Staying Or Going: Part 3

Also in regard to the staying or going question, another reader writes:

Initially, we aren’t told in this post just what makes the correspondent’s current parish “less than orthodox”. Is it because every mass isn’t in Latin (and we all know people who feel this way); or are there serious doctrinal and dogmatic inaccuracies and falacies being promulgated? Are we dealing with style or substance here? We can’t tell from the post as written.

Actually, there was more in the post than I printed. The lady in question included a number of examples, some of which I see she has also mentioned in the comments box of the original post.

I didn’t reproduce these comments when writing my entry because of space reasons and because it is my policy not to include data that could identify individuals or make them feel like they might be identifiable.

However, even if she had not included these examples in what she wrote, it would not have affected my answer. I learned a good while ago that you answer questions as they are posed to you, and if someone shows up and says “My parish has a problem with dissenters and I don’t feel that I can put my kids in its religious ed programs, should I stay at this parish or not?” then I’ll say the same thing I did say: If I concluded that I couldn’t put my kids in a parish’s religious ed programs then I would be disinclined to stay at the parish.

I would not be inclined to poke around to find out just how bad the problems at the parish may be. You have to trust people in what they are asking you. If you tried to second guess everything they tell you then getting a simple question answered would become a protracted discussion, and that would result in less rather than more service being performed.

As a parent of very young twin daughters I’ve been thinking about how to deal generally with the issue of people outside the home imparting opinions, beliefs, perspectives, etc. that are at odds with those we’ll be imparting. My instinct is that it’s better to equip children to deal with these issues and prepare them to hold to and defend what we’re teaching them, rather than insulating them and have an alternative view really rock them when they’re older but not prepared to respond.

I’m very sympathetic to the idea that children need to be exposed to challenges as part of the growing up process. The job of parents is not to shelter kids from every potential danger but to teach them how to deal with dangers (including dangers to their faith) so that they will know how to deal with them once they are adults. This means progressively allowing the child to encounter riskier situations as he grows in the ability to handle them, including awareness of other people’s religious opinions.

That being said, it does not do children a service to plant them in a parish from their early years where they are going to be exposed to rank dissent. Kids in such a situation need to be told that what they are hearing from their priests and CCD teachers is wrong, but this itself is a disservice since it schools them from an early age in ignoring and distrusting Church authorities. It is better to place them in an environment where the parish is supportive of their faith and let them encounter the world of Catholic dissent late in their development, after they have already assimilated an orthodox Catholic identity.

In fact, to the extent possible, dissident Catholics are the final religious group that children should be made aware of. It is less of a threat to a child’s faith to learn that there are people in a far off corner of the world who don’t believe in Jesus than that there are Catholics right in the leadership of their own parish who think it’s okay not to listen to the pope. The former is a reality that is unconnected with the child’s everday experience, but the latter is a much more confusing and direct challenge to their own assimilation of the faith.

And finally, we have to remember that it’s not as if this family is attending a “church” run out of the local gym ala some of the Calvary Chapel folks. They are members of a congregation under a duly appointed and aNNointed priest. There has to be some respect for that.

Yes, precisely, which is why one would want to foster children’s respect for the priesthood by not putting them in a parish where the parents have to constantly contradict what the priest says in front of the children.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live." View all posts by Jimmy Akin