Why should parishes and families use a family catechesis program?

Because Faith is best taught and lived out in the family, the Church calls parents to be the first and foremost educators of their children.
 

Children are more likely to put into practice the faith they see lived out day-to-day at home.

There is a receptivity and vulnerability to good formation which only happens in the early years of children’s development, and only in the family. A family catechesis program helps families to embrace this time and use it to form their children well. Read more about the benefits of family catechesis »

A careful reading through the documents of the Catholic Church quickly reveals the Church's great expectations for the family. “The right and duty of parents to give education is essential ... original and primary ... and it is irreplaceable and incapable of being entirely delegated to others” [Familiaris Consortio, 36]. Christ and His Church call parents to be “the first and foremost educators of their children” [Gravissimum Educationis, 3]. Family catechesis aids families in becoming the domestic churches they are called to be. [Lumen Gentium] Learn more about Church support for family catechesis »
 

What makes Family Formation’s
catechesis program so successful?

 

Through our unique catechesis model, Family Formation equips parents to pass on the Catholic Faith to their children, and grow in their faith together as a family.

Family Formation was developed by the Catholic Church of Saint Paul in Ham Lake, Minnesota as a fresh approach to the difficulties we experienced with traditional religious education programs that only provided a role for parish workers in a child’s catechesis. As a church, we recognized our ineffectiveness in teaching and forming children if their parents were not involved in the process.

As a result, we developed Family Formation with an adult formation component that teaches and trains parents in the Truths of the Faith, so that they can teach their children. This model provides parents with the tools they need to share the Good News and the beauty of the Catholic Faith with their children and to form them into true disciples of Jesus Christ.

Through engaging, down-to-earth, easy to understand lessons and activities, Family Formation brings parishes and families together to learn their Faith in joy and with excitement. This shared learning experience develops traditions and spills over into families’ everyday lives—incorporating the Catholic Faith becomes a way of life! Learn more about the history of Family Formation »

The Right and Duty of Parents Regarding Education

Familiaris Consortio -Pope John Paul II

(The Role of the Christian Family in the Modern World)

36. The task of giving education is rooted in the primary vocation of married couples to participate in God's creative activity: by begetting in love and for love a new person who has within himself or herself the vocation to growth and development, parents by that very fact take on the task of helping that person effectively to live a fully human life. As the Second Vatican Council recalled, "since parents have conferred life on their children, they have a most solemn obligation to educate their offspring. Hence, parents must be acknowledged as the first and foremost educators of their children. Their role as educators is so decisive that scarcely anything can compensate for their failure in it. For it devolves on parents to create a family atmosphere so animated with love and reverence for God and others that a well-rounded personal and social development will be fostered among the children. Hence, the family is the first school of those social virtues which every society needs."

The right and duty of parents to give education is essential, since it is connected with the transmission of human life; it is original and primary with regard to the educational role of others, on account of the uniqueness of the loving relationship between parents and children; and it is irreplaceable and inalienable, and therefore incapable of being entirely delegated to others or usurped by others.

In addition to these characteristics, it cannot be forgotten that the most basic element, so basic that it qualifies the educational role of parents, is parental love, which finds fulfillment in the task of education as it completes and perfects its service of life: as well as being a source, the parents' love is also the animating principle and therefore the norm inspiring and guiding all concrete educational activity, enriching it with the values of kindness, constancy, goodness, service, disinterestedness and self-sacrifice that are the most precious fruit of love.

Join us this year as we introduce family formation into our parish life.