Boring Catechesis Produces Boring Catholics
By SHAUN KENNEY
One of our readers raised a concern about a Catholic evangelization program for teenagers entitled ChristLife, which is designed as a supplement or substitute for your more traditional CCD programs.
Specifically, there is a section that includes the “Romans Road” so often used by Protestants to convert Catholics that ends with a recitation of the Sinners Prayer — a non-biblical prayer used by proponents of Sola Scriptura to advocate for non-scriptural dogmas such as Sola Scriptura.
Now if one wants a truly Catholic program?
Look no further than the Culture of Life Studies Program sponsored by American Life League, either as a supplement or a curriculum entirely devoted to promoting the dignity of human life.
I am certain there are other programs available, but truth be told? So many of them succeed in one thing: boring students to tears.
I speak as someone who has suffered through as a young man listening to 50-year-old youth directors attempt to get us all riled up about the “spirit of Vatican II” and the “reform of the reform” with tambourines and guitars and the like.
Problem is, most of us had no idea what reform needed to be reformed, much less what we were actually trying to reform.
Meanwhile, five days of the week our public schools continued to push condoms and birth control and “safe sex” while listening to music about drug use and violence. Our teachers pretended to teach us, and we pretended to learn.
After school, it was Beavis and Butt-Head and MTV while watching our president question the definition of the word “is”.
Catholicism in the Diocese of Arlington became a refuge from that nonsense. Deep down, we knew we were being sold a bill of goods. Deep down, we knew that Holy Mass was the centerpiece that resisted all of that nonsense.
Deep down, we could smile and nod at teachers, priests, and even CCD directors all because we knew that deep down? They didn’t believe what they were teaching us either.
.…And then you would meet that one priest who did believe, and the world changed.
This priest cared about our souls. This priest would bring us to Holy Hour on Friday evenings before he knew we would go out and have a good time that weekend. He knew we would come back on Wednesday if we talked about Aquinas, Bonaventure, Bellarmine, and Augustine – the good stuff we knew our parents didn’t understand.
What these rare souls among the priests understood was that we were patronizing the world because we had no other choice…but if we treated the Catholic faith as a refuge? As a Deposit of Truth and Faith? If we were treated as adults? We would respond as adults — and with an adult faith.
Unfortunately, most catechesis today wants to ape what works for Protestant evangelicals. We adopt the forms and forget the substance of Catholic teaching.
Much like the Protestants, we teach our youth and our converts “once saved, always saved” and think that we have the thing, when conversion takes decades if not a lifetime. More damage is done by Catholics who think they possess the faith in toto and play whack-a-mole with dissenters than by Catholics whose humility imposes upon them the fact that they have much, much more to learn.
True, there are some things we can learn from our Protestant cousins. But the “Romans Road”? Of course, I love the “Romans Road,” especially the big pothole at Romans 2:6 which clearly states God will render every man according to his deeds. So much for Sola fide!
But you know where I learned that? Catholic apologetics, not kumbaya sessions in the parish basement.
ChristLife seems to have its heart in the right place, as most of these catechesis programs inevitably try to do. But so long as we continue to substitute a set of rules for an actively lived interior life? The rules will inevitably fail.
Give me a priest who is in love with the Eucharist, and I will show you young men and women who will be in love with the Eucharist. In fact, there is probably no greater mission a Catholic priest could have than to spend that one hour with their youth before spending one hour with the Lord.
We are starving for it.
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Virginia’s elections just delivered their General Assembly to the Democrats this past week in what will be viewed as a repudiation of President Trump’s wider agenda for the country.
Don’t believe it. Here’s a few good reasons:
1. Partisan infighting absolutely wrecked Republican hopes, with millions being spent picking off Republicans rather than picking off Democrats. A house divided against itself cannot stand.
2. About $7 million was spent in races where there was either no hope of victory, on petty infighting, on lazy campaigners, or to preserve certain incumbents against inevitable defeat. If we had adjusted that spending to about six different races? We would have won.
3. More Republicans voted in contested races than Democrats. If Republicans had seen fit to run candidates in 33 uncontested seats? More Republicans would have voted overall in Virginia than Democrats….
4. Which brings us to court-enforced redistricting costing Virginia Republicans about six seats. This was imposed from on high, and utilizing a Democratic map. Nothing to be done about that in the House of Delegates.
5. Republicans still managed to win 19 seats in the Virginia Senate in lines drawn by the Democrats in 2010. With just one more seat? Not only would there have been a split Virginia Senate, but redistricting for 2020 would have been forced to be fair and not partisan.
6. Trump was disinvited to campaign for Virginia Republicans. You can imagine how that feels for Republicans who are defending the president at the moment.
7. Virginia may not be a red state, but it is not a Trump state — pure and simple. In fact, the Trump 2020 folks have already made the strategic decision to abandon Virginia and Colorado in favor of states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
Simply put, Virginia is no longer a battleground state, even if we are a place where the Democrats will be forced to spend millions retaining it.
8. Republicans squared off against a sitting governor who was in blackface or a KKK hood (we still don’t know which), a lieutenant governor who is accused of rape, an attorney general who admitted to blackface, a Democratic caucus that promised to bring back bills for post-birth abortion, ending our right-to-work statute, endorsing the commercialized exploitation of hunting, ending our Dillon Rule statute which keeps our business environment stable, and stack committees — and still lost.
Virginia isn’t a blue state by a mile, but we are by no means a Trump state. It is a lesson perhaps that voters need to be approached where they are, not as we would wish them to be.
Meanwhile, as Virginia prepares to rename itself South Jersey, the rest of America seems well primed to re-elect Trump. Sadly, for those of us who are native Virginians, we can at least reminisce about a good 400-year run….
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Can I still be angry about the way the Vatican press office handled the entire Pachamama fiasco?
Turns out that these wooden boomerangs aren’t even an Amazonian custom, but a Peruvian one transported to the Amazon by none other than a leftist-leaning priest who told the media that the Catholics he was ministering to made these statues — lovingly carved them by hand, we are told to assume — as Our Lady of the Amazon.
Of course, this isn’t even remotely true. Our Lady of the Amazon is quite beautiful. Meanwhile, these little wooden boomerangs can be purchased like dream-catchers from any Brazilian or Peruvian tourist trap — yes, they are that ubiquitous.
Pray for this Pope, the bishops, and the Church. We could use it right about now.
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First Teachers warmly encourages readers to submit their thoughts, views, opinions, and insights to the author directly either via e-mail or by mail. Please send any correspondence to Shaun Kenney c/o First Teachers, 5289 Venable Road, Kents Store, VA 23084 or by e-mail to kenneys@cua.edu.
