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Post by StellaMaris on Sept 9, 2021 20:48:05 GMT
What a great initiative! A new global project, Real + True, seeks to “unlock” the catechism and modernize the way church teaching is presented to a digital age.
The catechism “is not just a technical book,” said Real + True co-founder Edmund Mitchell, “but it’s written to really change our relationship with Christ.”
Launched Sept. 7, the initiative includes videos, social media content and a podcast organized along the four pillars of the catechism. Each month a new unit will be released, with 12 units for each pillar, totaling 48 units.
Aimed at millennial and Generation Z audiences, the content is meant to supplement evangelization and catechesis efforts that already exist as well as be a resource to those seeking answers to questions online, said co-founder Edmundo Reyes.
Reyes said the inspiration for Real + True came six years ago in Portland, Oregon, when he encountered BibleProject, a nonprofit organization with a library of resources to help people read and understand the Bible.
While the organization isn’t Catholic, he was impressed by their work, which he’d “never seen done in a church setting.” After learning about BibleProject’s creative process, he came back “with the hope of one day doing something similar with the church.”
When Reyes returned home, something unexpected happened. He started watching BibleProject’s videos on his phone and three of his children joined him.
“They kept saying, ‘let’s watch the next one, let’s watch the next one.’ And at the end my son said to me: ‘Dad, I feel I learned more about my faith from those videos than all my years of religious education,'” Reyes said.
“That moved me in two ways,” Reyes said. “One is a bit of sadness of like man, I’m letting my kid down here, but also a lot of hope that the message that we proclaim, the Gospel message, it’s truth and it’s beauty and it’s attractive in itself. We just need to be able to communicate that message in a way that is relevant to them, in a way that they can understand it.”
The church is moving in the direction of an “evangelizing catechesis,” said Reyes, citing the example of Pope Francis instituting the ministry of the catechist in May and the Vatican updating the “Directory for Catechesis” June 2020. He sees Real + True as participating in that evangelizing catechesis.
Reyes quoted the catechism, which states: “Periods of renewal in the church are also intense moments of catechesis.” And with the 30th anniversary of the catechism next year, the time seemed ripe to launch the initiative. Read on here.
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Post by katy777 on Sept 9, 2021 21:44:26 GMT
That's very nice. But it Children were taught how to pray, celebrate Marys Nativity etc...and know about the saints from a young age... What kills me is when I read about 8 year olds playing video games at Mass. Education is 2 fold. Religious ed or school and cerebrating and praying together as a family and not to be shy about it It starts young like 15 months see the wonder of children looking at Mary and Jesus in the Rosary. I have read "0h my child is difficult.. I had difficult children. My daughter crawled like 3 pews back under pews. Dad gave her a time out and no bakery for her after mass. No cry rooms in my area. The rel. Ed kids are a joke here. They had to be told how to receive communion before Confirmation
Because sports are king. Religious ed is either skipped or not important b cause you see these families at Christmas and Easter at mass.
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Post by StellaMaris on Sept 9, 2021 22:01:25 GMT
This Catechism project isn't claiming to be a replacement for prayers and Saints, but an added supplement to those things. The creator of the site recognised how engaged his children were by a similar project online and it grew from there. I think the Catechism is a wonderful resource and a prayer in itself. I think this new project is a great idea.
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Post by homeschooldad on Sept 9, 2021 23:26:17 GMT
When I removed my son from a nominally Catholic school at the end of Grade 5, I found that he had more holes in his religious knowledge than Swiss cheese. It's not so much what they taught, as what they didn't teach. It took until Grade 5 for my son even to have a Catholic homeroom teacher! How messed up is that? ("Who is Catholic and who is not" is a topic that is never discussed at that school. It's like an unwritten rule.)
So when we started Grade 6, religion class was the Baltimore Catechism, from cover to cover. "Getting back to the basics", you could say. A few aspects of it were a little dated, such as the artwork depicting only white children to the exclusion of all others, the way they were dressed, and some anachronistic things such as "children starving in Europe" (a reference to the post-WWII years). I called the lack of diversity to his attention and explained that this was a product of the time the book was written (the Father Bennet edition), and in this one case, not a good one. Nobody will ever accuse the BC of being a terribly nuanced catechism --- and we did go off on tangents to discuss some things in more detail --- but it largely corrected the damage by omission done by incomplete catechesis. I'd recommend it to anyone, covers the Creed, the Sacraments, and the Commandments and Precepts of the Church. It's a complete package.
(And, no, I didn't make him memorize it. I'd much rather have him know it, than memorize it.)
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Post by StellaMaris on Sept 10, 2021 0:06:46 GMT
Hopefully you are using the Baltimore Catechism in conjunction with the updated Catechism so that your son has the full benefit of Vatican II catechises.
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Post by katy777 on Sept 10, 2021 0:41:55 GMT
When I removed my son from a nominally Catholic school at the end of Grade 5, I found that he had more holes in his religious knowledge than Swiss cheese. It's not so much what they taught, as what they didn't teach. It took until Grade 5 for my son even to have a Catholic homeroom teacher! How messed up is that? ("Who is Catholic and who is not" is a topic that is never discussed at that school. It's like an unwritten rule.)
So when we started Grade 6, religion class was the Baltimore Catechism, from cover to cover. "Getting back to the basics", you could say. A few aspects of it were a little dated, such as the artwork depicting only white children to the exclusion of all others, the way they were dressed, and some anachronistic things such as "children starving in Europe" (a reference to the post-WWII years). I called the lack of diversity to his attention and explained that this was a product of the time the book was written (the Father Bennet edition), and in this one case, not a good one. Nobody will ever accuse the BC of being a terribly nuanced catechism --- and we did go off on tangents to discuss some things in more detail --- but it largely corrected the damage by omission done by incomplete catechesis. I'd recommend it to anyone, covers the Creed, the Sacraments, and the Commandments and Precepts of the Church. It's a complete package.
(And, no, I didn't make him memorize it. I'd much rather have him know it, than memorize it. Baltimore Catechism is what we have here. It's family and religious studies at home always to live a Holy Life and be an example. Prayer, devotions, feasts, all of it. You are so right.
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Post by homeschooldad on Sept 10, 2021 1:31:53 GMT
Hopefully you are using the Baltimore Catechism in conjunction with the updated Catechism so that your son has the full benefit of Vatican II catechises. I thank you for your concern, but I would probably end up disappointing you, and surprising you, in some ways pleasantly, in roughly equal measures.
On the one hand, what is "Vatican II catechesis"? The BC is based upon the Apostles' Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Sacraments. Does the CCC/"Vatican II catecheses" do something different? If so, what?
We place more emphasis on the first 1929 years of the Church (AD 33 - 1962) than the immediately preceding 59 years. That said, we do cover such "Vatican II-friendly" topics as the inadmissibility of capital punishment in today's world, the imperfect (yet very real) communion of all Christians with the Catholic Church, social justice, racial issues, and, yes, because he's seen so much of it in the media and has asked about it, LGBT issues. We attend both the TLM and the Novus Ordo. This year, due to our bad circumstances, we have taken a freer approach to our religion class (in that it is not mandated by the state), and have largely departed from the textbook, and engaged in a series of wide-ranging discussions, many of these driven by his questions. We devote more time to comparative religion, possibly, than in your garden-variety "Vatican II" Catholic school, and certainly more than in traditionalist Catholic homeschools! We have discussed both the virtues and the errors of separated Christians, in fact, I treat Orthodoxy with such a light hand, that he is barely even aware that a schism exists. We discuss such Christian-derived religions as the Jehovah's Witnesses and the LDS, and I even took him to an LDS temple (just outside, they don't allow "gentiles" in) and explained what they do there, the various "priesthoods", marriage sealings for eternity (and why that is a theological error), and so on. He knows a lot about Judaism --- one year, we celebrated Hanukkah (he has a menorah I got at Goodwill). We have discussed Islam at some length, and I have even read to him from the Koran (yes, I have a copy), the passages about Jesus and Mary. I pointed out to him that the Koran has more to say about Our Lady than the Bible does! And as for Freemasonry, if such a thing is possible, he is even more opposed to it than I am. (Imagine that.) Don't know how he came to feel that way, I have told him all the good work the Shriners do. As with all other errors, I taught him about their errors, and I guess it just kind of "took" with him. Every time we see a Masonic symbol on a car, he points it out, and knows what it is.
I'm not sure we would pass either a Vatican II "purity test" on the one hand, nor an SSPX (et al) "purity test" on the other, but I am at peace with what we do, and though he struggles with some things now (many 14-year-olds do), I have every fervent hope that he will come out of all this with a deep and mature faith that is both "ever ancient and ever new". I always tell him, if you had to have a traditionalist Catholic for a father, I think you'd rather have me, than a lot of such fathers --- some of them are pretty strict.
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Post by tth1 on Sept 10, 2021 14:53:40 GMT
Hopefully you are using the Baltimore Catechism in conjunction with the updated Catechism so that your son has the full benefit of Vatican II catechises. I thank you for your concern, but I would probably end up disappointing you, and surprising you, in some ways pleasantly, in roughly equal measures.
On the one hand, what is "Vatican II catechesis"? The BC is based upon the Apostles' Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Sacraments. Does the CCC/"Vatican II catecheses" do something different? If so, what?
We place more emphasis on the first 1929 years of the Church (AD 33 - 1962) than the immediately preceding 59 years. That said, we do cover such "Vatican II-friendly" topics as the inadmissibility of capital punishment in today's world, the imperfect (yet very real) communion of all Christians with the Catholic Church, social justice, racial issues, and, yes, because he's seen so much of it in the media and has asked about it, LGBT issues. We attend both the TLM and the Novus Ordo. This year, due to our bad circumstances, we have taken a freer approach to our religion class (in that it is not mandated by the state), and have largely departed from the textbook, and engaged in a series of wide-ranging discussions, many of these driven by his questions. We devote more time to comparative religion, possibly, than in your garden-variety "Vatican II" Catholic school, and certainly more than in traditionalist Catholic homeschools! We have discussed both the virtues and the errors of separated Christians, in fact, I treat Orthodoxy with such a light hand, that he is barely even aware that a schism exists. We discuss such Christian-derived religions as the Jehovah's Witnesses and the LDS, and I even took him to an LDS temple (just outside, they don't allow "gentiles" in) and explained what they do there, the various "priesthoods", marriage sealings for eternity (and why that is a theological error), and so on. He knows a lot about Judaism --- one year, we celebrated Hanukkah (he has a menorah I got at Goodwill). We have discussed Islam at some length, and I have even read to him from the Koran (yes, I have a copy), the passages about Jesus and Mary. I pointed out to him that the Koran has more to say about Our Lady than the Bible does! And as for Freemasonry, if such a thing is possible, he is even more opposed to it than I am. (Imagine that.) Don't know how he came to feel that way, I have told him all the good work the Shriners do. As with all other errors, I taught him about their errors, and I guess it just kind of "took" with him. Every time we see a Masonic symbol on a car, he points it out, and knows what it is.
I'm not sure we would pass either a Vatican II "purity test" on the one hand, nor an SSPX (et al) "purity test" on the other, but I am at peace with what we do, and though he struggles with some things now (many 14-year-olds do), I have every fervent hope that he will come out of all this with a deep and mature faith that is both "ever ancient and ever new". I always tell him, if you had to have a traditionalist Catholic for a father, I think you'd rather have me, than a lot of such fathers --- some of them are pretty strict.
There's always something to learn. I never knew this about the LDS.
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Post by tth1 on Sept 10, 2021 15:03:42 GMT
When I removed my son from a nominally Catholic school at the end of Grade 5, I found that he had more holes in his religious knowledge than Swiss cheese. It's not so much what they taught, as what they didn't teach. It took until Grade 5 for my son even to have a Catholic homeroom teacher! How messed up is that? ("Who is Catholic and who is not" is a topic that is never discussed at that school. It's like an unwritten rule.)
So when we started Grade 6, religion class was the Baltimore Catechism, from cover to cover. "Getting back to the basics", you could say. A few aspects of it were a little dated, such as the artwork depicting only white children to the exclusion of all others, the way they were dressed, and some anachronistic things such as "children starving in Europe" (a reference to the post-WWII years). I called the lack of diversity to his attention and explained that this was a product of the time the book was written (the Father Bennet edition), and in this one case, not a good one. Nobody will ever accuse the BC of being a terribly nuanced catechism --- and we did go off on tangents to discuss some things in more detail --- but it largely corrected the damage by omission done by incomplete catechesis. I'd recommend it to anyone, covers the Creed, the Sacraments, and the Commandments and Precepts of the Church. It's a complete package.
(And, no, I didn't make him memorize it. I'd much rather have him know it, than memorize it.)
I have to confess that I think a lot of contemporary religious education leaves a lot to be desired. Indeed a lot of contemporary education does.
We had a bishop here in England who wrote his own RE materials for use in his diocese because he was not happy with the materials but out by the Catholic Education Service (CES), which is the English and Welsh episcopal conference's agency for education. The bishop in charge of that agency complained to him saying you are trampling on my territory. The bishop replied that he was not because each and every bishop is the chief shepherd and teacher in his own diocese. I believe he was, thereafter, not well-treated by his episcopal confreres.
In fact, he wrote a series of documents aimed at adults and adolescents as well as children, all intended to teach the Faith. If you're interested they're readily available on the website of the diocese where he was the bishop. The series is called Fit for Mission? and it was authored by Rt Revd Patrick O'Donoghue (+2021).
The documents are available here.
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Post by homeschooldad on Sept 10, 2021 16:31:38 GMT
I thank you for your concern, but I would probably end up disappointing you, and surprising you, in some ways pleasantly, in roughly equal measures.
On the one hand, what is "Vatican II catechesis"? The BC is based upon the Apostles' Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Sacraments. Does the CCC/"Vatican II catecheses" do something different? If so, what?
We place more emphasis on the first 1929 years of the Church (AD 33 - 1962) than the immediately preceding 59 years. That said, we do cover such "Vatican II-friendly" topics as the inadmissibility of capital punishment in today's world, the imperfect (yet very real) communion of all Christians with the Catholic Church, social justice, racial issues, and, yes, because he's seen so much of it in the media and has asked about it, LGBT issues. We attend both the TLM and the Novus Ordo. This year, due to our bad circumstances, we have taken a freer approach to our religion class (in that it is not mandated by the state), and have largely departed from the textbook, and engaged in a series of wide-ranging discussions, many of these driven by his questions. We devote more time to comparative religion, possibly, than in your garden-variety "Vatican II" Catholic school, and certainly more than in traditionalist Catholic homeschools! We have discussed both the virtues and the errors of separated Christians, in fact, I treat Orthodoxy with such a light hand, that he is barely even aware that a schism exists. We discuss such Christian-derived religions as the Jehovah's Witnesses and the LDS, and I even took him to an LDS temple (just outside, they don't allow "gentiles" in) and explained what they do there, the various "priesthoods", marriage sealings for eternity (and why that is a theological error), and so on. He knows a lot about Judaism --- one year, we celebrated Hanukkah (he has a menorah I got at Goodwill). We have discussed Islam at some length, and I have even read to him from the Koran (yes, I have a copy), the passages about Jesus and Mary. I pointed out to him that the Koran has more to say about Our Lady than the Bible does! And as for Freemasonry, if such a thing is possible, he is even more opposed to it than I am. (Imagine that.) Don't know how he came to feel that way, I have told him all the good work the Shriners do. As with all other errors, I taught him about their errors, and I guess it just kind of "took" with him. Every time we see a Masonic symbol on a car, he points it out, and knows what it is.
I'm not sure we would pass either a Vatican II "purity test" on the one hand, nor an SSPX (et al) "purity test" on the other, but I am at peace with what we do, and though he struggles with some things now (many 14-year-olds do), I have every fervent hope that he will come out of all this with a deep and mature faith that is both "ever ancient and ever new". I always tell him, if you had to have a traditionalist Catholic for a father, I think you'd rather have me, than a lot of such fathers --- some of them are pretty strict.
There's always something to learn. I never knew this about the LDS. I'm referring here to the temples, those places that they use for specific types of ceremonies and ordinances. They do "baptism for the dead", eternal marriage "sealings", conferral of various priestly orders, and so on. They are not public worship places, indeed, even if you are LDS, you have to have a "temple recommend" card from the LDS. They're not places for regular Sunday worship. Their "regular" churches, on the other hand, are open to the public, and if you would show up there (I've never visited one, and have no intentions of doing so), I'm sure you would be immediately "love-bombed" with everything they have in their quiver, and I have to think you'd have the nicest people you ever met, on your doorstep wanting to talk to you about LDS.
Not every LDS marriage is a "temple marriage". LDS can and do get married outside of the temple, but so far as I'm aware, it's not considered as a "sealed" eternal marriage.
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Post by homeschooldad on Sept 10, 2021 16:40:26 GMT
When I removed my son from a nominally Catholic school at the end of Grade 5, I found that he had more holes in his religious knowledge than Swiss cheese. It's not so much what they taught, as what they didn't teach. It took until Grade 5 for my son even to have a Catholic homeroom teacher! How messed up is that? ("Who is Catholic and who is not" is a topic that is never discussed at that school. It's like an unwritten rule.)
So when we started Grade 6, religion class was the Baltimore Catechism, from cover to cover. "Getting back to the basics", you could say. A few aspects of it were a little dated, such as the artwork depicting only white children to the exclusion of all others, the way they were dressed, and some anachronistic things such as "children starving in Europe" (a reference to the post-WWII years). I called the lack of diversity to his attention and explained that this was a product of the time the book was written (the Father Bennet edition), and in this one case, not a good one. Nobody will ever accuse the BC of being a terribly nuanced catechism --- and we did go off on tangents to discuss some things in more detail --- but it largely corrected the damage by omission done by incomplete catechesis. I'd recommend it to anyone, covers the Creed, the Sacraments, and the Commandments and Precepts of the Church. It's a complete package.
(And, no, I didn't make him memorize it. I'd much rather have him know it, than memorize it.)
I have to confess that I think a lot of contemporary religious education leaves a lot to be desired. Indeed a lot of contemporary education does.
We had a bishop here in England who wrote his own RE materials for use in his diocese because he was not happy with the materials but out by the Catholic Education Service (CES), which is the English and Welsh episcopal conference's agency for education. The bishop in charge of that agency complained to him saying you are trampling on my territory. The bishop replied that he was not because each and every bishop is the chief shepherd and teacher in his own diocese. I believe he was, thereafter, not well-treated by his episcopal confreres.
In fact, he wrote a series of documents aimed at adults and adolescents as well as children, all intended to teach the Faith. If you're interested they're readily available on the website of the diocese where he was the bishop. The series is called Fit for Mission? and it was authored by Rt Revd Patrick O'Donoghue (+2021).
The documents are available here. Our Grade 9 religion class is going to be a half-credit class (twice a week on average), and the way our state's high school credit system is set up, I have to make it an elective humanities class (closest thing it fits into). The plan is to use My Catholic Faith by Father Morrow and the SSPX pamphlet for confirmation, as well as Scripture itself. For personal reasons, his confirmation date is indefinite, indeed, he may well defer it for a few years, we will just be using the SSPX pamphlet as a resource. Our religion class is not terribly intensive, and MCF will be our main textbook probably throughout at least two grades. Again, it's not a state-prescribed course (in the US, that would not be possible), so we have considerable leeway as to how we do it. It's an "easy A", though not an automatic one, I give him the grades he earns.
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Post by StellaMaris on Sept 11, 2021 4:50:46 GMT
Our Grade 9 religion class is going to be a half-credit class (twice a week on average), and the way our state's high school credit system is set up, I have to make it an elective humanities class (closest thing it fits into). The plan is to use My Catholic Faith by Father Morrow and the SSPX pamphlet for confirmation, as well as Scripture itself. For personal reasons, his confirmation date is indefinite, indeed, he may well defer it for a few years, we will just be using the SSPX pamphlet as a resource. Our religion class is not terribly intensive, and MCF will be our main textbook probably throughout at least two grades. Again, it's not a state-prescribed course (in the US, that would not be possible), so we have considerable leeway as to how we do it. It's an "easy A", though not an automatic one, I give him the grades he earns. Are you part of a homeschooling community where your son is able to experience life in Catholic community with friends and peers? Your posts seem to paint a scenario of isolation/insulation that if so, I find troubling. But correct me if I'm wrong.
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Post by homeschooldad on Sept 11, 2021 13:55:07 GMT
Our Grade 9 religion class is going to be a half-credit class (twice a week on average), and the way our state's high school credit system is set up, I have to make it an elective humanities class (closest thing it fits into). The plan is to use My Catholic Faith by Father Morrow and the SSPX pamphlet for confirmation, as well as Scripture itself. For personal reasons, his confirmation date is indefinite, indeed, he may well defer it for a few years, we will just be using the SSPX pamphlet as a resource. Our religion class is not terribly intensive, and MCF will be our main textbook probably throughout at least two grades. Again, it's not a state-prescribed course (in the US, that would not be possible), so we have considerable leeway as to how we do it. It's an "easy A", though not an automatic one, I give him the grades he earns. Are you part of a homeschooling community where your son is able to experience life in Catholic community with friends and peers? Your posts seem to paint a scenario of isolation/insulation that if so, I find troubling. But correct me if I'm wrong. We are not part of any homeschooling community, and we homeschool on our own. There are several reasons for this, and they would require me to discuss our circumstances, in a fashion I do not wish to on a public forum. What you propose is good, but it is just not for us right now. But I can tell you this much, my son has many friends in his online gaming communities, from throughout the world, and you can walk by and hear him engaging in animated, highly intelligent conversations with friends from around the world. He is always asking me what time it is, both in various parts of North America, and in Europe. We have a close, compact neighborhood where everyone takes great interest in his education and his welfare. And while his average educational endowments probably don't militate in favor of his ever being any great philosopher or social critic, be assured that he has no intellectual deficiencies. His most recent visit with an "adult" doctor --- we disengaged from pediatricians when his favorite doctor retired --- went without incident.
He went to a thoroughly "Vatican II" Catholic day school for six years, and came away with the results (or lack thereof) I described, moreover, none of us (including my own parents!) were ever really "accepted", not because of my traditionalism --- that was never an issue, the pastor, a social-justice liberal, was always very respectful of this, and our relationship was excellent --- but because it is a school for the children of wealthy professionals, and our modest means kept us from being accepted by the "elite". It was all we could do, to pay tuition, not to mention the massive "donations" that were expected, and to which our contributions, of necessity, were equally modest.
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Post by tth1 on Sept 13, 2021 15:33:50 GMT
I have to confess that I think a lot of contemporary religious education leaves a lot to be desired. Indeed a lot of contemporary education does.
We had a bishop here in England who wrote his own RE materials for use in his diocese because he was not happy with the materials but out by the Catholic Education Service (CES), which is the English and Welsh episcopal conference's agency for education. The bishop in charge of that agency complained to him saying you are trampling on my territory. The bishop replied that he was not because each and every bishop is the chief shepherd and teacher in his own diocese. I believe he was, thereafter, not well-treated by his episcopal confreres.
In fact, he wrote a series of documents aimed at adults and adolescents as well as children, all intended to teach the Faith. If you're interested they're readily available on the website of the diocese where he was the bishop. The series is called Fit for Mission? and it was authored by Rt Revd Patrick O'Donoghue (+2021).
The documents are available here. Our Grade 9 religion class is going to be a half-credit class (twice a week on average), and the way our state's high school credit system is set up, I have to make it an elective humanities class (closest thing it fits into). The plan is to use My Catholic Faith by Father Morrow and the SSPX pamphlet for confirmation, as well as Scripture itself. For personal reasons, his confirmation date is indefinite, indeed, he may well defer it for a few years, we will just be using the SSPX pamphlet as a resource. Our religion class is not terribly intensive, and MCF will be our main textbook probably throughout at least two grades. Again, it's not a state-prescribed course (in the US, that would not be possible), so we have considerable leeway as to how we do it. It's an "easy A", though not an automatic one, I give him the grades he earns. I was tempted, only briefly I may add, to write, 'ditto'. Because, again, I have to say I have learned something new. I was not aware that the temples were special places. I thought 'temple' was the name for their place of worship. Therefore, I have believed for a long time that I lived near an LDS temple. From your information it seems that will not be true and that it is whatever they call their ordinary place of worship.
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Post by homeschooldad on Sept 13, 2021 15:51:02 GMT
Our Grade 9 religion class is going to be a half-credit class (twice a week on average), and the way our state's high school credit system is set up, I have to make it an elective humanities class (closest thing it fits into). The plan is to use My Catholic Faith by Father Morrow and the SSPX pamphlet for confirmation, as well as Scripture itself. For personal reasons, his confirmation date is indefinite, indeed, he may well defer it for a few years, we will just be using the SSPX pamphlet as a resource. Our religion class is not terribly intensive, and MCF will be our main textbook probably throughout at least two grades. Again, it's not a state-prescribed course (in the US, that would not be possible), so we have considerable leeway as to how we do it. It's an "easy A", though not an automatic one, I give him the grades he earns. I was tempted, only briefly I may add, to write, 'ditto'. Because, again, I have to say I have learned something new. I was not aware that the temples were special places. I thought 'temple' was the name for their place of worship. Therefore, I have believed for a long time that I lived near an LDS temple. From your information it seems that will not be true and that it is whatever they call their ordinary place of worship. They call "regular" churches "meetinghouses".
Yes, the temples are specific places, and outside of the "Mormon Corridor" of Utah and surrounding areas, are normally some distance apart. The COJCOLDS has in recent years initiated a program of building smaller temples according to a look-alike architecture (no doubt to make it easier to build them according to pre-set plans, easily obtaining building materials in bulk), to make temples more accessible to people without having to travel huge distances.
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