Aldous Huxley, not even a Christian wrote a short story?essay? telling of the narrator's encounter with a young boy while walking along the beach one evening. He learned that the boy worked on a fishing boat and was very bright. They talked about all kinds of things and he came to look forward to his encounters with this intelligent mind. One evening they happened to talk about religion and the narrator was amazed that this boy, armed only what he had learned from his catechism, was able to counter so many of his arguments. To be sure, the teaching of the catechism, like so many rote methods, can become merely mechanical. But one must know the words before one can interpret them. The old Catechism compressed thousands of years of theology into a few hundred questions. By comparison too much Catholic instruction of the '70s contained almost nothing of merit.
Rote can be a good start of learning. Then you learn to understand what you have been saying. It gives you a starting place, a common vocabulary, and contains things we can branch out from. It is highly underrated in this era. But it works.