The moral life of the child and how to nurture it, Part 2.
“Children are allowed to grow up in ignorance and moral idleness; hence their piety is too often nothing but mere sentiment–a sort of misty and vague dreaminess — which is death to the spirit of prayer.” – Abbess Bruyere
{Here is my first post on how important moral education is to happiness.}
Let’s take it for granted that you are well acquainted with the archives here (drop down the “Raising Children” menu in our menu bar) and know how much I’ve written about home life, lived with order and wonder (even amidst the perfectly normal chaos of family!).
Through the Liturgical Year and ordinary day-to-day interactions, full of affection, our children gradually become familiar with Scripture, prayer, and worship.
The literature we read to the child, the stories he hears, and soon, the books he reads, all pay homage to the real moral truths that he begins to apprehend (if they are chosen wisely!): that the good is worth seeking, that actions matter, that inside of us all is a compass that keeps us on the path, if we don’t break it. Not that any of the books say so in so many words, but they take it for granted, and they are beautiful. Beauty itself reveals the good.
The baby and the very young child, in the normal course of things, learn that some things are naughty* and that obedience brings a delightful freedom and sense of belonging. For the under-six-or-sevens, your approval is what matters.
And then comes the time that reason dawns. (Both religion and psychology note that the child seems to turn a corner somewhere around age seven — I like to think of it as a stage stretching from maybe age five to eight, because it really does depend on the child and doesn’t happen overnight, either.) The child becomes aware of a world out there and his relationship to it — including the world of good and evil.
A certain amount of actual instruction has to occur. The question of “how to teach religion” or “how to pass on the faith to our children” is more about living than about telling, but telling there must be. Just a little, to rescue their spiritual life from “nothing but mere sentiment” as the quote above has it.
We will talk about that now.
We need to pay attention to the formal moral education of our children! Have you not noticed the crying need? The masses of people who seem to have no knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil? That we keep coming back to the realization that no amount of money or therapy can help them, because they need the habit of good?
Where did things break down?
I suggest to you that they broke down with the reluctance of parents to simply teach them — and the clergy to teach the parents…
If only, we think — if only there were an established list of rules or even commandments that covered all human behavior, that we could teach children early on, avoiding the obvious pitfalls of merely responding to difficulties as they crop up!
If only these rules went along with the child as he grows up, there, for him to consult in times of difficulty — even when we are not there to correct! They should be permanent, universal — written on stone, as it were.
What a relief that would be!
Well, good news, there is such a list, and I think you know that it is the Ten Commandments. Jesus Himself spoke of them, saying “If ye love me, keep my commandments,” (John 14:15).
I suggest the following plan of action, and everything that I say here is a gradual process to be done in the years between the age of reason dawning and the time, around puberty, when a more analytical approach can be taken. (Part 3, maybe!)
Reading material
Get yourself the Catechism of the Catholic Church. If you haven’t already, start reading it from the beginning. But also start reading the section concerning the Commandments. You are really your child’s spiritual director, and a director has to know the moral law pretty well — you can’t teach what you don’t know yourself, and you certainly can’t teach virtue without yourself striving for it.
This requires ongoing study and you might as well go to the source. The Catechism of the Council of Trent would be the other one to read. Have a copy of each handy — yes, it’s the work of a lifetime to go through these treasuries — and a challenge — and a joy!
Get the Baltimore Catechism for your child. You can get the old St. Joseph version with its old-fashioned pictures. Some like them, some don’t — I think the fact that they are in black and white makes them more universal than their style suggests; but if you’d rather, there is a version with no pictures.
Take this book as a curriculum guide for you. It provides you, in addition to the basics of faith, with the timeline: Creation, Fall, exile, giving of the Law, Redemption, founding of the Church, Second Coming. You will refer to this timeline over and over, and soon you will notice that we are living in it as we live the Liturgical Year.
The book provides you with Scriptural references. Take each lesson slowly — each one could be a week or quite a bit more! By the time you read it yourself, either read it to the children or say it in your own words, delve into the Scriptures in a slow, loving, listening way, ask them the questions (again, quite likely in your own words, not as “busy desk work”), and think it all over, yes, a week or more might go by.
Thus, one of the books might take two years! That’s fine.
Very importantly, the Baltimore Catechism takes you and your child through each commandment, slowly and with a lot of insight. By slowly, I mean that you will return to this year after year! (There are other editions for older children that go more into depth.)
The Greatest Commandment
Specifically about learning the Commandments: First, read Jesus’ answer to the lawyer.
Jesus said unto him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. — Matthew 22:35-40.
This is called “The Greatest Commandment” and of course it’s a summation of the Law in Deuteronomy and in Leviticus.
You can print The Greatest Commandment to form two sides of a hinged diptych, as they do on wooden tablets in the Atrium — your Mod Podge would be very handy for this use!), or otherwise connected. They go together and form two parts of the Law. (You can put them in a pocket folder to make a lapbook, unfolding and refolding to make your diptych.) I do think it’s worth making a beautiful one of your own, either printed in a readable but beautiful font or copied in your own hand. That way the child has a model to aim for, and you will both be meditating on it, just as God tells us to do.
Keep having your child write this out. He can certainly memorize it very quickly.
Now let’s also look at Luke 10:28, the Parable of the Good Samaritan. We don’t often pay attention to the beginning, where Jesus asks the expert in the law, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?”
The man answers: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'” Jesus approves of this answer — and do you see how important it is that the man is able to say it to him? We can use this as a model for teaching our children; only then does Jesus go on to explain to him who his neighbor is.
The man must know the big picture, so to speak, of the commandments, before he can delve into the particulars of loving his neighbor.
What he repeats is the “summary of the Law” — and what is it summarizing? The Ten Commandments, of course. So then you will start studying those. It’s easy enough to find or make worksheets that help children put them in order, learn their finer points, and memorize them.
The Ten Commandments
A good work (and it could be weeks or months before you get to this, and you will return to it) is to have the child copy out the Ten Commandments on “stone tablets.”
But — important! Do not do as you see all over the internet and in many workbooks, and put five on one side and five on the other!
No! Not five and five!
Put the first three on one side, and the other seven on the other. Here is a document for you: Stone Tablets for 10 Commandment Work.
The reason is that the first three relate to the first part of the Greatest Commandment — loving and honoring and worshiping God. The seven relate to the second part — loving one’s neighbor.
Note that the fourth commandment — honor your mother and your father — provide the bridge between the two, for the family is the way the child learns of God’s love here on earth as he develops.
As I said, there are many ways to memorize them. I would take some care to keep whatever medium you choose serious and appropriate (that is, stay away from cartoons unless you want your child to associate God’s Law with, well, cartoons).
Some thoughts
As you are doing this, you might keep a couple of things in mind (besides not rushing, which I hope you are convinced not to do).
First, don’t take the attitude that you are trying to persuade your child of the truth of these Commandments. They are givens — literally given to Moses by God. They have to do with the reality of God and of how He made us; they also reflect the Fall and our inclination to sin.
So don’t seek affirmation. Be calm, not anxious. The most important thing the child learns in his religious education is that the universe isn’t here to affirm him; on the contrary, he must conform to its implacable ways. Blessedly, Our Lord came and died that he might do that!
Second, be aware that the study of the Commandments is the way we form the conscience of the child and give him the resolve to obey it. Romano Guardini says, (speaking actually of the Commandment of keeping Holy the Sabbath Day, in his marvelous little book, Meditations Before Mass):
“In the conviction of a thing’s finality and inalterability lies a peculiar strength. As soon as I am convinced that I should perform some act, I can do it… Anything but steadfast by nature, man is always ready to let things slide; this definite law in his life is something like the bones in his body, giving him firmness and character.”
Confession
So knowing the Commandments is obviously the way to prepare for confession (and not just for children!). Confession is how we grow in the moral life, children and adults alike — how else are we to do it? We need grace, we need Jesus.
So often we are flailing about, trying desperately to think of what we will say. Probably this is the greatest obstacle to confession — we just can’t think! Are we really so bad? But as soon as we delve into the commandments, we realize right away where our fault lies.
I’ve taught the Commandments to children for years now. I’m always struck by their intense interest in the ones about lying and stealing. I think it’s a mistake to think that children don’t commit sins — to trivialize the importance of their failings, either objectively or as it appears to them. Their consciences are sometimes stricken, and you can sense that it’s a great relief, actually, for them to know exactly how they can repent and make amends. Of course, they never say any of this, but their riveted attention gives you the hint of it.
I’ve heard good priests complain that confessions tend to be things like “I didn’t love myself enough” and “I failed to love God as I should.” But really, I fault the priests — as well as the seeping of self-absorption into the devotion business — because all the teaching we get today (and all we give our children) is just that vague and useless.
Remedy: The Good Old Ten Commandments.
The Baltimore Catechism seems to understand the mind of the child very well. I use it as a guide, reading the points and paraphrasing as I see fit — another time you can dwell on another aspect if you like.**
Here, in this post, I am really focusing on teaching and learning the Moral Law, but you can easily see how to expand this method of using the Baltimore Catechism in the various parts of the religious curriculum. One really delves into Creation, the goodness of the universe, the maleness and femaleness of man; the Fall, and what its parts are; each stage of covenant giving along the way; the long, remote preparation for Redemption; the Life of Christ; the establishment of the Church. This outline would be used for every stage with its own appropriate level of detail and analysis.
We can go into it another time.
For now, I want to get across how simple and direct it is to teach the Ten Commandments. Our world is hungry for people who know and love God’s law, who know right from wrong and good from evil, and who desire to grow in virtue.
*Long ago, when I was just starting to have children and to think about how I would talk to them, I read the advice that one should call behavior “naughty,” not the child “bad” — and I couldn’t agree more. “Don’t be naughty” is a much better correction than “you are a bad boy.” It’s self-evident, isn’t it?
** The only real editing I’ve done of the Baltimore Catechism as presented in this book is to leave off the emphasis it places on immodesty, under the 6th commandment, because my class has been of boys only. I always add that for boys, modesty means dressing appropriately to the occasion, not assuming that going about in your undershirt is appropriate, and looking in a girl’s eyes, no matter how she happens to be dressed. With my own children, I only discovered this book by the time I got to Bridget. I think we had enough conversations about modesty that we didn’t spend too much time on it. The main thing with this commandment, when addressing a child, is to say that one doesn’t treat someone who isn’t a spouse as if he or she is, and vice versa. I tell them that it’s something to think about for later, when they are thinking of whom they will marry. (I have posts about this subject if you are interested: here is one about purity.)
The post The moral life of the child and how to nurture it, Part 2. appeared first on Like Mother Like Daughter.
