The plight of the Domestic Church

Catholic Families in Crisis: New Study Finds Catholic Homes Are Spiritually Bankrupt

Holy Cross Family Ministries recently sponsored a first-of-its-kind study through the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown on spiritual health of the Catholic family The results paint a sobering picture, I offer an explanation of how the family has fared in the decades since Vatican II in The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God.

Mass Attendance

Only 22% of Catholic families attend mass weekly.

Only 18% of Catholic families with an infant attend mass weekly.

Larger families do a slightly better job with mass attendance but still, only 33% of families with 3 or more children attend mass every week.

Religious Education

68% of Catholic parents do not have their children enrolled in any type of religious education. Only 8% enroll their children in Catholic grade schools, 3% in Catholic high schools, and 21% have children in some type of parish-based religious education (i.e., “CCD”).

When faith education is considered in light of Mass attendance, 42 percent of weekly Mass attenders having a child enrolled in parish-based religious education (though NOT Catholic school) compared to 27 percent of monthly attenders. But, of course, that means that almost 60% of the most committed families (weekly mass attenders) do not have their children involved in religious ed of any kind.

Many people believe that cost is a serious impediment to enrolling kids in Catholic schools. This would not appear to be the case insofar as only 14% of families in the upper middle class income bracket ($85,000+/yr) send their children to Catholic school.

Family Prayer

About 36% of Catholic parents say they pray daily but if it is true that the family that “prays together stays together” then Catholic families are in serious trouble.

Only 17% of Catholic parents who pray on their own also pray as a family. An additional 7% of Catholic parents say that they don’t pray on their own, but will join in if their family is praying.

While about 50% of Catholic families eat dinner together daily, only 13% of Catholic families say they pray before meals every day.

It means, that the kids are NOT all right. It means that Catholic family life is NOT OK. Most importantly, it means that we, as a Church, need to stop assuming that the families in the pews have been equipped to live and proclaim the gospel and that whatever other ministry we may do, we need to allocate resources to shoring up our own spiritual house, because it is falling down around our ears.

In light of this study, parents should commit to living out the 5 Marks of the Catholic Family , bearing a full and vigorous witness to the Catholic difference in our own lives.

Here are additional resources for help in living out the fullness of the Catholic vision of family life, made challenging in the face of the moral therapeutic deism so prevalent among Catholic families at present.

Discovering God Together: The Catholic Guide to Raising Faithful Kids (COMING AUGUST 2015–Sophia Institute Press) Raising faithful kids is a possible mission for Catholic families. This book exposes the latest research on what it takes to pass the faith onto your children. Discover how to make your faith the source of the warmth and love in your home. Celebrate uncommon closeness to Christ and your kids. Get more out of your prayer life and the sacraments.

Parenting With Grace: The Catholic Parents’ Guide to Raising (almost) Perfect Kids–Discover faithful ways to respond effectively to the challenges of each age and stage of your child’s life and create they close, loving, joyful family God wants for you.

Then Comes Baby: The Catholic Guide to Surviving and Thriving in the First 3 Years of Parenthood–Parenthood should be a celebration. Discover how find a healthy balance that enables you to meet your needs, baby’s need, and maintain your marriage as well. This book helps you enjoy your new addition to the fullest!

Beyond the Birds and the Bees: Raising Sexually Whole and Holy Children--You can raise moral kids in an immoral world. This book shows you, step-by-step how to respond to difficult questions, overcome challenges, and build character in your kids that enables them to make godly choices in every part of their lives–even when you’re not breathing down their necks.c

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This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News

DANCING WITH MR. D: This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News : 'via Blog this'

Dancing With Mr. D: Grooming the Little Children

A former pro-transgender activist said she regretted her previous work in pro-transgender activism, adding she felt she was "indoctrinated" on gender ideology in an interview with Fox News Digital. "I started to realize that what I had been doing at my job at the LGBT Center, it was grooming," Kay Yang, a former employee of a location in New York, said. Grooming in this context means "to get into readiness for a specific objective." Kay works as a 'deprogrammer' to help parents and children who have been 'indoctrinated' by the 'cult-like' transgender agenda. Yang herself previously went by they/them and worked as a 'trans educator' in schools for years. Listen to her testimony.

A Series on Spiritual Warfare

In The Screwtape Letters , C.S. Lewis’ use of irony exemplifies distinctions between God and Satan’s attitude toward human beings; Lewis does this through the use of innuendos, sarcasm, and ironic inversions. I recently stumbled on a three-part series which builds on the truth in Lewis' writing here , here and here . Good Advent reflection!

Liberal Catholics, Conservative Catholics, and Holy Catholics

In Smoke , I wrote of two modifications of "Catholic" in popular parlance these days: Lest we forget, there were indeed reform-minded Council Fathers who responded to Pope John’s vision of the Church growing in spiritual riches as a fruit of the Council under the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the hope that the faithful might through grace be aided in turning hearts and minds toward heavenly things. Given what has been said thus far, it should not surprise the reader that many “liberal Catholics” view the pontificate of John Paul II as too “conservative,” and out of touch with the modern world, while the traditionalists view the writings and teachings of the Holy Father as modernist! Dr. Jeff Mirus of Catholic Culture has rightly linked Pope Francis's view of Vatican II as synonymous with those of his predecessors, who were in attendance.

Libido Redux: On Transgerderism

W hat Christianity shares with Judaism (and Islam, for that matter) is a belief that God created all things (though all three religions understand God differently). We are creatures. We owe our being, our existence, to Him. We are stewards of His creation, stewards, even, of our own bodies. Acknowledgement of God’s creative power leads to religious awe, a sense of the sacred. This means that each creature/creation has a nature, a manufacturer’s (God’s) instruction manual. Masculinity and femininity are aspects of that nature for human beings. When belief in God becomes irrelevant, we can throw away this instruction manual and refuse to see ourselves as a creature who has responsibilities to God and to society. To understand ourselves, we need to start at the beginning. What kind of being are we? The traditional answer–originating with the Greeks, continuing in the Middle Ages, and persisting into our own time -- and the answer given by common sense intuition -- is ...

Blogging Disciples!

To promote a book I spent years in writing , I began this blog. I am a baby boomer who knows all too little about blogging and the latest techie stuff. As I was perusing various Catholic blog sites, I noticed a post by Fr. Longenecker entitled, "The Smoke of Satan." If one troubles oneself to read Fr.'s quite accurate assessment, and becomes interested in just exactly how, according to the Pope who coined the phrase "Smoke of Satan" the Devil made his entrance into the post-Vatican II Church in the U.S., then my book is just what the Savior may have ordered, so why don't you!?

Dancing with Mr. D: Gender Ideology

In a private conversation with Bishop Andreas Laun on January 30 as part of the Austrian bishops’ ad limina visit , Pope Francis strongly condemned “gender ideology.” In so doing he follows the example of Pope Benedict, who is on record as saying that gender ideology is “a negative trend for humankind,” and a “profound falsehood,” which “it is the duty of pastors of the Church” to put the faithful “on guard against.” Bishop Laun The Austrian bishop stated, “In response to my questioning, Pope Francis said, ‘Gender ideology is demonic!’” As I have chronicled on these pages, the Holy Father often refers to the work of the devil. Of gender ideology, Bishop Laun explained that “the core thesis of this sick product of reason is the end result of a radical feminism which the homosexual lobby has made its own.” “It asserts that there are not only Man and Woman, but also other ‘genders’. And furthermore: every person canchoose his or her gender,” he added. “Today,” he said, ...

About the Author II

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Libido Redux: Porn Stats

If one types "Libido Redux" on this blog's search engine, you will see various events which corroborate Pope Paul VI's prophecy that the human libido is a "crack" through which Satan can play havoc with souls. Here is the latest in the series, which should enlighten the reader, the stats on children and Christians in particular. From one who knows the truth of Paul's prophecy: "I have posted on a number of other articles about porn, but I wanted to post here as well to reach out to anyone else who, like me, is a porn addict. I tried for the first 9 years of marriage to stop looking at porn, and I could not. I asked God to help me stop, I went to confession, I received the Eucharist daily, but I could not stop. It was not enough for me to do it on my own with God. I had to ask for help from other people, see a counselor, and get into a 12-step recovery program, and that is how God is healing me. I believe the numbers here because I understand ...

Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness Against Thy Neighbor

Tucker Carlson: The Biden Scandal Is Real And Not Going Away Posted By Ian Schwartz On Date October 30, 2020 TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: It's been obvious for decades now that the Biden family has gotten rich from selling influence abroad. Joe Biden held a series of high level jobs in the U.S. government. Based on that fact and that fact alone, Biden's son and brother approached foreign governments and companies, sovereign wealth funds, energy conglomerates, Third World oligarchs and dictators, and they offered to exchange favors from Joe Biden for cash. The polite term for that practice is influence-peddling. Sometimes it is legal under American law, sometimes it is not. But it has always been the economic engine of the Biden family. They've never done anything else. Until recently, no one debated this fact. Several liberal news organizations, in fact, have written detailed stories about the Biden secret business dealings over the years. Look them up, assuming you still c...

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