Teaching Kids the Mass and the Role of Liturgy with Chris Carstens
The Catholic Man Show
The Catholic Man Show
4.8 • 768 Ratings
🗓️ 23 September 2025
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on The Catholic Man Show, Adam and David welcome Chris Carstens—Director of the Office for Sacred Worship in the Diocese of La Crosse, teacher, author, and liturgical scholar.
Together, they dive deep into the heart of Catholic worship and explore:
- How fathers can introduce young children to the beauty of the Mass—even when it feels like a workout.
- Why children belong in the main body of the church, not just the cry room.
- The meaning and role of altar serving and how it shapes boys into men of faith.
- Insights into the ordinary form vs. extraordinary form conversation, and how Pope Benedict XVI envisioned “mutual enrichment.”
- What the Eucharistic revival accomplished and why the Mass itself is the greatest act of Eucharistic adoration.
- Practical steps to make parish liturgies more beautiful, reverent, and evangelizing.
- Resources and books to help families grow deeper in love with the liturgy, such as A Devotional Journey into the Mass and A Biblical Walk Through the Mass.
About our guest:
Chris Carstens has spent over 25 years in liturgical ministry, teaching at the Liturgical Institute and Christendom College, and serving as editor of Adoremus Bulletin. He is the author of several books on Catholic worship and continues to help parishes and families rediscover the beauty of the Mass.
👉 Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
- Adoremus Bulletin
- A Devotional Journey into the Mass (Sophia Institute Press)
- Biblical Walk Through the Mass by Edward Sri
- Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist by Brant Pitre
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Chris Carson, thank you so much for joining us today. |
| 0:15.0 | It's been a lot of fun listening to you over the years. |
| 0:18.0 | Before we got started, I was like, this kind of sounds weird, but we've been listening to you for the years before we got started I was like uh this kind of sounds weird but |
| 0:22.0 | we've been listening to you for a long time um so it's it's really cool to have you here we've |
| 0:27.0 | uh been looking forward to it Dave and I've we're not I would not say liturgy uh experts by any |
| 0:33.5 | means I would say that about my I would say that about yourself, but we're very, we're always very interested in what some technicalities and like, want to make sure as we're teaching our children, uh, you know, how, uh, reverent, how to be reverent at mass, what to be doing, what's happening. And as little kids do sometimes, they'll ask you a question. |
| 0:55.6 | You're like, that is a good question. |
| 0:58.5 | You know, and so it's always good to talk about this, especially because I know that there's |
| 1:02.4 | going to be other guys out there that are listening that are trying to raise their kids |
| 1:05.2 | and trying to catacize them and form them with mass being the center, the source and summit of our faith, |
| 1:13.0 | you know, the Eucharist is, and that the mass forms us as a whole to do everything else. |
| 1:20.6 | And everything else is formed so that way we can go back to mass. |
| 1:23.9 | We just had a, or not doctor, but Brandon Sheared on. |
| 1:44.8 | And he's a... Let's just call everyone. Doctor. For this episode, just all people... Everybody's doctor. We'll be referred to this. Yes. You know what? Gosh, doesn't that sound amazing? I'm just going to change my my X handle to just Dr. Dave. There's some people who've done that and got away with it for a while. |
| 1:46.5 | I mean, what are they going to do? |
| 1:49.9 | It's like, I identify as a doctor. |
| 1:57.1 | But Brandon is a, so he's a butcher by trade, and he made this beautiful connection in one of our episodes that we just recently had with him. |
| 1:59.5 | He said, like, you know, the end of the pig or whatever is to feed us so that we can be nourished to go to mass. |
| 2:11.0 | Yeah. And about all the, you know, what he called the art of cooking is, you know, the point of eating is so you can |
| 2:21.5 | get back to Mass. You know, there's more to it than that. But yeah. So I'm really excited |
| 2:25.8 | to have you on. Welcome to Tulsa. Is this your first time at Tulsa? I've been in Tulsa many |
| 2:30.1 | times, actually. Yeah. Oh, you used to teach, right? |
... |
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