The following is a guest post by Dr. Troy Hinkel of the Holy Family School of Faith Institute, where I work. It’s a helpful guide for how you, as a Christian, can raise your kids to be atheists:
I’ve worked with adults young and old for over twenty years in faith formation. I’ve seen the steps in this list below repeated time and time again with great success. If creating an atheist child is your goal as a Catholic parent, this list is for you:
- Emphasize that being a Catholic is just about following rules and avoiding sin
Whatever you do, don’t mention that your children should grow in virtue. This will lead them to the inexorable conclusion that Catholic morality is the same as repression, which will promptly be rejected.
- Stress that hyper-tolerance is the proper way to get along in a pluralistic society
The only conclusion that can be draw from this is that dogma is always opposed to unity. A dogmatic Church like Catholicism will then be viewed as opposed to living with others in harmony.
- Never pray individually or as a family
If you don’t pray, the desire of your (and your children’s!) heart will remain disordered. The teachings of the Church will seam unrealistic and hopelessly outdated.
- Constantly complain about the Church
On Sundays, spend most of the time complaining about the length of Mass, the priest who celebrates the Mass, and the homily. Be on the lookout for excuses to avoid going to Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation. Even better, send your kids to Mass while you stay home.
- Believe that your media consumption has nothing to do with your faith life
Disconnect what movies, sitcoms, and TV shows you watch from your morals and Catholic values. Instead, listen to or watch programs that promote relativism. Of course, doing this for any length of time will connect your entertainment with your values, and you’ll find you no longer have any values left.
- Live for popularity, status, and worldly success
Strive to fit in your faith around the other goals that you’re vigorously pursuing. This will ensure that your children will view the Catholic Church as existing only for the clueless and unsuccessful.
- Assume it’s not your job to pass on the faith to your kids
It’s anyone’s job but yours to inspire your kid’s faith life. Whether it’s the Catholic school or the School of Religion that educates your children, your job is merely to drop them off.
- Indulge in sexual immorality
Promote a lifestyle for your kids that approves and participates in adultery or pornography. Your kids will feel unimportant and uncared for. This way, they’ll view God’s Fatherhood in the same light. - Be stern about Church teachings without empathy or compassion
If you follow this step, your children will associate the Catholic Church with cruelty and lack of sympathy.
- Dissent from Church teachings
If you live your life without regard for Church teachings, your children will get the impression that the Church is merely governed by man-made rules that are prone to error. They’ll promptly reject it.
Maybe, for some reason, this is not your goal. If you’d rather inspire and raise a devoted disciple of Christ, simply do the opposite of anything mentioned hear. I’ve seen the opposite of these steps repeated time and time again with great success!
I’ll add a few more:
Don’t provide good Catholic books, such as ‘lives of the saints’, to your children as they are growing up.
Without proper Christian role models, your children will not be able to understand the great love for God that is possible in this life, and the noble acts and deeds that are produced by that love. Thus, they will turn to other sources to be their role models such as athletes, movies stars and trendy musicians and imitate THEIR lives and aspirations …secular and vice filled though these role models might be. Therefore, instead of pointing towards the ‘narrow gate’ of Godliness, love and virtue, they will grow ever more accustomed and acclimated to the ‘broad way’ of ‘worldliness’, which is: vanity, vice and spiritual blindness.
Great addition Here’s one more. Dont speak kindly of your priests. They never really care theyre in it to feel good, for the deference people pay. Always voice your criticism in front of your children
Make ‘Catholic Radio’ stations (…such as Relevant Radio) the last station you choose while driving in your car with your children.
Almost everybody, even the most devout Christians, complain that they have little or extra time to study up on religion, or read the Bible, even though they know that it is very good to do so. However, they don’t even think about the time that they waste while driving in traffic, or commuting, on almost a daily basis. If parents would turn on Catholic Radio while driving their kids to school to a daily basis, they would at least give them some intellectual exposure to some biblical, or other spiritual topic, being discussed that day on the Catholic ‘talk radio’ programming. But, most of these Christian parents will rather choose to listen to some secular radio (…ie. hip hop, sports, etc…) channel during those wasted hours driving, and then complain that they never have time to study religious subject matter. What an incredible waste of a great resource to help both you and your children to grow more knowledgable about God on a daily basis…and especially when the time is being wasted while you are stuck in traffic!
Going to check out Relevant Radio right now. Thanks
It’s the only station I listen to…in general.
Ave Maria radio is another good one.
As the saying goes: “It takes a village to raise a child.” The problem is not always with the parents, but with the all-pervasive secular and materialistic culture around them. One certainly needs exemplary parents for the formation of children in the Catholic faith, but one also needs a culture that sustains it. Just imagine sending your children to a Catholic school where most self-identified Catholic students see you as an oddity if you are one of the few who lives the faith in its entirety. Sadly, Catholic schools are factories for the mass production of fallen-away Catholics. Children are conformists and are eager to fit in with the gang in order to be accepted. Hence, our churches are dying.
11. Make them go to a catholic school so they associate your god with algebra and detention.
12. Insist they not dissent from any catholic teachings, no matter how nonsense those teachings are. For instance, “Birth control is evil and ineffective, but ‘natural family planning’ is the most effective form of preventing unwanted pregnancies and is somehow okay because it’s natural.”
And “Homosexuals are the real cause of priests abusing children and all evil despite all evidence to the contrary.”
That will totally build up lifelong respect for Catholicism!!!!!!
Long time, no hear Pope Philbert?
How’s your papacy going? Sound’s like it’s thriving. 🙂
Hi Phil,
11 above makes no sense.
From the beginning, God intended that there should be schools and teachers, and this is because humans develop very slowly in comparison to other animals, and need to be very intelligent so as to survive in this very difficult world that we live in. so, teachers are important for the survival of humanity; and both for natural reasons and super-natural reasons as well. All of this is taught to us in sacred scripture even from the very first pages of Genesis.
And Jesus also reiterates the need for teachers and schools when He says such things as: “I am the Good Shepherd, I know my sheep and my sheep know me”. This is because a shepherd is a symbol for a ‘wise and beneficial teacher’. And the shepherds purpose is to guide and ‘teach’ the sheep where to find suitable feed and water, and also to guard the sheep against snakes, wolves, lions and other predators that would seek to destroy them.
So the Church, which is the ‘Body’ of the ‘Good Shepherd’ in this world… the ‘Body of Christ’… seeks to do the same thing. And one of the functions or tasks of the Church is that of “Feeding the ‘Lambs’ of Christ”, even as He said to St. Peter after Peter denied Him 3 times. So, where should a shepherd ‘feed the lambs of Christ’? In schools… of course. And this is why Catholics put a high value on education, both temporal education and eternal education, as both are needed in this world.
So, if you want to complain, don’t complain about the need for schools themselves, that they teach algebra and punish kids that get ‘poor grades, but rathe, complain if the teachers don’t teach the kids to be ‘holy’ and followers of Jesus Christ, the archetype “Good Shepherd”. So, yes we need schools that teach algebra, and we also need schools that teach about God, moral living, prayer, eternal life, charity, wisdom and in general…the meaning of life.
If Catholic schools come up short on those goals, then they should be reformed to accomplish the true goals stated above.
Your 12th suggestion above is similar. It makes little sense and assumes that the teachings of the Catholic Faith are idiotic, according to your saying: “…no matter how nonsense those teachings are”.
Is teaching children about Jesus Christ idiotic? Is that not the mission of the Church, to do what Jesus said…”Feed my lambs”, and:
“Going therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. [20] Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.” [Matt. 28:20]
So, your problem is with Jesus Christ, and everything He taught, and NOT with the Catholic schools…..unless they don’t actually carry out this teaching function in an adequate manner that Christ mandates to them.
Best to you.
Hi Philip, here’s how I’ve heard the birth control issue explained by analogy… Say you want to manage your weight, either up or down the scale, and become healthier. You’ve got two ways to do it: 1) by eating healthier foods (adding in more calories to gain weight or reducing calories to lose weight, perhaps consulting a calorie-counting technology or charting your calories) and exercising frequently (maybe using an exercise tracking technology) , or 2) by using addictive and damaging diet pills or by vomiting up your food after each meal, which damages the esophagus.
The first option above, diet & exercise, uses human understanding and perhaps technology to track and work with your body’s God-given natural systems to manage your weight. This way encourages the virtues of temperance/self-control, diligence, humility (in submitting to doing things the hard way and the long way, in accordance with God’s design), and patience. The second options above, diet pills or bulimia, go against your body’s natural God-given functions and interfere with the digestive process in a harmful way. These discourage virtue and allow the vices of gluttony, laziness, pride, short-term thinking, and impatience to flourish.
It’s just the same with natural family planning (ovulation tracking), which can be used to delay OR PURSUE pregnancy, and which works harmoniously with your body’s natural systems. It encourages the virtues of chastity, self-control, and patience… versus contraception, which only works to avoid pregnancy, and interferes harmfully with natural body systems and encourages the vices of lust, immediate gratification, and impatience.
Contraception also servers the cultural connection between sex and reproduction (which can lead to such horrors as genetic engineering in humans), and can even cause a disconnect between sex, love, & commitment (since sex can now be pursued lightly and most of the time without “consequences”). What do you think about this explanation?
Well put Antonia. It’s all there in
Humanae Vitae. It’s 50th anniversary seems to have passed without so much as a whisper.
Thanks. I agree about HV, it was prophetic. The bishops could have gone a long way to restoring their leadership if they had made a huge deal of the 50th anniversary of HV and started teaching against contraception and IVF, genetic engineering, etc. (many for the first time).
Well, there may not have been a Vatican whisper on HV’s 50th Anniversary, but there was a signed and silent hue and cry by dissidents who relayed their dismay to the U.N. Some of the dissidents also dissented in 1968 – Chas. Curran signed, for example, as did other ‘Catholic’ theologians.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/humanae-vitae-dissidents-to-oppose-vatican-at-united-nations-event
11. Please, you are only showing that you do not understand contracepting or NFP either.
12. All evidence shows that 81% of sexual abuse in the Church was committed by men and against post-pubescent males ages 11-17. This would indicate greatly that male on male sex is tied to homosexuality. Any Catholic who knows the faith understands that sodomy is a grave sin, so really, pretending it isn’t may make you a good atheist, but not so good for kids.
13. Pretend that it really isn’t important to pay attention to what Jesus Christ taught or what Scripture tells us.
Don’t let your children read current factual information as it may make them see that the secular world and media are giving incorrect information in order to further their immoral actions. Keep this stuff away from children and adults who are not really interested in the truth. http://www.ruthinstitute.org/press/ruth-institute-releases-study-on-role-of-sexual-orientation-in-catholic-clerical-sex-abuse-scandal
Looks like your parents raised an atheist….
Artificial contraception is deliberately thwarting the conjugal act by chemicals or barriers. This is a Mortal Sin deserving of eternal condemnation. The couple is literally preventing God from creating human life, a life He has intended from all eternity to come into existence.
NFP is simply avoiding the congugal act, not putting a barrier up to artificially prevent conception. NFP can also become a sin if the couple uses it selfishly. If a woman is fertile but is very ill, isn’t it normal and correct to avoid sexual intimacy at that time?
Also, to deny the blatant truth that homosexuality is the reason for sexual abuse of male seminarians and male altar boys and male parishioners is so absurd that it really deserves no comment.
Thank you for this excellent article.
We raised three children in the Catholic Faith in the 1970s. We thought we were doing a good job raising them as we had been raised in the faith. We prayed as a family. We went to Sunday mass. We talked positively about our faith and how important it was. We sent them to CCD, couldn’t afford Catholic School. However, in the 70s CCD was not really oriented to teaching what the church really taught. Most of you know how that went! We were also hit upside the head by the culture. One is an atheist, one married outside the church and the other one became a believer in God in nature (whatever that is). At least the one who married outside the church is trying to come back. Looking at your list I don’t see that we did any of those things, but it didn’t seem to matter. Culture is a big influencer.
Christine, I feel for you! I’m sure my parents were hit upside the head with the change in culture as well. The culture was a horrible undertow them, and it has gotten a thousand times worse now. I’ve pretty much given up on taking my teens to the public library unless it’s for specific books, b/c the teen and adult sections are so filled with filth. On the upside, for seekers the way to God has never been better, with all the wonderful resources available! Your kids (and theirs) have a great chance of coming back to the faith in this time of truth and renewal. I did, and I had no childhood training in the faith and had been a committed atheist for several decades. Prayers and blessings for your family.
Christine, I hear ya. Culture is a huge influence. I too, raised my children in faith, brought them to church, sent them to Catholic School, encouraged them to join youth ministries, etc… I have a daughter who didn’t marry in the Church, ended up divorced and is raising two agnostic children who are unbaptized and thoroughly unchurched to “believe in the Golden Rule”. She, is also agnostic- 12 years of Catholic education lost 🤦🏻♀️. I have a son who absolutely believes ✝️, but lives with someone out of wedlock who is agnostic and unbaptized, has had a child who is not baptized, and even though he is not opposed to baptizing their child, he knows they will not follow the faith/chipurch teaching…so, he won’t be hypocritical.
We just need to keep praying for them, loving them and giving them all back to God in our sacramental lives.✝️
We raised our kids, all born in 1970s, in a military environment where we moved every 3-4 yrs. No consistency in their education as sometimes public, sometimes Catholic schools. The finest Christian principals were two men, one who led the day with school prayer. The other loved the kids openly, learned their names and told them he prayed for them. Both worked at public schools. At the Catholic schools: at one three sisters were keen on Jesus is your friend-social gospel. At another our child was bullied so badly, that to this day he refuses to talk about it.
By the grace of God all three kids are married, with children, still practicing Catholic and raising their kids to be devout Catholics.
Herewith my suggestions for raising atheists:
1. Father cedes spiritual leadership to the wife. She reminds people to pray, takes kids to religious instruction outside the home, provides religious instruction in the home, takes children to Sun Mass while dad (he’s tired after a rough week) sleeps in. This suggestion works equally well if mother refuses to be involved in spiritual upbringing.
2. Parents offer no resistance to “real” world. Unmarried couples who visit overnight are welcomed to use one guestroom. Daughter is given birth control prescription because “she’s going to be sexually active anyway.”
3. When kids date, don’t ever, ever ask if the datee is Catholic, thus ensuring that he eventually “hooks up” with an atheist. Be prepared to find out evetually that your grandchild was aborted.
And finally … Make sure that some day when you re-encounter someone from the past, he asks, “i just found out you’re Catholic … Seriously, I never knew that.”
You are DEAD ON Right! Take dad out of the equation and no matter the enthusiasm of the mom only 36% of kids saty with the faith. put dad back in and that jumps to 76%.
The four most important elements of the spiritual life for adults and children are daily prayer (especially the rosary and divine office), the Holy Eucharist (daily or frequently received), frequent confession (and examination of conscience and forgiveness in the home) and Scripture especially the Gospels along with the Catechism of the Catholic Church. All of these grow grace, holiness and a relationship with Jesus, which is a shield against the culture we live in and the temptations of the devil. There are many other things that are helpful such as: spiritual reading and lives of the saints, a home that reveals it is a Catholic home with a crucifix in each bedroom, a prayer place for the family to pray, holy water font by the door for blessing the children and ourselves, etc. Lastly, a parents example in all of these will be the greatest influence on their children. They watch everything you do and all that you say.
As an atheist raised in a Catholic family.please allow me to give my take. There is no magic bullet that can make a child become an atheist or stay a Catholic. At some point each person reaches that point where they question what is and is not true, and then looks at the available evidence. When I did so (around age 13) I knew I did not believe. Others have looked at the same evidence and come to an opposite conclusion.
Each person is different, but I know the problems I have with Catholicism wouldn’t be resolved if we had prayed as a family more or tolerated others less.
While there might be no ‘magic bullet’…there are certainly things that can help out their children to be ‘pius’ lovers of God in their adulthood.
And one way is by providing an abundance of true love and affection to their children at a very early age…ie. under 3 yrs.,etc…. wherein parents can imitate God in His defined nature which IS “Love” (…ie..”God is Love”), and so by providing their children with an abundance of affectionate love they will be teaching them about God even without the use of religion or catechism lessons. So, if they start first with authentic love for their children, the children will one day be able to understand Jesus better, when He is taught to them via His Holy Gospel teachings and the sacraments of the Catholic Church. Herein, they will better recognize the ‘Shepherd’s’ voice, because that voice is ‘Divine Love’.
But, if the parents neglect this, and are self absorbed and addicted to other worldly loves…ie..’sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, money, their own popularity and ‘selfies’, sports…etc…then they will basically be living in a type of perpetual ‘hang over’, wherein they will have little, or no, ’emotional capital’ and affectionate love left over in their hearts to provide to their children. The children might therefore be left with few examples of the ‘Love of God and man’ that is exemplified throughout the Gospel message, and so not recognize this great love when they read the stories and words of Jesus Christ. Thus, they will more readily distrust the Gospel of Christ, having little actual memory or experience of it in the earliest years of their lives via their parent’s love and affection for them.
@MikeOLeary Have you looked at Edward Feser’s work regarding atheism?
The truth is, faith is primarily an intellectual matter. A person cannot give willful consent to something he believes to be false. The intellect leads the will. This is why when you’re winning an argument with a friend your friend might start shouting over you or covering his ears. That’s because he knows that if he hears your persuasive argument, then it’s game over for the will. He has no choice but to believe what you have successfully argued.
Adam and Hava were brought up in faith, hope, and charity, with free will and morals, but still they chose sin for themselves. Eventually, their elder son murdered their younger son, and then he went away with his sister. They had a third son who also married his sister. It was only in old age that Adam and Hava and their big family turned back to worship of God. Evil continued, with a few good meen such as Enoch, and many ages later was the big flood. In modern times, a Polish king said to his people, I am not king of your consciences. That is, human beings have religious liberty.
A little late to the comments, but I wanted to find the link to a blog post by Rod Dreher from late last year.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/farewell-judith-rich-harris/
Judith Rich Harris’ argument (as explained here) seems very plausible to me. There is what parents can convey and what is conveyed by one’s peers. It is often the peer’s opinions that hold more sway.
This explains why students at campus centers can experience profound conversions and why faithful Catholic students can quickly fall away from the practice of the faith.
There is one interesting point made in the Dreher post that is worth mentioning in light of Troy’s article. Harris says, “Even though parents may not have much influence as individuals, they can have a great deal of power if they get together.”
It seems to me that the best guarantee to make sure a child is strengthened in the faith is to participate in a home-school co-op. While it is possible, most schools, even Catholic schools lack the “common parent culture” to foster Catholic virtues and practices. Faith is a gift from God and it is one fostered by the culture(s) one inhabits. Without intentional action by cultural leaders, it will be very difficult for someone to sustain their faith.
I’m in total agreement with the homeschool co-op, having been part of one. This, I hold, is the only hope for a higher percentage of one’s children retaining the faith.
Also, I must speak to this experience: I often take my son with me to daily Mass. He has a discernible disability. Occasionally the Catholic school children attend the same Mass. Inevitably some some clique of some of the school children take note of my son. Then begins gawking, craning, and snickering directed our way. I tend to think that parents, sitting with these children, would correct them, while the Catholic school teacher, at the end of the pew in front of these children, fails to notice or cannot address her charges from her position far away. It is always a trial and a penance for me to attend Mass under these conditions.
When the parents of the school children also attend the school Mass, they inevitably pull out their cell phones and persist in taking pictures of their darling loved ones. What does that tell the children about the Mass?
I wish I could say that I broke even one of those rules. But neither my husband nor I did that and we have 3 atheists out of 4 children. Granted, they are 25 and under but still….
Too rigid about the faith and instilling fear? nope
Watching bad programs or allowing them to? nope
Faithful to our marriage in every way? yep
Happy in marriage? yep
Complaining about the church or priests? nope
Tolerance for bad ideas and going along to get along? nope
Integrity in dealing with others? yep
Gossiping about neighbors and friends? nope
Keeping up with the Jones’s ? nope
Eating and praying together? yep
Paying attention to schooling and even homeschooling when needed? yep
I just asked my daughter to rule if any of these things caused her atheism and she only said that because we expected her to go to Mass and other obligatory duties, i.e. confession, lenten fasts, etc.. she didn’t like to be told what to do. But certainly that didn’t cause her atheism. What caused it was that she wanted to do things that the culture says is fine and feels good and she could not do those things and be Catholic (or a believer in a Christian God) In addition she doesn’t see a difference in niceness between Christians and non Christians. So she chose what made her feel good. She also tends to be rather lazy intellectually, and self examination is not her strong suit. She’s one of those people who thinks she’s a “good” person because she doesn’t try to make others miserable and just kind of lives for herself. She’s pleasant and helpful at times and very conscientious at work. Perhaps she will return. I think she might. But your list doesn’t ring true with us.
Dear GOD/GODS and/or anyone else who can HELP ME (e.g. MEMBERS OF SUPER-INTELLIGENT ALIEN CIVILIZATIONS):
The next time I wake up, please change my physical form to that of FINN MCMILLAN of SOUTH NEW BRIGHTON at 8 YEARS OLD and keep it that way FOREVER.
I am so sick of this chubby Asian man body!
Thank you!
– CHAUL JHIN KIM (a.k.a. A DESPERATE SOUL)
P.S. If you are reading this then please pray for me!
Chaul… try some exercising and weight training. Wanting to be an 8 yr old boy when you are a man is, well….odd.
You have my prayers.
Rich