. Nobody would ever learn the alphabet. We would not know how to read or write, or even know how to eat.

We have to be taught everything we know. The real necessity for Catholic home schooling is not because we naturally need someone else to bring us into the world, nor to teach us what we need to know and do as human beings. Since the coming of Christ we are no longer mere human beings.

BECOMING CHANNELS OF GRACE

At baptism, we receive the life which is the very life of God shared by Him with His creatures. And just as no one give himself natural life, so no one receives or nurtures or develops or grows in that supernatural life that we receive at baptism.

The main reason for home schooling is that only those who have God’s grace are used by Him as channels of grace to others.

Over the centuries, our principal Jesuit apostolate has been teaching. And we are told, in the most uncompromising language, “You will be able to teach others, you will share with them, only what you are yourselves.”

No one else can teach the faith…except the person who has it. But possessing divine grace, beginning with the virtue of faith, is not only a condition, it is also the measure for the communication of grace. Weak-believing parents will be weak conduits of the grace of faith to their children. Strong-believing parents will be strong conduits of the grace of faith. This is not good psychology and it is not good example. This is Divine Revelation.

In the mysterious providence of God, this is the law: Only those who possess the supernatural life and the measure of the possession of faith, hope and charity will God use as the channels of His grace to their children.

LIVE OUR HOLY FAlTH

How are parents to provide for the Catholic home schooling for their children? First, the principal and most fundamental way is by living strong Catholic lives. All the academic verbiage and planned pedagogy are useless. Only persons who have God’s grace will He use as the channels of His grace to others, and no one, but no one, cheats here.

What then is the first way to be an effective home schooling parent while living a good Catholic life?

For Catholic parents to live good Catholic lives in our day requires heroic virtue. Only heroic parents will survive the massive, demonic secularization of materially super- developed countries like America.

And consequently, far from being surprised, parents should expect that home schooling will not be easy. Any home schooling in the U.S. which is easy today is not authentic Catholic home schooling. If it is easy, there is something wrong.

Today, Catholic parents must not only endure the cross, resign themselves to living the cross, but they are to choose the cross. In case no one has told you, when you chose home schooling, you chose a cross-ridden form of education.

This is the age of martyrs . . . and a martyr is one who suffers for the profession of his faith. There is red martyrdom and white martyrdom. There is bloody martyrdom and unbloody martyrdom.

You have to live a heroic Catholic life in America today. God will use you and provide you with the knowledge and the wisdom, providing you are living the authentically heroic Catholic life.

KNOW AND IMPART THE FAITH

Secondly, if you want to teach and train your children, you must know your faith. You must grasp and understand the faith. Read the 14th chapter of St. Matthew where Our Lord tells the parable of the sower sowing seeds.

Seeds fell on four kinds of ground. The first three kinds were unfruitful. As Jesus said, birds came along and picked up the seed, and nothing grew. The disciples asked Jesus for the meaning. The Lord explained that the seeds falling on the wayside are those persons who have received the Word of God into their hearts and fail to understand it, and therefore the evil one comes along and steals it from their hearts.

That is why America now has millions of ex-Catholics. They have never understood their faith.

I have strong encouragement from the Holy See to train parents. You are all welcome to learn your faith so that you grasp and understand your faith. Then God will use you to teach your children as a channel of faith. Teach, not only by rote memory, but to grasp the faith.

Many Catholics, before they finish college, discard their faith as a remnant of childhood. They don’t understand. I myself had 16 years of Jesuit education, and 15 more years before I started teaching. There are oceanic depths to our faith, and you must learn as much as you can, so that God will use you as an effective channel of grace so you can communicate your faith to your offspring.

TRUE SCHOOLING and THE SACRAMENTAL LIFE

Next, Catholic home schooling must be schooling. There must be organization, administration, a pattern, a schedule, and a program. Somebody has to be in charge. Mother and father must cooperate in the home schooling.

Home schooling must be sacramental. In other words, the Church that Christ founded is the Church of the Seven Sacraments, especially the Sacraments of Eucharist and Confession.

You, yourselves, should receive the sacraments of Holy Communion and Confession. Train your children to live a sacramental life.

Finally, to be authentically Catholic, home schooling must be prayerful. The single most fundamental thing you can teach your children, bar none, is to know the necessity and method of prayer.

You must pray yourselves. Without prayer, all the schooling in the world will not produce the effect which God wants home schooling to give, because home schooling is a communication of divine grace, from Christ to the parents to the children. And the principle way parents communicate from Christ to their children, the grace upon which those children will be saved, is prayer.

“Never be ashamed of your home or family because it is humble. People who look down on those whose home is humble and who lack social prominence are not worthy of the friendship of decent families. The most important things in life are character, honest work, humility, loyalty, friendliness, and love.” -Fr. Lovasik, Catholic Family Handbook http://amzn.to/2y7iaFI (afflink)

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Home Education and the Survival of the Catholic Family

Fr. John Hardon, S.J.

There are some topics that are meant to startle the audience to attention. Like clever ads in the newspapers or magazines you say something bizarre to catch the readers’ notice; but the title of the ad does not really mean what the words are saying. This is not the case here. The full title of my talk to you would read, “Home Education is Necessary for the Survival of the Catholic Family.”

My plan for this conference is to cover the three most important questions we can ask:
1. What is home education?
2. Why is home education necessary for the survival of the Catholic family?
3. How is home education to be provided not only for the survival but for the
progress of the Catholic family as we enter the twenty-first century?

WHAT IS HOME EDUCATION?

Home education is the development by the parents of the whole personality of a child from infancy to adulthood. It is education because it draws out, from the Latin word educere, the natural and supernatural potentialities of a person.

Some of these potentialities are latent in a child from conception and birth; others are present from the time of Baptism. The parents’ primary duty is to cooperate with God as Author of nature and grace to draw out the latent powers in the child whom they brought into the world.

It is home education twice over. It is first of all home education because it is done by the parents, without whom there would be no home. It is secondly done at home, within the ambit of what we commonly identify as our domicile.

Notice, I prefer to speak of home education rather than home schooling. This is to emphasize the domestic personal character of the education, rather than its institutional structure.

When I speak of home education by both parents, I mean both parents and not only by the mother. It may be that time-wise: the mother devotes more time to the training of her children than the father. No matter.

What is important is that both mother and father are involved; there is a contribution to the children’s up-bringing that, having a miracle, only the father can provide. His share in the education of the children is imperative.

Moreover, home education does not absolutely exclude all other forms or sources of teaching the children. But in every case, and I mean every case, the home is the primary source. All other, or any other educational agents or agencies are•secondary to the home,
•auxiliary to the home
•dependent on the home
•subordinate to the home
•chosen by the parents and meant to be helpful, never competitive with the
home.

What is the span of home education? It is the whole personal and social life of the child; it is the bodily and spiritual well-being of the child; it is the physical, emotional, mental and volitional life of the child.

WHY HOME EDUCATION?

In stating my thesis, I might have said many things, like
•Home education is helpful for the family, or
•Home education is a valuable asset for family life, or
•Home education is a powerful aid for the Catholic family, or
•Home education is all but necessary for the Catholic family.

Each of these titles would have been true, but inadequate. Instead, I chose to speak on “Home Education is Necessary for the Survival of the Catholic Family.” Why this title? Because it is literally true.

Let me be clear. I am not merely saying that home education is necessary in the modern world. This is not a conditional necessity. It is not just because the modern world has become so widely and deeply secularized that home education has become a necessity.

No! I make bold to say that one of the main factors contributing to the secularization of once strongly Christian cultures has been the neglect of:
• sound
• orthodox
• authentic
• courageous
• magisterial
• historic

Catholic teaching in faith and morals by parents in the home, from the dawn of the infancy of their children.

The issue we are addressing is perennial. Either Catholic parents provide their offspring with the education the children need, or the inevitable happens, as it has happened.

Our main focus here is on “Why?” Why are parents so necessary for the proper education of their children, and the corresponding survival of the Catholic family. The reason is really a cluster of reasons, all derived from what we know about human nature and divine grace.

1. We Are What We Have Received. The first reason is the mysterious law of interdependence. We depend on others for whatever we possess.

• This applies first of all to our physical nature. Only human beings can
reproduce other human beings.
• This reproduction is not only bodily but also mental or volitional. What do
we know that someone else has not taught us; and what do we love
except what others have helped us to choose and appreciate.

Under God, the primary, most important person in our lives, to enlighten and inspire us are our parents. Parents, in turn, are to recognize that the children they brought into this world are not meant for this world. The children’s destiny is eternal. It is the parents, more than anyone in the world, who are to prepare their children in time, indeed for eternity.

2. Parents Are Primary Sources of Grace. No one reaches heaven without divine grace. No one receives this grace, except through another human being who is the channel of this grace. Parents are the primary channel of this grace for their children.

We are here saying much more than meets the ear. We are saying that, in God’s ordinary providence, the parents are the main
• instruments of supernatural light for their children’s minds,
• channels of spiritual strength for the children’s wills,
• In a word, the parents are the principal conduit by which God communicates the graces that children need to reach heaven and save their souls.

This primacy as channels of grace for their children comes from the sacrament of matrimony which Catholic parents have received.

Matrimony assures them of a lifetime of God’s grace to love each other in faithful charity and chastity until death. Matrimony also assures them of a lifetime of God’s grace for the upbringing of their children in loving obedience to God, as a pre-condition for reaching a heavenly destiny.

The purpose of marriage is to raise families for heaven, nothing less; and there can be nothing more.

One of the great blessings of modern home education is that it is waking up so many parents to their God-given responsibility.

In the providence of God, He allows no evil or suffering without intending to draw a greater good, precisely as occasioned by the evil or pain.

The widespread secularization of organized education in so many parts of the Western world has served as lightening and thunder to arouse complacent parents from their complacency. They are beginning to ask themselves, “What is our duty, as parents?” What should we do to join forces with other dedicated fathers and mothers who are making such great sacrifices for the home education of their children?

3. How to Provide Home Education? As we enter the third part of our conference, I wish to make one thing clear. What I am sharing with you is no mere human pedagogy. It is not the science of psychology or of educational methodology.
It is nothing less than a mystery of faith. If I were to offer one passage from the New Testament that summarizes the whole doctrine it occurs in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, where the Apostle tells us, “For those who love God, everything works together unto good” (Romans 8:28).

What is St. Paul saying? He is telling us that, if we are united with God in our love, He will use us to accomplish His divine plans. Or, put in other words, depending on our union with God’s will by our practice of virtue, He will use us as channels of His graces.

Let me be clear. This is not merely giving others a good example, which we should. It is not merely that no one gives what he does not have, which is obvious. It is much deeper. It means that in the measure of our wills being conformed with the will of God–and the measure that we love God–He will infallibly use us to achieve the designs that He wants to achieve, especially in the lives of others.

What does this mean for home education? Everything! In the degree that parents love God, God will use them to teach and train their children…
• If the parents have a strong faith, God will use them to teach and train their children.
• If the parents have a strong faith, God will use them to strengthen the faith of their
children.
• If the parents are humble, they will effectively teach humility to their children.
• If parents are truthful and hopeful and patient and chaste and charitable and prayerful God will use them as His chosen means of teaching and training their offspring in trust and hope and patience and chastity and prayerfulness.

PRAYER
“Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Holy Family, obtain from your divine Son the graces which home teaching Catholic parents so desperately need in our day, the grace to see their great privilege as channels of grace for the children, and the grace to serve as channels of grace, even at the cost of living martyr’s lives in our day. Amen.”

Punctuality exacts self-discipline and detachment; it often asks us to interrupt some interesting, pleasant work in order to give ourselves to another kind, perhaps less attractive or less important.
However, it would be a great mistake to esteem our duties and to dedicate ourselves to them according to the attraction we have for them or according to their more or less apparent importance.
All is important and beautiful when it is the expression of the will of God, and the soul who wishes to live in this hole he will every minute of the day, will never omit the slightest act prescribed by its rule of life. -Divine Intimacy

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True Education, Part Two

Stuart, Janet Erskine, The Education of Catholic Girls, 1912

The following are points very necessary in Catholic education (Part Two)…

Part One is here.

5.Proper views of Jesus Christ and His mother. For Catholic children this relationship is not a thing far off, but the faith which teaches them of God Incarnate bids them also understand that He is their own “God who gives joy to their youth”—and that His mother is also theirs.

There are many incomprehensible things in which children are taught to affirm their belief, and the acts of faith in which they recite these truths are far beyond their understanding.

But they can and do understand if we take pains to teach them that they are loved by Our Lord each one alone, intimately and personally, and asked to love in return.

“Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not,” is not for them a distant echo of what was heard long ago in the Holy Land, it is no story, but a living reality of today.

They are themselves the children who are invited to come to Him, better off indeed than those first called, since they are not now rebuked or kept off by the Apostles but brought to the front and given the first places, invited by order of His Vicar from their earliest years to receive the Bread of Heaven, and giving delight to His representatives on earth by accepting the invitation.

It is the reality as contrasted with the story that is the prerogative of the Catholic child. Jesus and Mary are real, and are its own closest kin, all but visible, at moments intensely felt as present.

They are there in joy and in trouble, when everyone else fails in understanding or looks displeased there is this refuge, there is this love which always forgives, and sets things right, and to whom nothing is unimportant or without interest.

Companionship in loneliness, comfort in trouble, relief in distress, endurance in pain are all to be found in them.

With Jesus and Mary what is there in the whole world of which a Catholic child should be afraid. And this glorious strength of theirs made perfect in child-martyrs in many ages will make them again child-martyrs now if need be, or confessors of the holy faith as they are not seldom called upon, even now, to show themselves.

There is a strange indomitable courage in children which has its deep springs in these Divine things; the strength which they find in Holy Communion and in their love for Jesus and Mary is enough to overcome in them all weakness and fear.

6.Thoughts of the faith and practice of Christian life.

And here it is necessary to guard against what is childish, visionary, and exuberant, against things that only feed the fancy or excite the imagination, against practices which are adapted to other races than ours, but with us are liable to become unreal and irreverent.

We must guard against too vivid sense impressions and especially against attaching too much importance to them, against grotesque and puerile forms of piety, which drag down the beautiful devotions to the saint.

In northern countries a greater sobriety of devotion is required if it is to have any permanent influence on life.

But again, on the other hand, the more restrained devotion must not lose its spontaneity; so long as it is the true expression of faith it can hardly be too simple, it can never be too intimate a part of common life.

Noble friendships with the saints in glory are one of the most effectual means of learning heavenly-mindedness, and friendships formed in childhood will last through a lifetime.

To find a character like one’s own which has fought the same fight and been crowned, is an encouragement which obtains great victories, and to enter into the thoughts of the saints is to qualify oneself here below for intercourse with the citizens of heaven.

To be well grounded in the elements of faith, and to have been so taught that the practice of religion has become the atmosphere of a happy life, to have the habit of sanctifying daily duties, joys, and trials by the thought of God, and a firm resolve that nothing shall be allowed to draw the soul away from Him, such is, broadly speaking, the aim we may set before ourselves for the end of the years of childhood, after which must follow the more difficult years of the training of youth.

The time has gone by when the faith of childhood might be carried through life and be assailed by no questionings from without.

A faith that is not armed and ready for conflict stands a poor chance of passing victoriously through its trials, it cannot hope to escape from being tried.

“We have labored successfully,” wrote a leading Jewish Freemason in Rome addressing his Brotherhood, “in the great cities and among the young men; it remains for us to carry out the work in the country districts and amongst the women.”

Words could not be plainer to show what awaits the faith of children when they come out into the world.

For faith to hold on its course against all that tends to carry it away, it is needful that it should not be found unprepared.

The minds of the young cannot expect to be carried along by a Catholic public opinion, there will be few to help them, and they must learn to stand by themselves, to answer for themselves, to be challenged and not afraid to speak out for their faith, to be able to give “first aid” to unsettled minds and not allow their own to be unsettled by what they hear.

They must learn that, as Father Dalgairns points out, their position in the world is far more akin to that of Christians in the first centuries of the Church than to the life that was lived in the middle ages when the Church visibly ruled over public opinion.

Now, as in the earliest ages, the faithful stand in small assemblies or as individuals amid cold or hostile surroundings, and individual faith and sanctity are the chief means of extending the kingdom of God on earth.

But this apostleship needs preparation and training. The early teaching requires to be seasoned and hardened to withstand the influences which tend to dissolve faith and piety; by this seasoning faith must be enlightened, and piety become serene and grave, “sedate,” as St. Francis of Sales would say with beautiful commentary.

In the last years of school or school-room life the mind has to be gradually inured to the harder life, to the duty of defending as well as adorning the faith, and to gain at least some idea of the enemies against which defense must be made.

It is something even to know what is in the air and what may be expected that the first surprise may not disturb the balance of the mind.

To know that in the Church there have been sorrows and scandals, without the promises of Christ having failed, and even that it had to be so, fulfilling His word, “it must needs be that scandals come” (St. Matthew XVIII. 7), that they are therefore rather a confirmation than a stumbling-block to our faith, this is a necessary safeguard.

To have some unpretentious knowledge of what is said and thought concerning Holy Scripture, to know at least something about Modernism and other phases of current opinion is necessary, without making a study of their subtleties, for the most insecure attitude of mind for girls is to think they know, in these difficult questions, and the best safeguard both of their faith and good sense is intellectual modesty.

Without making acquaintance in detail with the phenomena of spiritualism and kindred arts or sciences, it is needful to know in a plain and general way why they are forbidden by the Church, and also to know how those who have lost their balance and peace of mind in these pursuits would willingly draw back, but find it next to impossible to free themselves from the servitude in which they are entangled.

It is hard for some minds to resist the restless temptation to feel, to see, to test and handle all that life can offer of strange and mysterious experiences, and next to the curb of duty comes the safeguard of greatly valuing freedom of mind.

Curiosity concerning evil or dangerous knowledge is more impetuous when a sudden emancipation of mind sweeps the old landmarks and restraints out of sight, and nothing has been foreseen which can serve as a guide.

Then is the time when weak places in education show themselves, when the least insincerity in the presentment of truth brings its own punishment, and a faith not pillared and grounded in all honesty is in danger of failing.

The best security is to have nothing to unlearn, to know that what one knows is a very small part of what can be known, but that as far as it goes it is true and genuine, and cannot be outgrown, that it will stand both the wear of time and the test of growing power of thought, and that those who have taught these beliefs will never have to retract or be ashamed of them, or own that they were passed off, though inadequate, upon the minds of children.

To know that in the Church there have been sorrows and scandals, without the promises of Christ having failed, and even that it had to be so, fulfilling His word, “it must needs be that scandals come” (St. Matthew XVIII. 7), that they are therefore rather a confirmation than a stumbling-block to our faith. -Janet Erskine, 1912

What is the typology of the ascension for us? What is the significance of it and the events leading up to it?

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