A New Direction-
By Chris McCormick- Director of Discipleship

In June, I began my 9^th year of serving Holy Spirit as your Parish Catechetical Leader. I have been incredibly blessed to learn and serve with you all these years.
 
This year we will embark on a new initiative to better serve the families in our parish who have school age children, kindergarten to 5^th grade.
 
Families are so busy nowadays. And it seems we are always complaining that we, as a parish, can never plan things to make everyone happy. And the truth is we can’t. We have to accept that! The activities people are involved in are so diverse: band, sports, scouting, etc… Some teens even start college classes in the 8^th and 9^th grades… The time pressures are so enormous!
 
So, how can we, as a parish, help families cope with this constant pressure? The constant demands on their time?

We can let the families decide when is the best time for faith formation class. And we can support the parents and offer them the tools they need to lead this instruction.

After all, parents are the primary educators in the faith.
 

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.