Howdy and welcome back to Beyond the Pew. We’re in the midst of this series on how to get your kids excited about the faith. The first thing that we need to realize is your kids aren’t going to be excited about the faith for a grand majority of their childhood.

I know that when I was I was a kid I hated CCE. I hated going. My mom would literally I was that kid that she had to like drag through right. And as I got bigger that got to be a funnier and funnier scene of this lady dragging me through the through the street to get to CCE.

So absolutely couldn’t stand it, and now looking back at it I’m like, okay thanks mom for dragging me through CCE because I was able to grow through that time so that when I finally had my conversion I was able to look back at CCE and be like, oh I learned Bible stories. I learned that Jesus loves me. I learned these basic things even though I absolutely hated every minute of it.

But the thing about being a parent and what you do for your kids whenever they are baptized is you take on the responsibility of training and forming them in the faith. So I’m going to read you your baptismal promises and see what you said whenever your kid was baptized.

The priest asks you you have asked to have your child baptized in doing so you are accepting the responsibility of training him or her in the practice of the faith. It will be your duty to keep him or her up to keep God’s commandments as Christ taught us by loving God and our neighbor. Do you clearly understand what you are undertaking? And my guess is you said yes at that point because it’d be really awkward if you said no and the priest probably wouldn’t have done the baptism.

So this is what you all agreed upon whenever you got your child baptized. And I say this to you not as a challenge to you but as fodder to use against your children. What you actually agreed to was that you will raise your kids up at least until they get all the sacraments of initiation. So they’re baptized, get their first communion, and they are confirmed.

So there is this transfer of power if you will as kids are growing up. At first most kids get baptized as a baby. They have no say in that right. And then first communion it’s 99 percent you, the parents. And then the 1% where the kid could like you know kick and scream throughout the whole mass because he didn’t want to be there. And then when you get the confirmation most dioceses do that in high school and it really does start to start to become this transfer of like okay you as a parent said that you would do this that you would see their formation through until they’re at least until they were confirmed.

So when push comes to shove this is a promise that you made before God and you can say that to your kids whenever they’re like I don’t want to go to church anymore I don’t want to go to confirmation. It’s like you can say like I’ve made a promise before God and man that I would get you through this stuff. The bottom line, when push comes to shove, you have that in your back pocket.

But obviously kids don’t want to hear that all the time. So what my mom did for me throughout all those times in CCE when I absolutely hated it, she said come back with one nugget, one thing you learned one thing that you enjoyed about your hour and a half in jail. So I went to this jail called CCE and every time I came back from I got back from CC I got in the car and my mom would say okay what’s your nugget? what’s the one thing you learned? And then slowly over time I got less and less against CCE, less and less against youth group. And by the time I was in junior high and in high school I was I was on fire for God. I was really excited about being Catholic.

So know that this is going to be a process. Know that this is your responsibility as a parent. And know that even through the tough times that kids can get through this with your help and with God’s help. So entrust them to the Lord and continue to bring them to church even when they don’t want to.