Steubenville, Ohio, Dec 2, 2018 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- When Mike and Alice Hernon started their podcast on marriage and family in 2015, they didn’t think anyone would listen, outside of their family and maybe a few close friends.
Both from big families – Alice the second of 10 siblings, and Mike one of six – and parents of 10 children themselves, the Hernons would often get asked for parenting advice at extended family gatherings.
At the urging of their siblings who were benefiting from their advice, the Hernons started a marriage and family podcast.
“At the beginning if you listen to our first two or three episodes, we kind of start off by saying something like, there are probably just like five of our brothers and sisters and their friends listening,” Alice told CNA.
But over the past three years, the podcast grew from a small fanbase of friends and family to 10,000 listeners per month.
“We literally did zero marketing! We didn’t do anything” to promote the podcast, Alice said.
“We didn’t have time,” Mike added. They were too busy with work and with their own family life.
Sensing a growing need among parents and families for guidance and support, and with the support and partnership with Our Sunday Visitor Institute, Alice and Mike have decided to expand their podcast into a full-time marriage and family ministry called The Messy Family Project.
In addition to the podcast, the Hernons will now offer their advice, support and encouragement through videos, downloadable resources, and live events such as retreats and workshops.
“One of our taglines is: ‘we’re not experts’ because neither of us have counseling degrees, we’re not professors, we’re not doctors,” Alice said. “We are really just older parents who are ahead of most of the people who are listening to us, so what we want to do is just kind of give that encouragement, that practical advice, but without being dogmatic.”
They’ve gained their wisdom from their own families of origin, from years of experience raising their own children (who are now ages 6-23), and from the teachings of the Catholic Church, and from interacting with families through various ministries over the years.
Their mission: “to empower parents, strengthen marriages and bring families to Christ.”
This mission has been on the hearts of the Hernons for a while, Mike said, because “we believe it’s more challenging to raise children today than maybe it ever has been.”
They offer their wisdom as older siblings who have been there, rather than as parents of a different generation, Mike said.
“There are challenges that our parents didn’t have,” he said, “everything from technology to all of the cultural issues that are bearing on our children and our family life.”
They wanted to offer their support and advice for Catholic families to build their own unique cultures instead, which will look different depending on the individual family, Mike said.
“We don’t try to say – this is the perfect plan. We try to share experiences, also the principles from the Church, because we believe the Church is an expert in humanity, an expert in real living.”
Creating a strong, welcoming and unique family culture, built on a Catholic identity, is one of the best ways to combat the cultural messages that are antithetical to Catholicism and family life today, the Hernons said. “The best defense is a good offense,” Mike said.
“Our ‘offense’ is creating your own family culture,” Alice said.
“Families need to not allow their children to be influenced by the world’s culture more than by their own family culture, because when you create your own family culture…that culture is a very powerful influence on our children because it’s an unspoken set of beliefs and expectations.”
A strong family culture also allows parents to enforce values without being judgmental of other families, Alice said.
“Because when a child says, ‘Oh well Susie is allowed to wear that dress to prom,’ you can say ‘Yeah, but Susie’s not a Hernon, and this is who we are,’” she said.
Family culture is communicated primarily through relationships, the Hernons said – the relationship of the parents with each other, the relationships parents have with individual children, and then the relationships children have with each other.
“The grace for your family flows from the sacrament of marriage,” Mike said.
“More is caught than taught, and kids need to see what that marriage looks like, and you model for them in so many ways what true love is, what it means to lay down your life, what it means to have a vocation, a mission of service.”
The Messy Family Project offers resources that cover a wide variety of topics related to family culture – including discipline, growing spiritually as a family, managing screen time, fostering sibling relationships, strengthening marriages, and building community with other like-minded families.
These resources include downloadable worksheets for parents to work through together, because spouses are each other’s own best parenting resource, the Hernons said.
“One of our themes is that parents need to work together and listen to each other as the experts,” Alice said. “More than they listen to us, more than they listen to anybody else out there, they need to listen to each other. So we have worksheets for parents to go through and have conversations with each other.”
Much of the Hernons’ inspiration comes from Pope St. John Paul II, and his teachings on marriage and family.
“Each family finds within itself a summons that cannot be ignored and that specifies both its dignity and responsibility: family, become what you are!” Pope John Paul II said in his 1981 apostolic exhortation Familiaris consortio.
That quote “sums up the goal” of The Messy Family Project, Mike said in a press release.
The Hernons said they are also inspired by St. Mother Teresa and the Little Flower of Therese, who found joy and holiness even in the little things of life.
They are also inspired by Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, who said in a 2017 address: “When young people ask me how to change the world, I tell them to love each other, get married, stay faithful to one another, have lots of children, and raise those children to be men and women of Christian character. Faith is a seed. It doesn’t flower overnight. It takes time and love and effort.”
Alice said she hopes Catholic families can find inspiration and hope, even in troubling times in the Church and in the world, through The Messy Family Project.
“I think a lot of times, Catholics look at the (Church sex abuse) scandals and say – ‘How can we change the Church?’”
“That’s important and we need to do that, but start with your family. That’s the most influence you can have, is over your family, and I think that people forget that.”
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I shall vote with my eyes. I will not watch the Olympics.
Surprised that the archbishop of Malta was outraged, I thought that he was these people’s apologist?
That Paris suffered a power surge that blew the lights in all buildings save the Basilica of the Sacred Heart and it’s bright light was beautiful to behold!
I am outraged at this heinous display and mockery of our most sacred Holy Eucharist. May God have mercy on the souls of all involved. I will not watch a single minute of these games. Paris and all concerned should be ashamed of themselves.
I hope that the Holy Father joins us, in a public pronouncement, his rebuke of this blasphemous display.
So many Catholics on these pages ask, “What can I do?” regarding the disgusting display at the Olympics. For starters, stop using the term “TRANS”. By so doing you are giving the appearance of a reality it does not merit. There’s no such thing as “trans.” Call it for what it is: homosexuality. That’s what what was on display. Stop being suckers for the woke nonsense this culture is handing you. I’m afraid my brothers and sisters in Christ are some of the most gullible people I’ve seen. This gullibility evidenced itself during the Great Covid Paranoia Psychosis of 2020. Even the Pope himself was forcing Vatican employees to take a vaccine against their will. I sometimes think that otherwise intelligent people are under a spell
Deacon Edward,
I am with you on the issue of “Great viral paranoia”. I will take it further though. The Church gave a sign to the world, of a blasphemous communion when it closed its doors to the unvaccinated and allowed in only the vaccinated. The vaccines were abortion-tainted i.e. they utilized the aborted human embryos’ cells either for the design of the vaccines or/and their production or/and their testing. PF cracked a letter which actively discouraged Catholics from demanding an ethical alternative (which already existed). Most gladly embraced it. As a result, those who partook the vaccine “made” on human sacrifice were allowed to the Holy Communion. Those who refused were not allowed. This is a very gross blasphemy done by the Church and not many noticed it.
The Church “sanctified” children’s sacrifice, for the first time in its history and tried to force its members to participate in it. It made a participation in the sin of a murder of children a condition for receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. It was done in an oblique form (as everything is being done in the postmodern world) but it was done nevertheless. In some places vaccination took place in churches, in some places with great solemnity. In Salisbury Cathedral the “holy injections” were accompanied by the live sacred music, some written for the Eucharistic hymns. (I wrote a paper about that “communion of abandonment” that is a hellish communion contrary to the true Communion of the Union with Christ and each other.)
And so, I see this parody of the Last Supper as a logical consequence of the Church’s blasphemy of the Holy Communion. The Church has never repented that. The world simply takes the Church’s sins on board now, being semi-conscious of it.
Yes, Anna. I agree. The world simply takes the Church’s sins on board now, being semi-conscious of it.
Re those church leaders who have not publicly spoken against the repugnant spectacle. Are they privately thrilled to see their ‘faith’ represented as their imagination would have it? Do they privately applaud the abhorrent spectacle? Why else would they not speak against it?
JMJ, have mercy.
Anna, I hadn’t thought about this dimension of the rot that is our current moral culture and how it has thoroughly infiltrated our Catholic Church.
Satan is our enemy. He has recruited much of the pagan world and actively seeks recruits in the Catholic Church as well. Satan hates Christ. Satan hates the Mass. Satan hates the Eucharist. Satan hates the fact that Christ’s death and resurrection has brought the possibility of redemption to a fallen world.
Not all men dressed as women are homosexual. Some are Drag Queens not transgendered like they like to be called and are doing it for entertainment purposes only and have wives that are genetic females. It’s awful what has happened and evil. let’s pray for them and someday like us all they will have to answer for what they did.
Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 1:18, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
At the Last Supper, of those who followed Jesus most closely, one betrayed Him, one denied Him, and all fled like sheep whose shepherd has been smitten.
Jesus loved them anyway and commissioned them to spread the word after His resurrection. We have the grace of God, and should we fail to follow in the Disciples footsteps, how different will we believers be than those who hate Christ, mock his cross, and persecute Christ’s followers,
Displays such as this in the LGBT+++ movement, are the devils work and prayer is the force that will spread God’s word and protect his people.
“Words cannot describe it.”
Gotta disagree with you on that – let me trot out just a few: Disgusting, pathetic, sad, outrageous, blasphemous, insulting, inexcusable – and that’s just the start.
Yet there are those who claim that the whole pathetic performance was not meant to insult anyone. I say to anyone who believes that for one instant – I have 6 acres of oceanfront property just north of Brattleboro Vermont that I can let you have for a song.
Your Holiness – We’re ALL waiting on you to say something – ANYTHING – about this.
Please
The current Vatican is unbothered by all of this garbarge from Paris. Nothing official has been said…yet.
And it is unlikely anything will be said. So be it, Francis. Sad.