Easter bunnies and Xmas trees

...For many of them and their families, there is little distinction or tension between the American way of life and their religious consciousness...

...No answer I could think of had any evangelical base...

...The local church is thus in danger of evolving into a holograph, where the image looks right but where there is very little content beyond religious observance...

...In these parishes, there is very little sense of the problems and the achievements of the church worldwide except for the annual collection and the sermon on the missions...

...Teaching the parish children about their faith every Sunday is a task consigned to a group of volunteers, mostly women and mostly, unlike myself, experienced primary and high school teachers...

...Parish life focuses around the priest, Sunday Mass, and a few parish organizations and activities, including the Sunday school...

...For them the latter is fully explained in terms of trees, decorations, Santa, and family gift-giving, while Easter is a time for bunnies, eggs, and candies...

...When asked, my current fourth-graders all described the service as boring...

...I was much less optimistic...

...If the answer is based on the current social conditions in these parishes and on the children's own perceptions of religion, it does not point to dynamic communities of faith...

...No one in this parish talks about that reality which, given the demographics of the priestly population, will come here as it has and will to many other parishes throughout the country...

...The fourth graders are not particuarly attracted by such traditional practices as confession and saying the rosary...

...A number of parents saw these reactions as typical of that age and believed they would grow out of it...

...The relevance of religion and religious teaching for both parents and their children seems to be confined to moral education...

...How will they have more impact tomorrow...

...Without resident priests, the local churches of tomorrow will have lost the primary focus they have today, leaving them to face new territory with little in the way of preparation, leadership, or resources...

...Gone also is a theological understanding, if not also any knowledge of the Old Testament images of the flood (at best just an animal story), the deliverance from Egypt, as well as the sense of the covenant and the Hebrews being the chosen people...

...About two-thirds of the children coming to Sunday school go to the Mass that day, some with, but some without, their parents...

...Only a small minority of the children talk with their parents about religion in terms other than going to church or going to Sunday school...

...In contrast to their perceptions of the Christian worldview, these fourth-graders have a fairly comprehensive view of personal sin, although they do not like to call it that...

...Gone is a sense of Christianity as a comprehensive view of life...

...The majority are unfamiliar with and certainly unresponsive to such basic symbols of the Christian faith as the Fall, Jesus as savior, and the broader mission of the church...

...Our common civic culture appears to provide them with adequate definitions of, for example, the divinity as well as Christmas...

...Weak though the children's perception of it is and without the priest who defines it today, the degree to which tomorrow's parish is either a nurturing Christian community or simply a building maintained for the visiting priest to dispense the sacraments will depend on its lay members...

...In a media-dominated world, many traditional Christian symbols are losing their power...

...As a catechist, the impending changes and their consequences force me to examine my priorities in order to use the limited time at my disposal on the dimensions of the gospel message that go beyond religious and moral observance...

...In many respects it might be the challenge that these communities need, to force them to take active responsibility for their parish...

...Many of their parents are active in local community affairs...

...Will it be only prolife activists...

...With a priest in residence, the parish atmosphere is characterized by traditional values of service and loyalty: the faith has brought a people thus far, it ought to be trusted and one ought to respond to its call to the moral life...

...As a catechist, I sense the need to prepare better our children for tomorrow...

...At the level of Christian education, it calls for a context in which children begin to see themselves as active members with substantial responsibilities...

...The implications of this one fact are enormous...

...More pressing questions are kept below the surface in a community where the right-to-life agenda and religious observance appear as the touchstones of fidelity and offer the only glimmers of theological enquiry...

...One of the children once asked me why no one talked with the priest during the the sermon or the Mass...

...The Eucharist, the Mass, or church on Sunday, as most of them call it, is the central if not exclusive religious activity of the week for many children...

...It is hard to find within their moral conscience a sense of the relevance of their Christian community or of the relationship between sin and a God in history...

...They are most aware of actions that undermine human and especially peer relationships: lying, stealing, fighting and bullying, anger, ignoring or rejecting others, insults, bad language, lack of respect for others and their feelings...

...They were clearly familiar with the rituals associated with church-going, but as time goes by, I have become more disillusioned by the level of their more general religious consciousness...but not yet pessimistic...

...What will these local churches offer...

...J. PAUL MARTIN Eighteen months of teaching Sunday school in a small country parish in upstate New York have generated in me a profound concern for the transmission of our Christian heritage and its implications for tomorrow's local churches...

...Thus, for example, in spite of its annual celebrations, the prominence given to the feast, as well as numerous sermons on the topic, on the basis of random questions in conversation, I find most Catholics cannot give a reasonably accurate description of the Immaculate Conception...

...The religious significance of the church today seems to be reduced to its moral positions...

...What will be religiously important when today's children grow up...

...moreover it appears to lose ground relative to their other knowledge as they advance in age...

...Their concerns are one of the few nationwide issues that distinguish the public agenda of the Catholic church from the rest of society...

...Compared with children of similar ages in an urban situation, they compare favorably in their knowledge of public affairs...

...When we began to discuss how to improve it, other than making its various parts shorter, their suggestions went in often conflicting directions: less singing, more modern music, more explanations for children, better bread, etc...

...It is hard to predict who will comprise the church...

...The few clergy who are under forty-five are looking past these rural settings for more urban environments, while the more numerous older priests are edging toward a retirement that everyone knows will probably leave most parishes like this without a permanent minister...

...They also can talk about responsibilities towards the less fortunate: the sick, the elderly, the handicapped, and the poor...

...This is not the emphasis in the textbooks...

...To me it appears as one more sign of an enfeebled Christian culture...

...What is the model for our country (and indeed city) parishes tomorrow and what should we all be doing now to prepare the next generations to live and to hand on the Christian gospel in their age?l in their age...

...Few have ever read Bible stories with their parents, although at least half say prayers every day and some have video tapes of religious stories...

...One striking aspect about parishes like the one where I teach is the continuing dominance of the individual parish priest, reflecting especially his age and personal interests...

...Gone is much responsiveness to Christian symbols ranging from Christ himself to individual figures and doctrines...

...Who will comprise that church...

...Most unexpected to me has been the lack of religious literacy among the children...

...Its theological treasures, such as its insights into the virtues of faith, hope, and charity, have been lost to view, perhaps the victims of a certain religious pluralism and desire for civic respectability...

...They are aware of their responsibilities and failings toward their family and their local community...

...At first I put this down to my own inability to communicate with them or to the fact that I had been introducing new ideas without necessarily inquiring about their own religious experience...

...We use the latest in catechetical publications, each child having his or her own textbook which each takes home and is encouraged to show to his or her parents...

...On the basis of this experience, I can return to the three questions asked above: the future composition of the local churches, their religious significance, and what they will have to offer to their members...

...The children seem to come from stable family situations...

...As a teacher, I have found myself searching with difficulty for starting points within the children's experience that would make it easier to introduce them to religious concepts...

...J. PAUL MARTIN is executive director of the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University...

...It would, on the other hand, be a step toward more active participation...

...One of the most obvious will be the shape of their local Christian community...

...The Christian and specifically the Catholic heritage in its broader terms, not to mention the documents of the bishops' conference on world peace and economic reform, hardly filter down to these communities...

...We not only have to hand on the heritage, we must also prepare them for great and fairly immediate social changes...