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Last summer Pauline Kids sent me a copy of Totally Catholic: A Catechism for Kids and Their Parents and Teachers to review. I finally took the time to look through it last week and I was thoroughly impressed.
Totally Catholic is intended for children ages 9-12. I’m not sure how accurate that is because my oldest is only 6-1/2, but it worries me to think that some topics need to be discussed so early. This book does touch on some mature topics like atheism/agnosticism, divorce, adultery, pornography, homosexual acts and chastity. Nothing in depth, but the idea that these words would even be in the lexicon of a 3rd-6th grader disturbs me a bit.
Being disillusioned with the state of society aside, Totally Catholic is laid out in 39 chapters. If you are a homeschooler (or even if you are not) you could do one chapter a week for a school year to supplement their Catholic education in a fun and fruitful way. The content is rich in catechesis from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, complete with notations. It’s divided into 3 sections–how we worship, how we live, and we pray.
Each chapter has several features making it interesting and easy to read. Instead of being pages of dry text, it’s graphically interesting with a very bloggy/newsletter feel to it. It reminds me of the (Protestant) Life Application Bible I was given in High School. There are BTW boxes with related but sort of random facts in them, a short sidebar called Catholic VIP with a bit about a Saint related to the topic, a link to scripture, and a prayer prompt called From My Heart. Also included is a topic to thing more about (Brainstorm), Now Act! Which has you DO something, and a recap of a handful of the main points to remember.
I spend a lot of time reading & reviewing Protestant resources in addition to Catholic ones and Mary Kathleen Glavich, SND did a great job of explaining fundamental differences between Catholic thinking & Protestant thinking without apologizing or being belligerent. Like I get sometimes :).
Some examples:
“…read the books with awareness of the culture of the people who wrote them.” Pg. 23.
and
“… creation story [was] written as a poem and is not meant to be understood as a historical document.” Pg. 33.
Can I just heave a big sigh of relief over that? Because, honestly, the whole Creationist thing makes me nuts. I was so excited to see a reference to the world being millions of years old. The idea of the Earth being 5000 years old and having dinosaurs on the ark just doesn’t work for me, probably because I grew up with the Catholic mindset.
Not only does Totally Catholic cover the main points of the Catholic Catechism, it also covers things like precepts of the church, virtues, fruits of the spirit, prayers, the Rosary and more. It even covers “hard” teachings like a divorce doesn’t end the marriage or that homosexual ACTS are wrong but we still love and respect the people. From a practical standpoint, it goes through the 10 Commandments and talks about gossip and what it means to live them out one by one. The section on prayer covers different traditional Catholic prayers, Lectio Divinia, and even explain about the Doxology & the Our Father.
Overall, Totally Catholic is a great resource for older elementary and maybe even middle school kids to learn the how’s and whys of the Catholic faith. I wish something like this existed when I was a kid. I fell away from the church for 15+ years after my confirmation. I think this would have helped. If you think your children may need this on the younger end of the recommended age range, I would maybe work through it with them. Some topics may need some loving discussion, as I mentioned above. We will probably add it as a Sunday study when our kids are old enough. Very well done & highly recommended!!
[…] a set of Catholic books for older elementary-tweens. Both are from Pauline Press. The first is Totally Catholic (a Catholic Catechism) and the second is When Parents Divorce or […]