LESSONS LEARNED — Cathy Steffes, a member of Shepherd of the Hills Parish, Eden, credits her Catholic elementary school education with her return to the Catholic faith. After a 20-year absence, Steffes returned to the Catholic Church because of the faith foundation she received at Sacred Heart Elementary School in Fond du Lac. (Catholic Herald photo by Sam Arendt)
EDEN — Never underestimate your decision for Catholic education for your children, says Cathy Steffes, a parishioner at Shepherd of the Hills Parish in Eden. She speaks from experience: after 20 years away, Steffes is now a faithful Catholic who credits her return to the church to the solid foundation in the faith she received in her eight years at Sacred Heart Elementary School in Fond du Lac.
Steffes was in the first class of first graders at Sacred Heart. She went on to attend public high school, and had no desire at the time to continue in the Catholic faith. Even so, “our parents made us go to church every Sunday,” she said of herself, her brother and her sister.
When she was 18, her parents moved to her mother’s home state of Louisiana. Steffes stayed in Fond du Lac.
“As soon as they left,” she said, “I stopped going to church.”
Shortly after her parents left, Steffes got married and gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Wendy. The church still had some draw for her — however slight at that point in her life — and Steffes brought her daughter to be baptized.
Catholic
Herald Parenting is a supplement of the Catholic Herald
published eight times annually, September to May. It is
intended to help parents pass on the Catholic faith to
their children.
