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RELIGION IN

THE HOME
By Gerard A. Pottebawn

Times have changed. We’re running out

of Catholic schools. Parents are knocking

at rectory doors asking, “What do we

do now?” And they are hearing, “Send

your children to CCD class.” The answer
leaves them feeling shortchanged. They’re

worried.

They’ve contributed to the parish school.

Why can’t they get their children in?
The school isn’t big enough. Besides, there

aren’t enough nuns. The Bishop’s policy is

three nuns for every lay teacher.

The severe shortage of schools and

teachers has thrown a strong spotlight on

the basic fact of parental responsibility.

No wonder parents are worried.

© 1964

AVE MARIA PRESS • Notre Dame, Indiana

DeactcSSKf



For years they’ve been told they are

the primary educators: “You are responsi-

ble for sending your children to Catholic

schools.” Now that there aren’t enough
schools, it’s no wonder they ask, “What

do we do now?”

Parents Mistake Their Role

The situation, however, is worse than

they think. When Catholic schools were

available, parents defined the fulfillment

of their responsibility as primary edu-

cators in terms of sending their children

to Catholic schools. Now they are rede-
fining their role as primary educators in

terms of seeing that their children attend

one or two hours of Confraternity of Chris-

tian Doctrine instruction each week. This

is progress?

The basic problem is not that we’ve run

out of Catholic schools, but that parents

have been leaning on the Catholic schools

to tend to the parents’ own business as

primary religious educators. One might

ask, “Why weren’t parents worried be-

fore, when Catholic schools were avail-

able?” The answer in part is that instruc-

tion given parents on their role as primary

educators seldom went beyond “send your

children to Catholic schools.” Also, schools

were assuming more and more parental

responsibility and parents willingly gave

it up.



Are We Turned Around?

Another factor that continues to con-

dition the attitude of parents toward their

responsibility is the way in which parishes

are frequently founded these days: first

build the school, then the place of wor-

ship. An ironical situation. Preoccupied

with building a Catholic school system,

we find that we are spending almost all

of our educational resources on a project

that provides Catholic education for less

than half the total number of Catholic

children.

This disproportionate expenditure is fre-

quently described in arguments to support

spending more money and energy on

formal religious education under the Con-

fraternity of Christian Doctrine. It is a

good argument for a vital organization.

3



But even more fundamental, no matter

how much money and energy are spent on
formal instruction, neither the parochial

school nor the CCD can ultimately suc-
ceed without a family life that reflects

the nature of the people of God as a wor-

shiping people. The vitality of this people

comes from the real center of parish life

— the altar.
So far, the CCD solution to the school

problem lacks completeness. The biggest

concern is training CCD teachers. At CCD
conventions the speakers almost without

exception refer to parents as the primary

educators, and then move into their

‘‘pitch” on teacher-training and what needs

to be taught in CCD classes. An over-
dose of this point of view is as unrealistic

and dangerous as the opposite would be:

parents don’t need the help of formal re-

ligious education.

Somehow the two must harmonize.

Before Harmony, Understanding

Both CCD organizers and particularly
parents need to take a closer look at what

“primary educator” means. It means, first

of all, that parents create an environment,

the surroundings at home that shape the

child’s attitudes toward life. This respon-

sibility comes from God Himself.

God, our heavenly Father, created the

4



environment of the world for us, His

children. The duty of parents is to create

the environment of the home to bring their

children to love and serve our heavenly

Father. This makes parents God’s co-

creators, the primary educators here on

earth. They cannot afford to think that

sending their children to Catholic school

or CCD class can relieve them of this
natural and holy duty.

What, then, does this responsibility en-

tail? What must parents accomplish that

formal education cannot? Is there a com-

mon ground upon which parents and

formal educators must work?

Let’s Start From Beginning

In Holy Scripture we read that God,

our Creator, made us according to His own

image. As God’s cocreators and coedu-

cators, parents are responsible for project-

ing this image into the next generation.

The nature of this image is both human

and divine. It is a mystery. It is Christ.

Holy and sacred, therefore, is the duty

of parents. Christ used the union of hus-

band and wife as a figure of His own

sacred union with His bride, the Church:

“And as a bridegroom He went forth from

His bridal chamber.” In the words of St.

Augustine this means, “The Word took to

Himself a spouse — human flesh. His
5



bridal chamber — the womb of a virgin.
There He joined the Church to Himself

that there might be fulfilled what had been

foretold: ‘And the two shall become one

flesh/
”

Through the natural union of husband

and wife, parents participate in a very

special way in the life of the Church. This

union is not only analogous with the union

of Christ and His bride, the Church. Christ

drew parents into intimacy with His

Church by instituting the sacrament of

marriage. Through their sacramental

union, parents found homes that reflect

the image of Christ by reflecting the image

of His Church.

Altar Is the Center

Parents project the image of Christ into

the next generation by participating in the

mystery of His Church. This mysterious

life we learn about through Holy Scrip-

ture, and we live it through the Liturgical

Year, the annual commemoration of the

life and work of Christ. Through the

Scriptures, God speaks to us. And through

the liturgy, whose center is the Mass, we

respond to God’s word. This is our heri-

tage as God’s chosen people, a heritage

handed down to us through the genera-

tions as far back as Abraham, and our

first parents.

6



Love, the Foundation

Upon this ground parents, as God’s co-

educators, must work in creating an en-

vironment where their children can love

and serve God. And within this context,

formal educators also must work. Not

only in word but in practice must the

altar and not the school be the center

of life for each family in the parish. Be-

cause the center of life is not knowledge

but love.

7



By loving one another and their chil-
dren, parents create a religious environ-

ment in the home. And through this love,

children discover God, because God is

Love.

Parents also create a religious environ-

ment by commemorating various feasts of

the Church Year, by formal religious prac-

tices, by using circumstances in their daily

routine to call their children’s attention

to God’s presence, by co-operating with

the graces of their marriage, by their daily

conduct, conversation, television and read-

ing habits. In other words, parents create

a religious (or irreligious) environment

simply by being themselves. They teach by

the fact that they live with their children,

and their children imitate what they see.

The teaching that parents do, therefore,

is quite different from that of a school.

'‘There is one thing that a professional

teacher can do so much better than a

parent that the parent had better not even

try it,” writes Willis Nutting in Schools

and the Means of Education (Fides). “The

professional teacher can keep a roomful

of 50 restless young ones in some sem-

blance of order for several hours. She (or

he) can also arrange it so that each of

these is able to learn something even

though no two of them have the same

capacity. The parent can’t do that, but

8





the beautiful thing is that he doesn’t have

to. The lack of this educational technique

need not hinder him at all. He is not teach-

ing a school. He is teaching a child —
his child.”

Parents Are Always Teaching

Schools or no schools, parents are al-

ways teaching. They are giving their chil-

dren religious and moral — or irreligious
and immoral — training. The method does
not depend upon professional know-how,

but on an awareness that every time dad

tells mother how he outwitted the traffic

cop and their child stands by listening —
they are teaching. When dad and mother

pray together, they are teaching. The

child learns more from these exposures

than he does from whatever a professional

teacher or a parent may say to him.

Clearly, the role of parents as teachers

is a grave responsibility. Perhaps that is

why Christ recommended a millstone for

those who give scandal, and instituted a

sacrament especially for the married.

Given this sacramental help, parents are

responsible for using it. By co-operating

with these graces they not only save their

owa souls, but they also help their chil-

dren get to heaven. The two concepts are

inseparable.

10



When parents use their graces and in-

volve themselves in developing a mature

spiritual life, their children come to dis-

cover this pattern of living, and thereby

also discover God.

Actually parents do not only create an

environment; they are the child’s environ-

ment. They are educators not only because

of what they might teach, but because

of what their children learn from them. If

parents grudgingly help their children do

religion homework, they might be teach-

ing the right answers, but the children

are learning that religion is burdensome.

Parents can’t give what they themselves

don’t have.

When parents discover that they are

the child’s environment, they will begin

to have insight into their responsibility as

God’s coeducators. They will become

aware of God’s presence in their own lives.

By responding to this awareness, parents

teach their children that God is present.

They put themselves in a position to take

the next step — to use things at hand
and occasions as they arise as teaching

tools. Their teaching can then be more

direct without the stilted formality and

artificiality of a classroom atmosphere at

home. But parents need to watch for the

occasions.

11



Teaching by Word

A father gives his boy a black and
white, long-haired terrier. The boy cuddles

it for less than five minutes when he names

it “Hector.” The father sees a chance to

talk about how the animals got their

names.

“Did you know that when God put the

first man in Paradise,” the father says,

“He didn’t tell him the animals’ names?

Instead, God brought the animals to

Adam, and he named them.”

“How come?” the boy asks.

“To show us that we are master of the

animals, just as you are Hector’s master.

God made us better than animals.”

12



Parents need to watch for ways natural

to them for drawing their children to a

sense of God’s love. Taking a walk in

the neighborhood, through the park, or

going for a family drive in the country,

appreciating things for what they are,

helps to expose children (and parents

themselves) to the fact of creation and

the Creator, even though no one may

actually say a word.

Give a child a can of water, some paper

and paint and he’s off to a wonderland.

For parents, he’s making a mess per-

haps, but he’s expressing himself, creat-

ing a house, a tree, or something he’ll name

when he’s finished. The bright color fasci-

nates him. In his way he is praising God.

Parents need to recognize when the time

is right to take the ‘‘mess” as an oppor-

tunity to tell how God made the world and

saw that it was good . . . just as the

child sees the six-legged dog he drew as

the greatest thing that ever existed. In this

way, the child learns to enjoy his powers

and senses as God intended. He is learning

about creation and about his own creature-

liness. And in discovering that he is a

creature, he will discover his Creator. It

must be a discovery, and discoveries take

more time than one or two hours of class

each week. With his parents’ help, the

child grows up to these discoveries.

13



“Grace Follows Nature”

“It is an axiom of theology that ‘Grace

follows nature/ ” Father Leo Trese writes

in his book Parent and Child (Sheed &
Ward). “This means that the more fully

human a person is, the more saintly he

is likely to become. The more complete-

ly he cultivates his human potentialities,

the more there is for grace to build upon.

The stronger he is in natural virtue, the

easier becomes the acquisition and prac-

tice of supernatural virtue. Thus we may

say that while the parents’ ultimate ob-

jective is to help the child become a saint,

the parents’ immediate objective is to help

the child on toward becoming a mature,

well-balanced and integrated adult.”

The child’s image of his heavenly Father

grows out of the image he holds of his

earthly father. So the father must be ma-

ture. The security he feels in his heavenly

Father grows out of his relationship with

his own father and mother. Their rela-

tionship must be spiritually mature. The

child stands on the love he experiences

at home to reach up and feel the texture

of the garment of Love Himself. When a

child experiences love with other human

beings, he enlarges his capacity for a

genuine encounter with God. Though

formal education might help, it’s not like-

14



ly that he’ll discover this in class. Parents

must understand that this lesson is their

responsibility as God’s coeducators —
to teach their children to love.

The Family and the Liturgy

With nature and grace so integrated, it

is clear why parents must lead their chil-

dren to an awareness of God in a way

that is natural and unaffected. The master

plan to follow in creating a religious en-

vironment is Holy Mother Church’s own

plan, the Liturgical Year of Grace.

The expression “Liturgical Year” or

“Church Year” frequently causes ordi-

narily receptive minds to close. People of

this mind unfortunately have been brought

to think of the liturgy as something for

an elite, who, among other things, eat

purple beans during Lent. On the other

hand, the “liturgical family” might con-

sider those of a different mind as belong-

ing to “the novena crowd.”

We need to understand that many
events called liturgical, actually are not

such. Without going into strict definitions,

a liturgical event demands the presence

of a priest, and must be an official form

of public worship of the Church. Events

that have their roots in these official forms

of public worship are called paraliturgical,

“on the side of” the liturgy.

15



PRAYE

FATHER C

O Father of mankind, W
and entrusted them to my ch

and to prepare them for eve

heavenly grace to fulfill this

give, and what to withhold;

forbear; make me gentle, yet

neither weakly indulgent noi

both by word and example, 1 1

wisdom and piety, and that

them to the unutterable joys c



. OF A

L MOTHER

hast given me these children,

\e, to bring them up for Thee

'.sting life, help me with Thy

zred duty. Teach me what to

hen to reprove and when to

m; considerate and watchful;

xcessively severe. Grant that,

V lead them in the ways of true

may finally be admitted with

mr true home in heaven.



No Purple Beans for Lent

Parents need not feel guilty about not

responding to the Church’s official public

worship with purple beans during Lent

and the like. Parents do have an obligation

to participate in the truly liturgical func-

tions, and to carry the spirit of these

events into their family life.

Through the liturgy man responds to

God’s word, which we hear through Holy

Scripture. This is the dialogue of love be-

tween God and man. When families fol-

low the Church Year, they are participat-

ing in the fullest possible way in the

mystery of God’s love.

By following the Church Year, the

people of God celebrate Christ’s life and

work. The year revolves around two cen-

tral mysteries: the Incarnation at Christ-

mas and the Redemption at Eastertide.

Weekly Instruction

The themes of Sunday Masses set the

liturgical seasons and moods. Parents need

to learn to use the Mass of the Catechu-

mens, which includes the Epistle and Gos-

pel, as the family’s weekly instruction.

Through these lessons, taken from the

Bible, God speaks to the family. And

through the Eucharistic liturgy, the family

responds to God’s word.

18



All of Life Is Offering

The quality of that response is in part

determined by what the family brings to

the altar from its daily life. If that daily

life at home is permeated with the spirit of

the liturgy, that is, the spirit of the life

and work of Christ, then the family mem-

bers can return to the altar as “other

Christs.’’ One with Christ, they then offer

themselves in a way pleasing and accept-

able to the heavenly Father.

Then, as pleasing victims, the family is

justified in eating at the Eucharistic ban-

quet, where the family’s life in Christ is

renewed through the power of the Holy

19



Spirit. With the power of the Holy Spirit,

the family returns to its home in the city,

the suburbs, or the country, to bring to

their comer of the world the word of God,

the Word who is God, Christ.

Home a Miniature Church

The cycle of the Church Year that fol-

lows the life and work of Christ is called

the temporal cycle. The Church Year also

follows a sanctoral cycle — the feasts of
saints. By celebrating the seasons of the

Church Year, by remembering family

patron saints* feast days, by commemorat-

ing anniversaries of when family members

received the various sacraments, parents

bring the spirit of the liturgy into the

home. These celebrations need not be

more elaborate than a little extra dessert

and a token remembrance, a baptismal

candle burning at the evening meal. In

ways such as this, parents co-operate with

the Church, who is Christ, the master

teacher. They make the home a little

Church, a miniature Mystical Body.

Phony Gimmicks Are Out

While following the Church Year is an

educational program in itself, we need to

remember that the liturgy is primarily the

Church's form of worship. Liturgy has

20



often been called ‘‘dogma prayed/’ This

doesn’t mean a lot of verbiage and kneel-

ing. Our Lord simply prayed, “Abba,

Father.” By commemorating the Church

Year in the home, the entire family routine

becomes a prayer joined to the greatest

prayer, the Mass.

Parents need to guard against allowing

their commemorations of the liturgy to be-

come shallow mechanisms. Children are

the first to discover something phony.

Parents may think they are teaching chil-

dren the spirit of Advent via the Advent

wreath, but unless their use of it is genuine,

they are learning that religion is a set of

gimmicks, or a formula. This is so espe-

cially of older children. It points out why

parents should start religious habits even

before children are born: later their chil-

dren from the very beginning will find

religious customs a part of life.

This brings back the point made at the

beginning: parents themselves need to be

developing their own spiritual lives so that

their children will discover this pattern of

living. In turn, parents will find it more

natural to talk about God in relation to

the ordinary things around the house.

They will discover that following the life

of Christ is something to live for.

21



How to Get Help

Creating specific ways of observing the

Church Year at home is not easy without

help from other parents. As in other

things, parents need to exchange ideas, to

share successes and failures. They need

to feel they’re not alone, to see other

parents overcome their embarrassment and

awkwardness as they try to get their re-

ligion out of their heads and into their

hands. If no man is an island, certainly

a family isn’t.

Parents today particularly need each

other because they have been given very

little to work with. Until recently, the

bulk of Catholic publishers’ energies in the

area of religious education has been spent

developing material for use in the class-

room. Slowly, more material is becoming

available, in book, pamphlet, and maga-

zine form.

Parents can learn about available tools

through CCD parent-educator discussion
groups. In such groups, parents learn to

shed some of their embarrassment in try-

ing to express their religion in terms be-

yond the usual meal formulas and Friday

abstinence. They no longer explain that

they go to Sunday Mass “because they

have to.” They learn from each other that

parenthood is not a burdensome set of de-

mands, but a holy duty, richly rewarding.

22



Your pastor can help you start a parent-

educator group if none exists in your

parish. Don’t fear leading such a group.

You’ll probably want to form the group

with parents whose children are roughly

in the same age group. One meeting a

month will do wonders. Make sure both

husband and wife attend.

For a topic outline, follow the Church

Year. In a short time, the group, parent

by parent, will discover the meaning of

their holy duty as God’s coeducators.

Against this background describing the

responsibility of parents as the primary

educators, it is clear that the complete

answer to ‘What do we do now?” is not

“Send your children to CCD class.” It
should be clear also that parents with

children in Catholic schools are not neces-

sarily thereby fulfilling their duty as God’s

coeducators. What then does formal in-

struction offer? How can parents har-
monize that with what goes on at home?

Education: Yesterday and Today

The way religion is taught today is not

the same as it was taught when today’s

parents were in school. All parents should

know about new developments so that

when dealing with their children’s situa-

tion they are not thinking in terms of the

way they were taught.

23



Formal religious education has always

and still does put a wealth of religious

knowledge in order. For example, in re-

gard to the teaching of the sacraments, the

child in class studies all the sacraments in

one neat order, although in actual prac-

tice he may receive the sacraments in any

of several orders, and some of them he will

not or cannot ever receive. Because the

presentation is systematic, it has the flavor

of artificiality.

This type of training may have been

adequate at one time. Not too many years

ago, formal education played only a sup-

plementary role because children had al-

ready acquired religious knowledge at

home and from Sunday sermons. When

industrialization came, it exerted a major

de-Christianizing influence on the home.

Children came to school with very little

religious backgroimd. The school tried to

furnish what normally the home supplied

— not only instruction, but also example.
It was soon discovered that what had

been taught was too abstract to be use-

ful. Catechetical training frequently and

inadvertently cultivated in children an

indifference to religion. They found the

religion class dull and boring. Therefore,

religion itself lost its appeal. This generally

characterized the instruction many of

today’s parents received.

24



Narrowing the Gap

Today's method of teaching religion and

the content of the religion courses are dif-

ferent. They have narrowed the gap be-

tween the environment of the classroom

and real life. The instruction is adapted

to the child’s mental capacities. The pre-

sentation proceeds from the concrete and

visual to the abstract, from the known

to the unknown. When teaching about the

gift of faith, for example, the teacher

might first ask the children what happens

at birthday parties.

‘‘You get presents!” is the response.

“And if you get a bicycle from your

25



father, you can’t wait to use it,” the teach-

er might say. ‘‘What if you’d not use it

at all — but just put it in the garage and
leave it there to rust? Wouldn’t that in-

sult your father? He gave it to you to

use. This is the way our heavenly Father

feels when He gives us His gift of faith.”

And then the teacher would probably draw

out of the children ways of using God’s

gift.

Bringing Religion to Life

The instruction involves the whole per-

son — senses, heart, mind, will — so that
the child learns not only religious knowl-

edge but also experiences a conviction to

live the truths he has learned. In the

past, children received mere instruction;

today to teach religion means to make the

whole Christian mystery — the mystery
of God’s love — live.
Each doctrine is presented in the con-

text of the whole story of salvation. Each

lesson is presented from the viewpoint of

God’s love for the child and his response

to that love.

The two central wellsprings that refresh

formal catechetical instruction, therefore,

are Holy Scripture (that is, God speaking

to man) and the liturgy (man’s response).

Today, unlike the past, the catechism

formula is not the starting point. First,

26



the teacher develops the child’s under-

standing of a religious truth. Having

drawn upon the Scriptures, and instilled

the child with the liturgical expression of

a doctrine and a desire to respond in

Christian living, the teacher then arrives

at the formulation.

Not too many years ago, instruction be-

gan with the catechism formula. The suc-

cess of the lesson was determined more by

how well the child knew the formula than

by his appreciation of the truth expressed.

The modern catechist, drawing upon

Holy Scripture, the liturgy, and experi-

ences from the child’s life, develops in the

child a desire to respond in word, in wor-

ship, and in action. In a word, the objec-

tive is to form Christian witnesses.

Home Life Is Crucial

For the school child, his home is the

scene of his response to formal religious

education. With this realization, we can

see now how the environment created by

parents dovetails with the formal instruc-

tion: through a Christian home life that

is liturgically oriented. In class, the child

learns the realities of the mystery of God’s

love. The role of the parents is to create

an environment where the child can par-

ticipate in the mystery of God’s love.

Obviously, formal education cannot re-

27



place the home or make up for what the

home must provide. From the teacher’s

viewpoint, the warmth of love that the

child takes from class will either be snuffed

out or grow into a flame, depending upon

the home. But more important, from the

parents’ viewpoint, the warmth of love that

the child brings to class determines

whether or not the child has the capacity

to appreciate God’s love. “Grace follows

nature.”

Liturgy: Response to Love

It should be clear that family life in

the parish cannot revolve around the

school or formal religious education pro-

gram. The Mass, the core of the liturgy,

must be the parish core. Parishioners need

to be conscious of the altar as the central

source of life just as the family knows

that it gets its food from the family table.

In a most sublime way does grace here

too follow nature: in the image of Christ

and His bride. Holy Mother Church, the

father and mother of the family provide

the meal for their children. This mystery,

reflected by Christian parents, becomes a

living reality when the family of God

gathers around the altar for the Eucha-

ristic banquet, the love feast.

When the child comes from a family in

the habit of celebrating the liturgy, and

28



the teacher in class explains the meaning

of one or the other event in the Church

Year, this instruction is meaningful to that

child. But to the child from a home where

the Mass means only “going to church”

and where liturgical feasts are never men-

tioned, the religious instruction can make

little sense as far as life is concerned.

Split Spirituality

Where no harmony exists between the

classroom and home, the child may be

learning all the answers, but he is also

learning mixed standards. He develops a

set of standards for the Church, another

set for dealing with life at home, and per-

haps a third set for when he is at public

school with his friends. When this hap-

pens, the child begins to live his life as

presented in a news magazine, with religion

as one of several distinct, unrelated cate-

gories, isolated from the rest of life. The

result is tragic.

Harmony between classroom and home

also means that parents provide their chil-

dren with time and a quiet place to do

homework. They need to keep up with

what the child’s homework requires. There

must be communication between teacher

and parent and not only at report card

time.

29



Exchange of Ideas Essential

Nor is it out of place for parents to of-

fer their services in organizing a meeting

where all parents can hear the teachers ex-

plain what doctrines they are teaching in

the various grades. The religious instruc-

tion system, after all, is to help the parents

fulfill their responsibility, not the teacher’s.

Such parent-teacher meetings offer a

chance to exchange ideas on how to apply

class lessons to home life. It lessens the

chance of a contradiction arising between

what the child hears in class and what he

hears from his parents. Teachers have a

chance to explain what is expected of the

30



child and parents for homework. Still

more important, it offers parents a chance

to explain what they expect of the teacher.

Otherwise the tail wags the dog.

Without an exchange between parent

and teacher, each remains an unknown

quantity to the other, with the child oscil-

lating between the two. Parents who don’t

bother to bridge the gap between home and

classroom show either lack of interest in

religion or in the child. When this hap-

pens, what is the child learning? That he,

or religious education, is a necessary bur-

den. He attends school about 30 hours

each week to learn about the world, and

one or two hours each week to learn about

God. If his formal education remains as

categorical as that, the child can only con-

clude that God is one-thirtieth as impor-

tant as the world. Parents are always

teaching, and the children are always

learning.

The Real Task of Parents

Bringing religion and life into intimate

union is really the problem that underlies

making the transition between the class-

room and home. Education doesn’t take

place in the classroom, but in the child.

Parents plant the seeds that grow into

the child’s attitudes toward life and God.

They set his standards. Parents need to

31



understand that if they do not create a

religious environment at home, they are

creating a secularistic environment. They

cannot turn over the task of religious edu-

cation to the school or CCD, even if they

want to. If they try, they are not only

cheating their children of the chance to

grow up spiritually, but they are also turn-

ing their backs on God-given opportunities

of developing their own spiritual lives.

They are standing in the way of their

children’s baptismal graces and failing to

co-operate with their own graces of mar-

riage. Parents can’t escape their holy

duty. They are by nature always teaching.

Religion means that God has come to

us, and lives in relationship to us, through

Christ, through His Church, and in turn,

through the parents. This is the way God

made it, and “He saw that it was very

good.”

NIHIL OBSTAT—John L. Reedy, C.S.C.
Censor Deputatus

IMPRIMATUR—^ Most Rev. Leo A. Pursley, D.D.
Bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend

January, 1964

THIRD PRINTING, November, 1965

AU rights reserved. This pamphlet may not be

reproduced by any means in whole or in part

without prior permission.



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RELIGION IN

THE HOME

originally appeared in

a special series of

articles entitled:

PARENTS

AS TEACHERS.

This pamphlet is pub-

lished in response to

the requests of those

people who read it

first in . . .