TEACHING CATHOLICISM
Principe, Francis J.
cial skills but considerable commitment, and without grassroots, wide-ranging involvement from rank-and-file Catholics, lay and cleric alike, the undertaking will fail. In my estimation,...
...The Reverend Francis J. Principe is chair ~ff the reliy, ion departmerit at Cardinal Spellman Hi~ql School, Bronx, N.Y...
...Most of the priests on the faculty had or were working toward advanced degrees...
...yet the changes in faculty, along with the increased number of non-Catholic students, weakened the once-pervasive Catholic identity of the school...
...The decade of the '80s was a time of consolidation in religious education...
...We--that is, the rest of us, the larger church--have failed to address the consequences these decisions will have...
...Most exhibit not only professional competence but strong devotion to Jesus Christ and the church...
...The courses are not simple recitals of Bible stories or literal-fundamentalist readings, but aim at a critical and sophisticated understanding...
...Students learn, as they should, that necessary adjustments have sometimes come slowly and painfully, in part because the church includes sinners as well as saints, diehard Bourbons as well as visionary reformers...
...We have reason to be grateful to them, and because of them to be hopeful for the future of the church in the United States...
...The church has been able to adjust, sometimes slowly and with difficulty, to changing cultural and historical contexts without abandoning the essentials of her message...
...Church history is also much more prominent in today's Catholic religious education...
...Some programs promoted acceptance of "the new morality," calling for a more personal, less legalistic apCommonweal | _9 April 10, 1998 proach to sinfulness...
...But the effort to displace the novena/Rosary style of devotional spirituality with something livelier and more relevant, though well-intentioned, sometimes had dubious results, leading to the use of "poster" art, pedestrian readings, and music of questionable quality...
...Decisions made by individual dioceses to close inner-city schools that are financially draining, though they serve as true sanctuaries for their students...
...The civil rights movement, the Vietnam War protests, major political scandals--all these came at the same time as the Second Vatican Council...
...for them, the work is more a vocation than a profession...
...The school provided opportunities for daily Mass and frequent confession...
...These decades were times of societal turmoil...
...decisions made by families to use public schools and entrust their children' religious formation to CCD classes...
...Not all the change has been easy, pleasant, or even heaIthy...
...There were also significant changes in Catholic piety and spiritual life during these two decades, some salutary, some regrettable...
...Students are invited to understand not only that Catholics are "people of the Book," but that we form a "community of memory...
...Trying to build sexual morality on so vague and subjective a foundation in an already permissive society was a recipe for disaster...
...By then, will the legacy of available, affordable parochial schools have been frittered away...
...What will be the state of faith formation of the Catholic young in the year 2050...
...In my estimation, feasible solutions exist...
...For many high school students (as well as others), it meant that nothing was forbidden, provided you were truly "in love" and "felt" that what you wanted to do was right...
...The church's valuation of the dignity of every person becomes more credible when the teaching on abortion is presented in the context of the consistent ethic of life, and is thereby linked with the church's approach to the death penalty, questions of war and peace, and the care of the seriously ill...
...This traditional approach to religious education was fortified by an extensive program of spiritual activities...
...Commonweal [ S April 10, 1998...
...But in 1981, when I was reassigned to a large Catholic coed high school in the North Bronx as chair of its religion department, I sensed the stirrings of healthier change...
...Teaching Catholic morality in the context of a society that prizes self-fulfillment over self-discipline, that accepts or at lease tolerates premarital sex, abortion, and divorce, and gives relatively little weight to the demands of justice in social, economic, and political realms (racism, poverty amidst plenty) is a daunting challenge...
...Whatever merits this approach may have, it produced near chaos in the realm where the "new morality" had its strongest impact: sexuality...
...In its 2,000-year history, the church has spread more widely and is more deeply rooted than any other religion...
...Many were extremely weak in intellectual content...
...Most were dedicated and effective...
...Meantime, the collapse of vocations plus leakage from religious orders and the diocesan priesthood reduced the number of teaching brothers to seven and teaching priests to fifteen...
...many are already on the drawing board, including lobbied-for tax credits (never fully embraced by the Catholic electorate as a high-priority campaign issue) and/or a school system financed by endowment...
...Beyond that, however, the lay religion teachers I have encountered (and not only in my own school) bring a surprising level of professional expertise in theology, Scripture, history, and educational methodology to the task...
...A significant number had language problems, weak academic backgrounds, poor self-discipline, and minimal instruction in religion...
...Many were non-Catholic and even more from poor, oneparent households...
...some has been neardisastrous...
...Many of them were societal and/or economic, but inevitably affected the school's atmosphere and its approach to education, including religious studies...
...There is no field of human endeavor--political, social, economic, cultural, artistic, intellectual--that has not felt the church's influence...
...This was particularly evident in the field of morality and social justice...
...Changes began slowly in the 1960s, gained momentum in the '70s...
...Various programs introduced to "update" every level of religious education in response to Vatican II and to the challenges of the times led to confusion in religious studies...
...In September 1959, i was assigned to teach in what was then the largest Catholic boys' high school in the Archdiocese of New York...
...some were introduced to support some specific social, religious, or political agenda...
...In my experience, as will be seen, current trends are hopeful...
...The intellectual content of religion courses became more substantial...
...Ponderous textbooks were in use in all four years...
...Academically it was a fine school...
...The virtue of love (often vaguely defined) was to be paramount, along with the individual conscience and right of self-determination...
...decisions by other parents for home schooling or sponsorship of private academies--all these imperil the extraordinary achievements of the Catholic school system in this country...
...For forty years I have been a New York priest teaching the Catholic faith in two diocesan high schools and as an adjunct professor in several colleges and graduate schools...
...weekly Benediction and frequent Marian services were well attended...
...Male lay teachers made up the majority of faculty...
...We have not thought and talked about what needs to be done to force a change in the attitudes and economics driving our school system toward decline and demise...
...More than 90 percent of its graduates went to college, many with scholarships...
...Living in the midst of fundamental social and cultural change, the American church was prodded from within to bring itself up to date...
...This has entailed living with significant and continuing change: social, ecclesial, pedagogic...
...The presentation of Catholic teachings was often selective, emphasizing some, ignoring if not denying others...
...Lay teachers are of course indispensable simply because there are no longer enough priests and religious to staff the classrooms...
...And if so, at what cost to the faith and the faithful...
...The issue of how we rear children in the faith deserves our full attention: hearts, minds, and pocketbooks...
...every year during Holy Week the students took part in a three-day silent retreat...
...The faculty--forty diocesan priests, fifty religious brothers, and three laymen--taught a student body of 2,200, drawn mostly from lower middle-class Irish and Italian families in the South Bronx...
...I am convinced, then, that this lay participation is a gift from the Holy Spirit, bringing a new presence and tone to American Catholic education...
...Observing their interaction with students, I sometimes suspect that their lay status makes it easier for them to become spiritual confidants for the students and to model for them the life of Christians "in the world...
...One could welcome Mass in the vernacular, emphasis on full participation in the liturgy, the trend toward Scripture-based homilies...
...By 1970 the flight to the suburbs, rises in tuition, the opening of other Catholic high schools, and the physical decay of the South Bronx had reduced the enrollment from 2,200 to around 1,200...
...decisions made by individual pastors and parish councils not to build schools but instead to rely on CCD programs...
...The teaching of Catholic morality was structured around the Ten Commandments but was defended by natural law arguments, particularly in the field of sexuality...
...No doubt some of the religious instruction was arid, and some of the retreat sermons were full of hellfire and brimstone...
...Religion was no minor subject in that era...
...But today most of the school's graduates remain grateful for the quality of the education and religious training they received...
...This presentation defines Catholics as members of a faith community that feeds its understanding of faith, morality, and spirituality on the word of God and the tradition that was born of it and that shapes our understanding of that written word...
...Social unrest and Catholic reform fed each other and in a way lived off each other...
...Emphasis in the current approach falls on presenting Christian morality as an imitation of Christ, on an understanding that the more Christ-like we become, the more human we are...
...Scripture was used sparingly, often only to provide "proof texts" bolstering the rational argumentation and the magisterial teachings...
...Francis ]. Principe TEACHING CATHOLICISM Downs & ups over four decades hings are different now...
...many undertake this ministry at serious financial sacrifice...
...The basic truths of Catholicism were again presented, but now with constant references to their foundations in Scripture and tradition...
...Not all the results were happy ones...
...Ethnic changes in the community the school serves and problems in urban public schools brought increasing numbers of inner-city Latino and black students to the school...
...Topics were formidable: God's existence, the Trinity, creation, the Incarnation, the church, the sacraments (especially the Eucharist), and morality...
...As I said at the beginning, "things are different now"-and perhaps the most visible difference is that the majority of religion teachers now are laymen and laywomen...
Vol. 125 • April 1998 • No. 7
