The Catechist Cafe
BOOKS YOU DIDN'T HAVE TIME TO READ
  • HOME
  • MORALITY
  • SCRIPTURE
  • PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
  • CHURCH HISTORY
  • BOOKS
  • LITURGY
  • ON MY MIND
  • The Boys of Aroma Hill-Callicoon
  • ABOUT THE BREWMASTER
  • CATHOLIC NOVELISTS and the BOOKS THEY WRITE
  • VATICAN II DECREE ON LITURGY STUDY

1/15/2016

The Road to Extinction

0 Comments

Read Now
 
This week marks the first anniversary of our daily blog. For my impressions of the first year and plans for 2016, click here at your leisure.
 
 
Today I am taking a day off from blogging, truthfully to get a few days ahead in the prep work. But I did come across an interpretive interview on recent research about the religious beliefs and practices of millennials vis-à-vis their elders from the good folks at PEW. So you won’t be alone with your coffee today.
 
I found a number of points of agreement with the author, Dave Masci, though I think the research needs to look a little more closely at the internal dynamics of religious faiths, to see what trends and practices within faith communities might be leading to a progressive disinterest in church commitment.
 
Anyone who knows me is probably well aware of my strong belief that religious education in American Catholicism is presently woefully inadequate, if not terminally ill, and it is only getting worse.  In short, each successive generation of Catholic parents and catechists are less prepared to share the faith with their children than the previous one. This has been a problem long before the priest abuse scandal that Masci references.
 
Back in the late 1990’s, when I was teaching a college course on world religion, I assigned Alan Dershowitz’s 1997 work, The Vanishing American Jew. (It was one of my first review submissions to the new Amazon site, and it was refused, incidentally.) In this book Dershowitz describes Jewish youth formation for bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah. “The kids typically hate it, but they want to be bar or bat mitzvahed because it is a rite of passage and it comes with a party and presents. The “deal” usually made between parents and their children is that in exchange for “giving up” several afternoons and Sunday mornings, the children would get the party and a promise of no more Hebrew school." (295)
 
Does that sound familiar?


Share

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

Details
    For Folks Who Can't Read Everything

    Archives

    March 2023
    January 2023
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    March 2022
    October 2021
    September 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    July 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    October 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    March 2018
    October 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • HOME
  • MORALITY
  • SCRIPTURE
  • PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
  • CHURCH HISTORY
  • BOOKS
  • LITURGY
  • ON MY MIND
  • The Boys of Aroma Hill-Callicoon
  • ABOUT THE BREWMASTER
  • CATHOLIC NOVELISTS and the BOOKS THEY WRITE
  • VATICAN II DECREE ON LITURGY STUDY