My husband and I are both cradle Catholics, though we view the teachings of the Catholic church differently. Today, during Mass at the Gospel readings, one of the children in the church was very loud and distracting. The abbott, began reading, however, he stopped after a few sentences and said, "Will you please take that child out of the church. I can't hear myself read above her noise." Of course the mother was horrified, embarrassed and ashamed and left immediately with her four children. Her husband does not attend church with her, he is no Catholic. She is faithful in her attendance on Sunday and to CCD. Her children do seem to be a handful and are noisy during the service. I went after her this morning, and tried to just calm her down. She was ready to leave and not come back after being so humiliated by abbott. After we got home, I asked my husband what he thought and he lectured me for almost an hour about how the Catholic church teaches discipline for children and that he thought the abbott was correct in asking Jessica to leave with her children. I am horrified. My husband continued to tell me that it is preferable to have her leave with the distractions than to have the rest of the congregation suffer. I tried to explain that I wasn't opposed to approaching Jessica and offering to help her with her children during Mass, but I was opposed how abbott went about it. Big fight between us, ending with my husband challenging me to write to you and ask about it. He listens to your station faithfully and is unbending in his defense of the Catholic church in all its teachings, without question. His father, a devout Catholic, used to beat him with a 2X4 in punishment when he was seven and on up. The nuns that taught him in school applauded this and once made him strip down to nothing, grab his ankles, and hit him repeatedly with a laundry paddle. He was 7 and he had taken a rosary from a drawer. Please answer my question.

I am not sure what to say.

How the abbott handled the situation is not how I would handle such a situation. I would never do anything to publicly embarrass anyone.

However, on the other hand, if children are disruptive, then parents do need to do something (e.g., take the child to the vestibule).

I would offer a distinction between discipline and punishment. Discipline is generally preferable to punishment. Discipline means instructing the parish as a whole about proper behavior during Mass, giving general advice to the congregation as to how to handle disruptive children, offering classes to parents on how to get their children to behave better during Mass, etc. For example, I advise parents with young children to sit closer to the front. Children tend to pay attention better to Mass when they can see what is going on.

Discipline is providing structure, guidance, and predictability. In my opinion, this is better than the punishment suggested by your husband and practiced by the abbott.

I take the Church's canon law as a guide. There is a small section of the Code of Canon Law on sanctions (punishments). However, they are only meant to be used as a last resort, after all other measures are tried. The vast majority of the code, on the other hand, provides discipline and structure, which is always preferable whenever possible.

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