My five-year-old asked me today why family members go to a different church than us. These are family members who are in a different denomination than us. I wanted to be precise, but tread carefully. The answer is, of course, rooted in the Good News, and I owe it to speak it and he deserves to receive it.
Here’s how it went:
Me: “OK, you know how Jesus started the church and gave them the Holy Spirit a long time ago right?”
Kid: “Uh huh”
Me: “And that the Holy Spirit He gave them was also God and Jesus so He could always be with them right?”
Kid: “Uh huh”
Me: “Well those people received God inside of them. I like to think of the Holy Spirit as a glittery gold dove and that my rib cage is a birdcage, because of course my body is a temple of the Holy Sprit.”
Kid: “Cool!”
Me: “Anyway, so those people spread the good news of God all over the world, and when they did that they baptized and confirmed others and those other people got the Holy Spirit. So there were a ton of people with the Holy Spirit. Follow?”
Kid: “Follow”
Me: “But the rub is, even when people have the Holy Spirit, the actual living God inside of them, they can make mistakes. And some of those people decided that they wanted to make different rules than the people in the main church. It’s OK to have discussions about new or different rules, and it’s important to pray and talk about it to understand if new rules or changes should happen. Got it?”
Kid: “Got it.”
Me: “But some of those new rules were so different that people could not agree. So instead of agreeing to disagree, or continuing to dialog and work for change, people left the church that Jesus started to make up their own churches. And in doing so they left something really really important that we have that others don’t have, do you know what that is?”
Kid: “Uh, Jesus?”
Me: “No, they still had Jesus and the Holy Spirit in them… what they lost was Communion and Confession, sacraments that Jesus started in the church he started.”
Kid: “Oh right.”
Me: “Isn’t that interesting. That people who believed in Jesus and had the Holy Spirit in them could still make a choice to separate themselves from God and his church. That’s like when we say we “fail to do good” in our confession. It’s not that they are choosing to do wrong but they’ve failed to do good in a really big way…”
Me: “So as time went on, people continued to pass down their church to their family members, and also more and more churches were created. And our family members who aren’t Catholic are in a different church because that is their family’s tradition. And today there are tons of churches but only one Catholic church. Sometimes people change churches, like how daddy became Catholic from being not Catholic. He came because he believed in Communion and knew that the Catholic church is where Jesus truly was present in Communion. But others, who still believe in Jesus, do not believe in the Catholic church, for whatever reason. They are still Christians, and they can be good people, just like non-Christians can be good people. Makes sense.”
Kid: “Makes sense.”
Then I got to take him to school Mass, which I love as the children’s homilies are usually so clear and true 🙂
But I really liked the chance to try to break it down, And the idea of our various ways to fail to do good and how some of those failures can have generational implications!
Anyway, just putting this here for them one day. Especially since the 5 year old may not be asking me any theological questions for a while to stay out of a long conversation! 🙂
Let Us Pray:
Holy God, creator of all things, preserve us, your dearest children from eternal separation from you.
Guide us and give us the grace to discern your will. To avoid instances where we would otherwise fail to do good. Gift us with Wisdom to make straight and clear the path that leads us to eternity with you.
Amen!