GO TO MASS EVERY SUNDAY AND MAKE SURE DAD DOES THE DRIVING

There once was a time when all Catholic families worked their weekend schedule around Mass, as they made sure going to church each Sunday was never missed. Today, the majority of (self-identifying) Catholic families rarely attend Mass beyond Christmas and Easter, and even if they do go once or twice a month, it’s often their second-choice that was only taken because the family’s prioritized calendar of weekend sports tournaments, Saturday night kid sleepovers, and Sunday morning NFL game-watching had an unexpected opening to squeeze in 60-minutes at church on a particular weekend.

Regrettably, many of today’s Catholic are ignorant of the precept of the Church which states that a genuine Catholic attends Mass weekly and on other Holy Days. A precept is a minimum requirement for a baptized Catholic to fulfill to be able to truly consider oneself a Catholic. (Other precepts include the minimum requirements to go to Confession and receiving Eucharist at least once a year and observing certain days of fasting and abstinence.) Besides Sundays, there are six other Holy Days when American Catholics are obligated to attend Mass:

1. January 1: The Feast of Mary, the Mother of God

2. Forty days after Easter Sunday: Ascension Thursday (which some dioceses in the United States transfer to the following Sunday of that week instead)

3. August 15: Assumption of Mary into Heaven

4. November 1: All Saints’ Day

5. December 8: The Feast of the Immaculate Conception

6. December 25: Christmas, the Nativity of Our Lord

Add the Holy Days to the 52 Sundays, and a faithful Catholic should be attending Mass at least 58 times a year. I can hear many of you parents responding to this number in exasperation: “You want me to get my kids to Mass on six Holy Days in addition to every single Sunday?! I’m lucky to get them to a grand total of six ordinary Masses all year!” As a busy parent, it comes down to setting priorities for you and your family and to keep commitments to the things you value most. Going to church on the weekend as a family is just that – a priority and a commitment. When you baptized your children, you committed to raise them in the faith. You can’t say you’re raising your kids Catholic if you fail the most fundamental requirement of being Catholic – attending weekly Mass.

British Archbishop Leo Cushley stressed the importance of the Sunday Mass obligation for Catholics in a letter he wrote to his archdiocese, where he said in part:

“It is true that many people think of Sunday as just part of the weekend, a welcome break from the usual routine, and perhaps a day for family, or sporting activities. Naturally, it’s good to relax and make time for these things, but our culture has largely forgotten that Sunday is a weekly holiday because of its meaning as the Christian holy day. Attending Mass on Sunday is a solemn and binding obligation. If we deliberately fail in this matter, it is a grave sin, and we must go to Confession before receiving Communion again. The sacrifice of the Mass is a foretaste of heaven that empowers us to do real and lasting good in the world. Without the power of the Mass, we are not only cut off from the mystery of grace, but also from Christ and community. Surely, we cannot treat Christ our Savior as one option among others for us to shuffle at our convenience. I therefore urge you, brothers and sisters, to make the choice to attend Sunday Mass, to make it a priority, and to bring others with you. There’s no better thing you can do for children than to bring them to meet the living Lord Jesus at Mass every week. If you teach them like this to seek the Kingdom of God first, you can be sure He will bless them in all the other ways that you hope for.”

We recall how Jesus was upset when His disciples could not spend just one hour staying awake with Him to pray on that Holy Thursday night when He was in agony in the garden, awaiting His arrest. If you are hopefully fortunate enough to approach Jesus at the gate to heaven after you die, try to explain to Him why you could not spend just one hour each week in His Father’s house to pray, but you could spend a dozen hours each week purely to binge-watch TV and your family could devote an entire weekend to hanging out at your children’s lacrosse, soccer, or volleyball tournaments.

Consistent Sunday Mass attendance by Catholic parents and children has decreased starting with the Generation X people born in the 1970s and declining at a more rapid pace in the Millennial and Generation Z generations after that. Whereas most Catholics today only experience a standing-room-only, packed church once a year – on December 24 at the Christmas Eve Mass – those born in the Greatest Generation and Silent Generation (i.e., the first half of the 20th Century) had to squeeze into packed pews every single week of the year – regardless if the date was December 24 or February 24. It seems like unless you attend a Latin Mass parish these days, where their church pews are typically packed to the brim reminiscent of a century ago, most Novus Ordo Mass parishes in the 21st Century have embarrassingly low attendance where even the late-arriving families can choose from among dozens of empty pews.

Which of the three types of Catholics describes your family:

1. “Chreaster Catholics” = you only attend Mass twice a year – on Christmas and Easter;
2. “Lukewarm Catholics” = besides Christmas and Easter, you make a few additional appearances at Masses throughout the year due to your family’s traditions (such as on Ash Wednesday or at a relative’s First Communion) and because it’s the Advent or Lenten season;
3. “Authentic Catholics” = if the day of the week begins with the letters “Su” or “Sa,” you’re at Mass at least one of those days.

If you’re “Authentic,” you can stop reading this blog post right here. But if “Chreaster” or “Lukewarm” describes your family, please read on.

First, I suggest you have a family talk where you explain to your children (or your resistant spouse) that going to Mass is the most important thing that you can do together all week. If your child can make a commitment to get to his or her sports practice nightly or to practice a musical instrument a few days each week, and if you as the parent can make a commitment to drive your child to that nightly sports practice school or to get to the gym for your daily workout, then in comparison attending Mass once a week is not a difficult commitment to make. Being committed to one hour a week to go to church as a family is not just good for your soul, it also models to your kids what a life of commitment is about.  If one can’t keep a simple commitment as a Catholic to attend Mass one hour a week, can that person keep other more complex commitments?

What’s nice about the Catholic Church is parishes schedule a variety of weekend Mass times and there are usually a number of Catholic churches within a reasonable driving distance. So, no matter your family’s busy schedule, it’s quite a reach to contend there is no way you can fit attending Mass on your weekend calendar. Many of the non-denominational mega-churches and other Protestant churches have only one service each weekend, typically sometime between 9:00 and 11:00 on a Sunday morning. But most Catholic churches have a Saturday evening vigil Mass along with a couple of Sunday morning Masses from which to choose. Some even hold Masses on Sunday afternoons or evenings. Thus, even with your family calendar noting an all-day Sunday sports tournament or a classmate’s Saturday night slumber party, chances are your family can still find a Mass to attend that doesn’t conflict with events like these.

Now, I realize it’s one thing to get your school-age kids to go to Mass with you weekly, but it’s quite another to assume your college-age and older children will keep on attending Mass when you can no longer use the “as long as you’re living under my roof” ultimatum. Notably, it has been shown in studies that the main factor in assuring children will continue to go to church in later years as they grow older is if their own dad attended with them as youngsters. For those families with two parents, it’s critical that dad attend Mass with the kids. Yes, mom should attend too, but it’s the dad’s attendance that has the most positive repercussions. 

One large study published in Switzerland showed that the religious practice of the father of the family, above all, determines the future attendance at or absence from church of the children. Among the results of the study (which wasn’t confined to researching only Catholics, but all denominations) were these amazing statistics which revealed how vital dads are:

• If both father and mother attend church services regularly, 33% of children raised in these households will end up as regular churchgoers as they age, while 25% of these children raised by two church-attending parents will not practice their religion at all when they become adults.
• If the father is irregular and mother regular in church attendance, only 3% of the children in these families will subsequently become regular attendees themselves as adults. Meanwhile, 38% percent will stop attending church altogether.
• If the father is non-practicing and only the mother regularly attends church services, only 2% of these children will become regular worshipers in the future, yet a whopping 60% of these kids will be lost forever to the church. 
• HOWEVER… If the father is the regular churchgoer, and the mother is either irregular in attendance or totally non-practicing, a remarkable statistic emerges. In this case, as many as 44% of children raised in these types of households will regular attend church as they mature. That is a higher percentage than the 33% given above for when both parents attend church regularly! 

The results of this study may seem counter-intuitive, because you’d think that if the kids grow up in a home where both parents regularly attend church (#1 scenario above), that would be the best chance those kids became churchgoers later in life. Perhaps there are many cases of the dad merely attending church because the mom expects it, and dad grumbles about going as much as the children. It’s possible these stats are showing that the strongest inspiration to the kids (as shown in scenario #4) develops when they see dad take the lead and show passion about being a Christian, without mom’s influence or involvement. This study seems to reinforce the essential role of a family’s father as the spiritual leader. Fathers are to care for their children as our Father in heaven cares for us. 

While we know children tend to take many cues about life from their moms, it appears when it comes to faith-life, if dad takes faith in God seriously, then the message to their children is that God should indeed be taken seriously. So, dads, don’t make it a goal to be seen as the cool, casual parent of the household who lets the kids off the hook from attending Mass; make it a goal to be seen as the faithful, committed dad who is the first out the door each Sunday morning (or Saturday evening) so to start the car and give a honk to the family to hurry up and get in.

Moms are wonderful, and as my own life story showed, my widowed mom’s modeling of weekly attending Mass had a big impact on why I kept attending throughout my lifetime. But I was an anomaly. If you like to play the percentages, and you want your kids to have the best chance of growing up and being faithful Catholics/Christians when they are trying to raise their own families, you’d be smart to make sure in your family dad is modeling that faithfulness by going to church regularly. And remember, as the Catholic precepts state, regularly equates to every single weekend (with a dispensation due to illness or extreme circumstances).

The father is to be the spiritual head of the family. The history of the world – from God the Father, to Abraham, to Joseph of Nazareth – has always referred to the male of the family as the spiritual head. I implore all you dads to do your part in keeping up this tradition. If you don’t already drive your family to Mass every weekend, how about starting this coming Sunday?

In your actions of clearing out an hour in your family’s weekend calendar and both literally and figuratively being in the driver’s seat on the way to Mass, your kids will know that going to church every Saturday or Sunday is the most important commitment to keep and the most treasured thing all week that you can do together.