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In this episode: Austin’s questions about leadership, Unschooling, Allyson reviews the Crafty Classroom, Austin reviews Heroes Over Europe, the “Church” situation, Catholic Crossroads by Patrick Denny.
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About Unschooling, I completely agree with you. My question is why did the mother buy the spelling book? Did the boy ask her to do it? Why didn’t he go to the store and get it himself? Did the mother just decide it was time for him to learn to spell?
I affirm that unschooling parents have the right to follow this path with their children, but I also have the right to think it is flaky and ultimately detrimental for their children. I wonder, with this philosophy, if they told their children ‘no’ when they were going for the electrical outlet. After all you wouldn’t want to impose your concept of appropriate knowledge on the child.
David,
I must side with Cathryn on the bi-lingual Mass. In our little mission church, we have had a Spanish Mass and an English Mass for a number of years. On feasts and special occasions we would have a bi-lingual Mass. We struggled through and managed pretty well. Our combined community does well together and we used to have parish meals and functions that were well attended by all. All of this was accomplished with priests who spoke very little or no Spanish. Of course, there have been issues along the way, but these had to do with individuals, not the community.
A couple of years ago, we got a new pastor who is bi-lingual. He gives an excellent homily and seemed to be just what we needed for our growing parish.
Soon, we started to lose people in our Hispanic community. It seems he had alienated some families. He was right in what he said or did and I mostly agreed with him, but had reservations about his lack of tact (love?) in the manner he did things.
Skip to the present. By Lent of this year, our Hispanic and English communities had shrunk to about 2/3 of where we were a couple of years ago. Then our pastor announced that we would have only one Mass and it would be bi-lingual. To make mattres worse, he came up with a schedule where we have an English choir and a Spanish choir and rotate which sings different parts of the Mass and the hymns. Since adopting this bi-lingual schedule we have had only about ½ of our congregations of 2 years ago.
The founding families of our mission speak English. We built this mission under the direction of a priest with vision and a love of people. We have no debt and have a substantial sum accumulated to build a new and larger church. We welcomed our Hispanic brothers and sisters when they came to our community and they have also contributed much to our mission. We give money to our sponsoring parish every month. All they do is provide us a priest for our Masses. We do not have a parish council.
Personally, I am waiting. I have worked with our Hispanic Choir in the past and we have combined for special Masses and have done well. I even taught everyone a Latin Mass so that we could avoid the poorly devised bi-lingual music. I am aware that the Holy Spirit sent me to this mission nearly 20 years ago because there was a need for what I have to give. Now I suspect that He is preparing me to move on.
But I digress. A bi-lingual Mass is good for a special occasion, but a steady diet can leave one anemic. Oddly, a Hispanic priest who works in my area will adamantly tell you that the Mass should be in English. Only the homily should be offered in English and Spanish.
Our parish council agrees with you. This week, they voted to put aside the idea of a regular bilingual Mass.
Hi,
This comment is with regard to a show that you did a while back, during lent possibly. I’ve been meaning to comment but as the mother of three small children enrolled in a professional training program at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York, I haven’t actually sat down to write my thoughts. A while ago the two of you had somewhat of a heated discussion about weight loss and what each of you needed to change in order to meet your weight loss goals. I think the main thing I wanted to write is that each of you needs to come at your goal from within, we can’t tell each other what we need to change and expect it to happen, we have to want it badly enough and then make the change for ourselves, although having one another’s support can go a long way. We are all individuals, and while we would all benefit from more fruits, vegetable, whole grains and lean proteins, we are all metabolically unique and we have to find what diet and lifestyle including fitness style works for each of us. For example, David commented that Allyson eats too much sugar and Allyson commented that David eats too large of portions, while this might be very true, change won’t happen until we look into our thoughts and behaviors to understand why we are doing it, why are we sabotaging ourselves, we know what we need to do but we need to understand why we are getting in our own ways. Just some thoughts, best of luck. You can visit me at myrealhunger.com for more helpful information about living a happier, healthier life for yourself, your family and the planet. God bless and peace be with you! De
one .. one four … seven … eight … nine. I love it. You could not have planned that better.