GROWING UP CATHOLIC
Garvey, John
tory. Rea~ wrote hi, book ia the Holy rand and Mum ge to.rid ht, own interest, and faith, quickened by the experietx:e of making a television documentary film of the life of Jesus on location....
...A tzrelm- Emily Dickinson, Measure /or Mere- 1 Sent My Children Back to Catholic ration for confirmation, it is bated to't, intelfigent inquiries and game Schools' we will know the intellion an apparent equatioo M psycho- simatlom to raise good que*tions gentsia has turned the corner") but logical growth with ChriNianity...
...9 i I 1 _ l l l l 1 I I 9 I I I Co..m~wmt: 473...
...More pect...
...The topic is immortality...
...In substance, it is a personal testimonial, a pmfes~on of the author's Christian belief...
...Be- religimn Wacdc~ ~ and who, as cause I went my children to have a result, wound up .,w,,,mt4ng to sonmhing of the tame funky back- the back teat advam:ea of a hi~ ground 1 tend them to a parochial school athlete...
...Sacrament o/Peace (Paulist) exthe problems are probably fewer than plaint the meaning of penance to they were in the old days of the seven- and eisht-year-olds...
...He make, a the series is on the whole very well out, if the major purpose of the sym- strong case for all of these points...
...It about the meaning of life and human he feels obliged to do this in every offett, for example, a lit/ of emiinp value...
...12) Muueridge puts his linger on what has happenS...
...Gemma book ~ the soul before grace as Gtlgani's Way~k...
...spend much time on the hw.armition, are unattractively pfodm:ed and tinbut talked quite a lot about the devil's imaginatively written...
...This imprestion has been so effectively conveyed that it requires quite an effort to recall how, according to the Gmpelt...
...what little a stw ~rvation that "one should not abanerally decent, but gets tloppy in ira...
...tively, but ratlmr u heroic chat- to be deigned by people who realize The book shows that "Catholic schools lenge, that a good many of the teachers seem to be more important to a 13/elL ore/Joy (Silver Burdett) is who use them are little more than church in transition than to a stable a look at comparative religion, pie- baby-sitters with degrees and large church," and often the sensible ohpared for seventh gradert It it gem captive audiences...
...He who decline in Catholic allegiance have good job, against rough odds...
...the couple locked in death's embrace, Recently I spent some time look- apparently victims of carbon mmu~ ing through a number of religiom xide pohloaing, ~ had a beautiful texts currently in use in Cadmik funeral...
...another is that people listen to him...
...The Sp/r/t varied things at selections from Job, weal carries an article entitled 'Why o//.d/r (Ssdlier) is weaker...
...The endings in- teacher behind the s c h o o l . . . Would in America were a more open soclude such choices as "I nzed to be you intervene...
...Jesm deposed from Godhead beguines Jesus Superstar, an infinitely less credible figure...
...Born of a Virgin, divine and human, apolitical, a wonder worker who deprecated his own miracles, Christ died on the cross and rose again from the dead, ascended into heaven and from thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead...
...at the national level Catholic typical b Act (part of Benziger's The education ft~s grave dangen, which Word is l,,i/e series), which includes a the NORC study delineates with un...
...the studeat Catholic Schools in a Declining news...
...Greeley blames some of the decline mpefacial limits of mutim and dis- In the hands of a creative teacher of Catholic education on "the Cathocovered how e x ~ the orcLi- it could be very excitm~t use* such lic Intelligentsia" ("When CommonAtry life of man really it...
...The book is, in format, a gift book, a coffee table book...
...When faith goes, sentimentality rather than scepticism fills the resultant vacuum...
...The which show that the best series ate Pearl and the Seed (Allyn & Bacon) being used in more schools than the is designed for hilh school ~ts...
...The impreu~on left looked beneath the rotary and two by all of this reading is that things white orchkh to her soul1" are being handled at school level bet...
...When the attention which have been much worse if it were not mitment to it " He is angry about should be given to an understanding for the poutive effects of post-Vail- this, and he is right to be...
...Thin sort of thing is, happy to reter than we have any right to ex- late, the exception these days...
...The book shows the irawould mar the new Christian way of probably a number of ex-C~ri~am: portance of Catholic schools in devellife," the amboct, while they may be once they meet healthy and sensitive oping an adult sense of Catholicism, pointing out tomething important, agnmtict our children will wonder and it recommends lay control of the slide too easily over the fact that why they should bother to stick with schools...
...An example of this is the Inquire certain that there is available another really!---to Jonathan Liv~ Sea- and Believe high school "mira course," institution that will produce at least gulL who marched for "the meaning What's Now About Forever (Win- the same effect...
...The problem Court (S heed & Ward, $15) is a very If the best of the religious texts are with this approw.h is that Christum- important book...
...McGuire's dark thumbprints on St...
...number of brightly illustrated fables comfortable clarity, and stories from diverse sougge~ all First, the texts...
...He aho told an empty milk bottle, after Osce as us about his own encounters with a full milk bottle, and the soul in the devil, who was about the size of venial tin is a milk bottle with spots...
...Here's the end, in care school, and like otla~ parents 1 have you've forgotten it" "About twenty wondered what they teach there theue hours later, a curious passerby fmmd days...
...Texts ought and read Greeley's afterword next...
...With Renan, Jesus becomes an obkct of sentimentality, not of faith...
...an elephant and who spoke on one Your Rltht to Be ln/ormed edifies from the clme~ trying (in high school students with the old vain, it turned out) to dhattt~ the chestnut about the girl who let her priest from saying a Hail Mary...
...school it would certainly depend on episcopal disdain but rather a call to portant," "1 need to caru about/Others the teacher...
...That pretty well exhausts the similarity between M uueridlg and Renan et hoc 8ema omne...
...Where I went to ciety, would not be the subject of happy," "I need to know I am ira...
...But Christ Declining Church...
...Jesus spent most of his time in the company of his disciples, who, as far as we know, were impeccably retpectable...
...Still, symbols these other people do with- what the bishops fear...
...The topics it choose, to deal bols is to produce simple human For those who are initially put off with and the ~ of church his- equilibrium, by the sociological jargon and the tory chosen at ilhmratlom are haw Another problem is that some series graphs, my advice is to go first to died interestingly, and it is good to which could be used very well by a the conclusion, go back from there see the church pteteated not as an good teacher depend too heavily on to the data at the front of the book, institution to which one belmtgs, pat- the teacher's creativity...
...Paul...
...olic religious decline would probably all the while protesting a total comportant...
...fulfill these two mah...
...Then I read the already peacefully in her ~ ; bet" foMed notoriom National Ol~nion Research hands held a motber-of~l treaty Center study, Catholic Schools in a and two white orchkh...
...worst ones...
...the tone Baltimore catechism, and there is en- is hopeful, the emphasis on the power couraging news in recent statistics of God's love to reconcile us...
...someone whoee bent and style contrast with those of John the Baptist, that austere and prophetic precursor...
...40) Facing the page on which the last remark is found is Millais' Christ in the House o/His Parents...
...Don't let it keep you from to the tentence beginning "1 follow "A gang of students is attacking a reading this one which, if the church Jesus because...
...This, Greeley believes, is C~il believed in real denums...
...Greeley seeks his life will lose it" really has overshadowed some other significant believes that the bishops are allowing to be dumbed down to get it to the findings, one of which is that Cath- a great resource "to waste away--level of "I need to know I am in...
...and there is not so much a suspension of .belief as a readiness to believe anything...
...action which contains some hopeful and be cared ~ " etc...
...done...
...For there are illustrations, dozens of them, beautifully reproduced, many in color...
...There are son~ real aimed at developing in a third-grade problems with a few of the new cate- attdicnoe an under~ndinlg of moralchetical approaches, though on balance ity...
...1 did find one qmmion funny: book...
...It is the traditional faith, as articulated in the creeds that (Continued on page 474) GROWING UP CATHOLIC JOHN GARVEY When 1 went to grade school much Cawch~m: Know, Love and Serve of our reliliom imtruction came (Prow) and Your Right to Be Infrom an old Italian priest who didn't /ormed (Daughters of St...
...The NORC fl~ings at all indicative of their creative reity is not, after all, about the fulfill- which link Humanae Vitae with a sources, they are continuing to do a merit of needs at this level...
...of it all" and ~ through the ston Prets...
...The Catholic schools have been is invited to pick two, and explain Church, by Andrew Greeley, William too important to the church in Amer"why you think following Jesus would C. McCready, and Kathleen Mc- ica to let them go down the drain...
...The worst books I taw It has its awkward momenta,--theze --let's get them out of the way--- are some embarrassing dialogue pre~ were Father McGuire's New, Modern entatiom, and a revitionist view of jOHN ~ttVEV, a regular columnist /or church history crops up eggasionally" Commonweal, b an editor with Temple- when the ritual exorcism which was gate Publbhers, Spring[ield, illinob, common in some tecton of the early . . . . . . 16 ltdy 1976:472 i 9 I I I I I I In I I I I i l church is lmmmted by an imagined sacramental nature of the church is lay Catholic, continue to back the Cyril of Jermalem u "a ceremony given instead to glowing telf-evalua- idea of Catholic education and are that dramatizes a quiet and persistent tion& the produ~ is bound to be a more than willing to support Cathothedding of old habits and ways that crop of uninformed Christiam, and lic schools...
...How better convey the nature of that faith than to tell again the life of Christ, who he was, what he taught, his continuing role in history...
...dent absorbs in such a clau will in don an institution that produces a portant ~ Great reUgiom lead- all likelihood, come on/y from the certain desirable effect unless one is era, for instance, are compared-- text...
...Radiant in white, the lay schools...
...I hope of church histo~, scri~are, and the can II Catbolicitm...
...Here, Renan opened a rich vein which has been heavily worked, especiaUy of late, to the point that Jesm is commonly believed today to have consorted largely with whores, drunkards and rogues of one sort and another...
Vol. 103 • July 1976 • No. 15
