My wife and I don't have children yet. Today, I was thinking about an interesting experience I had with a friend who completed RCIA with me. I had made a comment about how important I felt it was for my children to openly search through religion and theology to find out what they believed to be true. Part of the baggage of my old Protestant denomination was that you were never taught to really seek God, especially not through a search of religion. Even with scripture, you were only taught to search the scriptures in as much as you agreed with everyone else. You were to "personally interpret" the Bible just like the "Church interpreted it" and anything else was being dishonest or dumb. Of course this goes against my feelings on just about everything. so thus I made the comment that I would raise my children to seek and learn while at the same time holding that the Catholic position is the right one. My friend took some offense to that because that's how he was raised. His father came from an Islamic background and his mother from a Catholic background. He said his parents always left it open and thanks to them it took him 30 years to find the Catholic Church! He thought it would be much better to simply teach them the truth and say "there it is". Obviously, his experiences left him with a totally different feeling from mine. Today, I've come to a different conclusion. Jesus said those who sought would find. I believe anyone with a true desire to find Christ will eventually find him in whatever way God has it planned. I don't want to say that it "doesn't matter how you raise your children" but I do want to say that we should put more faith in God and less in our own teaching and let the Holy Spirit do the leading. Honest souls will follow.
4 comments:
Well, I can certainly appreciate your intent, knowing how at least in the CoC we were basically not encouraged to question things at all.
I think the only problematic issue I have with what you said (and it may just be a semantics issue, I'm sure you didn't mean it this way) is that saying "study to find out what you believe is true" implies that truth is itself relativistic, that it depends upon "what you believe".
I'm in the same boat as you as far as not having kids, so this is just my own speculation, but I think the best approach would be to present what we believe to be true as the truth, but at the same time encourage questioning, encourage looking into history etc (at the appropriate ages), and acknowledge that ultimately the choice *is* theirs to make at the appropriate age. This is the problem I ran into in the CoC...even as an adult, I did not feel my parents respected my right to choose my faith.
Anyway, just my thoughts!
Oh! I forgot one thing I wante to say about your last paragraph...
I hate to kind of pit "our work" against "God's work." Of course it's the Holy Spirit that speaks to our hearts, but He often does so through people, and especially through family. The Church tells parents that it is their primary duty to teach the children the faith, that's why this is something that is so important when getting married in the Church, when baptizing children, etc. So I don't know that it's putting one above the other rather than acknowledging how one works through the other, if that makes sense. :-)
Thanks for the comments. Actually as I was rereading my post again, I don't feel like the end was very solid. That's probably because my feelings on the issue are so torn, knowing that I don't want my children brainwashed, but I do want them to be Catholic! I agree with much of what you say, and I would probably summarize my position as follows: You should adamantly teach your children to be Catholic without using force and allowing them to explore religion in their own way, respecting their freedom of choice while emphasizing the beauty of the Church.
A great summary, well said. :-)
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