The students are questioning the practice of All Saints and Souls Day?

Question from Cathy on 10/21/2007:

I teach 6th Grade REP and they are questioning the practice of all Saints and Souls Days they want more than what is in our Religious Education Books. History and practice of these days. Where can I pick up some more info that is brief and to the point. I did see the movie DVD option but I do not know if we have the budget to purchase it. Please help me Thanks, Cathy

I would have liked to know more of Doctrine as well but it is full.

Answer by Richard Geraghty on 10/22/2007:

Dear Cathy,

There is the Catholic Encyclopedia on line. There you will get a great deal of information on those two holy days. But don't think that supplying more information is going to make your students believers if they are already skeptical. The real power working is when the teacher professes that he or she believes in what the Church teaches. Here the children have the witness of an adult who takes all the teachings of the Church as the truth. Thus in your effort to supply more information impress upon the students that you believe in the teachings of the Church, not because you understand them all, not because you have approved of them one by one, but because you are a Catholic. And what Catholics do is to believe the Church as teaching in the name of God. This view, of course, does not fit the Protestant's view, which is based more on the Bible and more on opposition to the Church. So maybe you have to give a few lessons on the difference between Catholics and Protestants about the way each views the teaching authority of their respective churches.

Dr. Geraghty