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Critical
Catholic
Commentary
in the Twilight
of Reason |
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“What is urgent is the evangelization of a world that not only does not know the basic aspects of Christian dogma, but has in great part lost even the memory of the cultural elements of Christianity.” John Paul II, January 26, 2004 |
Your
child is in the 10th grade, the 10th year
of Religious Education — and does not know Who
God is, what the Church is, and why either
should have any impact or influence on their
lives. Except for their Baptism in Christ and
their First (and probably last) Holy Communion
— the significance of which they know nothing
— they are effectively pagans. This sounds harsh.
It is meant to be. We need to be shaken out
of our indifference and awoken from our illusions.
Our children — your children
— do not know their Catholic Faith. In fact,
most of them do not even know God.
And they are in the 10th grade of Religious
Education. Think on that for a moment.
They have already had nine years — 9 years —
of something dubiously dubbed, “Religious Education”.
In less than a year they will make their Confirmation,
which is to say, they will publicly “confirm”
their belief in a God they do not know and ritually
assent to the teachings of the Church ... of
which they know nothing.
We will congratulate them and shower them with
money and gifts, and tell them how proud we
are of them. They will wear caps and gowns,
as befitting graduates of some form of learning,
and be absolutely clueless as they stand before
the Bishop who would not dare embarrass himself
or them by asking them the most basic question
about what — in this defining moment — they
are assenting to, what they are standing in
Confirmation of — fully aware that, with rare
exception, the student will be unable to answer.
This is not the sad state of CCD today
— or as we more disingenuously call it now,
“Religious Education”. It is the dismal and
utterly reprehensible state of Catholic Religious
Education everywhere in America, and likely
elsewhere, for the past 50 years.
Warm Bodies
“How can this be?”, you ask.
It is stunningly simple: students know little
or nothing about God and the Church because,
by and large, their teachers know little or
nothing about God and the Church. Religious
Education north of Boston is the only venue
of formal education in the world in which the
recruitment process for teachers has two criteria
only: a warm body and a willingness to teach
what one does not know.
There is no formal training for a Catechist.
Not in this “faith community” (the awkward New
Age neologism for the apparently now defunct,
“Church” or “Parish”) in this small town just
North of Boston — and very likely not in America
at large. The “DRE”, as they prefer to be called,
or “Directors of Religious Education” do not
question the prospective Catechist in any way
pertaining to his or her grasp, knowledge, or
understanding of the Faith that they will be
teaching. If the candidate can read, they are
qualified to teach. Period. There are no such
things as “competencies”, no courses, no required
readings, no demonstrable qualifications.
To fully grasp the egregious nature of this
absurdity, try to imagine your local school
hiring a teacher of Ancient History who never
studied it, does not know Homer, Thucydides,
or Virgil, nothing of the culture and politics
of Classical Greece or Rome — but who has sufficient
visual acuity to read the text of The Iliad
or the Aeneid. The only credentials
required for the position are a warm body and
a willingness to teach something of which the
candidate knows little or nothing. This absurd
disproportion is not likely to inspire confidence
in parents. But it does in DREs ...
The first thing to grasp is that, in many parishes,
the DRE is a
“Professional
Catholic”
— not in the way that, say, a Catholic physician
is said to be a “Professional Catholic” — a
practicing Catholic who is in “one of the secular
professions”. “DRE”s are “professional Catholics”
in another way. That is to say, they are
paid Catholics who are paid to teach Catholicism
through unpaid Catechists. Catholicism
is not just presumably their Faith, but their
livelihood, their living, their income
— in a word, it is their “job".
The DRE typically — and most often defectively
— knows her faith, and is selling it to the
highest bidder. The Catechist, hopefully learning
as he or she is teaching, at least follows the
injunction of Christ Himself: "Freely you
have received; freely give." For all their
admirable charity, many, regrettably, have little
to give because they themselves were not taught
by their Catechists who had, in turn,
been given little — or much that was counterfeit
— by their Catechists.
Before the decimation of the teaching Orders
of Sisters — and vocations in general — following
the Second Vatican Council, our children were
taught their Catechism by Nuns (Sisters, really)
who were unpaid consecrated women who taught
with a passionate conviction not only what they
knew well, but, by and large, lived well. This
had been the case almost universally until the
confluence of Vatican II and the anti-culture
of the 1960's. It was a climate saturated with
permissiveness, and a clamoring not so much
for freedom as for license. Any notion of “authority"
and anything less hedonistic than what verged
on euphoria became synonymous with “repression”
— ecclesiastical, civil, moral, and sexual.
As the doors — behind which incense and silence
had stirred for 2000 years — were flung open,
the miasma — and the animosity — of the world
rushed in. The vocations — unable to accommodate
this inimical influx — either rushed out or
were systematically driven out. Social manifestos
replaced religious evangels; the Realpolitik
of man became the summum bonum, the
greatest good, not the salvation of his immortal
soul — a quaint and at best, anachronistic notion
effectively abolished by the now socially enlightened
masses.
It was at this point that the great teaching
orders of Religious Sisters either evolved into,
or were subsequently replaced in toto
by the Professional Catholic, the Catholic for
whom Catholicism became a profession, not of
faith, but of emolument. Much like the Sophists
of Classical Greece (the great antagonists of
Socrates) who “sold" their wisdom and made a
handsome living off it (ever proving themselves
clever, but never wise), today we confront the
Professional Catholic who sells Catholicism
for a living, and with a vested interest in
what is sold because it redounds to their wages.
That the goods they sell are shoddy and defective
is of no concern to them. They have a captive
market: every Catholic with children must pay
them each and every year for ten years. Not
bad work if you can get it ...
It is true that St. Paul said that
“the workman is worth his wages”,
but it remains equally true that St. Paul sewed
tents — not Christianity — for a living. The
DRE, you must understand, does not sew tents.
Alternative Methodologies
One DRE north of Boston appears convinced that
the way to reach the children is not through
tiresome doctrine, text and study (as, for example,
Jewish children learn their faith), but through
the oxymoron called “Christian Rock and Roll”
(the term, “Rock and Roll”, we will remember,
derives from the bodily movements associated
with copulation) to which she herself sprightly
dances in her office. She is not alone. The
“Ministers of Music” (among the many "Ministers
of this and that” which proliferate throughout
the “Faith Community” and within the “Worshipping
Spaces” — neologisms for Church, pew and Altar
respectively — have even brought in drums complete
with trap sets to punctuate the Mysteries of
the Mass. It appears to be a mind-set that prevails
among those employed by the Church as “Professional
Catholics”.
And yet the numbers of the young who appear
at Mass (especially those unaccompanied by a
parent) continue to diminish. Given the failure
of “Religious Education” through what can only
be loosely construed as formal and textual instruction,
is “Rock and Roll” really the inducement our
children need? Will syncopation suffice where
formal instruction does not? Can we “Rock and
Roll” our children to God through “Christian
Rockers”? After 9 years of “formal” instruction
with so dismal a result, perhaps another, some
alternative, non-textual pedagogical avenue
is open? Perhaps the new evangelizers are not
the Catechists (if ever they were), but the
musicians, the “Rock and Roll” Catholics?
Piqued by this, I began to ask around — first
my own children, and then their acquaintances.
“Can you please tell me the name of a Christian
“Rock and Roll” group”?
“No.”
“How about a Christian "Rock and Roll" artist?”
“Mmmmm ... no.”
“Well, what about the music at Mass?“
Their eyes roll and they giggle.
This is cause for uneasiness.
“No
Child Left Behind ...”
It is also why children can pass through 9 years of “Religious "Education”, end up in the 10th grade preparing for Confirmation — and not know God and what He expects of them, or the most basic precepts of the Church to which they will formally ... and obliviously ... bind themselves.
It is also why no one fails “Religious Education”.
There is no “staying back”. The bindings of
the Bibles given the students remain unbroken,
as well as their Newer-Age Catechisms-of-sorts.
The queue leading to the Bishop is always as
long as the year before.
Why are there so few young Catholics at Mass? To begin with, no one has taught them even the simplest and most basic Catholic precept: that attendance at Mass on Sunday is obligatory — even if you are oblivious to why you are there.
Not a Member of the Better Business Bureau
But you have paid to have them — your children — taught their religion. It is you who drive them to “CCD”— and it is you who go back to pick them up. Cash and carry ... So why are they — your children — as oblivious to the Faith — as you are ... too?
“I have paid the tuition!”, you complain — and the return on my investment is total ignorance?
In the world of business, had you paid
that money for a product — and received
in the mail an empty envelope in return,
you would call the owner of that business a
con-man, a “rip-off ”. But for the next 8 years
you continue to buy “the product” and receive
an empty envelope. Who is the fool?
I encourage you to ask your DRE:
“Why does
my child not know God?”
The Church has ever taught that we, as parents,
are our children's' primary teacher —
and we have failed. It is an uncomfortable truth.
Ask your DRE why she has, too
... if only to know where your money is going,
and why. If you do not receive a satisfactory
answer —and you will not — acknowledge
that you have been a fool and demand a refund,
as is reasonable and just. But be advised: you
cannot call the Better Business Bureau and tell
them that you have been scammed. Still less
can you call the Chancery, or the Bishop. The
BBB will at least reply to your letter. The
Chancery will just “push the empty envelope”,
and in the unlikely case that they do reply,
they will most likely tell you that the Bishop
deems your “CCD” program an outstanding model
of religious education, and that he personally
holds the pastor and DRE in the highest regard.”
In truth — at least here in Boston — Cardinal Seán Patrick O'Malley is as clueless of the reality of “Religious Education” as your children are of their Faith.
Geoffrey K. Mondello
Editor
Boston Catholic Journal
Comments? Write us:
editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
Comments submitted on this Article:
Please write us and tell us what you think: editor@boston-catholic-journal.com
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Dear Editor,
I have been blessed by finding the
wonderful Boston Catholic Journal
website and greatly enjoy your articles.
I would like to offer a hopeful
response to the November article
"Religious Education in
America." I live in Ventura
County, California, which is very
much a biracial community - Caucasians
and Latinos (particularly Mexicans).
This community provides interesting
contrasts in religious education
and practice. What you have described
in religious education I most certainly
see in the dominantly Caucasian
churches of the county - a strange
watered down mix of new age, populist,
and pop culture "theology." These
churches have bands during Mass,
gongs in middle of the church, and
tend to regard the Eucharist as
symbolic. The Latino churches stand
in sharp contrast: youth attendance
is high, people of all ages still
take the Eucharist on the tongue,
many women still cover their heads,
NO ONE leaves early during mass,
and either Sisters or students from
St. Thomas Aquinas college perform
religious education. I am a man
in the middle of two cultures: biracial
Irish and Mexican. I have lived
this contrast, wandering the area
for several years trying to find
a church that has not abandoned
2000 years of rich Catholic tradition
and culture. It was truly a very
despairing period in my life and
I almost gave up. Fortunately, I
have found most of these traditions
alive and well in Latino churches
and I finally feel like a whole
Catholic again. This shouldn't be
too surprising as with Mexicans,
there is no line between Mexican
culture and Catholic culture. To
be Mexican is to essentially be
Catholic. While forces of secularism
have often split our religious and
ethnic identities in White America,
these forces have been largely unsuccessful
with Latinos in the Americas. Most
likely, all this is a function of
socioeconomics and materialism.
When you look at it that way, it
is not surprising that White America
has grown, fat, lazy, and arrogant
due to high standards of living,
with all of this affecting religious
practices and education. The faithful
and traditional Catholic Christians
(generally speaking) continue to
be the poor, working class, and
politically disadvantaged - those
closest to Christ. So through Him,
it is these communities that may
prove to be the salvation of religious
education and tradition in Catholic
America...but we'll have to swallow
our pride first!
May the peace of Christ be with
you, Editor’s Response: Dear Dr. Miller,
Thank you for your kind and extremely perceptive letter. We share in your anguish, and equally share in your hope that the burgeoning Latino community in America will bring with it — and resolutely maintain — its strong and authentic Catholic identity. May it be the leaven needed in in this self-indulgent Anglo-Saxon society that has, as you correctly observed, become complacent and to a large extent spiritually bankrupt and liturgically corrupt. It remains to be seen if the promise of affluence at the cost of its Catholic identity will prevail — or if that that genuine Catholic impulse historically prevalent in the Latino community, that indefeasible identity that is inseparable, even inalienable from 2000 years of Catholicism, will overcome the increasingly defined "American Catholic Church" that has made God in man's image ...
Dear Editor, a former "DRE"
Dear Editor,
Mike Editor’s Response:
Dear Mike,
Dear Editor,
My wife and I are so fed up with
the way the Church is heading. All
we hear is “spiritual froth”; is
there someone out there with the
courage and fortitude to take a
stand for their faith? Don’t get
me wrong, there’re some excellent
priests and religious out there
that lay down their lives for their
people every day. We pray every
day that our Pope, bless his soul,
will pull in the reigns on the American
Church. However, we’ve got some
“wolves in sheep’s clothing” and
they’re in the “hen house”.
Name Withheld by Request Editor’s Response:
Dear Sir,
Praised be Jesus Christ. J+M+J
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