Posted on 11/01/2005 5:41:48 PM PST by Coleus
America got a wonderful present this Christmas past. On Christmas Eve, 2003, Catholic news services reported the findings of a special commission investigating Catholic school resources. The commission found nearly two-thirds of high school catechetical materials used throughout the United States are trash.
The Heart of the Church A Disaster Waiting to Happen From Mortal Sin to Status Quo
That is, these texts are not in conformity with the Catechism of the Catholic Church. When asked about the problem, Archbishop Alfred Hughes of New Orleans, the head of the commission, replied, “The committee recognizes that the causes are manifold. A particular area of concern is the way in which catechetical leaders, catechists and potential textbook writers are being taught and formed in our institutions of higher learning.”
It is a masterpiece of understatement.
Last week, I explained why Catholic schools don’t matter. Now let me explain why they do. The pope’s apostolic letter on the Catholic universities is entitled Ex Cordae Ecclesia — Out of the Heart of the Church. Put that together with what he said in his letter on catechesis: for “instruction in the Faith to be effective, it must be permanent. It would be quite useless if it stopped short on the threshold of maturity.”
The university is the heart of the Church because the students at a university are on the threshold of maturity. When a person has the capacity to undergo university training, he has the capacity to be truly taught the necessary adult understanding of the Faith. True, not every Catholic adult has gone to the university. But university training is arguably the pre-eminent method of adult formation. And adults who have not had the opportunity to go are dependant for their own continuing education in the faith upon the writings and materials provided by adults who have done so. At the university, adults spend their lives teaching other adults. If the university method of adult formation is not safe-guarded, it is unlikely that other adult formation methods will be safeguarded either. Without an adult formation in the Faith, a man or woman can be a biological parent, but he or she cannot be a fully Catholic parent.
This matters. In fact, it is critical. Correct formation of Catholic parents is critical precisely because the family is the core building block of society and the Church.
You see, while begetting a child is certainly an enjoyable experience and it is certainly part of being a parent, the biological act of begetting the child is not sufficient to fully make me a parent. God may have reached out and given my wife and I the gift of a child, but unless and until we teach our child about the God who touched us with his life, the God who endowed him with life, we have not become fully parents. We only become fully parents when we instill in our child an understanding and love of the God who enlivened him.
That’s why the Catechism says what it does in article #2221, “Conjugal fecundity is not limited to procreation, but also includes moral education and spiritual formation.” In this, the Catechism simply paraphrases Aquinas, who said the same nearly a millennium ago. He pointed out that the ministry of parents is comparable to that of priests, with one exception: priests only give spiritual life. Parents give both physical and spiritual life.
So, we can only be fully parents when we teach our own children about God. But we can only teach what we know. And we only know what we have been taught. Like any other knowledge, knowledge about God is a “use it or lose it” proposition. Since we are adults, we will only use knowledge of God that is applicable to our adult lives. Just as I can’t run a business based on a twelve-year old’s understanding of finance, so I can’t live an adult Catholic life using a twelve-year old’s understanding of God. If my last encounter with Catholic theology was my confirmation class, I’m trying to deal with mature adult experiences on a teenager’s understanding of God. That is a disaster waiting to happen.
The family is the first school, the parents are the primary educators. If we as parents don’t have adult understanding, we will not pass on the Faith effectively. We can’t be given an adult understanding in grade school or middle school. That is, after all, why universities exist — only as we approach our twenties are we capable of absorbing a universal education. Thus, the university is the heart of the Church, it is ex cordae ecclesia. Or at least, that’s what it is supposed to be.
Re-read Archbishop Hughes’ words. The textbooks stink because universities aren’t teaching catechists correctly. In a word, the “catechetical leaders” (read the professors) in the Catholic universities are often heretics. The young adults in their care, men and women who are finally capable of adult understanding, the baptized men and women who need adult understanding, who have a right to correct teaching, are instead trained to be heretics too. Assuming they don’t fall away from the Faith altogether, these young men and women will most likely follow their teachers’ heresy.
In 1901, the bishops told Catholic parents it was a mortal sin to send their children to a non-Catholic school. Today, most bishops will not tell parents whether an ostensibly Catholic faculty is, in fact, Catholic. It is a simple, startling fact that a student is more likely to lose the Faith at a “Catholic” university. Conversely, he is more likely to keep his Faith if he avoids Catholic universities and sticks to secular universities. Most “Catholic” universities aren’t. Because many bishops refuse to tell parents whether the universities in their dioceses are orthodox, because they refuse to state whether the professors in the universities have promised to faithfully pass on the Faith, parents are unable to complete their God-given task: helping their own children grow in the Faith.
So it is here, at the university level, at the heart of the Church, that the loss occurs. What we do at the parochial school or even the high school level is really just moving deck chairs around on the Titanic. If we fail in the Catholic university, all the schooling prior to it is quite useless.
The parents have a divine right to assistance in completing this last, crucial step in their children’s formation. The children have a divine right to be taught the Faith. The bishops have a divine duty to assist the parents. By and large, the bishops aren’t doing this.
Ideally, the bishops should clean the heretics out of the universities. Failing that, the bishops should at least let parents know which professors are loyal to the Church. To refuse parents this information is to silently ignore their own vocation as bishops. This silence, in fact, arguably constitutes a sin of omission against the family. Because the family is the basic cell of society, this failure is an attack not only on Catholic parents, but on our culture and on the Church itself. Yet this is where many bishops stand today.
So it comes as no surprise to discover Archbishop Hughes’ statement in the news. In fact, it isn’t really news. The heresies, the deficiencies, the heterodoxies found in texts today are almost exactly the same heresies, deficiencies and heterodoxies the
A handful of American bishops have done their jobs. The rest allow the wolves to ravage the family. Even as young Catholic men and women finally reach maturity, even as they finally have the capacity to begin to grasp the fullness of the Faith, their parents unknowingly hand them over to the ravening maw of the heretic who lies in wait within the heart of the Church. As the parents watch in horror, their children are disembowled before their eyes. The bishops watch in silence.
Let’s stop pretending. If we refuse to have Catholic universities and we won’t provide decent adult formation in the parish, then let’s at least save a bit of money. Without adult formation, parochial schools are quite useless in passing on the Faith. Close them. Put the money into parish formation for adults. Stop the hypocrisy.
© Copyright 2004 Catholic Exchange
Steve Kellmeyer is a nationally-known author and lecturer, specializing in apologetics and catechetics. His new book on the Theology of the Body, Sex and the Sacred City, is now available for on-line or phone ordering through Bridegroom Press as are his other books, audio recordings and teaching tools. If you would like to comment on his columns or other writings, please visit www.skellmeyer.blogspot.com .
Ping
I went to St. Peter's a Jesuit School. Very orthodox Catholic. Even though it was one year of theology, the whole culture emphasized the faith.
st. peter's in jersey city?
Jersey City.
ONE YEAR OF THEOLOGY? At my high school, we had four years. When my dad went to Essex Catholic (Newark) in the early 1960s, they had four years as well.
I went to St. Peter's a Jesuit School. Very orthodox Catholic. >>
who were some of your teachers?
No in College. High School was all four years.
+
The bishops have a divine duty to assist the parents. By and large, the bishops aren’t doing this.
Once again, it all comes back to the bishops. The very same bishops who skated through the last 25 years with nary a harsh word from above, and have gotten so used to being false shepherds they probably don't think there's any other way to do the job.
True and important essay. We need to hear this from the pulpits.
Parents can fight back by sending their children to the few remaining truly Catholic colleges. I won't spend my money anywhere else.
The story about the sandbar is a very old JOKE! I can't remember exactly how it goes, but I heard it from a Vincentian at St. John's U. and at the time (1955), I thought it was very funny.
this was taught to the class. the only joke was the priest/ teacher who put in doubt in the young students' minds.
Oh, that's bad then.
It was one of those...Jesus, Moses, and Abraham were preaching to the crowd...jokes. And the punchline was :"Then the Lord says, "Moishe, Abe--get up here on the sandbar with me."
Strange that I remember the jokes but not the college course. It was either Religion or Philosophy, of which we had to take 30 required credits.
Were you able to visit the blue army shrine?
Not yet...maybe during Christmas vacation.
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