Posted on 06/27/2005 1:42:52 PM PDT by Coleus
| Parents miss Mass, kids get ax |
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The Rev. Michael Cichon, pastor of St. Joseph/St. Thomas in Pleasant Plains, used each family's bar-coded donation envelope to track attendance. He's tossed about 300 kids from classes and told them not to reapply until next April. Without the classes, children cannot receive the sacraments, meaning some youngsters who thought they'd be making their First Communion next year will have to wait. The suspensions, legal under church doctrine, were a shock to many parents with kids enrolled in the 1,400-child program, which caters to kids who don't attend Catholic schools. "It's hurtful," said Joseph LoPizzo, 38, whose 6-year-old son was booted. "I've been a parishioner at that church for 23 years - longer than he's been the reverend." LoPizzo said he paid the $150 for his son's Thursday afternoon classes last year, but his father-in-law's illness hampered the family's church attendance. "I've just never heard of a church kicking you out," complained Lisa Nicol, 36, who got a letter saying her 7-year-old twin daughters had been barred from classes. "They should be more welcoming and sensitive." The pastor said he suspended kids from the 2005-2006 after-school program because Mass is an "essential" component of the Catholic faith. The affected families were attending church less than once a month, he said. Cichon insisted that the move has nothing to do with the lack of a donation. "There are many families who put absolutely nothing inside the envelopes they submit," he said. |
But they can't validly receive the Sacrament if they are in a state of persistent sin - i.e. never attending Mass. Any absolution given to them would be a nullity.
But what of the kids who cannot get themselves to Mass regularly but desire to go? They are sinning by missing Mass, but they are not knowingly doing something they can control. They are not choosing to do wrong. They wish to attend, at least as 2nd graders (perhaps the bad habit of never going becomes easier as they get older), but are unable to get themselves to a church on a regular basis. Sometimes an older relative is able to take them. They can't drive, for some it's too far to walk and at 7, I would hope someone older would accompany them. I've been with our program long enough to see that those whose parents or relatives regularly attended Mass with the kids and prayed with them, they are most of the kids who attend regularly. There are exceptions, like one boy I taught my first year. He is always at Mass, an altar server. Yet, there are few family members of any regular faith or attendance around him. It's good that our pastor kept the door open to him, even though his parents stood outside, not coming in. The issue we see is that the parents 'intend' to return to the church if they are away or not fully participating, and some do fully, but they don't want their kids to be raised without faith. It's clear they aren't exhibiting faith themselves and are only marginally Catholic at best but - perhaps grace? - they want for their kids the same faith they remember having at some previous point. Even among the parents I know whom I attended school and church with, who should know better, have forgotten, or simply not bothered, to pray with their kids, to attend Mass with them, to celebrate Holy Days and speak of the Saints as examples.
"The Catholic Church doesn't care a whit what it says or does not say in the Bible about attending Church. The Catholic Church KNOWS what Jesus and the Apostles left it in the Deposit of Faith, and this includes the obligation to attend Mass every week on Sunday"
The pharisees and Sadducees also cared not what the OT said about the right way to live depending instead on their Oral tradition and those written down in the Talmud.
Christ by using the actual old Testament exposed their follies.
By denying the ultimate authority of the Bible to expose the inevitable errors that creep in in every human run religious institution including Catholicism, Catholicism opened itself up to open scism as in the Reformation, and to the current sinful excesses that it suffers from today...but don't worry I'm not just describing Catholicism...the mainline Protestant churches are just as guilty and suffereing from their gross error as well.
I think you should take into perspective the size of the school before you make such slams, kwim? Firstly, as I said, we have THREE sponsoring churches and our school is approx 1/3 your size with students. That $8000 momthly is only from one of the churchs. Obviously your school is going to cost more money to run. Also, you in an urban area, I'm in suburb NJ, in a good school district, it's hard to convince parents that they should pay for a Christian education when their overpriced taxes will give them a good education. In our case, a Christian education supercedes that.
Thanks for the reply. Again, we are obligated to judge ACTIONS as right or wrong, tolerable or intolerable, good or evil, but not human souls.
If you are old enough to go to confession, you are old enough to take responsibility for meeting (or not) your obligations to Holy Church and to God.
These kids are able to get their parents to take them to school, the mall, friend's houses, sports events, concerts, etc. However, they cannot then be expected to even have them just drop them off at Church?
Every parish around Philadelphia, small or large, urban or suburban, contributes large amounts of money to its school to keep the tuition low. The tuition rates (and per capita parish contribution) were not materially different at the school in suburban Malvern when I lived there, which is in one of the top 5 school districts in the state of Pennsylvania.
The judgement of actions is the judgement of souls. The soul is the actor for the human person - if it wasn't, we'd be Karl Marx's inanimate "matter in motion".
I'd rather call myself Born Again! Now the Lord is #1 in my life and I look forward to the day I see Him face to face.
At which point He will ask you why you blasphemed Him by being baptized a second time.
Where is there an infallible Table of Contents to assure me the books you believe constitute the Bible are actually the right books - no more and no less?
I'd hate to be missing out on some inspired words, or to include as inspired things that were not.
And also where does the Bible say attending Church weekly is wrong or not required? Christ confuted the Pharisees by pointing out how their rules nullified the commandments. The obligation to attend Mass weekly glorifies the Commandments to not "have strange gods before me" and "keep holy the sabbath day". It hardly confutes or nullifies these verses to require people to come to Church.
It amazes me that a suppsoedly Bible literate Protestant could make such a basic error of comparison.
Christ said "Why do you also transgress the commandment of God for your tradition?" and "you have made void the commandment of God for your tradition."
But where does the Catholic Church void the 1st and 3rd Commandments by requiring we worship God in Church every Sunday? Is this not a manner of fulfilling the commandments, not voiding them?
I've never even heard of bar coded donation envelopes. Where have I been.
It had never happened to me before! When I was a teenager I spent the Holy Week with my grandparents, in a dairy farm in northern Spain. I rode my horse, bareback, to all church services and never had anybody tell me that I wasn't clean or dressed up enough to go in! This experience that I was talking about got me by surprise, like a blow below the belt. But God used it to bring me closer to Him. And when something similar happened at my SB church, between an old lady and a visitor, I was able to (1)tell the visitor to please come in, God loved him and (2) ask the lady how did she know that there wasn't a good reason that man was not wearing a suit? I think I mentioned yesterday that the man is now attending church regularly and is an student in my Sunday school class. I wonder if I would have stood up to the old lady if it hadn't been for the painful memories of having been told that I was not welcome in a church because of my clothes!
"The Most Blessed Eucharist is not to be given to apostates from the Catholic Church"
No, it is to be given to those who have "the faith of a simple child...for such is the Kngdom of heaven" as our Saviour has said!
I do know that they're both subsidized by the Diocese, and that St. Joe's keeps track of who's at Mass and how much they give. This was esp. evident when we signed my daughter up for pre-K CCD (to start this fall) -- they confused us with my in-laws, who do NOT give any more. (My MIL is a liberal moonbat who says she is "culturally Catholic," but won't give or attend Mass because she doesn't like our Monsignor, disagrees with the Pope, and believes that "all curch donations go to perverts.") They called us to tell us that our daughter couldn't go, because we weren't "active members," until I showed up with a fistful of cancelled weekly gift checks.
In the end, we're probably sending my daughter to Villa Maria lower school -- ata whopping $6,875/yr. (But the IHM's are outstanding.)
They have these nifty devices now called "computers." They're all the rage. They help automate laborious tasks.
SD
I think most folks have an idea the the Christ was referring to young folks below the age of 11 or 12 or so, below the jewish age of accountability, such as those attending those Catechism classes!
It does apply...and you know it does...if you are at all sensitive to your conscience you know it does!
We were pretty much told when we registered that the envelopes were to keep track of Mass attendance -- esp. for those with children in the parish school -- to help facilitate tuition reductions for active members. They told us that we didn't have to put anything in them, cash-wise, at all, if we couldn't or didn't want to. Or we could include prayer requests and intentions.
I'm expecting more like "well done, good and faithful servant".
Good and faithful servants don't shove priests and blaspheme.
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