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If you’re a Catholic parent these days, you’ve probably spent some time thinking about how to raise kids who stay Catholic.
We know that about half (52%) of all U.S. adults who were raised Catholic leave the Church at some point in their lives. Sociologists like the University of Notre Dame’s Christian Smith, author of Handing Down the Faith: How Parents Pass Their Religion on to the Next Generation, have dedicated their careers to figuring out what factors make a difference in whether or not children retain the faith tradition of their parents.
The assumption is that faith is something passed down from parent to child. Parents shape the religious and spiritual character of their children: Faith transmission seems to depend on parents, grandparents, and what happens in the family home. Countless books and organizations help parents pass on their faith to their children effectively.
Then Blessed Carlo came along and turned all of that upside down.
A saint who passed his faith to his parents
The story of this millennial saint took the world by storm since he died in 2006 at only 15 years old. By all accounts a deeply holy person, Acutis enjoyed Pokemon and video games, making him a super relatable saint for modern kids.
Sure enough, most kids I know can’t get enough of him. My kids cheered when they heard about his upcoming canonization and couldn’t wait to tell their friends. My friend named her son after him, to the delight of all the other kids at our parish. Another friend’s daughter started going to daily Mass because of him.
What shocked me about his story is that Blessed Carlo wasn’t raised Catholic. His parents weren’t trying to raise a future saint: They weren’t even trying to raise a kid who stayed Catholic!
“Before Carlo was born, I did not have faith,” his mother, Antonia Salzano Acutis, admits candidly in her memoir, My Son Carlo. Before Carlo, she wrote, “I had only gone to Mass three times in my life.”
Instead of the parents handing down their faith to their child, it was the other way around for Carlo. “My husband and I had come back to our faith a few years prior [to Carlo’s death],” his mother wrote. “We discovered it thanks to Carlo. It was he who brought us close to God.”
It was Carlo who “handed up” his faith to his parents after learning about Jesus through his Polish nanny, Beata, a practicing Catholic with a special devotion to St. John Paul II.
God is in the driver’s seat
As a mom, I find something really important and powerful in his unusual story.
God called Blessed Carlo in a direct way, without his parents’ help, and similarly God is calling each of us in countless ways every moment of our lives. He is calling out to our kids, reaching their hearts through people, books, and experiences we can’t even imagine for them.
Our kids are really God’s more than they are ours. He wants them to be close to Him even more than we want that for them.
What was going on in Blessed Carlo’s heart that drew him to God and led him to seek God so ardently? How can we help our kids develop this same faculty for reflection, listening to God in prayer, and putting first things first?
Listening for God's voice
Perhaps teaching our kids to listen for God's voice is the most important part of sharing our faith with them. Carlo’s story reminded me of one of my favorite passages from a children’s book, Canadian Summer, by Catholic mother and writer Hilda van Stockum.
At the end of the book, the six lively Mitchell children who are the protagonists ask their mother, “Don’t you have any special wish for us?”
“Yes, I do,” said Mother. “I want you to become men and women who are easily moved by God’s inspiration. I think there is nothing more beautiful in the world than a soul who is sensitive to the language of God, whether He speaks in nature, or in art, or through people, or whispers directly into our hearts. I think we are happy and alive just so much as our ears are open to His voice and our eyes to His handiwork. That is what I wish for you and that alone. Then I know you will choose the right way of life for yourselves.”
“A soul who is sensitive to the language of God” — surely Carlo was that, seeking God without the influence of his family.
Important questions
His story makes me wonder: What are the ways that we can introduce our children to God and let them form their own loving friendship with Him, instead of thinking of their faith as something that has to be mediated by us, something we can control?
How do we raise our kids to be ready and able to listen for the voice of God in their hearts? How do we listen to and make space to hear His voice ourselves?
I don’t know the answers, but I think asking ourselves these questions is a big part of sharing our faith with those we love.
In imitation of Blessed Carlo, I’ll keep asking these questions and seeking answers, right alongside all of you who are raising Catholic kids, too.
