A DRE in the northern suburbs of Chicago, Matt Furjanic, published a nice article in his parish bulletin titled “Top 10 Ways to Help Your Child Get the Most of His/Her Religious Education Sessions.” Nice job, Matt!

1. Take an active interest in your child’s work - review lessons together, look in your child’s folder each week when he/she brings it home. Help your child complete any homework assignments. Post papers/artwork on the refrigerator or bulletin board at home, visit his/her classroom, etc. Pay attention to correspondence from the DRE.
2. Get to know your child’s catechist - Ask the catechist to keep you informed on your child’s progress or lack of it.
3. Make class sessions a priority - Make sure you put your child’s religious education dates on the family calendar. Try not to schedule events that compete with religious education.
4. Be involved in your parish community and the larger community - Remember church is always bigger than your own immediate family. God’s family is very, very big!
5. Continue to nurture your own spiritual growth and development - Read good Catholic literature and books. Attend parish retreats and religious education offerings for adults.
6. Be open - Help your child to notice and pay attention to events of wonder and awe in life - a sunset or the song of the cicadas; the death of a pet or the arrival of a baby brother or sister. All are moments of grace.
7. Act on the faith - Help your child make connections between what he/she is learning in religious education and other life experiences at home, in school and in the neighborhood. Help him/her see that faith values make a difference in your family.
8. Pray - Develop a strong practice of personal prayer. Also pray at home with your child and family. Although formal prayers are often studied and the children pray in their faith sessions, unless you pray with your child at home, prayer remains an abstraction.
9. Attend Mass weekely - Take an active part in the Mass. Worship with your whole heart. Bring your child to Mass. Sit up close so your child can see. Cultivate an attitude of gratitude in the Eucharist. Teach your child the prayers of the Mass.
10. Commit yourself to holiness - Strive to be the best Catholic you can be. Be a good example of a faith-filled parent for your child.

I just got this advice from a DRE friend who tells me that she always gives her catechists the student book first before she gives them their catechist manual. She instructs them to read through the student book to get a feel for the flow of the book and the content and flavor. Then and only then does she distribute the catechist manual which helps to unpack the content of the student book.

That makes a lot of sense to me and I thought I’d pass it along as advice for those of you who will be using a new textbook this year. Sometimes, jumping right into the catechist manual can be overwhelming. If we have a good idea of the student book, then the catechist manual will serve us as a resource for accessing the content it contains.

For many of us, the start of the religious education year is just a few weeks away! Let’s keep in touch about advice and strategies for entering into this year of grace!

Psychologists at the University of Texas have released the results of a study of nearly 2000 people that identifies 237 reasons why people have sex.

Now I know that there are lots of things about the results of this survey that are bothersome, not the least of which is the casual approach to pre-marital and extra-marital sex that is so prevalent in our culture. However, I’d like to focus on a different perspective.

I’m bracing for the articles and homilies that will respond to this research by issuing blanket condemnations of our culture’s sexual attitudes and practices while ignoring the rich complexities of married sexual expression.

In other words, if you talk to married Catholics, you will discover that, within a marriage, there are indeed numerous reasons for having sex. Of course, within our Tradition, these numerous reasons for marital sex are summarized by the words unitive and procreative. The unitive dimension of marriage can be understood as the mutual and total self-giving of spouses to each other. The procreative dimension is the participation of the spouses in the creation of new life.

My point is that these 2 reasons are the over-arching reasons why married couples have sex, however, there are numerous immediate reasons for having sex.

It is specifically under the category of unitive that a plethora of immediate reasons for having sex within a marriage may indeed exist. A couple may be playful. They may feel romantic. They may feel particularly attracted to one another. They may have a need to feel accepted. They may be making up after an argument. They may be releasing tension. And so on. These are immediate reasons that, for faithful married couples, fall under the category of unitive. In other words, the immediate reasons may change, but the ultimate reason does not…to totally give of oneself to one’s spouse.

What am I trying to say? I’m just trying to state the fact that we need to talk about sex to Catholic married people in a manner that does not make sex sound like a sterile theological event.

God invented sex and is not embarrassed by its erotic and sensual aspects. This research, while pointing out how alarmingly casual our approach to sex is in our culture, also points out the complexities of sexual expression. These complexities are present within Catholic marriages and we need to be able to talk about them without somehow feeling like we are being profane. Sex (within a marriage) IS A SACRAMENT!

Just as we encourage frequent reception of the Eucharist, we should encourage Catholic married couples to engage in frequent reception of another sacrament: married sex. Grace is no less present in this sacrament than in any other of the sacraments and we should be extolling the beauty of this sacrament and its expression instead of sounding like we are always saying NO! when it comes to the topic of sex.

I’d love to hear a homilist refer to this study about the 237 reasons for having sex and then encourage the married people in the congregation to go home and practice a few dozen of them!