Catholic Homeschool Support

One Baby, One Vote

49 million American babies have been aborted since Roe V. Wade in 1973.
25 million would have been old enough to vote in this election.

Finally! Yes, I finally sat down and went through this beautiful program in order to provide a write up. This is a Catholic economic program for high school age students called “Apostles and Markets“. From the website the author states:

I wrote Apostles & Markets with Catholic teachers in mind. For twenty years I held an endowed chair in economics at a Catholic college-preparatory high school in the Midwest. In my work I sought to develop the particular perspective and instructional materials that I knew I needed in order to teach well according to academic and normative standards. At the same time, I became aware that other teachers, similarly situated, faced the same challenge. How might a teacher in a Catholic school frame the study of immigration, for example—or wage inequality, profits, the environment, or globalization—validly, according to relevant disciplinary principles, and according to principles of our faith? How do technical issues of monetary and fiscal policy come into view in a Catholic context? I struggled with difficult questions of this sort for a long time, through study, discussion, and ongoing classroom practice. These efforts have now yielded Apostles & Markets. I offer it here in the hope that others will find uses for it and, in their work with it, contribute to the quest it represents.

Stephen J. Haessler, Ph.D.

Honestly, I found myself a bit reluctant to review this program because I do not as yet have students in high school. So, I offer that as a caveat.

The program is provided in a very large 3 ring binder that permits the teacher to pull out the reproducibles quite easily. The quality of the paper is quite nice, and while the majority of the pages are black and white, there is enough color to give your eyes a treat.

The program is comprised of 12 chapters – each one named after an apostle. The topics include:

• Entrepreneurship
• Prices
• Valuation
• Profit
• Wages
• Pollution
• Trade
• Tariffs
• Unemployment
• Immigration
• Stability
• Corruption

Each chapter begins with a “Lesson Description” offering a one paragraph explanation of what the student is to learn, what resources he or she will use and what project they will work on to apply the lesson. This is followed by the “Lesson Rationale” – another one paragraph item. After these two paragraphs, there follows a list of references including specific biblical passages, references from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. The author also provides a list of Economic Concepts, Economic Standards, Objectives and finally a list of Materials (handouts) that you would make copies of for your students.

The next section of the chapter is the specifics on how to teach the lesson. In general this is about a one page “script” for the teacher. There are terms for the student to define, questionms to pose and discussions to lead.

After the “Teaching Procedures” portion of the chapter, answer keys are provided for each of the handouts for that chapter. The answers are generally a few lines each. Finally, you are given a set of guidelines on how to assess the work that is turned in.

The meat of the program is in the Handouts. For example, in the first chapter, Handout one is comprised of six pages. Four pages are text and include biblical passages and passages from the CCC along with explanations of how the passages relate to the chapter’s topic. Following the text are the questions to have the student work on. Some of the handouts are hands on projects like “Doin’ a Dozen: Applying Supply and Demand Analysis to Gas Prices” in Chapter 2 – “St. Andrew: Market Pricing”. This handout has 11 pages and guides the student to an indepth analysis and chance to apply what they have been studying.

You can view samples for each of the chapters on the website by clicking on the Lesson links on the left side of the page.

This program is best suited to be used in a group setting. One parent might feel comfortable teaching all the lessons, or you might have each parent take 2 of the lessons to teach. You would be best prepared to study the materials and go through the activities on your own so that you can better guide your student.

I think this is a fantastic addition to the homeschooling community. While it is geared to a presentation in a group setting and was developed for Catholic teachers, I believe that students benefit from this type of setting for this particular topic and I believe that there is enough information provided for a homeschooling mother to manage – but it could be a stretch honestly since this is not a subject that many of us have studied.

The foundation of the program is solid and authentically Catholic. My hope is to offer this as a class in my homeschooling community during the year we again study American history and civics. I envision some lively discussions and feel that the projects will be of great assistance in really learning the material. Another suggestion would be to enlist a homeschooling family that owns a small business – what a great opportunity for a father to teach to the homeschoolers – perhaps a Saturday morning class?

Faith Database – Over 1500 Writings – Over 75,000,000 Words – Over 80,000 Pages

First of all, let me give you some links:

Faith Database Website

Video Introducing the Faith Database – Jerry Usher

In one place, you have an absolutely mind boggling amount of information compiled (from the website):

2000 Years of Christian History

• 10 Bible Translations
• 88 Council Documents from all 21 Ecumenical Councils
• 400 Early Church writings
• 165 writings from the Doctors of the Church
• 74 books from John Henry Newman
• 1300 Papal writings/encyclicals
• The Old Catholic Encyclopedia (1200 entries and 5000 images)
• Many classics including Gibbons’ “Faith of our Fathers,” Thomas a Kempis’ “Imitation of Christ” and John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body”
• 1000 Bible Art Images
• Over 100 Bible Maps
• Illustrated Church history
• Search Catechism and Code of Canon Law

Some of the Over 1500 Featured Writings Classics

• Apologia (Newman)
• Orthodoxy (Chesterton)
• Thomas a Kempis
• Doctors of the Church
• St. John of the Cross
• St. Theresa of Avila
• St. Thomas Aquinas (The Summa)

Early Church Fathers

• St. Augustine’s Confessions
• Irenaeus’ Against Heresies
• St. John Chrysostom’s Commentaries

Papal Writings / Encyclicals

Ok, so now as a homeschooling parent – what do we do with this? How can we it assist us in our job as teachers? I believe it’s a given that it it is a fantastic apologetic tool for all adults as well as way for us to grow in our faith. With ten translations of the Holy Bible, we can do in depth Bible studies.

But, this review is focused on how we might use the database with our children.

So, my first delve into the database – my two oldest children had to write a paper for 8th grade about Infallibility. I could not do the search because I was using the database incorrectly. Finally, I realized I needed to select Encyclopedia and searched again for the term, “infallibility” – and the program crashed. Yikes. A caveat, watch the video! It gives a nice walk through of how to search the encyclopedia. But, I still encountered an error and will contact them in regards to it. It appears if you search for a term in the topics that is not found, you receive an error message and if you press cancel, it closes the program down.

Oops – I discovered that I spelled the word incorrectly. Once I correctly spelled infallibility, I discovered one entry for the topic and many entries when I searched the text – both searches returned a huge amount of information. Everything I might possibly want to know about infallibilty was in the topic and my children were able to understand the concept better. Actually, I read it and distilled it and was better able to delve deeper into the topic so that they were able to write more about it.

Then, out of curiosity, I wanted to see what other information was in the database about infallibility. After selecting the Tab, Apologetics, I selected Authority/Church in the Categories Box, and then in then in the box below, Doctrines, I selected Church Authority/Papal Infallibilty.  What was returned, was a series of quotes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church including:

100 The task of interpreting the Word of God authentically has been entrusted solely to the Magisterium of the Church, that is, to the Pope and to the bishops in communion with him.

Under this section was Supporting Bible Passages with another great list of quotes. This was followed by quotes from the Early Church fathers. Wow! All I can say is wow! What an amazing collection of information.

Next task – my 8th graders needed to write a paper on the 4 marks of the Catholic Church, “One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic”. I go immediately to the Apologetics section – and there it is. Once again, I select in the Categories box, Authority/Church. Then I find a topic for each item – Church is Apostolic (ok, I know this is the One part of the Marks of the Church). Again, the format is a collection of quotes from the CCC, then the supporting Bible passages, followed by the Early Church fathers quotes. There is more information than I even know what to do with. And, again, my children are able to write a deeper paper because I am better educated.

My only disappointment with the Apologetics section is that I was unable to search for terms in it.

The Mass section is another little treasure. Each part of the mass is written out, and then a “references” link is provided on the right. After clicking it, you find a list of Bible passages giving reference to where the words came from. You could also use this section for a detailed study of the Creed since each section is referenced.

The saints section is searchable.

I love the History Section. It has as categories, 100 year increments, and within each period such as 501-600AD, a number of topics like Irish monasteries flourish. The text on the right is brief, but there are images to view, an encyclopedia entry about the history of Ireland, and a map image. As my children study medieval history, I can totally image how we can use this section.

I cannot even begin to delve into all the rest including the various writings of Saints, Doctors of the Church and Popes. You can select Popes and then Pope John Paul II and see all the writings included. So, if you want to read “Faith and Reason”, there it is. I believe all these writings are downloaded upon installation. So the install of the database does take some time.

Also included are 10 translations of the Holy Bible and again, I do not have time to delve into how we might use that in our homeschools.

This is a fantastic product – I am not sure if they will be offering updates, but it is well worth the price of $31.95 (downloaded), or $39.95 (shipped). I look forward to seeing all the ways I can use this for both my personal growth in faith, to become a better apologist, and in my homeschooling.

I am sorry for my absence – I found out I was pregnant a month ago – and at the end of last week, discovered that I would not be holding this baby in my arms in this life.

To make this is a newsworthy article and of benefit to others, I wanted to be sure that all you lovely mothers who have experienced the loss of a baby know about this site:

The Church of the Holy Innocents

At this site, you can name your baby and have him or her placed in the Book of Life and be comforted by the fact that a candle remains lit for all of our babies that we have had to entrust to God’s care and will hopefully meet heaven.