Posted on 08/06/2017 3:49:20 PM PDT by ebb tide
Our priest makes each family meet with him in person before they can enroll their children in Catechism and he said he was going to require them to attend at least one class with each child. The children are required to go to mass weekly and get their cards signed by him or the DRE. Supposedly, if they miss one mass or one class in Confirmation or First Communion they can’t receive the sacrament but I haven’t seen him kick anyone out.
After 1st Communion they are required to be altar servers and if the parents don’t send them back the next year he calls them and the kids usually show up.
On Baptisms he’s pretty easy, the parents don’t have to be married or anything but their Godparents must be Catholics in good standing and the parents and Godparents must take a 4 hour class.
We never see a lot of those families again until they start Catechism.
In my classes I usually have 1 or 2 kids who know anything about the faith from home. Most don’t pray, they don’t read the Bible.
He’s very strict but not mean and we have about 3 times as many students as we had before he came but most of them don’t come to mass during the summer.
I wish I could remember the Pre-Cana my future wife and I went through during my senior year at St. Joseph’s College, of Indiana, along with a couple of dozen other couples who were intending to get married after graduation. It was for 2 hours one evening a week for 6 weeks. Various aspects of being married were discussed: life as a married couple, finances, having children, and other topics. Both priests and/or lay members of the faculty taught the classes, depending upon the evening’s topic. We found it useful and for somethings should have paid better attention (no not on family planning for any wiseacres out there.)
Whoa! Better double check about the tea, Coke, gin and tonic, etc.!
I am pretty certain that at least some of those liquids would be invalid, and maybe all of them.
It takes 3 years in law school to become a lawyer. It takes at least 8 years to become a priest. It takes Dominican Sisters 7 years before they profess perpetual vows. It takes a few 20 minute classes to get married. Anybody see a problem?
When we are considering vocations, and something as important as marriage, doesn’t it deserve some serious thought, discussion, and spiritual guidance? Perhaps better marriage formation is the answer.
Regarding Baptism classes, I’m sure more people went to CCD than Catholic school. They probably don’t remember very much from their 6th grade discussion.
Yeah, people work on Saturday. However, should the church do nothing in the formation or preparation for the vocation of marriage?
The validity of any sacrament is unaffected by the state of grace or state of sin of the minister of the sacrament, or the recipient.
Anyone, baptized or not, can baptize.
He loves the Sacraments and would like to have access to them without all the useless mandatory classes which do not address sin and salvation but money and nice names for the baby.
Yeah; I see a huge a problem. To delay the baptism of newborns of a practicing Catholic family is reprehensible. These parishes are risking the salvation of those innocent children.
Shouldn't baptism and child-rearing have been covered in a "pre-cana" class before the couple was allowed to marry?
I’m not a follower of the RCC personally. But through the centuries what is the normal time that a newborn would be sprinkled or Christened? Are we normally talking a few days after being born, weeks, months? Immediately?
What is the historical standard a Catholic parent would expect to be a normal time to do it within?
We just had 26 Baptisms at our church, and, yes, all the parents had to take classes or else their children couldn’t get baptized.
A neighboring church recently held 59 baptisms. I don’t know about the classes there.
Even if they had older, church-going children?
Why risk a newborn's salvation?
I doubt your parish had 26 children born within one week or, in another parish, 59 born in one week.
That's nothing to be proud of - that baptisms are delayed until a quorum is met.
Infant baptisms should be done as soon as possible; even it interferes with the priest's "schedule".
This guy’s disdain for the middle class is palpable.
Church aside, I don’t know middle class folks who are like the ones he described.
His pride in being *different* and above all that is nasty.
They were of varying ages. Families accompanied them. (At least in my parish.)
Well that in itself is a shame.
Why the delay for the older ones?
I've never seen an infant baptism where the family and godparents are not present.
Have you?
Good sermons, EWTN radio and cable fill the bill.
That's ridiculous. Unmarried parents of a child are not in good standing with the Church; yet the godparents are required to be in good standing?
i don’t think it’s ridiculous. Suppose your teen age daughter got pregnant. It happens. Would you want the baby to be baptized? The role, as I understand it, of Godparents is a Catholic upbringing, so they are supposed to be capable of providing that.
In our parish, it’s a one hour one night class, which is usually done before the child arrives. They don’t come all that suddenly.
you only have to go to classes on your first child’s baptism, apparently some parishes are different.
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