Normally people reach for their toolbox to fix a leaky kitchen faucet, but the leadership team at St. Patrick Parish in Lawrence is encouraging parishioners to reach for the toolbox to build their faith.
Members of the team present a large red plastic toolbox to each household that registers with the parish. On the outside of the box are stickers that say “St. Patrick Parish Catholic Toolbox” in three languages — English, Spanish and Vietnamese — and inside are religious items including a Bible, Catechism of the Catholic Church, a wooden crucifix with a stand and candle, rosaries for every household member, and a children’s Bible for families. Materials for different prayers are also included. All the materials are in the language appropriate for the parishioner.
Parishioners who register or re-register at St. Patrick Parish in Lawrence receive a “Catholic toolbox” including items such as a Bible, a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and a rosary for every member of their family. Photo courtesy St. Patrick Parish
Parishioners are also encouraged to keep other items like their family Bible, confirmation class items or baptismal candle in the toolbox.
“In our spiritual lives God really does give us basic tools to build our faith homes, to fix up our faith homes, and expand our faith homes,” said pastor Father Paul B. O’Brien, adding that the parish wanted to make these items available in the home of every parishioner. [Source]
This is actually a pretty good idea as a very basic Catholic toolbox. I would like the Tim Allen supersized Snap-On version. A giant red toolbox with room for a small library (think ancient library of Alexandria) or at least a laptop with a library of texts stored on DVD media. A built in kneeler would also be cool and some specialty shadow-boxed drawers for my Bible, Catechism, Liturgy of the Hours, and GIRM. Another drawer to hold various color highlighters for passage highlighting and of course a Holy Water dispenser. Now I would want some real tools also for those emergency Rosary repairs and gluing back on broken parts from various statues of Saints my pets have knocked over.
20 comments
I thought this was a joke when I first read it but what a great idea!
Kneelers are for wimps!!! Real Catholics kneel right on the floor (or blacktop or gravel whatever is appropriate).
🙂
that’s so cool 🙂
This is truly POD. May God bless this parish, and hopefully many others follow its example!
(BTW… POD= Pious and Overly-Devotional. Meant to be a GOOD thing!)
This is really thinking out of the box! Pardon the pun. The Church is alive and creative.
Brilliant!
I really think its great the parish went the extra mile so that each family can actually read the materials.
….and scapulars, blessed medals of saints, and a Holy relic (when available) to round the box all out.
Oh and Jeff that would be the “Binford 2000” series tool chest with the stainless steel removable tray, and self locking combination lock :o)
I think it’s great… and on further reflective thought, it’s a little sad: it comes to this to get people to have a Bible in the house, a Catechism on the shelf, and a Rosary that will wind up on the rearview mirror.
That said, I still think it’s a great idea, material, languages and all. Fantastique!
Cool! Now we just need a Catholic tool belt for seminarians; it would hold an extra collar-tab, an emergency purificator, a breviary, and a child-proof caffeine-pill dispenser.
By the way, could someone please publish a ultra-cheap paperback version of the RSV-CE so that we can get rid of the NAB?
I thought Andy Greely was a …
Oh. Never mind.
Great kit!
One suggestion, though: throw out the New American Bible and substitute for it the Catholic edition of the RSV (available from Scepter). Yeah, yeah, I know the NAB is the version in all the lectionaries and breviaries and has the blessing of the USCCB; but I submit to you: which English version of the Bible did the editors and translators of the Catechism pick for all their scripture citations??? Yup, the RSV. That should say something.
IM(PA)O, if the USCCB were as particular about the right handling of Scripture as they (rightly) are about the Blessed Sacrament, they’d find ICEL guilty of sacrilege.
Also a great way to “re-masculanise” parish life. Men have been isolated by parishes that are completely iffeminate – time to bring back the “uugghhh!”. Also, by appealing to manly men we will hopefully get more manly men with vocations – Tool men become Tool Priests!
Yay!
Bec
I’m with Bec on this! Time to equip our Catholic men in building strong Catholic families. They’ll need hard hats and safety goggles though to protect them from sharp flying heresies.
Yes, definitely have a repair kit. Small sewing kit for scapular repairs, DUCO all purpose cement and a hot glue gun for those challenging situations, and may I suggest some flexible glue and also some Shoe-Goo which I found to be very helpful in fixing a breviary cover without resorting to professional help. And a small selection of paint for touching up chips on plaster statues. (The paint thing is a personal call. Some chips add charm and I’m sure amateur paint jobs detract from the ‘value’ of a work. But sometimes a chunk out of our Lord’s hair or Our Lady’s mantle is just crying out for a dab of paint! And it helps a lot when you’ve just glued St. Jude’s head back on – see below:)
(Yeah, I could write the book on statue repair. An all purpose cement is so helpful for the randomly decapitated St. Jude or fractured St. Therese. Some heavy duty rubber bands might be a good investment, too. I used those as a support while the glue cured on the hands that came off of our vintage Our Lady of Grace. I suppose an ACE bandage might have worked too.)
A gold paint pen. Or a selection of metallic Sharpie markers. How could I forget those for the repair kit? (I think everyone should have them anyway. Because you never know when you must gild something. Sometime. )
My husband Joe is the world champion of fixing and/or hanging up Catholic items (crucifix, papal blessing certificate, etc.) Especially after the lady at the Catholic bookstore told him the time spent doing this comes off his time in Purgatory… 🙂
Awesome!
A kit like that isn’t cheap! I guess the cost of putting it together is nothing when compared to the benefit of solving:
“Um, what’s a Catechism?”
I’ve sometimes thought that if I had money I’d like to do something like this for RCIA candidates or teen groups. Putting it in a toolbox makes it much cooler than anything I was thinking of, though.
Bryan, I saw a cheap (under $10) hardcover Catholic edition of the New RSV of the Bible in Books-a-Million a couple of months ago. NRSV has gender inclusive language and an odd habit of changing “he” or “him” to “Jesus”, but the changes are (at least in the Oxford Annotated NRSV) clearly marked as changes, so it could be worse.
Ellyn, thanks for that tip about Shoe Goo and book bindings.
“I’ve sometimes thought that if I had money I’d like to do something like this for RCIA candidates or teen groups. Putting it in a toolbox makes it much cooler than anything I was thinking of, though.”
Oh my gosh, YES! I just got sucked into doing jr hi age kids and I think this would be great for them!! And for RCIA it would be perfect.
Lisa
But where’s the duct tape?
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