Messy Family Podcast : Catholic Conversations on Marriage and Family

"Failing to plan is planning to fail." – Ben Franklin Your family is your own little corporation and you are president of the board. Well, maybe not exactly, but you and your spouse are the partners in running your home, and how can you do that effectively without a plan? Once a year, it's a good idea to get away, dream a little, and make a plan. A Family Board Meeting isn't about success or failu...

"Musical nourishment which is 'rich in vitamins' is essential for children." ~ Zoltan Kodaly, music educator Music is a powerful tool, and an absolutely unique vehicle for ideas, emotions, and stimulation. As parents, we need to train our children to recognize music that is good and music that is not worth listening to. By exposing our children to lots of different types of music, we can help them...

"If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother." - Matthew 18: 15 As married people, we each have a duty, a solemn obligation to help to get our spouse to heaven. Sometimes we help them by being a cross for them ☺, but sometimes we need to help our beloved by pointing out things in their lives that need to...

"A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together." – Garrison Keillor Thanksgiving and Christmas are times of great joy and celebration, but can also be times of unprecedented stress and conflict. Buying gifts, traveling to see extended family, and keeping traditions are all important aspects of the holidays. How do Catholic families e...

"With great power comes great responsibility" ~ Ben Parker (Spiderman's Uncle) As Catholics, we have a great blessing in the clarity and beauty of the Church's teaching on contraception. Using the natural rhythms of a woman's cycle to regulate birth is a way that couples can use the reason of science as they are informed by the light of Faith. NFP is a gift, but it's also a challenge! It's hard to...

You might be a millennial parent if you… have more pictures of your kids than you do of yourself on social media, feed your kids only organic food, regularly ask the internet for parenting advice, have a tattoo or piercing, or... The generation born between 1980-2000 has a particular way of parenting that is unique. Recently TIME magazine ran an article called "Help! My Parents are Millennials!" a...

"…parents must be acknowledged as the first and foremost educators of their children. Their role as educators is so decisive that scarcely anything can compensate for their failure in it." ~ Familiaris Consortio #36 Making educational choices for our children is a daunting and stressful task for most parents. How do parents know what will be best for their children and for their families? The real...

"What I do, you cannot.  What you do, I cannot.  But together we can make something beautiful for God." ~ Blessed Mother Teresa In our culture today, kids have so many options for activities that it can be overwhelming!  How do you balance family life with sports, theater, groups, and community events especially when you have many children?  Exposure to different activities is important because ch...

"To go on pilgrimage really means to step out of ourselves to encounter God where He has revealed Himself, where His grace has shone with particular splendor, and produced rich fruits of conversion and holiness." ~ Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI We as Catholics are incarnational people: part of the richness of being Catholic is that we can see and touch the elements of our faith!  Bringing our childre...

"Where there is a family with love, that family is capable of warming the heart of a whole city with its witness of love." - Pope Francis Our Holy Father has a pastor's heart, but often his quotes become controversial. He speaks directly to families, those suffering, and to those in power in a frank, honest fashion. With the Holy Father coming to the United States and the upcoming Synod on the Fam...

"Learn the heart of God from the word of God." - Pope Saint Gregory the Great How is the Word of God honored in our homes? God is present in His Word; do we truly realize that? As Catholics, we need to surround our children with Scripture through stories, prayer, teaching, and song. We should be using the Bible to pass on the faith to our children, for it is through the Bible that they will come t...

"Nothing makes a father happier than seeing a daughter with a smile on her face and her boyfriend with fear in his eyes." - Willie Robertson Daughters AND sons need direction and guidance when it comes to dating. The world tells us that dating is private and we have no business "meddling" in our teens' affairs. Nothing is farther from the truth! Kids need mom and dad's wisdom on navigating the per...

Your marriage is only as good as the work you put into it. A child-centered marriage is a recipe for disaster. Teach children early that their "happiness" is not Mom or Dad's reason for living. ~Breathing Grace: Everything I Know About Marriage in 200 Words or Less How often do we take the time to show our spouse that they are "Number One" in our lives? Dedicated time alone without the children is...

"Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear." - Ephesians 4:29 The words that are spoken in our home can create an atmosphere of trust, openness, and honesty, or one of hostility and distrust. We need to banish from our homes sarcasm and negative humor because they tear down family members...

"Half of the time I feel like I'm running an insane asylum… the other half of the time I feel like I belong in one!" There are so many needs pressing on parents, especially moms, all day, every day. How can we prioritize our time and energy to create an orderly life for ourselves and our family? In the book A Mother's Rule of Life , Holly Pierlot describes the Six Priorities of Life that can help...

"My name is Rod, and I like to party." – Andy Samburg in Hot Rod To be Catholic is to love to party, because every Mass is a foretaste of heaven, and heaven is a wedding feast! Celebrations are an important way to communicate our values to our children and to the world. By investing our time and treasure to gather friends and family together, we are saying, "This is an important event!" As Catholi...

"Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence." ~ George Washington It doesn't take a village to raise a child, but the village is certainly an important part of his growth and development! The friendships that our children have, even at the earliest ages, are an important training ground for life. As parents, we can't micromanage...

"Why did God make you? God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven." - Baltimore Catechism Dealing with the loss of life is difficult for adults and for children. Our generation is more poorly equipped than the ones that came before us to deal with this issue, because we are repeatedly told that we are in total control of our ow...

"Honor your father and mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you." ~ Deut 5:16 We each have a family that we have come from, our family of origin, and sometimes they are very different from us. Because of this, visiting with grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws can be stre...

"The task now for believers is to form our own families even more deeply in the love of God, and to rebuild a healthy marriage culture, one marriage at a time, from the debris of today's decision." - Archbishop Chaput The Supreme Court's decision to strike down the bans on same-sex marriage in many ways was no surprise. The Judeo-Christian values that have supported our culture for so long have be...

"All it requires is that you be a man, a real man, which means a man of courage, perseverance, and integrity. You were made a man for a reason. You were made a man to be strong, long husband and father. So listen to your instincts and do what's right. Be a hero." - Dr. Meg Meeker Fatherhood is devalued, underappreciated, and desperately needed in our society. Why is fatherhood so important? Why is...

I love playing with preschoolers. They make me feel so powerful! Family game night is quickly becoming lost in our technological age, but it is an extremely valuable pastime for families with many benefits. Not only can board games bring people together, but they also exercise our brains and people skills while having fun! Listen in as we discuss why we play games with our family, the types of gam...

"There are no such thing as stupid questions - only stupid people." (but not you all!) All of you out there have helped to make this a lot of fun for us, and we love to hear from you! We have gotten so many encouraging comments from our listeners, but also some really great questions. In this episode, we decided to take some time to answer some of the questions we have gotten from all of you out t...

Life was so much easier when Apple and Blackberry were just fruits. Changes in technology happen rapidly, and kids are usually way ahead of their parents on the newest app, social media, or website. It is hard, or even impossible, for parents to keep up! Some parents choose to keep their children away from all screens, and though sometimes we envy these people, this isn't the route that we have ch...

Sometimes we try to love someone in a language they don't understand. We all know that our mission is to love our spouses and our children, but how do we communicate that love to them? How do we speak so that others can understand what we are saying? Gary Campbell has written a book that we have referred to often called The Five Love Languages, and it is a great way to figure out how to speak in t...