The Catholic Weekly 5 April 2020

catholicweekly.com.au 15 5, April, 2020 Families find ways to cope minus Mass CATHOLIC PARENTS across Sydney set up little prayer spaces and asked children to pay attention to Mass on computer and TV screens last weekend, the fifth Sunday of Lent. Margaret and Julian Flit- croft of Carlingford in north west Sydney lined up dining chairs in front of their TV and watched their local parish’s recorded Mass with their chil- dren Sam, 11, Lucy, 9, Tom, 7, and Georgia, 4. “I was worried it might be a bit cheesy watching a live- stream Mass, but we lit can- dles and had flowers, and it was really beautiful,” said Mrs Flitcroft. “We told the kids they still need to do their hair and dress nicely, just as if we were there in the church. “It helped them to realise they still needed to be quiet and respectful.” As the state’s increased public health restrictions close churches and affect al- most every area of life, the Flitcrofts hope to keep their family rosary, Mass and other spiritual anchors embedded in their new routines. Every week the children participate in an online cat- echism class that used to see ¾ ¾ Marilyn Rodrigues them travelling to the Mater- nal Heart of Mary Parish on Friday afternoons. “Hopefully if we can keep that part of life ticking along while everything else is weird, when this is all over it will be easier to continue from where we were,” said Mrs Flitcroft. David and Bernadette Jee and their children were among more than 200 who tuned to the Maternal Heart parish, Lewisham’s live- streamed Mass on Sunday. Mrs Jee said she “wept” at the announcement that churches would be closed. “The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the closest we can get to heaven,” she said. “We long for Jesus and make many Spiritual Com- munions.” slowly starving. It’s cruel, but they do survive. We started out Lent watching a Catho- lic-themedmovie each Friday, but we plan to add general movie night to the evening schedule. Read aloud. It doesn’t have to be edifying or great litera- ture; it just has to have some reason for existing. Maybe plan to shut off the wifi for a few hours every evening, and make that be read-aloud time. We like the essays of James Thurber and short stories of P.G. Wodehouse. For the younger set, try Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Wanda G’ag, or Jack Tales collected by Richard Chase. If you can get your hands on some kind of anthology of myths or fairy tales, those are almost always weird and entertaining. The Hobbit is so good. The Pirates! series by Gideon DeFoe is ridiculous fun (but may require a little censorship on the fly if your audience is young and inno- cent). Rudyard Kipling is im- mensely satisfying, and if the only Jungle Book you know is the Disney cartoon, you’re in for a treat. Or try The Phan- tom Tollbooth by Norton Just- er, or Robert Nye’s retelling of Beowulf for those who don’t mind some verbal gore. Zlateh the Goat by Isaac Bashevis Singer is a wonderful collec- tion of Jewish folktales; and the anecdotal stories by Eng- lish country vet James Herriot are beloved for good reason. Have a party, whether there’s a birthday or not. One of our kids just realised her birthday will surely fall within the time of social isolation, so she can’t invite any friends. Some people in this situation are organising virtual parties, where kids get together with their friends online and sing karaoke or watch movies to- gether. Others are inviting fami- ly and friends to drive by the house holding “happy birth- day” signs. Our particular child, soon to be eleven, is mulling over hosting a Cutthroat Kitch- en-themed birthday party. She is a natural saboteur, and since some pantry staples have been hard to find any- way, it’s a natural time to turn cooking into a competition. You can do something like this even if there’s no birthday in sight. Fire-the-heck-works. I don’t know what your lo- cal laws are like, or howdry it’s going to be in your area, but I myself am looking around, calculating how busy the neighbourhood police force is likely to be, and gathering together some steel wool, a battery, and metal hangers. And a fire extinguisher. Let them do something that’s normally off-limits, like writing on the walls of their bedroom, digging a giant hole in the yard, dyeing their hair stupid colours, or whatever it is they’ve been begging you to do, and you previously just couldn’t bear the thought of disrupting the routine that much. The routine is already disrupted, so why the heck not? These are extraordinary times; so make an effort for some of the “extra” to be fun and memorable, not just something to endure. It’s all too easy for the anx- iety of the situation to creep into everyday life and cover everything with a blanket of doom. To combat this, think over what you can let the kids get away with without losing your own mind, and let them at it. At very least, they’ll re- member this time as some- thing other than the time they couldn’t do stuff. Now may well be the time to resurrect all the family-friendly movies and programs you know. Georgia Flitcroft completes a religious colouring-in exercise. PHO- TOS:ALPHONSUS FOK Margaret Flitcroft goes through a catechism exercise with her chil- dren Lucy and Tom. We told the kids they still need to do their hair and dress nicely, just as if we were there in the church ... It helped them to realise they still needed to be quiet and respectful.” Margaret Flitcroft FEATURE