Sports activities vs Church

[kage_ar]

I actually would have no problem with my children missing out on CCD. I am a bit leary of what they might teach. I am a sponsor to my sister at RCIA and they told us non-catholics could recieve the sacrament of Reconcilliation.

That is because non-Catholics CAN recieve the sacrament of reconcilliation.

When baptized people come into the Church, they go to Confession before FHC/Confirmation, some do this several months before and more than once prior to Easter Vigil

 

[HouseArrest]

Missing CCE classes is not the same as “neglecting the child’s spiritual life and growth”.

Maybe you did not read the very next sentence, which was, “That might look different depending on what the sport schedule looks like.” Please reread. I do not think that CCD - religious education.

Ideally we would not need CCD classes, would we? Our kids would all be taught at home and that would spill into seeing each other at adoration, or confession, or at attendance listening to a speaker, followed by a light supper in the social hall where we would all discuss with each other the evenings topics.

 

[jmcrae]

Don’t worry, I don’t. I teach them but don’t enroll the kids. That means my kids come with me to class a few times a year when my husband travels. Otherwise, they wouldn’t make it to Mass. So they get “free” CCE or the CCE program gets “free” teacher’s aides on those weeks, depending on how you want to look at it.

That actually works, for me. Guests are always welcome.

But in Confirmation year, I will have no choice. That year, my kids will miss 3 or 4 classes (out of 28) and I am sure they will be fine. I have got to say, that if your Finance council can’t deal with a class for teens that has an absentee rate of less than 15%, you might need some better accounting types on the council.

So far this year, things are actually pretty good - we’re running 18.4% absenteeism from mid-September (we’ve had three classes, so far), and a surprising number of the kids have perfect attendance, up to now.

We’ll see how it goes over the course of the year, though. (The fact that the program will be shut down if we have too much absenteeism this year is likely a factor in the dramatic improvement in attendance this year over last year.)

 

[Cat]

A little off-topic, and I ask this question with fear and trembling. Please keep in mind that my children were raised Protestant, and I’m not at all sure how religious ed is done at Catholic parishes. I get the feeling that it varies from parish to parish, because I know that it is held on different evenings and times. Also, throughout history, hasn’t the age of confirmation been different? So it strikes me that this isn’t the kind of thing that is set in stone, like Mass attendance.

Is it possible that perhaps the U.S. Catholic churches need to re-examine the way they do religious education classes for children? (Please don’t hit me! Fear and trembling!)

In our parish, kids who are enrolled in the parish school (K-8th grade) get their religious ed at school. So they don’t have to miss religious ed to be involved in sports, arts, etc.

The children and teens who are not in the parish school have to attend after school or in the evening.

A lot of kids are homeschooled–could not these children receive their religious education at home from parents?

I don’t know if it would be helpful for you to know that our parish has many many kids that are make their First Holy Communion and get confirmed every year. I’m guessing well over a hundred children, possibly more.

So–should the method be examined, and perhaps updated? Or is that a no-no?

 

[jmcrae]

A little off-topic, and I ask this question with fear and trembling. Please keep in mind that my children were raised Protestant, and I’m not at all sure how religious ed is done at Catholic parishes. I get the feeling that it varies from parish to parish, because I know that it is held on different evenings and times. Also, throughout history, hasn’t the age of confirmation been different? So it strikes me that this isn’t the kind of thing that is set in stone, like Mass attendance.

It isn’t.

There are three kinds of Catholic education. There are Religion classes, Youth Groups and Sacramental Preparation classes.

Religion classes can and do take place in the Catholic schools, but those classes don’t substitute for Sacramental Preparation or for Youth Group. Religion classes are also held separately for kids who don’t attend Catholic schools.

Youth Groups are optional, and they take place at the time when the most kids are most likely to come. This varies from place to place. It’s in Youth Group that the kids will attend concerts, go to Adoration, put on performances, and get involved in long term service projects.

Sacramental Preparation programs vary in length from just a few weeks to a whole school year, and take place again at the time when the largest number of kids are most likely to come, based on what the parents tell us. Same with the Religion classes - these take place at the time when the largest number of families say that they are likely to be available.

A lot of kids are homeschooled–could not these children receive their religious education at home from parents?

For everything except Sacramental Preparation (the Sacraments by nature are public acts, and have to be done in the Church with a priest) they can, and probably should.

I don’t know if it would be helpful for you to know that our parish has many many kids that are make their First Holy Communion and get confirmed every year. I’m guessing well over a hundred children, possibly more.

Sacramental Preparation is typically much better attended than Youth Group or Religion Class, mostly because it’s a relatively short-term commitment, and there is a tangible goal to be achieved at the end of it.

 

[Tosk]

.A lot of kids are homeschooled–could not these children receive their religious education at home from parents?

I think the ideal situation is if the child receives their religious education at home. There is a push in our parish to have children not enrolled in Catholic school attend religion classes but I don’t see the point. I am just as capable as following a textbook as the person they have teaching the class and my children don’t need another activity filling up their schedule. Plus our parish will basically take anyone with a pulse so they have had some rather strange characters in charge of religious education in the past.

 

[Cat]

I hope I can explain this clearly.

I very much agree with training children at home, especially when it comes to religious faith. If a curriculum was available that included tests or quizzes, I think that many parents would do a great job.

I have a little bit of a hard time with just letting parents go to it without any standardized material, as we all know that many Catholics (and Protestants, too!) know very little about their Church and their faith.

But I do think that if parents were offered something written or on computer or video, most could handle it well and the result might be catechesis of entire families, which would be a good thing.

HOWEVER–here’s the part I hope I explain well–I think there is a good reason for placing kids in a class of their peers. The class provides the child/teen with an “accountability group” that will help him to stick with the Church for years to come.

One of the main reasons why people drift away from the Church as they get older (Protestant and Catholic) is that they don’t have any reason to stay other than God. As humans, we crave human companionship and friends–that’s one reason Jesus gave us “the Church” instead of telling us to journey through life by ourselves with the help of the Holy Spirit. If a person has no friends at their church, they quit going.

When there is a group of friends who grow up together, are confirmed together, graduate together, often they remain friends for many years. And they keep going to church together because they don’t want to ditch each other. Along with this, they avoid certain heinous sins because they feel accountable to each other. They don’t want to disappoint their childhood buds.

This happened to my kids at the skating rink. The children who were in their Learn To Skate classes in the toddler years became their good friends through the long years of practicing, testing, and competing. Those friends were there also during injuries, failing tests, and placing last at competitions–the friends encouraged each other to never give up, to stick with it and keep working.

To this day, my kids are still good friends with some of these childhood skating friends.

So I think that even if kids are trained at home, there is great value in a class of peers. It sounds like the “Sacramental Preparation” that jmcrae described would possibly be this peer group, although the shortness of the time that the kids are together doesn’t make it likely that they would “bind” together and become close friends.

 

[puzzleannie]

Ideally we would not need CCD classes, would we? Our kids would all be taught at home and that would spill into seeing each other at adoration, or confession, or at attendance listening to a speaker, followed by a light supper in the social hall where we would all discuss with each other the evenings topics.

that is an ideal world

in a world where parents are already complaining about the seemingly endless demands of coaches, band directors, scout masters, schools, dance instructors, and all the other activities that take up their child’s time after school, where will they find time for homeschooling RE?

 

[gurneyhalleck1]

If there’s anyone who is going to get struck by a lightning bolt by God, it is the person making blanket judgements on people without knowing what he or she is talking about.

I know I’m not going to be judged by God for allowing my child to miss a poorly designed CCD class that is scheduled smack dab in the middle of a Saturday, (and was moved to that day on purpose to increase the inconvenience to parents, by the way. I know that because I am a teacher.)

Sorry, it is not going to happen. My daughter gets more out of home religous education and her competitive sport. God will not be judging me for this parenting decision, I can guarantee you that. My daughter never misses Mass.

I don’t know any that only occur after school. School season volleyball mostly occurs after school, but the competitive leagues have tournaments on Saturdays.

It’s amazing how you know what God is and is not going to judge you for…wow

 

[Angels_Unaware]

It’s amazing how you know what God is and is not going to judge you for…wow

I am know I am making good choices for my child. I have peace about my decisions, and have no doubt this particular choice is not one that will incur judgement. Having inner peace is a good thing.

 

[HouseArrest]

that is an ideal world

in a world where parents are already complaining about the seemingly endless demands of coaches, band directors, scout masters, schools, dance instructors, and all the other activities that take up their child’s time after school, where will they find time for homeschooling RE?

Yes, of course. Ideally again, it would come first.

 

[rotlex]

Coaches need to stop scheduling practices on Sundays and this will only happen when parents start to say no. It wasn’t that long ago that you never had practices or games on Sunday and I don’t think the quality of sports in this country was any less.

jb

Too true regarding the parents. The problem is, the parents say nothing; or if you do, your labeled some type of religious nut\holy roller etc. As bad as it sounds, most parents, at least in the area\district we are involved with, are far from regular church\mass attendees.

 

[Bluegoat]

When I was a kid growing up in the 1960s and '70s, I attended Brownies, Girl Guides, and Rangers on Thursday evenings from 6:30 - 8:00 from the age of 7 to 17. We had weekend events (camps, dances, service projects, etc.) once every two months and during the summer time, but nothing that ever conflicted with Sunday School. I also played baseball one or two years, basketball another year, and floor hockey for another couple of years, and to the best of my recollection, these were also one afternoon a week at the community centre, right after school, with occasional Friday night games, and they were only on for about three or four months a year, tops. I only played one sport at a time. I don’t remember any conflicts between games and Guides. There were certainly no conflicts with either of these and Sunday School - my mother would have pulled me out if there had been, because her priority was Church. I had perfect attendance at Sunday School nine years in a row - she made sure of that.

So, no - no one is saying that if your child is signed up for one hour of Religion every week, that she or he can’t participate in other things on other days of the week, or at a different time of the day. We are just asking you not to double-book her. If you sign her up for Religion, then please make sure she shows up to it, in the same way that you make sure she shows up for her sports and other commitments.

It’s kind of interesting - what you describe was the norm for kid’s activities it seems up until the 80’s as far as time commitment etc. That’s when all of a sudden there seems to have been a huge change to more time, and also more money. Of course there were always a few serious athletes, even among young people, but the majority were involved in what you describe.

What happened in the 80’s??

 

[Cat]

It’s kind of interesting - what you describe was the norm for kid’s activities it seems up until the 80’s as far as time commitment etc. That’s when all of a sudden there seems to have been a huge change to more time, and also more money. Of course there were always a few serious athletes, even among young people, but the majority were involved in what you describe.

What happened in the 80’s??

That’s a good question.

The first thing that came to my mind was that the 80s were the Reagan years, when the economy tanked at the beginning of the decade, but then started coming back and got bigger and bigger. People were doing well financially, and that meant that they had more money to spend on their kids.

The second thing that came to my mind was that in the 80s, many many women went to work outside the home, many in high-paying jobs, not just traditional low-paying “women’s jobs,” and this meant, again, more money to spend on the kids.

The 3rd thing that came to my mind is that many of the sports and the arts started publicizing themselves in order to recruit more participants (and have more money available).

Finally, I think that when I was growing up in the 1960s, there was a feeling among parents that certain activities were only “for the wealthy”, e.g, figure skating. This wasn’t a sport that regular people did, but only super-talented little fairy-like goddesses with Olympic talent. But in the 1980s, we stopped thinking of certain sports and art forms as only for the “rich kids,” and began taking ownership of a wide assortment of activities.

My personal approach to raising my children was to allow them to try out many different activities, classes, sports, and art forms. As they got older, they chose the one(s) that they wanted to stick with.

Both of my daughters loved figure skating and still do. My older daughter stuck with ballet throughout high school, choreographed dance at her college, worked for three years at a professional ballet company, and now is taking ballet classes again in graduate school.

My older daughter also was a theater kid from her toddler days, and this was a common thread throughout her entire childhood and teen years, and now she is a professional.

Among the activities she dropped were piano lessons, guitar lessons, Irish step dancing, and gymnastics.

My younger daughter dropped dance early in life, along with gymnastics, piano, violin, and theater. She stuck with singing, though, and took lessons through high school and college. She also was on Varsity volleyball through high school.

Both of my daughters have praised me and Daddy for allowing them to try so many activities, and for never forcing them to stick with something. We didn’t allow them to just quit without giving it a good, solid try, but we never insisted that they stick with something that they clearly were not cut out for.

 

[HouseArrest]

I have vague memories of my cousins, who are 12 - 15 years older than me, raising their kids. I was in high school and college at the time. They were signing their kids up for every sport, lesson, extracurricular, job, volunteer position in the book. The idea was to keep the kids super, super, busy so they didn’t have time to get into drugs.

Then there was a backlash against that - in the '90’s maybe. Children were complaining they didn’t have anytime to run around the backyard. Experts were telling parents they were stifling their children’s imaginations. People were exhausted. I think parents have backed off some and have replaced a lot of those scheduled lessons with family time, but it will take awhile for us as a society to get that idea of busy, busy, busy out of our systems.

 

[jmcrae]

I have vague memories of my cousins, who are 12 - 15 years older than me, raising their kids. I was in high school and college at the time. They were signing their kids up for every sport, lesson, extracurricular, job, volunteer position in the book. The idea was to keep the kids super, super, busy so they didn’t have time to get into drugs.

Yes, I know what you mean, and it seems like there is still an attitude out there that over-scheduling your kids will in some way keep them out of trouble. The only problem is, as soon as they leave home, they get into every kind of trouble there is, trying to cram an entire childhood into the first few months away from home.

There is a lot more fear of “stranger danger” today than there was when I was a kid. Not that we didn’t have weirdos and creeps around back then, but somehow, we were less afraid of them - the extent of it was that Mother told us not to get into cars unless they were being driven by a parent known to us from the neighborhood, and not to take candy from strangers. Somehow, it worked out.

 

[cthulhubryan]

This is one of the first signs that you recognize on the way to being Catholic.

You think ‘Sunday! Church!’ but also think ‘Sunday! Football! Grill Out! Time with Friends!’

Then you reach the phase of thinking “I’ll just skip Church this once, after all the Cowboys are on”

Then you think “God loves me. God wants me to go to Church but God wants me to have fun and relax with family and friends as well”

Then you think, being a good protestant, well the answer must be in the Bible. So you read the Bible. You even read the parts they never read in Church and you start to think “Hey! This sounds like the **** that Catholic guy talks about at work. That can’t be right!”

Then you start to read some of the early Christian writers and you become convinced that Yes, against all odds those folks in Rome are right. So, you go down to the local Parish and you talk to the priest and he gives you some material including a mass schedule.

You look at the Mass schedule and you think “Doh!” There it was all the time! God loves me AND God made the Western sky in the evenings Burnt Orange like the University of Texas so therefore God loves football. And His Church has services on Saturday night.

Voila! (only slightly tongue in cheek)

Bryan

 

[Bluegoat]

This is one of the first signs that you recognize on the way to being Catholic.

You think ‘Sunday! Church!’ but also think ‘Sunday! Football! Grill Out! Time with Friends!’

Then you reach the phase of thinking “I’ll just skip Church this once, after all the Cowboys are on”

Then you think “God loves me. God wants me to go to Church but God wants me to have fun and relax with family and friends as well”

Then you think, being a good protestant, well the answer must be in the Bible. So you read the Bible. You even read the parts they never read in Church and you start to think “Hey! This sounds like the **** that Catholic guy talks about at work. That can’t be right!”

Then you start to read some of the early Christian writers and you become convinced that Yes, against all odds those folks in Rome are right. So, you go down to the local Parish and you talk to the priest and he gives you some material including a mass schedule.

You look at the Mass schedule and you think “Doh!” There it was all the time! God loves me AND God made the Western sky in the evenings Burnt Orange like the University of Texas so therefore God loves football. And His Church has services on Saturday night.

Voila! (only slightly tongue in cheek)

Bryan

Of course, many Protestants actually spend all day Sunday at Church, as well as several evenings during the week.

 

[HouseArrest]

This is one of the first signs that you recognize on the way to being Catholic.

You think ‘Sunday! Church!’ but also think ‘Sunday! Football! Grill Out! Time with Friends!’

Then you reach the phase of thinking “I’ll just skip Church this once, after all the Cowboys are on”

Then you think “God loves me. God wants me to go to Church but God wants me to have fun and relax with family and friends as well”

Then you think, being a good protestant, well the answer must be in the Bible. So you read the Bible. You even read the parts they never read in Church and you start to think “Hey! This sounds like the **** that Catholic guy talks about at work. That can’t be right!”

Then you start to read some of the early Christian writers and you become convinced that Yes, against all odds those folks in Rome are right. So, you go down to the local Parish and you talk to the priest and he gives you some material including a mass schedule.

You look at the Mass schedule and you think “Doh!” There it was all the time! God loves me AND God made the Western sky in the evenings Burnt Orange like the University of Texas so therefore God loves football. And His Church has services on Saturday night.

Voila! (only slightly tongue in cheek)

Bryan

HAAAAA! That IS funny.

 

[Cat]

Yes, I know what you mean, and it seems like there is still an attitude out there that over-scheduling your kids will in some way keep them out of trouble. The only problem is, as soon as they leave home, they get into every kind of trouble there is, trying to cram an entire childhood into the first few months away from home.

There is a lot more fear of “stranger danger” today than there was when I was a kid. Not that we didn’t have weirdos and creeps around back then, but somehow, we were less afraid of them - the extent of it was that Mother told us not to get into cars unless they were being driven by a parent known to us from the neighborhood, and not to take candy from strangers. Somehow, it worked out.

I’m sure you realize that the second sentence in this post is a generalization.

My hyper-involved kids went to college, and promptly got involved with a myriad of activities in their college towns.

Within a few weeks after she arrived at Calvin College, my older daughter had several theater jobs in the community lined up. Plus she did tons of theater stuff ON campus. And she had a boyfriend and an apartment. And she coached skating, and even continued to test and compete for a year.

My younger daughter attended (she’s in her final year) at St. Louis University, and majored in Physical Therapy. When she went to sign up for classes, the advisor gave her a puny schedule with only 12 hours of classes.

My daughter shook her head and said, “This it it? I’ll be bored to death!”

The advisor told her that physical therapy is a very hard major and that most kids struggle to get the work done and get good grades with 12 hours.

My daughter told her, “I took nine academic classes all the way through high school, including several AP classes. I skated on a World-ranked synchronized skating team, I coached another team, I worked at a restaurant, I played varsity volleyball for my school, and I took private voice lessons. All this, and I still managed to have a steady boyfriend, and to participate in all kinds of family and friends’ activities. I want a heavier course load!”

So the advisor allowed her to take 18 hours, including choir, and warned her that it might be too much.

Well, you’ve figured it out by now. My daughter has a straight A average at SLU, works several evenings a week at the skating rink, works weekends in the early mornings (6 AM) at the skating rink, was a member of Master Singers, and got married last year. Plus for the last four years, she has directed Nutcracker on Ice, which involves over a hundred skaters, and attracts an audience of several thousand who love the cheap ticket price, and who bring truckloads of canned goods.

Although I’m sure that some people try to “cram their childhood into their first few months away from home,” I think there are a lot more who have learned time management and discipline from their many involvements in their childhood and teenaged years, and continue to use these skills to enjoy a rich, full life when they leave home.

Everyone handles life and freedom differently. We’ve kept up with quite a few of the figure skaters that our kids grew up with. The vast majority of them turned out excellent, and are currently enjoying career and family success (so many of them are married with children–I feel so old!)

Yes, some turned out not-so-good and broke their parents’ hearts. Hopefully they’ll eventually come to their senses and live a good life.

Parents can only do their best.