Why Stories Matter in Children's Faith Formation

In today’s episode, Sr. Allison Regina and Sr. Julie Benedicta are joined by Sr. Maria Grace, and talk some of ways and reasons we might use fiction when helping young children begin to learn about the Faith and build a relationship with God.

Video where we talk about these ideas and Tolkien’s lecture “On Fairy Stories”  

C.S. Lewis quote: “I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralyzed so much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices, almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.... The inhibitions which I hoped my stories would overcome in a child’s mind may exist in a grown-up’s mind too, and may perhaps be overcome by the same means. The fantastic or mythical is a mode available at all ages for some readers; for others, at none. At all ages, if it is well used by the author and meets the right reader, it has the same power: to generalize while remaining concrete, to present in palpable form not concepts or even experiences but whole classes of experience, and to throw off irrelevancies. But at its best, it can do more; it can give us experiences we have never had and thus instead of ‘commenting on life’ can add to it.”

“Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to Be Said,” Of Other Worlds (as quoted in On Writing (& Writers), pages 29-32)

G.K. Chesterton Quote: “If you keep bogies and goblins away from children they would make them up for themselves. […] Fairy tales, then, are not responsible for producing in children fear, or any of the shapes of fear; fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already, because it is in the world already. Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.[…] Exactly what the fairy tale does is this: it accustoms him for a series of clear pictures to the idea that these limitless terrors had a limit, that these shapeless enemies have enemies in the knights of God, that there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.” Tremendous Trifles, 1909

1.    Check out Sr. Maria Grace’s series, The Gospel Time Trekkers, and her other books here: https://paulinestore.com/books/featured-authors/sr-maria-grace-dateno.html

2.    Visit Sr. Allison Regina’s page on our website and learn more about her books for kids and teens: https://pauline.org/staff/sr-allison-regina-gliot/

3.    You can find the Sister Seraphina Mysteries books by Haley Stewart here: https://paulinestore.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=seraphina

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The Daughters of St. Paul, also known as “The Media Nuns,” are missionaries sent forth in the spirit of Saint Paul the Apostle, called to proclaim the Gospel to the world through the most effective means of communication. Pauline Books and Media is a mission of the Daughters of St. Paul that publishes Catholic books for the whole family. To learn more, visit https://pauline.org/