When my children were younger it was the norm for them to be in a separate room for the Liturgy of the Word and to return at the offertory. As adults, they tell me now how much they disliked the practice. They were much happier when they were able to attend the entire service as a family. Of course, I know that other people had much more positive experiences; I know that other children really enjoyed going out (for whatever reason). Of course, there is a subtle or not-so-subtle trend out in the world to separate parents/children, men/women, married/single, etc. etc. anyway. . .some people believe it’s good and others don’t.
When I was young (at the changeover /Vatican II), during regular Sunday Mass the only separation we had from the family was if we girls were singing in the choir upstairs, or if the boys were altar boys. And during the school year, the entire school, grades 1-8, marched down for daily Mass at 8 a.m.; we sat with our grade and we behaved the same way we did for Sunday Mass–with reverence and attention. Maybe we did not get some of the nuances we do as adults, maybe there was a more “child like” understanding–but is this really a bad thing? Rather than having the liturgy “dumbed down” to the understanding of the 6 year olds among us, we were supposed to stretch our learning capacity UPWARDS and to build our youthful understanding over the years to a well formed ADULT understanding.
I often think that is why my Catholic school education for me was “better” than my later high school public education for the last 3 years. It is not that the public school offered less variety (it did not), or had worse teachers (it did not) or that hard work was not encouraged as much (it certainly was).
But at least for me in my time in my area (Philadelphia/Sisters of Mercy), there was a much greater emphasis placed not just on learning subject X for this semester, or this year, in a more or less “vacuum”, retrieving just enough info to pass a final exam and then doing a “data dump” where the subject was never ever thought of again (Hurrah, I’ll never have to do Algebra ever again! was the glad shout of my public high school buddies)–in my Catholic elementary school every subject was a part of a whole, and that whole was the Catholic faith. Everything worked together. If I learned geography (and I did), it was in the context not just of what was the capital of Arkansas (Little Rock), but in the context of how the country/state/city came about, facts ranging from religious and secular history to science to math to English all ABOUT Little Rock, and each year more information was grafted onto our “data base”, so to speak. Instead of “Yay, I’ll never have to do geography again”, to this day I not only can remember all the U.S. capitals and a surprising amount of history, geography, science, math, and English, but I am eager to learn even MORE and to explore not just geography but ALL subjects.
Bottom line, if you send your children off for the Liturgy, you’re entrusting their faith to someone who is not you. If you are lucky, if you are a good and conscientious Catholic who lives in an excellent and devout parish, then everything could be well.
But you can’t just “trust” that because you are in a Catholic church, that the priest, DRE, catechists etc. “know” and can “teach” the authentic Catholic faith. Sad but true.
