Homeschooling Guilt, Statues, and More

Weekly Notes

Today is a big day here at the Chapman household. It’s the last day of school for my kids, commencement for Chris’s seniors, and Toby is officially crossing the bridge (a literal one) signifying that he is moving up from Primary School to Elementary School. I am barely comprehending it all, though, thanks to multiple nights with multiple little ones in our bed. This morning, after a second child crawled into our bed at three a.m., I just gave up on going back to sleep altogether and instead got up to proof this newsletter. When you see typos, which you inevitably will, please don’t point them out to me. Just remember “three a.m.” and say a little prayer for me.

I’m doing a reader Q&A this week, which is free for all, but is only showing up in your inbox because of the support of people who know how much it costs me to write these newsletters (especially in terms of sleep) and want to make sure they keep coming. Thank you to those of you who make these newsletters possible. They are what literally keep the lights on in our home. And I hope a few more of you will consider joining them this week.

Question Box

Do you struggle with guilt about not homeschooling your children? I feel guilty that I’m not homeschooling and am torn over what to do next year?

I get that you’re torn. It can be so hard to make decisions about how to best educate our children. Pressure from family, friends, and the Internet doesn’t make those decisions any easier. But it might help to first remember that you do indeed homeschool your children. So do I. So does everyone. Every family homeschools their child. Everything we do as a family—the books we read, the games we play, the meals we eat, the trips we take, the prayers we pray—is part of our children’s education. It all helps mold their imaginations, shape their character, and form how they see the world.

If your kids also attend a brick-and-mortar school, then their teachers are helping you in your mission of educating your children. They are assisting you in your vocation. But it is always you and your husband who remain the primary educators of your child. No matter where your children are between 8:30 a.m. and 3:00 p.m., the lessons you teach them, in your home, as a family, are the lessons that will have the longest and most lasting impact on their life—for good or for ill.

As for me, no. I feel absolutely no guilt about our decision to send our kids to school. I feel guilty about a lot of things, but not this. Up until a little over a year ago, I actually thought we would educate our kids in the home. That was my own personal parenting plan for almost 20 years, long before I even met Chris. Most of my close friends educate their children at home, and I am more familiar with the world of home-based education than I am with parish schools or public schools. Even when we began at our neighborhood Montessori school, I only anticipated doing it for the preschool years. But as the months went by, Chris and I came to see that, at this point in our lives, our little school is by far the best option for our family. The kids and I love the rhythm and routine of school life. We love the community. And we love my kids’ teachers, who are dear friends and really good at what they do—way better than either Chris or I would be at the tasks they take on in the classroom. We also love the Montessori vision of education, a vision which is rooted in the Catholic understanding of the human person, as well as the Montessori method, which is producing great fruit in our children. The three-block walk to school doesn’t hurt either.

So no, we are incredibly happy with our decision to send our kids to school. I don’t feel like we’re failing because we’re not educating them at home. I just feel blessed and amazingly supported as Chris and I carry out our work as the primary educators of our children. It is so good to have a school that shares our goals for our children and has come alongside us to help us in their formation and education.

So, that’s one reason I don’t feel guilty: our school is awesome. But I think I also don’t struggle with guilt because I don’t subscribe to the idea that homeschooling is always best. This is definitely an idea which some people hold—especially younger families, but some older families, too. And in a world that is as broken as ours, I can understand that. People want to protect their kids and give them something different from what the world is offering. Homeschooling seems like a way to do that.

Sometimes it is. I’ve spent the past two decades living life alongside homeschool families, and I have seen it done really, really well. It can be so awesome and so beautiful, and some of the healthiest, most intelligent children and adults I know have been homeschooled. I also, however, have seen homeschooling done really, really badly. I’ve seen parents doggedly stick to it, even as their child is struggling and the mom is miserable, and the home is falling apart. I’ve seen parents fail to give their children the basics of an education. (“A lot of home and not a lot of schooling” is how my husband describes it). And I’ve seen kids finally leave the home, only to spend a solid decade or more, angry, bitter, and resentful, conflating the faith with their parents’ failed attempts at homeschooling, and rebelling against God as much as their parents.

I don’t know what is best for your family or your children. I don’t know what your options are, what your children’s needs are, what your family situation is, or why you’re choosing not to educate your children at home. But I do know, regardless of all those variables, that homeschooling is not the automatic, de facto best option for your family. It’s not the automatic, de facto best option for any family. Like every other type of schooling—Montessori, Classical, public, private, parish-based, Waldorf, whatever—home-based education has advantages and disadvantages. In turn, those advantages and disadvantages can be mitigated or exaggerated by whether it’s done well or done badly. If you recognize that for any possible number of reasons you are not able to do homeschooling well and therefore choose not to do it, then you are not less of a mom, less of a woman, or less of a Christian. You’re just sane. And that’s not something you should feel guilty about.

Guilt has its purposes. I’m always grateful for the help guilt gives me in getting to Confession. But really, it shouldn’t be the motivation for choosing how you educate your child. The best and most successful homeschoolers I know have chosen that path out of a real love for it. They are good at it. They enjoy it. It brings them life. This doesn’t mean they don’t find it challenging and downright exasperating at times. They do. It also doesn’t mean they don’t ever question their decision to homeschool. They do that, too. But the bulk of the time, they find joy and purpose and meaning in it. They are, by and large, confident in their decision. And I think this is because they are motivated by love of what they’re doing. Not guilt. And that motivation makes a huge difference. You see it in their kids.

By contrast, the unhappiest homeschoolers I’ve known are the ones who choose it out of guilt and fear. These are also the most unsuccessful homeschoolers I’ve known. Their kids may or may not do fine on the tests. They might master the subjects. But guilt and fear are contagious. Kids are infected by those spirits, and that infection can stop the most important pieces of an education—the pieces that all parents are called to give their children—from taking root in their souls.

I’ll be praying for your discernment as you continue to decide what is best for your family. It might be home-based education. It might not. But as you discern what is best, don’t let guilt guide you. Unless you’re dealing with a moral issue, where there is an objective right and objective wrong, guilt is not a trustworthy guide.

As a Protestant, I don’t understand why Catholics have statues in your churches and homes. I was always taught statues were prohibited in the Book of Exodus.

I believe the Biblical passage to which you are referring is Exodus 20, in which God gives Moses the Ten Commandments. In verses 4-5, He outlines the first of those Commandments, stating:

"You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them."

At times, different Protestant communities (similar to the Islam-inspired iconoclasts of the eighth and ninth centuries) have interpreted that passage to mean that God forbids artistic representations of Himself, along with representations of all other heavenly creatures and saints. Alternately, some have said that it’s only representations of God which are prohibited or that it’s not so much the images themselves which are the problem as it is the veneration of those images. I’m not sure which of those interpretations is yours, so let’s talk about all three.

The first idea, that all religious statues and images are prohibited by the First Commandment, is easily disproved just by reading a bit further along in the Book of Exodus. There, in Exodus 25:18-21, God Himself commands the Israelites to make statues of cherubim to adorn the Mercy Seat. If Exodus 20 was meant to be a prohibition of all religious imagery, then God was breaking His own rules.

Likewise, while the ancient Israelites believed Exodus 20 prohibited any artistic representations of God (which makes sense when the God you know is invisible), the first Christians did not. As early as the second and third century, they were adorning catacomb walls and sarcophagi with images of Jesus, Mary, and the martyrs. They did this because they knew that in Christ, the invisible God of Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph had become visible. God had taken on flesh. He had given Himself a human nature and a human face. And so artistic representations of His face became, for them, a witness to that miracle. They still are. In the New Covenant, statues, paintings, and icons of Christ are a proclamation of the Incarnation, a testimony to the Gospel, a way of teaching the Good News to the world, and an invitation to encounter the God with the Human Face through prayer. Conversely, to not depict Christ as a human, to never represent His face in any way, proclaims the opposite of all that. It is, in some sense, a denial of Christ’s humanity. It is a denial of the fullness of the Incarnation. It’s a denial of God, which is exactly what the First Commandment says we shouldn’t do.

But what about the third type of concern raised about Catholic statues: that in venerating them—in praying before them—we are worshipping idols.

Jews, Catholics and Protestants all agree that idol worship is very much prohibited by the First Commandment. It was one of the great sins of the Egyptians. They worshipped false gods and taught their Hebrew slaves to do the same. As such, breaking the Israelites of the deadly vice of idol worship was one of God’s most urgent tasks in the Book of Exodus.

The First Commandment is part and parcel of this work. It underlines the importance of not worshipping false gods, both for the Israelites and all the rest of humanity. All men and women were made to worship the Creator, never the created, and when we fall into idol worship, we do grave damage to our souls. This is as true for people prone to worshipping cows, as it is of people prone to worshipping money, titles, big houses, fast cars, romantic relationships, and anything else that is not God.

So, given that, how can Catholics reconcile the God’s prohibition of bowing down before false gods with devotional practices like kneeling before statues? Aren’t we literally bowing down before a created thing, giving it worship that is due only to God?

No. Not in the slightest.

First, no faithful Catholic is under the impression that the statues in Catholic parishes and homes are gods or supernatural powers of any sort. We know they’re just statues—creations of marble and plaster. No spirit lives within them. Second, veneration is not worship. The two words are not the same. To venerate something is not to adore it or worship it as a god. It’s to show respect and reverence. It’s to honor something good, something that has meaning and value.

And statues do have value—not always artistic value, but definitely spiritual value. Or maybe, it’s more accurate to say “familial value.” Statues and other representations of God and His holy ones are like beloved family photographs. They’re representations of people we love and want to honor. They’re also reminders of those people. They remind us of the God who took on flesh and the great Cloud of Witnesses which surrounds us at all times, interceding for us before the throne of the living God.

Accordingly, when we kneel before one of those statues, we don’t kneel in worship. No one worships reminders. Rather, we use reminders to guide our thoughts to who they represent. And then we pray. That’s what the kneeling is about. We kneel in prayer. We kneel as we contemplate the truth the statue proclaims. We kneel as we meditate upon the witness the statue bears. We kneel as we direct our thoughts to the one (or One) whom the statue represents. Then, we talk to them. We talk to the saint who lives in Christ or we talk the angel who looks on the face of the Father or we talk to God Himself. As we talk, we might feel comforted, encouraged, or inspired. We might have an encounter with grace. But the statue itself doesn’t do those things. It doesn’t bless us or give us grace. It just is a tool that focuses our mind on the One who does. Blessings and grace come from God alone, not from pieces of marble.

And yes, we treat these statues with reverence, just as I treat the pictures of my lost loved ones with reverence. A photo of my dad sits on the bookshelf in my bedroom. Framed pictures of a host of departed grandparents and great-grandparent hang in our entryway. Every day I look at those pictures lovingly while I ask those relatives for prayers. Sometimes, I touch the photos. Sometimes, I bow my head and close my eyes before them as I pray. And sometimes, I kiss my fingers, then place my fingers on the photo, bestowing a gentle kiss on people who I love and miss. But none of that is worship. It’s love.

If I can bestow a kiss on a picture of my dad, as I whisper a prayer of love to him and ask him to pray for me, I can absolutely do that with pictures and statues of Jesus, Mary, and Saint Catherine. We all can. It would be strange not too. It would be, again, denying Christ’s humanity, the realness of His human nature, and the transformative effect of His grace in the lives of the saints. It would, ultimately, be denying the Christian faith, which is an incarnational faith.

Christians are not Muslims. We believe God took on human form in Christ. And for two thousand years, we have testified to that with statues and paintings and windows of colored glass. That’s not violating the First Commandment. It’s obeying it.

Could you share any advice on how to start writing professionally or get essays published?

Despite having now earned my living as a writer for 20 years, I don’t know if I am the best person to answer this question. In part, this is because I have been doing it for so long. I started writing professionally in 2005, and so much has changed with publishing since then. Also, when I did start writing, I never had to look for work. It just kind of fell in my lap. And from there, it just kept falling. Writing isn’t so much a career I chose, as it is a career I said yes to when God offered it to me. Which also might make my advice less than helpful.

That being said, about two years ago, I was receiving so many questions similar to this one that I decided to do a Zoom call where I could answer questions from people who were interested in writing professionally. I solicited questions beforehand, did the Zoom call (which was fun), forgot to record the Zoom call, then did it all over again so I could record it for posterity (that part was less fun). I shared the call here on Substack, and it was open to everyone for two weeks before it went behind the paywall, where it has lived ever since. I’ve recently gotten a slew of questions again about writing, though, similar to yours, so I have decided to just unlock that post. It’s goes into a lot of detail about the business side of writing, as well as the spiritual side, so it should answer your question (and then some!).

Five Fast Things

1. This week, on Visitation Sessions, we talked with the hosts of the American Catholic History Podcast, Tom and Noelle Crowe (who also happen to be the founders of our children’s school), about a few of the movements and people that shaped the Catholic Church in America, for good and for ill, and why that matters in the world today.

2. Chris and I finished Miss Austen this week. I liked it very much. Chris not so much. He found it maudlin’. Which is an unusual complaint from him, as maudlin movies are normally his favorite. I, however, found it to be an interesting and plausible supposal, offering a solid explanation for why Cassandra Austen burned many of her sister Jane’s letters. I also thought the depiction of Jane was quite right.

3. We have now moved on to watching Stanley Tucci In Italy, which if you like food, Italy, and Stanley Tucci, you will like. Chris and I are fans of all three, so we are enjoying it thus far. I’ll report back when we’re finished.

4. Despite temperatures that are more reflective of March than May, it is almost summer, which means one of my favorite summer recipes is back in the regular rotation: Smitten Kitchen’s Crisped Chickpeas with Herbs and Garlic Yogurt. We are working our way through some venison a friend gave us, and it paired beautifully with Grilled Backstrap.

5. If you’re a former Beautycounter client, you should have gotten an email this week from me. If not, here’s the gist: Beautycounter is coming back starting June 25. I don’t know much more than this. I know the name will change (it’s just “Counter” from now on). I know there will be new products (but not what they are). And I know that I hope I can, in some way, continue helping you find the best clean products for you (but not sure what that will look like). As soon as I know more, I promise, you will know more.

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A Christmas Pilgrimage to Rome—December 26 to January 4

Our Christmas time pilgrimage to Rome is officially sold out. If you still have your heart on going with us, though, my best advice is to call Select International at 1-800-842-4842 and ask to have your name put on the waiting list. Life happens. People get sick. Jobs change. And sometimes, people have to back out of pilgrimages. We had a couple cancellations last year that allowed people on the waiting list to come with us, so it absolutely is possible that something will open up. And if not, your name will go on the list to be among the first to learn about our next pilgrimage.

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In Case You Missed It

“The Weeds and Wheat of Motherhood”

“Circling the Drain: On Feminism, the Patriarchy, and What Marriages Really Need”

“Infertility, IVF, and Me: The Conversation the Pro-Life Community Needs to Have”