Articles Under: Catechizing Children

St. Thomas Aquinas explained the imagination as “a storehouse of forms received through the senses” that are later called to mind. [1] St. Augustine considered it as a form of “spiritual vision,” distinct from our corporal and intellectual senses. [2] St. Theresa of Ávila described it as one of the most important powers of the soul. [3] Each of these Doctors of the Church spent ample time writing on the power of our imagination and its relationship to the life of faith. They understood that our imagination is part of our physical and spiritual nature. As such, it can affect... Read more

Several years ago, I stepped into another sister’s classroom to drop something off and found her seated on a low chair near the sacred space, her students on the carpet at her feet. She had an image of Fra Angelico’s Annunciation prominently displayed, but they were talking about the bells at Mass. “The bells are like the doorbell,” she was saying. “When the doorbell rings you know someone is there to see you. When the bells ring at Mass, they tell us that God is here.” I was intrigued, and, since I had a few minutes, I sat down to... Read more

Nearly forty years ago, my wife and I faced one of those moments that every parent dreads. Our curious three-year-old daughter reached up to the kitchen bench and put her finger into a cup of tea that had just been poured and pulled it over onto herself. It scalded her arm and, within seconds, a blister the size of an egg appeared. Straight away, we put ice and Lourdes water onto the blister, and I took her immediately to the hospital, praying all the way. The nurses and doctors began their work immediately. One of the doctors took me aside... Read more

As another Holy Day of obligation rolls by, the question arises once again about the wisdom and sustainability of current Mass provision in our Catholic schools in Scotland. In our Cathedral parish here in Motherwell, we have three Sunday Masses, but between us as clergy we normally celebrate eight Masses on Holy Days, mainly in school settings, with varying degrees of enthusiasm and participation on the part of pupils. What is the point? Are we (as is often argued) sacramentalizing pupils who have never been evangelized, never mind catechized? In addition, as Catholic schools worldwide also become increasingly multi-faith—with, for... Read more