McGrath Institute Blog

Thus far in this series, we have looked at the intersection of liturgy and education in both the school and the parish. Here, I turn to the last educational milieu we will consider in this series: the family.

Summers were always refreshingly quiet at the Newman Center. Like any college campus, for a few precious months our public university was reduced to the satisfying hum of summer students and a steady stream of high schoolers coming for campus tours and orientation. I met many Catholic students and parents as they stopped by the Newman Center after their campus visit. There are a few of these students I will never forget, but there were also many whom I never saw again. In seven years of Catholic Campus Ministry at a public university, there was no shortage of parents calling us for help with a student who was struggling or who had stopped going to church. While we did what we could for them, their calls echoed the same question I saw in the eyes of my summer visitors: how can I help my child stay Catholic in college?

As the Church celebrates the feast of Our Lady of Fatima today, the McGrath Institute for Church Life is releasing a free resource: Celebrating Mary in the Month of May: A Resource for the Domestic Church.

In the first part of this series, I offered some thoughts on homeschooling and crisis management. In this installment, I’ll give suggestions pertaining to essential needs.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve received a number of requests from people looking for resources to assist them in different ways as they meet the challenges presented by stay-at-home orders and social distancing restrictions. In response, we’ve begun curating online resources in this weekly series, including links in each of the following categories: Prayer for the Home, Educational Opportunities, Resources (for ministers, educators, parents, etc.), and Flourishing and Fun.  

Here are several that caught our attention for this week: