It’s no secret, the Catholic Church is facing a crisis.
According to the Public Religion Research Institute’s survey, “Exodus: why Americans are Leaving Religion – and Why They’re Unlikely to Come Back,” only seven per cent of Catholic millennials practise the faith and 79 per cent of those who leave the faith do so before the age of 23.
Our world is becoming more and more secular, and raising children in this environment is fraught with concerns for parents. Even children who were engaged in their younger years tend to walk away during high school or university. Parents are at a loss, asking what they can do to ensure that their children do not become another statistic.
Brick by Brick: Building a Strong Family that Won’t Lose Their Faith in a Secular Culture is our family’s attempt to respond to these questions. Every chapter is written by 10 authors: my husband Andre Regnier, myself, all of our five kids, and three in-laws.
The book came about through the insistence of Catholic Christian Outreach alumni. Our alumni, who have witnessed us raise our family over the past few decades, kept asking, “How did you do it? How did you raise children who are active in sharing and living their faith?”
We know many young families today are looking for advice and guidelines about parenting in today’s culture especially with the long game of raising children who will practise their faith as adults. Our desire is to lift the aspirations of Catholic parents to not just hope that their kids will go to Mass as adults. We want to exhort parents to raise children who will be active missionary disciples for life.
“Missionary discipleship” has become a catch phrase in Catholic communities who are active in the new evangelization. The term was made popular by Pope Francis by his mention of it in the Aparecida Document (2007) and later in Evangelii Gaudium (2013).
“In virtue of their baptism, all the members of the People of God have become missionary disciples,” Pope Francis wrote.
“All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization, and it would be insufficient to envisage a plan of evangelization to be carried out by professionals while the rest of the faithful would simply be passive recipients. The new evangelization calls for personal involvement on the part of each of the baptized. Every Christian is challenged, here and now, to be actively engaged in evangelization; indeed, anyone who has truly experienced God’s saving love does not need much time or lengthy training to go out and proclaim that love.”
How can a family put missionary discipleship at the centre of ordinary family life? In our book, we help parents:
Understand the importance of aiming high: helping children become intentional missionary disciples rather than just Mass attendees;
Discover ways to make faith a “positive option” in the eyes of their children;
Feel empowered to prepare their children to live their out their faith in the real world;
Learn how to raise children who can navigate the trials and temptations of the world by making moral, Christ-centred decisions;
Learn effective ways to pass their faith on to their children, especially through emphasizing the importance of a lived personal relationship with God;
Learn seven key areas of family life that will enable them to raise children who will continue on in their faith into adulthood;
Be equipped in essential principles of family life that will create a healthy environment for their children to grow, develop, and thrive in their faith.
Come on in! Join us in our living room and have a cup of coffee; sit in on our family discussions and uncover key principles about raising children who are growing in holiness and in their missionary identity.
We have noticed that the “village” that children grow up in is an essential aspect in achieving this goal.
We urge you to find a village of role models who your children can look up to and aspire to be and whose relationship with the Lord is alive and attractive; a village of faith-filled families who can act as a community for yourselves and your children, walking with you on your family’s faith journey; and lastly, a village of a youth group environment, where your children can go to claim their faith, encounter Jesus, and grow in Catholic leadership.
These aspects work together in helping raise your children as missionary disciples. This task, though daunting, is in fact possible and necessary; truly it takes a village.
Angele Regnier and husband Andre Regnier are founders of Catholic Christian Outreach, a university student movement focused on evangelization. The Regnier family published Brick by Brick in 2019. It is available through the Sophia Institute.
