Hello to all, and God bless each and every one.  I have a question about teaching methods for Religious Education, and I teach the 6th grade class. 

I am in Oklahoma, which is about 96% Protestant/Christian/Other and about 4% Catholic.  I am personally concerned about preserving the Catholic Faith to these young people, because basically everyone these young kids know is NOT Catholic. 

Are there any good programs out there I could teach which would be appropriate for my situation?  I am thinking somthing more centered around apolegitics.  Opinions needed, please.

Frank

I'm the cases when I have heard the term used  "Giving my testimony" had nothing to do with confession of ones sins and asking for forgiveness, but rather testifying to how God had saved you.  That is the problem with making any blanket statement about protestantism per se because there are so many groups and great deal of varability in both believe and termonlogy even within a given 'group'. 

there is for instance extreem diffrences between Lutherens who are members of ELCA and Lutherens who are member of the missoury sinod.

The first being extreemly libral and embracing everthing from homosexaual marrage and clergy to abortion.  The other being decided anti-catholic and engaging in the buring of rock-n-roll records as evil my home town during the 1980's.  My hometown actually had one of each kind of Lurhteran and they hated each other.

 I've taugh 6th grade religious education for 2 years now and have found :

Most 6rh graders are studing world history, so explaining the differences between catholisim and prostenism in terms of how protestenism arouse historically is intresting to them becaus it connects to something else they already know.  ( although most people students already spend enough time in the books , so too much detail will proably boar them.)

I like to point out the passages in matthew in which peter is declared the rock and explain that the catholic church is historically the church Jesus founded and that all protestant church's were in fact founded much later and that thier teaching were invented by later men because they did not want to obey the authority of the pope. 

That gives you lots of good jumping off places , but probably shouldn't take up more the a few class periods.  

You should definately go through the creed as recomended above and make sure they understand the sacraments and what they mean.

I like to give time for questions as 6th graders usually have plenty of them on thier own.   

As always, RE should be about conversion so remember while it may be your mouth that is moving you should pray hard it will be the holy spirit doing the talking.

I whole heartedly agree.  I try to copy things into a word process and back before I post them , but don't always have the time.

U rote

These Forums are desperately in need of wasy-to-use spell-checking software.

Ewe hour rite.

God bless,


NoelFitz.
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In necessariis, unitas; in dubiis, libertas; in omnibus, caritas.
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PTR,

helping the other guy up above who mashed the wrong key.  This is what we do when teaching kids, to find good things. 

The important thing here is to tell our story. Tell them why you are a new creation in Christ.

The bible does not say that we are a new creation in Mommy or Daddy, no it says we are a new creation in Christ.

Make the Church and all the family Christ centered, not mommy centered or daddy centered. Do not follow the example of Adam and Eve and walkaway from Christ like they did.

Stop saying, "I love you" for this is to say, "my will be done" instead of "thy will be done". Instead say, "Daddy loves Christ and Mommy love Christ". Then our children will become the object of our love a new creation in Christ. For our daughters will want to become the object of daddy's love and our sons the object of mommy's love.

Ours is a comunial love in Christ. This is what it means to be Church and what it means to be family, being Christ centered.

Follow the example of the Holy Family, Joseph and Mary, center you life on Christ.

Peace to you and yours DonH: I agree. Everything centered on Christ for as the Bible says. He is the ALL, the Alpha and Omega etc. There is nothing else. Living this in front of others allows Christ to come through us to reach our Brothers and Sisters which he wants so badly to reach.

God Bless and Peace      Mike Edwards

Dear fseabeck, In my humble opinion the best way to help those children preserve the Catholic faith is to teach them the Catholic faith in depth and also to teach them the errors of the protestant communities. There are many resources concerning the men responsible for establishing the protestant errors ie; Martin Luther, William Smith etc. The more you educate the children on truth and error the more prepared they will be to distinguish between the two. The sad reality of life in the United States is that not only children but also adults think there is essentially no difference between Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, 7th Day Adventist, etc. which is of course malarky[irish for lies,fairy tales,b.s.,baloney,etc) If you tell the children the truth and help them identify the lies, they will become responsible Catholic adults. As Jesus said to the Apostles, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees" He did not mean their bread but thier "lies".

In the Holy Love of God I am your brother in Christ and my name is Royal