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Religious Education
Since our parish’s founding, religious education has been problematic. The diversity of our children’s ages, special family circumstances, and scarcity of personnel resources all led to our program being quite basic. After thought and exploration, we determined that the problem stemmed from Saint Patrick’s trying to imitate surrounding parish programs, when what we should have been doing all along is embrace the uniqueness of our parish and address religious education from that uniqueness.
Saint Patrick’s will provide a religious education for all parish children Grades 1 through high school, who wish to participate, using a “master teacher” approach: that is, individual instruction of each student, reinforced by participation of student and parents.
Details of our parish religious education program
• Setting: a 30-minute appointment, at a mutually convenient location( church, home, other), during which the Master Teacher will meet with parent and child to review each lesson, as well as the previous one (subject to customization due to each child’s unique needs and circumstances).
• Content: parent and child work at home, on their own time, at their own pace, to absorb the material and use the provided workbook for reinforcement.
• Materials: each child will receive, free of charge, an age-appropriate text book and workbook from the award-winning Faith and Life Series designed for home-schooling in the Catholic faith, slightly modified to accommodate our parish’s minimal variations from Roman Catholic practice. The materials are available for your review online at www.faithandlifeseries.com;
• Schedule: classes ordinarily begin in September until the material for the year is completed. Annual registration will occur at each year’s concluding session to eliminate need for formal registration and to assure continuity of instruction for the following year.
• Sacramental Preparation: only children who have participated in our religious education program will be admitted, as educated Catholics, to First Communion and Confirmation. The Pastor will be directly involved in this process as need arises.
Adults of college age and older will be prepared for the sacraments in a different manner.
• Requirements: you must be registered and sustaining members of our parish family, attending Mass at least twice a month as a family, be willing to keep appointments for scheduled classes and to take time to reinforce the material. In exchange for your expenditure of time and attention, the parish assumes all financial expense for textbooks, associated materials and program costs.
• Pre-School (ages 3-younger than Grade 1): We wish to reactivate this program which involves activities in the lower church from the beginning of Mass (10:30) through the sign of peace. As the number of children is sufficient, this will be organized and put into place.
On the day of your child’s baptism, you and your child’s godparents assumed responsibility for their formation in the Catholic faith. Our program helps you to fulfill this responsibility with hands-on guidance and appropriate materials to achieve this goal. We believe our program is the most unique religious education program in the State and, as family needs evolve, may well come to serve as a model for other parishes.
These are exciting times for our parish. Please join me in prayer for the success of this program and in active cooperation towards its success. As the Pastor often says at Mass, we are called upon to do more than simply talk the talk. We need to actively walk the walk as well! Together we can provide for the care of our children, and perhaps learn a little bit more about our faith at the same time!