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hensen“Son, I think we should have a conversation about the virtue of prudence.”

Try to find a way to open a conversation with a pre-teen about virtue that doesn’t kill their interest and put the adult into lecture mode almost instantly. It’s not easy.

Virtue education needs a major PR overhaul. We want our children to speak as fluently and passionately about virtue as they do about video games and classroom drama. More importantly, we want them to know the virtues and aim to embrace these behaviors in their daily lives. However, the conversation quickly gets bogged down and awkward when put into practice.

In fact, the same myopic reticence that used to accompany basic sex education in the home has traded spots with communication about virtue development. Why is this?

Perhaps parents themselves have been deprived of an adequate education in virtue. Can you name the four Cardinal Virtues? The three Theological Virtues? The seven virtues that help you to combat the seven Capital Sins? We need words to unlock the richness of reflections available on these topics, extending back to the Early Church Fathers.

Perhaps parents have been overwhelmed by all the other things they have to “get right” with their kids – technical words for a STEM education, feeling words for emotional intelligence, anatomical and cultural labels for sexual education, vocabulary words for high test scores, and an ever-changing political and social vocabulary so your child is not labeled a bigot or insensitive. These vocabularies will help our children to some extent in a word-driven economy and complicated social sphere, but they will have little bearing on their eternal destination.

Thankfully, we have a few virtues that have gotten plenty of attention lately, even if the modern definitions have skewed significantly from the classical and Christian definitions. Justice and kindness are having a moment in the spotlight. They are seen as external virtues and easier to talk about than internal virtues such as humility, prudence and even modesty, which involves much more than a visible percentage of skin. If the virtues of justice and kindness are part of a family’s vocabulary in discipline and in their constructive analysis of situations, adding other virtues and exploring the traditional definitions of each is a simple step forward.

Because we are unused to using the vocabulary of virtue, it’s not easy to begin it in an emotionally charged moment. If our families focus on learning about and practicing one virtue a month, the virtues become tools in our family journey toward holiness. It is especially helpful to talk about how each virtue is actually a mean, a balance, between two extremes. Children and teens will readily see how they lean toward an excess or impoverishment in each area and can be coached and encouraged as they adjust toward the virtuous behavior.

The virtue of courage has a unique role to play in virtue conversation today. Young people often wish to be courageous, while they may not yet wish to be temperate or truthful or generous. When you are working with older children, moral direction frequently requires more than quick reminders or commands to “share,” “do this,” and “stop that.” After understanding the situation or challenge, asking how they can approach it with courage can lead into the other virtue that applies in the situation while honoring the emotional difficulty and rigorous work of self-mastery that moral action requires.

Whether you acknowledge the obstacles we face in our quest for goodness as the devil, original sin and our inherited weakness for comfort or you phrase challenges as “overcoming resistance” in your life, it all points to the same reality. Virtuous life is hard because it is not merely something we do, it is also who we are and become, and there are real, intelligent spirits who would rather us be something else.

Can you have the courage to tell the truth? How could you respond to his teasing with courage and kindness? How would you dress at the beach if you had the courage to be modest and not care what others thought of your personal style? Can you have the courage to forgive your sister? Would it take courage for you to curb your late night video game time so you are rested for school? Questions like these can lead to fruitful, open conversations where virtue and emotion are not put at odds (as some modern psychologists will claim) but work in harmony to associate virtue with the nobler version of oneself that we would each like to be. In this manner, children can consciously open themselves to the workings of grace in their lives.

Our society says it values equal opportunity, dignity for all and education for everyone. If this is so, an education in virtue achieves these goals in the hearts of children so they can be leaders who will enact real change in our world and who will experience authentic happiness in their personal lives. In his encyclical “Rerum Novarum,” Pope Leo XIII says, “The true work and nobility of man lie in his moral qualities, that is, in virtue; that virtue is, moreover, the common inheritance of men, equally within the reach of high and low, rich and poor; and that virtue, and virtue alone, wherever found, will be followed by the rewards of everlasting happiness.”
Societal values, based on nothing more than popular sentiment and political posturing, cannot replicate the solid foundation for thinking and action that a training in moral habits – virtues – and moral aversions – vices – has provided for centuries. If you had the courage to do so, which education would you choose for your children?

Kelly Henson is a Catholic writer and speaker who explores the art of integrating faith into daily life. She and her family are parishioners of Our Lady of Grace Parish in Greensboro. She blogs at www.kellyjhenson.com,