By Susan Ciancio
If you’re like me, you wish you could bottle up all your knowledge to pass on to your children. You wish they could see things with your eyes and that they could have your experience. You wish that they understood our faith and God’s love as you do.
If all that is to happen, we must be proactive and teach them. We cannot allow them to sit silently with their faces in their phones mindlessly watching TikTok or YouTube videos. Those things may have some positive components and can offer fun or lightheartedness once in a while, but they do nothing to save our children’s souls. They do nothing to strengthen their relationship with Christ. They do nothing to build a better future filled with thinking and caring people.
We live in a crazy world. Just the other day, I overheard adults mocking God, discounting prayer, and espousing the belief that God does not exist.
Our children hear this kind of craziness every day—in school, on TV, on social media, and on the playground. And we know that, as they grow and go off to college, they will encounter much worse, even in so-called Catholic colleges. This morning I read about how faithful students at Loyola University in Chicago—a Jesuit school—were heckled by other students who supported a drag show sponsored by one of the campus groups. At one point someone shouted, “I hate Catholics.”
This is just further evidence that we are truly battling a culture of death—a culture bent on creating future adults who have no need or desire for religion, a culture that mentally and sometimes physically beats down anyone who dares stand up for morality or Catholic Church teaching.
What’s sad is that only three students chose to stand up for the faith and oppose this woke ideology. But at least there were three. At least three young people had moral courage. And maybe those three will inspire courage in others, for we know that this is pivotal in today’s world.
This is why programs like the Culture of Life Studies Program are so vital. We not only offer lessons that teach moral courage, but we offer lessons that teach the sanctity of all human beings, lessons on saints, and lessons that teach the truth about end-of-life issues, abortion, and marriage. Anyone—parent or teacher—anywhere can use our standalone lessons.
Our children desperately need this type of education today. We cannot send them out into a world that screams “I hate Catholics” without giving them the tools to stand up for their faith.
So now that summer is upon us and we have a little more time, let us take time to talk to our children about our faith. Let us make time to educate them about pro-life principles. Let us immerse them in God’s love so that they can shine it to others. And let us help instill in them the moral courage they need to become one of those three who will stand up and say “not in my school” or “not in my community” or “not in my country.”
If we do not teach our children these values, they will only learn the “values” of a society hell-bent on defeating any form of morality. If that is not the kind of country you want, take a stand and do something about it.
