Off the Top of My Head (4 Things Catholics Should Do Before Dialogue)

from St. Peter's List

Last week I posted some nonsense about how we need to stop letting atheists and stupid misconceptions pigeonhole us Christians (I'm looking at you, fellow Catholics!) into looking moronic by actually engaging those misconceptions.  A little shared dialogue can do wonders in the development of our own faith and in crossing bridges and barriers in others.  But honestly, we can't engage unless we are prepared to do so.  A lot of us have been inadequately catechized, and a lot of us don't even realize how accessible the faith is.  So let me give you some pointers:

1.  Do some reading in your free time.  What free time?, you ask.  I dunno.  I don't exactly have tons of free time with brain cells, either.  But I'm guessing you could skip out on one of those Facebook sessions where you scroll down through the hundred or so things in your Newsfeed that you already saw, and wonder why there's nothing new.  For reals, it's like the newer version of walking to your fridge every 5 minutes and wondering why there still isn't anything in there that I want to eat.  Or skip out on that last game of Angry Birds before bed.  Whatever.

But, speaking from the Catholic perspective, there is a TON of literature out there that you can read.  And reading's good for you, right?  "It's got a good reputation."  I'm not saying everybody's got to be breezing through the Summa Theologica at the first opportunity, but you might not realize that we literally have a Catholic manual.  It outlines everything the Catholic Church teaches.  Maybe you've heard of it.  It's called The Catechism of the Catholic Church (what? I did NOT see that coming!) and it's even available online because apparently education about the faith should be available to all or some such thing.  Or you could check out the myriad of books and podcasts available on Catholic.com.  Or scope out some papal encyclicals or documents of the ecumenical councils.  Fides et Ratio seems apropos, here.

2.  Pray lots.  Especially before/when you interact with those people who concern you.  We got a little reminder in the latest Apostolic Exhortation from Pope Francis (cowritten with Pope Benedict) that we ought to be concerning ourselves with building up the faith of those already belonging to the Church, those who are affiliated with the Church but no longer practicing, and those who have rejected, or appeared to reject the Church.  No pressure!  But there were also plenty of reminders that this is NOT just up to us; we love others because God loves us first.  And we can minister to others because God serves all of us first.  Therefore, it stands to reason that we need not overwhelm ourselves with all the answers we think we don't have, but rather learn to rely upon God and trust that He will give us the words that need to be heard.  The best way to HEAR those words, of course, is to learn to be in conversation with God.  That means speaking regularly, with prayer, adoration, Biblical study, and above all the Mass.  This is probably not news for anybody, but it's a good reminder at the least, and during this time of Lent, we should all be discerning ways to become closer to God anyway.  So consider whether you can stake out more specific time for prayer, or try to train yourself to be in prayer for short bursts throughout your day.  It may sound weird, but my favorite time to pray is when I'm washing dishes- it usually helps me to recenter my day around God, interact more peacefully with the kids afterward, and keeps me from being bitter and resentful about the number of dishes that get dirtied throughout the day!

3.  Start small.  Not everyone is comfortable jumping into huge conflicts.  Actually, probably most of us aren't.  But that doesn't mean you can't speak and minister to people in your own ways.  One of MY favorite things to do is listen to apologetics programs like Catholic Answers Live, which sort of re-wires my brain to think in terms of apologetics, which in turn makes it much easier for me to adapt to those conversations when they arise.  But point-by-point debate is not for everyone; that's OK.  Maybe you can get involved with a small group that can give you further ideas and encouragement for your day-to-day life.  Maybe for you it's simply enough to continue with the ways you currently minister to others, but to grow more comfortable with letting others know why you do what you do.  Or maybe there's lots of mud-slinging around the Thanksgiving table about NFP or large families or homeschooling or gay marriage or **insert your family's argument here- let's be honest, we all have them**.  Don't be afraid to chime in with a gentle reminder that there are valid reasons for what Catholics believe; and if you're not comfortable enumerating them, you can always point them in the right direction by recommending they read the Catechism or any number of encyclicals and Church documents.


4.  Love them.  Man, I hate to be redundant, but that's the best thing you can do in any situation.  We're all called to love God and love everyone else as we love ourselves.  To love means to will the good of another; when we love, we are truly caring for another person's physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.  Maybe we occasionally get confused about what love looks like, because there are so many contrary and divergent images we're inundated with every day.  Romantic love doesn't have to look like a Disney movie, and there can be very deep fraternity without it being in any way sexual.  But while we're willing the good of another, we want them to have the best possible chance they can of staying healthy, and of getting to heaven.  That means that we can't simply back away when someone we love is suffering from a grievous error.  That means we have to put their spiritual well-being ahead of our own discomfort with putting ourselves out there.  That also means that when we find ourselves being backed into a corner, God's got our back.  Like Pope Francis (and, actually, all the other Popes before him) reminded us, God doesn't ask us to do anything He hasn't first begun, and all we really need to do to love others is to receive the love God has given to us and spread it around a little.

All Hands On Deck

Ok, fair warning.  This is a call to (metaphorical) arms.  Religious people everywhere are being pigeonholed like mad.  We are portrayed as bigoted, misogynistic, illogical sheeple.  Hateful, all of us.  It doesn't really matter what you are, or what denomination, the fact remains that in our modern society atheist and agnostic extraordinaires like Christopher Hitchens (God rest his soul) and Richard Dawkins and a host of others have done a bang-up job of convincing a whole lot of people that we're basically a bunch of deluded, brainwashed morons.  

Taken from Catholic Memes

But you know what's worse?  We let them do it.

Now, to be fair, there COULD be a great many vague, moronic people who happen to be religious.  And there are a lot of us who haven't been very well catechized.  And a lot of us who haven't gone to college to study in detail what we believe.  And there are yet more of us who HAVE been, but we are lazy.  Seriously, I know I am.  So yeah, a lot of us could be perfectly capable of defending the faith, or at least talking about it without sounding like a buffoon, but a lot of us don't, for a variety of reasons.  And that has to stop.

Because when did Faith become synonymous with illogic?  It happened when enough of us refrained from standing up and saying something so we wouldn't be "that guy."  I get it, guys.  I do.  We've got family who would be offended if we just laid it all out there.  Our working environment isn't exactly "friendly" to religious discussions.  We have a fear of public speaking, or of speaking to people we don't know well, or we're afraid of getting something wrong, or of not having a ready answer.  But guys.  Guys.  We gotta say something, or we will continue to be the blinded, brainwashed sheeple that so many think we are.

So let's stop with the niceness and letting people assume that only irreligious people have a monopoly on logic.  I can't tell you how many times I've heard from agnostic acquaintances that they "use logic in all my decision making," as though I'm over here playing BINGO or Russian Roulette with how I live my life.  Or "just taking someone else's word for it," like I can't figure out what a brain is even for.  Do they honestly think that they've managed to come up with some irrefutable awesomeness that the Catholic Church hasn't seen in it's 2000 year history?  Do they think that one of the largest religious groups in the world is seriously led by a few guys in dresses who sit around in Italy and just make crap up, and we just nod our heads?  

Also Catholic Memes.  I love them so much.

Can I ask you a question?  A person has an experience that lies beyond the norm for every day life; possibly a vision, or hearing a voice, or a sudden conviction in how they've been living.  Should they seek to find an explanation for said experience, or just ignore it and hope it goes away?  Should we assume that the person, who seems sane in every other possible way, is now just crazy and that the experience they claim to have had was just wrong?  Or could it be possible that they seek an explanation, and find that explanation within a system of belief that also resonates coherently with what they already know and continue to learn about life?

I will absolutely grant you that not everyone has had an experience like the one I'm talking about here.  Some people were just brought up in some faith or another, and they may have gone along with that for years, just because it was what they did as a family, or whatever.  But there comes a point in every persons life when they need to make a decision about what they're going to believe, how they're going to live.  And call me crazy, but I think most people try to at least make an educated decision about it.

True story:  I was once told, by an agnostic friend, that people who profess to be Christians but act in a prejudicial manner toward others give real Christians a bad name.  And then, in the same conversation, he said that we should simply expect that kind of prejudice from religious people, and it should be obvious to everyone.  I'm sorry, but it seems to me that a lot of people who claim to be perfectly logical in their decision making have not yet learned about the Principle of Non-Contradiction.  Buddy, you have to decide if religious people are generally reasonable people who get a bad rap on the basis of a loudmouthed few, or if we're all prejudiced in some way (in which case, we darn well earned our reputation).  You should also probably consider whether, if a lot of us are saying the same thing, it might be for an actual reason. 

And just in case you needed a little extra evidence in favor of religious people valuing human reason, let me give you a neat little (Ok, not so little) list:

Fathers of Science

Abbot Gregor Mendel, the Father of Genetics.

Franciscan Friar, Roger Bacon, the Father of Scientific Laws.

St. Archbishop Nicolas Steno, the Father of Geology.

Rene Descartes, the Father of Modern Rationalism.

Fr. Marin Mersenne, the Father of Acoustics.

Andreas Vesalius, the Father of Modern Anatomy and Physiology.

Antoine Lavoisier, the Father of Modern Chemistry.

Blaise Pascal, the Father of Hydrostatics.

Louis Pasteur, the Father of Pasteurization.

Archdeacon Nicolaus Copernicus, the Father of Heliocentrism.

Pierre Duhem, the Father of the History of Medieval Science.

Fr. George Coyne, the discoverer of asteroid 14429 Coyne.

Dr. Martin Nowak, discoveries in evolutionary dynamics.

Guglielmo Marconi, the Father of Radio.

Christian Andreas Doppler, Father of the doppler effect.

Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, Father of biomechanics.

Thomas W. Hilgers, the father of NaProTechnology.

Alessandro Volta

Charles Augustin de Coulomb

Andre Marie Ampere

Pierre Gassendi- formulated the modern "scientific outlook", of moderated scepticism and empiricism.

Universities

University of Paris

Universitas Magistrorum et Scholarium

Abbey of St. Denis

University of Reims

Collège de Bons Enfants

University of Cologne

University of Vienna

Charles University in Prague

Notre Dame

University of Dallas

Michigan University

Boston College

Ave Maria University

Georgetown

Gonzaga University

Villanova

Fordham University

All of the above are Roman Catholic in affiliation.

So next time, I'll give some pointers for how to deal with these problems when they arise.  But in the meantime, accustom yourself to the idea!

Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel (Top 4 Homeschooling Cheats. Because We Have To.)

Rough week for us, busy-ness-wise; we've been working on a tax mess that's been lingering for a couple of years now (they're fault, not ours) and assorted other household odds and ends.  But hey, gotta give to Caesar what is Caesar's, right?

That's a rhetorical question.

So anywho, what with me being the Grand Poobah of All Things Paperwork around here, I've been exercising as many options for homeschooling as possible that involve me NOT being super involved.  And we spend more time IN our PJ's than OUT of them.  Now I sound like a terrible parent.

I PROMISE you, I'm not doing this ALL the time.  But most SAHMs who also homeschool will probably admit that there are times (Morning Sickness anyone?) when we have to do what we can to keep the kids occupied so that WE are not.  So this week, I'll share a few of the tricks up my sleeve.

1.  Nursing time is reading time.  I know a lot of you out there are already aware of this one, but for those of you who don't: DO IT.  I have a sling that I wear several times a day for when my little French Fry is feeling clingy and I have to do it, but nursing is always more relaxing when I get to sit down.  And it's even MORE relaxing if I don't have to keep getting up from nursing to chase after somebody else.  So nursing time is reading time, so at least a couple of the kiddos will sit still for like, two seconds, and my oldest (who's almost 6) finally started reading, herself, so we work on her reading skills together while I'm sitting.  It has the added bonus of making children feel like you're paying attention to THEM, which generally keeps them better behaved during times when you're not.

2.  Play-doh is my best friend.  Seriously.  All the kids love creating things, digging in and pulling and squishing.  Play-doh is awesome.  And if you're motivated, you can even make your own.  And if you dig out your homeschooling mom instincts, it's an educational tool.  Back when The Boy was seriously lacking in the fine motor skills department, we got him learning the alphabet shapes, not by writing, which was frustrating and discouraging for him, but by drawing/printing the shapes on paper and having him use Play-doh to fill them in.  I'm so ingenious I surprise even myself, sometimes!

3.  History time is also play time.  We've been teaching our kids based on a history paradigm, beginning with the first humans, who probably lived somewhere in the Fertile Crescent, up through Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, etc.  So when we talk about Nomads, for instance, as soon as the lesson is over, they're put to work using whatever materials they can scrounge (cushions and blankets, mostly) to build a tent just like the nomads would use.  They pretend they're outside, surviving on their wits, maybe herding their animals with them, or whatever.  And it'll keep them entertained for a REALLY LONG TIME.  Because whatever games they were playing before, are like forty times FUNNER because it's IN A TENT.  It keeps going until your 2 year old destroys the tent for the fifth time and the kids complain to you about how nothing is working to keep it up.

4.  Get the older kids to teach the younger ones.  You might think, having children, only 5, 4, 2, and under 1 year old, that this is an option that is completely non-feasible.  But you would be wrong!  Just yesterday, I bought myself some extra time filling out paperwork (YAY!) by asking Mo to be a Teacher.  Which was a big deal to her.  And her job was teaching Sophie her colors, using some colorful baby toys (which were safe, so I could let French Fry play along with them).  5 year old feels like a big girl, 4- and 2-year olds occupied competing for right answers, baby teething on their lesson.  Mission Accomplished.

So these are tricks I pull out occasionally when it's needed- not the ONLY things I use, but I feel way better about doing something to keep their bodies and minds occupied without resorting to videos or computer games. 

What are your go-to's for keeping those kids busy during the winter, and it's too cold to go outside?

Growing Like A Weed

For serious; Mommyhood is a rough job.  I am not saying this to toot my own horn; even with all the incredibly growth (no, not girth) that motherhood has forced me into, kicking and screaming, I still recognize that it is one for which I am still insufficient.  Can't do it all on my own.  No way, no how.

They say you never really appreciate your mother until you are one, and I can tell you that it is absolutely true.  And this is also why family life and good community is so important; we're not really meant to do it all on our own.  We need help in properly forming our children to be wonderful, joyful, productive, and insightful members of society.  We especially need help to form them while avoiding physical exhaustion and mental breakdowns.

That being said, I love it when things just happen to make my life easier- especially when homeschooling.  I've mentioned before that the Hubby and I are writing our own curriculum.  And that means writing our own lesson plans 9 times out of 10.  And that (for us) means writing a lesson plan for a 5 year old who is advanced, but still can't do most of the work on her own, since she just learned to read.  It also means planning coordinating activities to keep a 4 year old busy but still allows him to pick up on at least some of the information, and wrangling a 2 year old who gets into everything so she doesn't destroy whatever projects we just did.  Eventually, if macro-evolution turns out to be legit, and there is any justice in the world, it will allow mothers to grow 4 eyes and 6 arms.

But NEXT week, we have HOLY DAYS, which means I get 2 WHOLE DAYS where the lessons practically write themselves.  So for those of you who are Catholic and Homeschool and are looking for something to keep your kids busy on Tuesday and Wednesday next week, here's a sampling:

Tuesday, March 4: Fat Tuesday!
5 year old's lesson: I am a huge fan of schooling in any way other than a lecture, because no small child wants to sit through a session of you just talking at them.  So for our own personal Mardi Gras, we do some baking- and while we bake, we do mini-lessons in measuring and baking (it's TOTALLY MATH!) and the tradition of getting rid of the extra sweets in the house before Lent.  You can choose to do a traditional treat (Paczki are a little beyond my expertise) like a King Cake, and expand your kids' palettes, or just go ahead and do the family favorite, like chocolate chip cookies or banana bread.
4 year old's lesson: 3- and 1-year olds can't be distracted from a lesson as delicious as this one, so we just pass around measuring cups and spoons for everyone to play with, let everybody have a chance at pouring or stirring or whatever, and bribe them later on with batter-filled spoons for licking.  Nobody's gotten Salmonella yet, I swear.

Wednesday, March 5: Ash Wednesday!
Mass and a lesson for everybody today, so they know more of the significance of what's going on.  I find it helpful just to explain to the kids beforehand (especially if there's an extra part in the liturgy, like there is on Ash Wednesday) what will be going on and why, so they know what to look for.  For this day, we run through the Biblical creation story, and talk about how God made Adam out of the dirt, and the Holy Spirit breathed life into him, and gave him a soul.  Give them a context for the whole "Remember that thou art dust, and to dust thou shall return" thing.  While you're discussing the Ash Wednesday Mass, go ahead and give them some coloring pages to tackle on the same theme.  Some other things you can add in, if your kids are sufficiently interested: Vestment colors for liturgical seasons (Purple is for Preparation!), the Ashes on Ash Wednesday come from the palms from Palm Sunday the previous year (there's a reason Liturgical Calendars are formed like a circle, and I'll give you 1 guess why!), and the season of Lent as a penitential time (so we make certain sacrifices, like fasting and abstaining from meat, etc.).

Side note:  I ritually do Google image searches for just about every topic to find coloring pages before the lessons we do, because my kiddos are still of an age where coloring holds their interest longer than me talking.  Having images associated with the topics before they are of reading age still gives their memory something to hold on to, and they can use the visual cues from the coloring pages to notice things during the Mass.  Same premise here as with the older, traditional stained glass windows and triptych iconography- teaching to the non-literate by assimilating educational images.

This year, I think I'll be tricking my kids into enjoying vegetables once again, by making an amazing Zucchini Bread:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3 eggs

• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 2 1/4 cups white sugar
• 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 1 cup chopped walnuts