Faith Formation for the Entire Family

WHERE IT BEGINS

"In asking for Baptism for your children, you are undertaking the responsibility of raising them in the faith, so that keeping God's commandments, they may love the Lord and their neighbor as Christ has taught us. Do you understand this responsibility?"

PARENTS: "We do."

(To the godparents) "Are you ready to help the parents of these children in their duty?"
GODPARENTS: "We are"

"Dear children, the Church of God receives you with great joy. In her name I sign you with the Sign of the Cross of Christ our Savior; then, after me, your parents and godparents will do the same."

- from the order of Baptism of Children

FROM THE CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

2223 Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children. They bear witness to this responsibility first by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule. The home is well suited for education in the virtues. This requires an apprenticeship in self-denial, sound judgment, and self-mastery - the preconditions of all true freedom. Parents should teach their children to subordinate the "material and instinctual dimensions to interior and spiritual ones." Parents have a grave responsibility to give good example to their children. By knowing how to acknowledge their own failings to their children, parents will be better able to guide and correct them: 

• He who loves his son will not spare the rod. . . . He who disciplines his son will profit by him. 
• Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.