IT ALL BEGAN WHEN…
For the past several months I have had the interesting and intriguing opportunity to work with a lay group in my parish which was organized several years ago to study Pope Francis’ encyclical Fratelli Tutti. Buoyed by the experience and committed to continuing its adult education outreach, the group decided to engage on a study of the Vatican II documents, beginning with the 1963 Sacred Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. They decided to invite the broader parish at large. As I am a laicized former pastor, psychotherapist, college teacher, diocesan catechist trainer, and presently a catechetical blogger—and my wife was part of the Fratelli Tutti study--I was invited to join the planning circle for this second venture to assist in its planning, organization, and presentation. It has been and remains a source of inspiration, admiration, and yes, even frustration for me as we progress along our way; and it has given me new and renewed insight into the state of “adult education” and “adult faith formation” in the United States. LEARNING IS PART OF WHO WE ARE… If God created the heavens and the earth ex nihilo, “out of nothing,” the same is true for any cluster of dedicated parishioners today who wish to form communion with the rich fountain of two millennia of Catholic theology, “the study of God.” The idea that the Church is Western Civilization’s Great Educator is a parish’s best kept secret. If you live and worship in most any parish of the United States, you would never deduce from a sermon that baptism incorporates us into the heritage of divine wisdom from the pens of Paul the Apostle, Augustine, Aquinas, Teresa of Avila, Cardinal John Newman, Karl Rahner or Thomas Merton, or the collective wisdom of the Councils Nicaea, Ephesus, Chalcedon, IV Lateran, Constance, Trent, and Vatican I, to name just seven of twenty before Vatican II. Nor do we ever celebrate in our collective memories the historical reality that the Church established both the curriculums and the concrete slabs for the two hundred great universities of medieval Europe that preserved ancient classical thought in partnership with Islamic scholarship and went on to lay the intellectual groundwork for “the modern world,” all under the umbrella of God’s truth. Nor was “faith and education,” historically speaking, the reserve of only scholars. Even in medieval times, frequent holy days released serfs from their fields to come into the cities for religious formation in the form of morality plays, cathedral preaching, and solemn liturgies. For many reasons the identity of the Catholic Church as a “studying church” and the church member as student has never blossomed as an element of pastoral life, even after the Reformation and the Age of Enlightenment. It may be that with the Council of Trent’s [1545-1563] decree calling for the establishment of diocesan seminaries, a major innovation, the belief developed that routine parish life, conducted by better trained pastors, would sufficiently educate the laity to what they needed to know. History would sadly prove otherwise. The fathers of Vatican II understood that the key to holiness and the empowerment of the faithful was an educated faithful. A call for greater education permeates nearly all the Vatican II documents—including Sacrosanctum Concilium—and the Council teaches that clergy and laity alike must immerse themselves in study of the sacred scriptures and the rich body of literature we collectively refer to as lectio divina, “divine reading.” In just one of the sixteen Council documents, Sacrosanctum Concilium, there are 29 specific references to the need for the study of Scripture and Liturgical Theology. BUT IN THE UNITED STATES…. Prior to Vatican II the one jewel of educational faith formation that an American Catholic might experience in his or her lifetime was the formative elementary and secondary Catholic school system. In the 1880’s the bishops of the United States mandated that every Catholic parish have a school. Beyond high school, though, adult formation was poor or nonexistent. In 1955 the American historian Father John Tracy Ellis caused quite a stir when he pronounced the country’s two hundred Catholic colleges to be overextended, understaffed, and intellectually barren. The same could be said of seminaries, of which virtually every diocese and religious order had at least one, and sometimes more. Academic Catholicism in the United States was a parched intellectual desert. Ellis, who desperately fought to attend a Big Ten University for his history doctoral studies instead of Catholic University, was later hired to teach by Catholic University, but he insisted that his CU credentials were so poor that he took one year to prepare at Princeton University. On his assessment of Catholic higher learning, he was mostly right. No American bishop made a significant contribution to the debates at Vatican II. Contrast the U.S. situation to Holland. Just one year after the conclusion of the Council, the Netherlands Conference of Bishops authorized The Dutch Catechism, a work which became very popular in the United States and elsewhere in the late 1960’s. The substance, quality, and orthodoxy of catechetical programs including adult education was an immediate concern of the Vatican, particularly given the somewhat experimental twist of the Dutch Catechism. In 1971 the Vatican, at the Direction of Pope Paul VI, issued its first post-Conciliar directives on universal catechetics which included this: “Steps which are effective and indeed of the greatest importance for good results must be taken: promoting the growth of the customary forms of the ministry of the word and stimulating new ones; evangelizing and catechizing men of lower cultural levels; reaching the educated classes and taking care of their needs; improving the traditional forms of the Christian presence and finding new ways; gathering together all the practical aids of the Church and at the same time avoiding forms which are not in accord with the Gospel.” [1971 General Catechetical Directory, paragraph 9]. This was more revolutionary than generally realized at the time, for the Church was highlighting a need for catechizing “the educated classes,” a far cry from the gas-and-go Confirmation programs for 12-year-olds, so common, even today, in the U.S. Feeling some pressure after the Council and The General Catechetical Directory the American bishops issued in 1972 a pastoral statement, “To Teach as Jesus Did.” By 1972 Catholic school attendance was declining; popular wisdom had it that the departure of many religious sisters to other ministries or to life outside the convent was the main cause, but the full reasons have never been sociologically researched. In 1972 the bishops were faced with a conundrum. One option was to double down on an existing educational system their predecessors had mandated in the 1880’s by putting forward more planning for the schools’ funding, staffing, accessibility, and—importantly—certification in Catholic theology for all employees for the next century, in tandem with a declaration that Catholic education for all the faithful was job one for the American Church, consistent with the nineteenth century vision of their predecessors. The second option was to swallow hard and say, in so many words, that CCD religious instruction and new, untested models were just as good as the Catholic school system for faith inculturation. Actions have consequences, but so do inactions—and in general the bishops did little to shore up either option. In “To Teach as Jesus Did” the bishops basically asserted that both Catholic schools and after-school religious instruction programs were equally good, which in fact they were not. The statistics compiled by CARA-Georgetown over the past half century are startling in that they trace a massive decline in both categories—Catholic school attendees and religious education attendees. [The same studies, conducted annually, indicate that presently 17.1% of self-identifying Catholics attend Mass weekly. I should add here parenthetically that in Holland, the home of the Dutch Catechism, the figure for weekly Mass is 5% the last time I checked.] In 1999 the U.S. Bishops published a better set of directives for adult education, “Our Hearts Were Burning Within Us.” But Paragraph 43 makes a candid admission that adults in the church remain unserved: “Yet despite the consistency and clarity of this message, the Catholic community has not yet fully heard and embraced it. While most Catholic parishes place a high priority on the faith formation of children and youth, far fewer treat adult faith formation as a priority. This choice is made in parish staffing decisions, job descriptions, budgets, and parishioner expectations.” The popular wisdom which endures to this day is that the best goal to be hoped for in education of the young is to hang on to them till Confirmation, load them up with a lifetime of doctrine, which they immediately forget, and watch them flee the church faster than the confirming bishop. CARA’s numbers indicate that many young people are not making it even this far under a very low bar. I have concluded that the last generation or two of ordained priests are themselves the products of the general state of poor catechetics, and consequently their grasp of their ministry as educators is not well developed. This is evident in preaching, to be sure, which is generally weak in both content and artistry, but also in the structuring of parish priorities. My guess is that pastors believe the Sunday sermon and the church bulletin suffice as “adult education.” Clearly the observation of the 1999 Bishops’ Document that “far fewer [pastors] treat adult faith formation as a priority” is spot on, but not every diocese generates much heat in this regard, either. CARA’s numbers indicate that Catholic markers across the board have been sinking for years; one might say dramatically beginning in 1975. Kenneth Woodward, the longtime religion editor of Newsweek Magazine [whom I met at a presentation in 2018] observed that “the best indicator that a little Catholic or Presbyterian will become a big Catholic or Presbyterian is the religious commitment and energy of their parents. The problem is that, in mainline Protestantism and now in Catholicism, we've had several generations of parents who were weakly or poorly formed in their religious faith and practice.” THE ADULT DEFICIT IN FAITH UNDERSTANDING... Woodward could not be more correct, and there has been local movement in recent years to address this hard reality. Some parish faith formation leaders are attempting “family-formation programs,” particularly around the celebration of sacraments of initiation [Baptism, Confirmation, First Eucharist]. In these programs the parents are involved in the educational-formative process provided by the Church. Other parishes experiment with a once-a-month day of family formation where multitrack programs are provided simultaneously by age/generation accompanied by a Eucharistic celebration and common meal. I was invited to conduct the adult portion of such a program at a local parish a few years ago—on Valentine’s Day Weekend, no less—and at the very least, the positive reinforcement of the parish as a community around the Eucharist was quite evident. Some parishes actively support religious education homeschooling, whose quality of education will vary with the commitment and competence of the parent[s]. The great vacuum, unfortunately, remains adult religious education. The best way to put it is this: in my parish and elsewhere I have many friends and acquaintances of considerable post high-school education [Ph.D.’s are not uncommon] and professional achievement who live and worship with an eighth grade understanding of Catholic doctrine, wisdom, and life. Vatican II, in Gaudium et Spes and many other places, reminds us that the Church must be intelligible to the men and women in a contemporary world. To wit, consider these points: [1] Theology, at its heart, comes from the Greek theos logos, “the study of God.” To deny adults the assistance and opportunity to access the richness of the theos logos as it comes from its sources borders on pastoral malpractice. [2] The Church has been the backbone of religious and philosophical thought for much of the past two millennia. In its long history the Church has faced most of the critical questions facing society today. Its richness, if studied and promulgated, would make a major contribution to our chaotic society. In our present situation, typical pastoral life brings precious little to the questions facing modern society. Actually, parishes avoid them like the plague. [3] Study of the theos logos brings us into closer communion with God. It is no accident that the Church’s greatest thinkers—from Paul to Augustine to Aquinas to Edith Stein—are also among our greatest mystics. [4] Monks—men whose lives are arranged around the liturgical hours of prayer—study from two to four hours each day, from the written word of Scriptures, the Church Doctors, the saintly scholars, and Christian history itself. Thoughtful study is the wellspring of prayer. [5] Every demographic study of the Catholic Church indicates that there will be fewer and fewer priests in our future. The need for an educated laity to step forward in the work of teaching, preaching, and sanctifying will become greater than ever. Thoughtful and regular adult study of theology creates both the enthusiasm and the competence in adults to step forward in embracing these new responsibilities. [6] The cultivation of healthy understanding of the Church’s tradition protects its members from drifting into dangerous extremist or one-dimensional energies that harm the Body of Christ. There are those who would say that learning is a distraction, that humble piety is enough to please the Lord. To that, I would simply say that every hour of religious study I have invested in over the years has humbled me profoundly. And, I would add the wisdom of my old seminary rector. Every year he would preside over the “votation” or deliberation over which seminarians to promote, and which ones to send home. The toughest cases were those of candidates who spent hours in the chapel but not enough in the library. When it came to vote, the rector would say, in Latin: “Piety comes and goes. Stupidity remains forever.” The next post: how my fellow parishioners and I met the challenge of theos logos. [In 2-3 days.]
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