2026-05-06
Dear Parents,
As a priest who has long been in the ministry of forming young people, parents often ask me how they can form their children for holy purity.
In our dissipated and confused age, the question has become urgent both for your family and for the Church. Young people, including the seminarians with whom I've worked for years, swim in waters polluted by the debris of cultural upheavals that happened decades before they were born. The impressive young men in the seminary are not immune from the struggles of their peers; nor, by extension, is anyone else.
You know what your children are up against: the encroachment of devices, the aggressive tactics of social media, the black hole of the gaming culture and, most of all, the toxic allure of pornography. You know it but perhaps are not sure what to do about it. I'd like to offer some words of counsel and then some time-tested ways to protect your child's heart.