"The School of the Home"

Check out Genevieve Kineke's article at Catholic Exchange today:

"In the domestic church, children learn a variety of things. Sharing a bathroom with siblings can be frustrating but essential to the give-and-take necessary to communal living. Finding the box of a favourite cereal emptied and trashed is familiar terrain, providing an opportunity to make sacrifices and forgive. Living with the disappointment of a busy father missing a stellar game offers the means for a child to grow in understanding in this fallen world. In each case, a strong family should remind its members to apologise, make reparation, and retool its priorities when necessary. Sometimes families are schools of hard knocks while still managing to be a haven for unconditional love.

Children encounter a host of trials in the modern world that throw them off balance — challenging their abilities to receive love and love in return. Some, like divorce and abandonment, are so overwhelming that a variety of outside resources are needed to help them cope. Stacks of new books are aimed at holding their young hands and offering sage advice and a mental framework that will help them process these shocks. The divorce manuals, explanations about death, and sweet introductions to the “new families” are now supplemented by a new title, My Beautiful Mommy, by Dr. Michael Salzhauer.

This plastic surgeon has performed hundreds of “mommy makeovers” and knows how confusing the procedure can be for children. Kids normally associate doctors with illness and bandages with trauma-so seeing their mother hospitalized and incapacitated is frightening. No so! With this helpful illustrated tool, children will know that all is well.

Or will they?..." (Continued here.)

Genevieve Kineke's article in Catholic Exchange

In case you haven't had a chance to see Genevieve Kineke's article the other day at Catholic Exchange, here it is. Genevieve eloquently recounts the experience we shared at the International Congress in Rome celebrating twenty years since the Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem was penned by our dear and late holy father, Pope John Paul the Great!

"If we had held a congress on Mulieris Dignitatem twenty years ago, it would have unfolded very differently." Cardinal Rylko, President of the Pontifical Council, for the Laity made this statement at the outset of his final remarks, bringing to a close a three day International Congress which focused on John Paul II's remarkable 1988 document "On the Dignity and Vocation of Women."

Women in the conference hall, nourished throughout by a wealth of inspired presentations, nodded in agreement. They had enjoyed hearing the sublime truth of God's creation of male and female considered from a variety of angles, through the lenses of anthropology, sociology, politics, theology, history, biology, philosophy and personal experience. Each dimension underscored the beautiful truth: "God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them" (Genesis 1:27).

While some could recognize the tremendous insights of Karol Wojtyla long ago, when he first offered his thoughts on the feminine vocation, most have needed the ensuing years to take them to heart, to pray over them, and to apply them to various fields of inquiry. The time has been well-spent..." (Continued here at Catholic Exchange)