CATHOLICISM LITE
Schommer, John J.
tian denominations? Don't they need to be acquainted with the dogmatic claims of their own Catholic tradition before they can talk intelligently with their peers from other Christian...
...How have we as a church helped to prepare parents to be what the catechism says they should be: the "primary educators of their children...
...I can't say for sure what my peers were doing in their religious ed classes, but I know I was playing "Guns or Butter" and watching videotapes of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter...
...If we are serious about passing on the Catholic faith, isn't this the kind of program we ought to be offering...
...Commonweal I • September 10,1999...
...And that means no substitute for high-content programs that require much of adult and child alike...
...An extra hour of parish fellowship would probably be far more valuable to our children on the niceness front than the hour we spend with them in formal religious education...
...If the main thing we want from religious education is to develop a social conscience in our kids, then we might do well simply to send them to programs at any number of progressive mainline Christian denominations...
...Don't they need to be acquainted with the dogmatic claims of their own Catholic tradition before they can talk intelligently with their peers from other Christian denominations...
...When content-lite educational theories hold sway in the broader culture, how easily can we blame Catholic parents for believing that the best thing that Sunday school can do is teach their children how to be nice or that their children will learn the "boring details" of Catholic faith and history later in their lives when they are "ready...
...If the main thing we want from PRE is children with a thorough knowledge of Bible stories and an ability to quote chapter and verse, again, such schools are already up and running...
...The junior high students that my wife and I have taught already seem like nice, respectful youngsters and are probably well on their way to becoming thoughtful, concerned adults...
...Can we really blame today's parents for fearing the intelligent questions of their thirteen-year-old as they read an eighth-grade text with their child...
...If the sole reason parents enroll their children in Sunday school is so that their kids can learn how to be nice, then my own experience is that they might as well skip it...
...For intensive schooling in the Bible, the Baptists would surely be hard to beat...
...Most of the parents my age attended high school a decade after Vatican II when the social justice message dominated high school curricula...
...But if we want our kids to have a uniquely Catholic education, an education that leaves them knowing something of the rich history of their church, and the specific teachings of the Catholic faith, as well as the kind of good works the Catholic faith enjoins, then there is simply no substitute for sustained parish involvement in religious education...
...Most of what I learned about the Catholic faith in the years since grammar school I learned on my own, a full ten years after wandering away from the church during college...
...Certainly another exculpatory fact to consider is that many sincere and actively practicing Catholic parents feel ignorant of the teachings of their own faith...
Vol. 126 • September 1999 • No. 15
