By Susan Gallagher

Parents are the primary influence in childhood religious development, studies find, and a program tested in the Diocese of Helena is intended to give mom and dad some help as they nurture faith in their sons and daughters.

The program, “Strong Catholic Families: Strong Catholic Teens,” – previously named “Will Our Kids Have Faith?” – was offered on Sunday, Sept. 20, at a Helena training session led by Doug Tooke, the diocesan youth and young adult minister.

Parents and campus ministers were among the 100-plus people at the session, with Helena serving as the pilot diocese for the program developed by the National Federation for Catholic Youth Ministry Inc.

“It’s a comprehensive look at mom and dad as the primary source for faith formation,” said Tooke, who is affiliated with the federation. The training held at Helena’s Our Lady of the Valley Parish drew “savvy adults who are doing faith formation and are interested in doing it better,” he said.

Tooke said the program launched well and he hopes it eventually will be offered in deaneries throughout the Diocese of Helena. He anticipates a session, perhaps next spring or summer, to instruct people who will then serve as trainers to help establish the program widely in the diocese.

“A vacuum in parish ministry is that mom and dad are not taking the lead” as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says they should, Tooke said.

“The role of parents in (religious) education is of such importance that it is almost impossible to provide an adequate substitute,” he said. “We want to help them with resources and tools.”

“Strong Catholic Families: Strong Catholic Teens” was developed following examination of data from the National Study on Youth and Religion, an ongoing project headed by researchers at the University of Notre Dame and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The study’s first major findings are in the 2005 book “Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers.” Its authors write that the “single most important influence on the religious and spiritual lives of adolescents is their parents.”

“Attendance at services, use of spiritual language – kids mimic mom and dad,” Tooke said. “Gone are the days when “Sister Smith” and “Father Jones” were the primary source of faith formation.”

Princeton Theological Seminary’s Kenda Creasy Dean wrote in a review of “Soul Searching” that the book puts “American religious communities on notice: If religion matters, then we had better stop ‘exposing’ young people to faith and start teaching it to them.”

Participants in the training session Sept. 20 included Bill Hunthausen of Helena, who has a 15-year-old daughter and a son 12. Hunthausen said he and his wife, Maureen, were “looking for ways to enhance our own ministry at home. We did come away with some things – how our own children do mirror our faith and our faith language, and how important it is to use more of the language of our Catholic faith at home and be more intentional about it. It was good to refocus on how important our home connection is.”

“It’s not just dropping your kids off at RE (religious education) and having the Church take care of it,” said Hunthausen, a teacher in the Helena public schools.

Bernie McCarthy, who works in religious education at St. Teresa of Avila Parish in Whitehall and is a deacon candidate, also took the “Strong Catholic Families: Strong Catholic Teens” training.

“For me, this was one of the most affirming programs to talk to parents about their roles and responsibilities in terms of Catholic formation of our teens,” said McCarthy, father of a 14- and a 12-year-old. “The message is, ‘I’ve got to do it first and there are resources to help me as a parent.’”

McCarthy said that three days after the training, he met with parents at his parish and they discussed “speaking the language of faith in your house.”


Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 25, No. 10, October 16, 2009.