Byzantine Catholic Family Matters

Evangelizing Ourselves and Our Children I

Faith as if it Doesn't Matter

When I was a child growing up in the sixties I heard a news story on the radio during Holy Week telling how the officially atheistic regime of the Soviet Union would schedule popular concerts and films on Good Friday in order to distract the young from attending church services. The tone of the story, as I recall was "those cunning, manipulative communists."

Fast forward to 2004: Boston Red Sox team officials requested dispensation from the Good Friday fast for baseball fans attending Opening Day festivities in Fenway Park. Roman Catholic Archbishop Sean O'Malley denied the request. An unidentified priest from Boston offered to a reporter his hope that scheduling Opening Day for Good Friday was an oversight.

Maybe that's the problem: There was no conspiracy in Boston to draw people away from churches on Good Friday; rather, faith and active participation in the Church has become marginalized and has a hard time competing with other distractions. People have become removed and detached from the liturgical year. This becomes most apparent during the Great Fast and Holy Week. Those who choose to cheer on their Red Sox and attend (or watch on TV) the festivities of Opening Day at the ball park replete with hot dogs and beer are at once failing to seize the opportunity to commemorate and relive the Passion of Christ.

And the message to our children is very clear: Church is a nice place to go and a good thing as long as it is convenient and doesn't interfere with the truly important things in life. To borrow from sports, it might be helpful to consider the win-loss records our families have in the various "contests" God and Church have with sporting events, participation in sports, sleeping in, going to the beach, working, doing yard work, going to the movies, going out with friends, homework. . . . The list is virtually endless. When we evaluate these win-loss records, we can begin to get some sense of the importance of God in our lives and of the likelihood that God and Church will be a central part of the lives of our children when they become adults.

When God and His Church are on the losing end of too many of these contests both we and our children are also on the losing end of the equation. God and His Church can and should be the central, organizing force of our lives. However, the more we see our churches as places to get married in, to bring our children for the sacraments of initiation, and to be buried from - if that - the less surprised we should be when our children grow up and drift away from the Church.

If we love God and His Church - and specifically our Eastern Catholic Church - and want our children to ultimately embrace it and have God and Church as the central, organizing force in their lives, we have serious work to do.
The good news is that we don't need to re-invent the wheel. In this series we will look at ways that parishes can become more family centered, evangelizing within as well as to the larger community. Our Tradition has a treasury of rituals and wisdom that can lead us, our children, and anyone who we invite into our midst ever closer to our Father and to the promise of Resurrection.

(If you would like to share something that is done in your parish that is an example of a family centered ministry that is helping to pass on the faith to our children or to the unchurched, please write drtom@byzcathfamilymatters.com)