Laudet Dominum

There are three things that have bothered me about how catechesis of Catholic children is done in much of the United States. First, we treat it like another class at school. Second, there is little to no effort to show the faith as something practical to their lives. Third, there is little to no parental involvement in the programs.

When I consider these three issues, they seem to be connected in my eyes. Instead of seeing catechesis as molding and forming their lives on earth in preparation for eternal life, it seems to be viewed as another class that has material that needs to be crammed into the kids heads. Just as math class gives the kids the concepts of mathematics, religious education gives them the concepts of Church teaching.

With this focus on the material, there seems to be a lack of making the faith practical and desirable for the kids. Now, I’m not talking about merely having them do “social justice” days, which usually ends up being a community involvement track. That’s a good start, but what about seeing the importance of the Mass and devotional life? Some of the traditional prayers, such as the Our Father and Hail Mary, may be presented to the kids, but there is no concept of developing a prayer life. How about encouraging them to live the Church’s moral theology? The moral theology of the Church is where the theological rubber meets the road, but there seems to be no movement to encourage the kids to explore and live what the Church teaches morally. Same problems with communal involvement, sacramental life, and most other areas of Church teaching and life.

Of course, at this point, I’m sure some are saying, “Father, that’s your job to fix it if you see it’s a problem!” Yes, that’s true, it is my job, but there’s far more going on here than just Father falling down on the job. As the Catechism teaches:

The fecundity of conjugal love cannot be reduced solely to the procreation of children, but must extend to their moral education and their spiritual formation. “The role of parents in education is of such importance that it is almost impossible to provide an adequate substitute.” The right and the duty of parents to educate their children are primordial and inalienable. Parents must regard their children as children of God and respect them as human persons. Showing themselves obedient to the will of the Father in heaven, they educate their children to fulfill God’s law. Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children. They bear witness to this responsibility first by creating a home where tenderness, forgiveness, respect, fidelity, and disinterested service are the rule. The home is well suited for education in the virtues. This requires an apprenticeship in self-denial, sound judgment, and self-mastery – the preconditions of all true freedom. Parents should teach their children to subordinate the “material and instinctual dimensions to interior and spiritual ones.” Parents have a grave responsibility to give good example to their children. By knowing how to acknowledge their own failings to their children, parents will be better able to guide and correct them (CCC 2221-2223 – Emphasis mine)

Herein lies one problem I see with many kids at religious education: they’re being dropped off for their once-a-week-Christianity-fix, and never setting foot in the Church otherwise. They, along with their parents, almost never attend weekly Mass, and are there only if the kid is “performing” in the children’s choir. Religious education is being seen as free babysitting for an hour on Wednesday while “checking off” teaching the Catholic faith to their children.

The problem with our current model is that there is no reinforcement from the parents about the importance of the Catholic faith. Catholic parents are falling down on their “first responsibility,” as the Catechism phrases it. After all, it’s not important to the parents, so why should the kid take it seriously? Because the kids don’t take it seriously, and there’s no encouragement from the parents to take it seriously, anything the catechists present just go right over the kids’ heads. Unfortunately, this is what I see here in too many cases. School academics are taken seriously, sports are taken really seriously (to the detriment of everything else), but religious education is blown off.

How do we fix this? I don’t know. Is it possible to reach the parents and convince them to take their faith seriously? Maybe, but most of them have gone through a program very similar to what we have today, with similar results. They probably can’t tell you how many sacraments the Church has, nor more importantly how those sacraments influence their daily lives. Too many Catholics don’t know what it means to be Catholic.

This needs to be changed immediately. We can’t allow another generation to fall away from the Church. I’m open to suggestions on how to reach the kids and help them to know, live, and love the Church’s teachings.