CST #110: The Fall of Charity
This Week: Its been two weeks, calamitous Sundays, putting up lights, we review The Fall, get more info on Catholic weddings, and look at whether charity should have its limits.
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Have been listening your your podcast for a short time now, and have enjoyed it very much. I wanted to share with you about our children and Mass.
My wife and I have 7 kids. And just like you we have tried various things to keep them quiet during mass. We have finally settled on sitting up front. It does not always work, but is is better than almost anything else. Our oldest son is 11, and our youngest is just over a year. The one year old makes noise and we expect that, he’s one. So my wife or I normally have to take him to the back of church. Now he also loves his oldest brother, meaning he will beg for his oldest brother to hold him. the oldest is an alter server. So as the processions occurred this week he tried to jump from my arms in to BC’s (my oldest son.) And every time the baby caught site of BC he called to him. It was a noisy Mass.
Beyond that, during Mass they have the Children’s lit of The Word and we send three of our children to that. This means that on the days BC serves we have only three left in the pew with us. Quiet time for mom and dad! However, this week our oldest daughter (KE) who is four and, home schooled, had an accident while she was gone. She came back into Mass very sad looking (which is odd of her.) After a couple of minutes we got it out of her what happened. It turns out that home schooled kids fail at two things: one standing in line, and two raising their hands to ask a question. She didn’t know how to ask if she could go to the bathroom. So my wife took her out to get her cleaned up and clean up the mess that she didn’t tell any one about.
Admittedly this was a bad week for us. KE’s next oldest brother (LC), is normally a handful, (we call him the energizer bunny) but when there is only one parent around he can be more than normal. By the end of Mass I was literally almost sitting on the child to keep him still.
We have only been in this parish for a couple of years, but I am pretty sure I too have seen money change hands as one of us takes the kids out.
The long and short of this I remember having two or three kids and how much of a handful that can be. But now, my wife and I tend to giggle at people who have one, two or three kids and say have their hands full. Not in a mean way, but still we laugh. Good luck. I will say that the older ones are for the most part behaved during Mass. So there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
If you would like to see more about our family please visit my wife’s Blog at http://lostinthelaundrypile.blogspot.com