A serious warning to all parents and guardians

Until recently virtually all children were brought up within and instructed in their family's faith from the youngest age that they could understand. They were taught about God, taught the tenets of their faith, taught how to pray, and were brought to services or Mass according to their faith. Even if they attended secular schools virtually all children were taught the Bible at home or at Sunday school. It is essential to bring a child up within their faith from the earliest days, even if YOU the parent do not completely believe. When a child reaches majority age they can always "reject" their faith if that's what they in their adolescent rebellion choose to do. But if you do not teach them their faith it is rare that they can find their way back on their own. Also you have robbed them of judicious common sense and balance that their love and understanding of God gives to them when they are young.

Today there have been several stories about young people who died in car accidents, and also in sports. Every parent ought to add to their natural thoughts of sympathy and concern for the loved ones who have lost someone the realization that when a child dies, it's automatically "too late" to remember that you never gave them religious instruction. While God has infinite mercy for the young, you must remember that society is teaching children to be more and more "adult" in their actions, and therefore their potential consequences. Conversations that maybe you thought could wait until a child was 18 now seems to have to be had before they are 12. It used to be that every child was able to grow up in a family where God was acknowledged, loved and taught. Now a child is more likely to get keys to a car, a condom, or a joint from their parents than religious instruction. You are teaching children (or allowing society to do so) to do riskier and more "adult" things at the same time that you teach them less and less if anything about God and the consequences of particular actions, both of this world, and after one enters into God's judgment. Bad things happen to good kids too so I'm not saying they buy some insurance policy when they are instructed about God. However, they are given an extra stability (assuming you are not teaching them cult crap) that comes from knowing they are special and loved, but that there are rules and boundaries in life. Kids are less likely to commit suicide or do incredibly risky and stupid things if they have a solid (not fanatical) but steady lifelong upbringing within a family that occupies the "God zone." Kids need spine nowadays to resist peer pressure and the constant marketing of sex and substances for abusing. Having a firm foundation in your family's faith in God helps to provide them with that extra spine stiffening, and a stronger heart and spirit to take the steadier road and be more responsible. Broken families and the lack of teaching about God (and living in God's zone in reality of day to day life) are taking a terrible toll. Kids have less maturity, less mental and emotional stability, access to more unsavory adult activities and much more dark societal pressure than they did forty years ago. A kid who used to help out on the farm may be viewed as more naive by some today, but that kid was more mature than kids today, make no mistake about it. And if kids are going to drive cars, abuse substance and do other risky adult things, if they should die God will judge them by what they were doing and what they should have done - and so too will he judge those who should have intervened.

So even if your love for your child is not enough to make you want to provide him or her with the key to God's love and protection, for goodness sake do it because these very young deaths we are reading about is a true wake up call that your kids and you adults will face judgment, and perhaps it will be sooner than you would wish it.