Becky
The catechetical intellegensia, which has left nearly two generations of Catholic uneducated, is dug in pretty deep. They are the root of the problem. With the intoduction of the Cathechism of the Catholic Church in the early 90's, orthodoxy shall prevail in the end. It will still take a while to uproot the freakshows.
LOL! Thanks, but I know the truth about the sorry state of "Catholic" education. The little town I live in has a "Catholic" school with grades up to 8th. They have to have an EVENING catechism class because faith formation is not taught in their "Catholic" school. In place of SCIENCE, they are taught to venerate the earth.
In my own parish in a different town, the catechism classes are just pitiful. The teachers are sweet women and good men, but they are all products of their own failed Catholic educations, and can't be expected to pass on a Faith they scarcely understand. This wouldn't be TOO much of a problem if it was just a parish here and a parish there that was weak. But the modernizers have been undermining the faith for the last 30 years at least, and the first place these inroads appear is in the books that are pushed on the children in the CCD classes (CCD means "Continuing Christian Development" Talk about buzzwords...!). Glossy pages covered with color photos take the place of books filled with questions and answers.
Most of the older posters on these threads remember the old Baltimore Catechism in one form or another. We learned the Faith by rote, but by golly, we LEARNED it!