Raised in Faith

Checking a box that says Catholic is not necessarily the same thing as living in a Catholic home.

Research frequently measures things such as: frequency of religious-service attendance, frequency of prayer, importance of religion, participation in religious groups, family religiousness, personal religiousness, and support from a religious community.

That matters. A family that identifies as Catholic but rarely attends Mass, rarely prays and rarely discusses God is very different from a household in which faith forms part of everyday life.

And the research frequently finds associations with religious practice, not merely a religious label.

A child learns much more about Christianity by watching Mom and Dad than by listening to Mom and Dad.

Children notice. They notice whether we pray. They notice whether we forgive. They notice whether Sunday Mass is negotiable. They notice how we speak about other people. They notice whether we help someone who cannot repay us. They notice whether we go to Confession. They notice what happens when Mom and Dad disagree. They notice whether our Catholic faith disappears Monday morning and reappears Sunday morning.

And eventually they notice something even more uncomfortable: whether we actually believe what we tell them to believe.

Research into religion and adolescent development gives us reason to take that distinction seriously. A nationally representative study of 3,290 American adolescents from the National Study of Youth and Religion examined individual religiousness, family religiousness, peer religiousness and religious-community support.

Researchers compared those dimensions with outcomes including future orientation, grades, community involvement, alcohol use, sexual activity, and depression. Multiple dimensions of religious life were associated with youth outcomes, although the relationships varied by measure and religious affiliation.

This is important because religion does not exist only inside the mind of a child. It exists within a family, peer group and community.

Here the evidence deserves more caution.

There are studies showing relationships between religiosity and academic outcomes, but the evidence does not justify saying: "Going to church makes your child smarter." That isn't what the research demonstrates.

For example, a longitudinal study following 3,993 Canadian adolescents from grades 9 through 12 found that more frequent religious attendance predicted lower substance use in the following year. However, participation in nonreligious clubs — not religious attendance — predicted subsequent higher academic achievement.

That is exactly why we should not exaggerate this research. Some benefits appear more consistently than others.

This deserves to be said clearly. Science has not proven that Catholic children will be more successful than non-Catholic children.

It has not proven that Catholic children won't use drugs. That Catholic children won't commit crimes. That Catholic children won't leave the Church. That Catholic children will have successful marriages. That Catholic children will become wealthy. That Catholic children won't suffer from depression or mental illness.

And it certainly has not proven that religious parents automatically raise better children.

Human beings are not equations. Children have free will. Families are complicated. Socioeconomic circumstances matter. Genetics matter. Education matters. Neighborhoods matter. Friends matter. Family stability matters. Parenting matters. And individual personalities matter.

Good research attempts to control statistically for many of these variables, but no observational study can eliminate every possible explanation.

So we should never turn these findings into: "Raise your child Catholic and everything will turn out fine." Christianity has never promised us that anyway.

Because modern culture sometimes presents religion as something children must endure rather than something that might actually contribute positively to their development.

The evidence doesn't fit that simplistic picture. Regular participation in religious life has repeatedly been associated with meaningful measures of human flourishing.

Researchers at Harvard have gone far beyond childhood studies. A substantial body of work from the Harvard Human Flourishing Program and other researchers has examined religious participation in relation to physical health, mental health, social connection, volunteering, purpose, depression, substance use, suicide and longevity.

Harvard researchers reviewing this field have concluded that participation in spiritual or religious communities is associated with several measures of healthier living.