Baby Boomers-Why So Poorly Catechized?

[commenter]

I grew up in the 50’s & was taught by the Nuns in both grammer & high school. Catechisis was strongly emphasied. Think we lost that when the Nuns were no longer available for teaching in the number they once were.

Well, in a way.
I grew up at a time when all teachers - nuns, priests, and lay teachers - were solidly orthodox. Later, I found many Catholic teachers, including nuns - to be not so. Prior to the 1960s religious education was a subordinate ministry serving the Church. In the 60s it became a “church within the Church”. The principal and DRE were no longer reporting to the pastor, but to the Religious Education Movement in the diocese; which was itself reporting not to the bishop, but to the RE movement nationally. There arose a network of “Catholic” textbook publishers, certain university theology departments, and contacts within the dioceses, all of whom engaged each other, and only indirectly were responsible to the Church, let alone parents.

Part of their progress was based on reshaping everything into “Vatican II” even though much of what they eliminated had been reaffirmed by the Council. They also pushed new educational techniques - the idea was that even though memorization was still needed in Science, History, Languages and every other subject the student was learning, somehow it was an obstacle to learning Religion. Parents and even pastors were often told they just don’t understand the New Catechetics, so better not to interfere, let the experts do their job.

In the past few decades many newer bishops are much more sensitive to the need for doctrine, who have made progress in many areas; but often not much change in catechetics. Bureaucrats are entrenched in dioceses, and principals are able to block improvements in doctrine. Teachers are unionized. In my diocese, the most secularized schools are those traditionally run by orders of sisters; they may have very few sisters teaching, but they hand picked teachers mostly very liberal. Parents and alumni tend to be focused on sports, etc, and tend to regard the School as still Catholic, because it always used to be.

In my diocese people in Catholic high schools couldn’t make any progress in improving catechetics, and parents were so fed up they were sending their kids to public school or home schooling. We started an independent Catholic School - the diocese is willing to take our rent money, but won’t promote us in any way. I honestly think the bishop is doing the best he can, but the whole mid management of the diocese, and the people controlling most Catholic schools are deeply entrenched.

 

[baliano]

Since the majority of Catholics don’t attend any formal religious education the education must come from the pulpit during the homily. It’s been decades since I have heard a solid homily addressing sin, penance, purgatory and hell. I generally hear comforting homilies all full of sweetness and kindness, there is even one parish I attended at which the homilies start with and are based on the Peanuts cartoon strip ( I don’t go there anymore).

Catechisms were given away free a couple of years ago but they were too comprehensive and a little difficult to use for simple answers to common questions, I doubt many were ever opened much less read. It would have been far more productive to have re-issued the Baltimore Catechism, far less expensive as well.

 

[ProVobis]

Education in general has declined in the last 50 years. All one has to do is compare math, science, and reading scores between then and now. I’d say blame the educators who were probably more concerned with copyrights and their careers rather than on what effect their teaching would have on society and within the church.

 

[baliano]

Education in general has declined in the last 50 years. All one has to do is compare math, science, and reading scores between then and now. I’d say blame the educators who were probably more concerned with copyrights and their careers rather than on what effect their teaching would have on society and within the church.

How does that affect religious education in US parishes? Religious education is a direct responsibility of the pastor either personally or via delegation to qualified staff or parishioners. We are now and will for at least a generation paying the price for the lack of religious education since the fifties.

 

[SuscipeMeDomine]

I think a lot of the problem is that it is simply not possible to teach children all there is to know about the Faith in one hour a week (if that much) unless this same information is being used in the home. (This is also true for children attending Catholic school but there is a chance that Catholic school children will be expected to practice some of their book knowledge outside of religion class.)

Absolutely!

I remember when my mother taught CCD back in the…oh, maybe late 60s or early 70s. She taught the students preparing for first communion, second grade. She sent home a list of the prayers the children should know – the Sign of the Cross, Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be – and parents were actually angry with her. “What do you mean I have to teach them this stuff at home. Why do you think I send them to class?” How much exposure do you think they had to ANY aspects of Catholicism if teaching the Our Father was more than their parents were willing to take on? We won’t even speculate on how many attended Mass each week.

The Evangelical Protestants did a good job of reaching out to their friends and neighbors, and I think a lot of Catholics attended some of their exciting church activities, especially the Bible studies and prayer meetings, which were usually done in small groups of the same sex, with child-care provided, and were a discussion format where no one was forced to talk, but everyone was encouraged to make a comment and didn’t have to worry about being criticized.

And just in general Catholics in the US have adopted a largely Protestant mind-set. How often do you see questions or comments on CAF that ask “where is that in the Bible?” with the assumption that Catholic Tradition means nothing? Or “Isn’t Halloween evil?” because certain fundamentalist churches have said so. People seem to have absorbed this from the culture, possibly because their personal practices of truly Catholic activities are lacking.

How does that affect religious education in US parishes? Religious education is a direct responsibility of the pastor either personally or via delegation to qualified staff or parishioners. We are now and will for at least a generation paying the price for the lack of religious education since the fifties.

And yet how much time, effort, and money do most parishes put into education, either for adults or for children?

In my own parish I know that they have a hard time getting teachers for the children’s classes. I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard the line “God doesn’t call the qualified, he qualifies the called.” Would you accept any warm breathing body for something that really mattered? Would you go to a doctor who was called but not educated and prepared? But when it comes to teaching children, oh well, we don’t want to put on too many restrictions or we won’t have volunteers. There are catechetical certification classes in this diocese, but we don’t require that people be certified before taking on children’s religious education or even that they enroll in the classes. As long as they can pass a background check so we know they’re not abusers they’re good enough.

At least we offer something for the children. How many parishes offer any kind of education or formation for adults? If you’re lucky maybe there’s a parish mission during Lent or a Bible study class. But that’s about it. And how many people would take time out of their week to attend a regular class? Especially if it was somewhat rigorous and required regular reading and preparation?

I guess I’m feeling rather cynical today. I think the Church has gone minimalist in this area. We don’t offer much, we don’t expect much, and we’re seeing the results in a population that doesn’t know much or care much.

 

[ProVobis]

How does that affect religious education in US parishes? Religious education is a direct responsibility of the pastor either personally or via delegation to qualified staff or parishioners. We are now and will for at least a generation paying the price for the lack of religious education since the fifties.

How does it affect it? Hmmm. Several years ago some mothers asked me to help their kids in reading during the summer months. One thing I found out is that they were probably all good at reading except for one thing. Each had his/her own interests. If the kid has enough interest in a subject, he will probably do well in it. The real challenge is to stimulate interest in church or religious matters. And what are we doing except to throw a ton of scripture at them, hoping that something sticks? Our religion educators need to do some rethinking in this regard IMO.

 

[Sunbreak]

The early baby boomers were fairly well catechized. The ones born later - in the last half of the 60s and later - were growing up in the age of experimentation with the felt banners, kumbaya type stuff.

 

[SuscipeMeDomine]

The early baby boomers were fairly well catechized. The ones born later - in the last half of the 60s and later - were growing up in the age of experimentation with the felt banners, kumbaya type stuff.

But apparently those well catechized folks weren’t able to pass things onto their children…so perhaps they weren’t so well catechized after all. Religious education classes can only supplement what the children are getting at home. That was true in the 60s and it’s true today.

 

[JimG]

I’m old enough to have escaped much of the madness but experienced a lot of the consequences.

I grew up learning religion from the Baltimore Catechism taught by nuns. It wasn’t the only teaching tool but it was important. Even my non-Catholic father learned a lot of Catholic doctrine just be reading the questions for me to answer.

No, the Council did not mandate poor Catechesis, even though poor Catechesis did follow in its wake. The seemingly big change of emphasis gave religious educators the go ahead to implement their own free-wheeling ideas without much interference from the magisterium. (And priests and nuns were themselves infected by “the spirit of Vatican II” whatever that was.)

I had five brothers and sisters. I was second oldest. By the end of 8th grade, I pretty much knew all of Catholic doctrine. It’s not that hard to learn. I figured that all my younger brothers and sisters were taught the same things, since we all went to the same Catholic school. But I was wrong. Later, at family gatherings, some Catholic doctrine might come up in conversation, and I would state the facts of the teaching. The youngest siblings would give me a blank look. “Are you sure? I never knew that?” I would mention something else. “Never heard of it,” they would say.

All this time, my parents just figured that all the kids were getting a Catholic education. Nope. Catechesis changed drastically in just a few years, and remained bad for a few decades. In some places it disappeared entirely.

A few years later, my wife and I were teaching CCD at a different parish. At the beginning of one school year, the DRE passed out samples of religion texts they were considering, allowing us to look them over and comment.

Out of about five series offered, only one had serious content and was arranged for good systematic learning. I gave it a good review. One series consisted of nothing but marshmallow fluff. Nobody could seriously learn Catholicism from it. But that was the one selected.

Another year, we did switch to a good text. I remember an illustration showing a picture split diagonally. On one side, a priest at Mass elevating the host. On the other side Christ on the Cross at Calvary. I held up the illustration. “Can anyone tell me what this picture means?” I asked.

The whole point was to illustrate the Mass as a making present of the sacrifice of Calvary. Everybody gave me a blank look. Various ideas were thrown out, none of them close to correct. I broached the idea of the Mass as Sacrifice, Mass as a making present of Calvary. Nobody had heard of it before.

My own previous bishop once mentioned that he was a victim of this lack of catechesis. He said he grew up Catholic, but had no idea of what the Eucharist was until he got into seminary.

Thankfully, things have improved. Our new seminarians are better catechized than any I have ever seen. They are more orthodox and certain in the Catholic doctrinal knowledge than I have seen even before the Council.

 

[ProVobis]

But apparently those well catechized folks weren’t able to pass things onto their children…so perhaps **they weren’t so well catechized after all. ** Religious education classes can only supplement what the children are getting at home. That was true in the 60s and it’s true today.

Perhaps but there are studies that say the father’s influence was/is the dominant factor in his offspring’s church attendance. Mother’s not so much. So given even a small number of paternal apathy in the beginning, several generations will produce a much more significant apathy in religious study. Today women outnumber men at Mass, more at Spanish Masses.

 

[KCT]

Catechesis is intended to follow evangelization.

I think the people you speak of are not evangelized. Their hearts may not be converted and they may not have chosen to live a life pleasing to God.

One can be sacramentalized but not evangelized. And that, I think, is a big problem with the classroom religious education model we are used to. We can use the best materials on the market, but if the students’ hearts are not for Christ, the books make little difference.

 

[livingwordunity]

I believe that it’s because of the influence of the “smoke of Satan” in this age. In 1972, Pope Paul VI said that he had the feeling that the “smoke of Satan” had entered the Church.

 

[edwest2]

I don’t have a detailed answer, but as I understand it, during / after Vatican II the emphasis in the Church changed. More on love / gathering / spirit / spirit of the Council / “we are the body of Christ”, rather than teaching / truth / doctrine. Weird things happened in the name of the “spirit of Vatican II”. Some people are kind of stuck in that era of near-rebellion, anti-1950s spirit, I think.

There is no such thing as the spirit of Vatican II. It was a scapegoat, an invention, an excuse for all that occurred right after the Council ended. Carefully planned things were set in motion to launch the greatest assault against the Church in the last three and a half decades of the 20th Century. All of it was well-coordinated. The Church certainly did not change its emphasis.

Ed

 

[livingwordunity]

I believe that it’s because of the influence of the “smoke of Satan” in this age. In 1972, Pope Paul VI said that he had the feeling that the “smoke of Satan” had entered the Church.

 

[edwest2]

Just a few thoughts, some people are Catholic by tradition. You see this often in the Jewish communities too, where people are Jewish by identity, but their faith isn’t all that much or non-existent.

Also they were raised by a generation that was probably had the highest rate of church attendance even in American history. This in my understanding was part of the WWII generation’s longing for “normalcy” and family values after 15 years of depression and 5 years of perhaps the most inhumane war ever fought. I think a higher percentage of this WWII generation attended church because it was socially important and less for faith than other generations. So you combine the 60’s rebellion of the baby boomers and the higher number of more superficial Christians that raised them and you might get a part of what we are seeing today in churches in general.

World War II was the most necessary war ever fought against some of the most inhumane enemies in history. Does anyone know how many Allied ships were struck and sunk or put out of commission by Japanese pilots diving their aircraft directly into them? How many German V-1 cruise missiles got through or V-2 rockets that could not be shot down? My Dad was in Europe for the whole war. He and some others had a fresh start in America but he and his vet friends rarely talked about what they saw or what they went through. He was part of the Depression era, along with my Mom. “Normalcy” meant no one shooting at you or dropping bombs on your head.

Having families and raising children correctly led to a mostly pious and well-catechized group of misnamed Baby Boomers. I am one of them. God was important every single day. He was not just in Church. I lived with God every day and we lived out our faith every day. The reverence that existed. The Feast Days. The Holy Days. The Stations of the Cross. Easter Mass at dawn. Jesus said to do what He told us to do and we did it, for the most part. Not out of social obligation but out of the growing understanding as we went through Confirmation and became young adults, that we would be held account for our actions by God, just as were held account by our actions by our parents.

Ed

 

[edwest2]

I grew up in the 1960s. What I saw was that those who attended Catholic schools in the 1950s and 1960s were actually fairly well catechized in their younger years. (Those who attended CCD were often treated like second class Catholics.) When Boomers got older, they head the message that “God truly loves you,” and somehow turned that into, “God loves you so let’s change anything that feels unloving because we baby boomers are the first generation in the history of the world who understand love.” And baby boomers sincerely thought they were the enlightened ones. Some still think that.

Since I was there, I can tell you with all sincerity that total strangers inside and outside the Church attacked it. Anybody who lived through the time period will tell you one thing about Catholics at the time: we were too trusting. So when the wolves arrived, we did not recognize them. We could not see what was coming after 1965, since it was gradual, and many of us assumed that the strangers, the wolves, would not succeed. They could and would be ignored at first. But the battle to come in a few years only hinted at where we are today. At worst, the Church would react and we would respond, but coordinated assaults from many corners meant that we were losing our footing, some of us falling for the deceptions. Some of us seeing outward changes and thinking they would be corrected. But once the full force of the five year plan struck, the groups involved would show themselves and act. And between 1968 and 1973, not Catholics, but strangers and dissidents inside the Church would hurl great effort, time and money to lay the foundation for today. It was promoted primarily by using a perverted form of the word “freedom.”

In 1967, Pope Paul VI was at work with a commission concerning the Church’s stance on birth control. The birth control pill was referred to as The Pill, and here’s how it was marketed in the April 7, 1967 cover story in Time Magazine. He knew what was coming.

content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,843551,00.html

In 1968, when the encyclical Humanae Vitae was published, he reaffirmed the Church’s constant stance against artificial contraception and warned what would happen if his words were not heeded. The reaction?

"Within 24 hours, in an event unprecedented in the history of the Church, more than 200 dissenting theologians signed a full-page ad in The New York Times in protest. Not only did they declare their disagreement with encyclical’s teaching; they went one step further, far beyond their authority as theologians, and actually encouraged dissent among the lay faithful.

"They asserted the following: “Therefore, as Roman Catholic theologians, conscious of our duty and our limitations, we conclude that spouses may responsibly decide according to their conscience that artificial contraception in some circumstances is permissible and indeed necessary to preserve and foster the values and sacredness of marriage.”

Source: Regnum Christi

Did you catch the part about “an event unprecedented in the history of the Church”?

1969 NARAL, which meant both the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws and National Abortion Rights Action League, got off the ground. The deceptions involved were finally revealed years later by one of its founders, Bernard Nathanson.

catholicnewsagency.com/resources/abortion/articles-and-addresses/an-ex-abortionist-speaks/

1970 The Sexual (without love) Revolution was in full gear. Dirty, filthy magazines, comix and Head (short for dope-head) shops began to appear which sold “roach clips” so you wouldn’t burn your fingers so you could get your last toke from your joint. Illegal drugs were more widely available. And porn - Adult Bookstores, topless bars and strip clubs began to appear everywhere. This cost millions of dollars in printing, distributing, prostitutes, photographers and others. DID WE ASK FOR THIS? NO!! Better yet, who legalized this? Back in 1968, the worst you could legally do was buy Playboy, and now we have gynecology.

1971 Hippies. “We got freedom, man.” Don’t listen to mom, dad, the Church or anybody - except them, of course. My Hippie friend went from normal guy to like he just got out of Hippie Boot Camp. The regulation length hair, the regulation length chain, regulation dope smoking and expert in Hippie-speak. “I don’t need no piece uh paper tuh live with my old lady (she was 21 ?)” Underground newspapers told us to hate the rich, to harm corporations, to be like Marxists/Socialists. We were promised a Woodstock Nation – which we never got.

And there was Eastern Mysticism - a ton of books about it. If it wasn’t Christian, it was OK. Yogis, yoga, meditation. DID WE ASK FOR THIS? But again, someone spent a lot of money to get those books and bookstores to us, including the underground newspapers.

1972 The push for legalizing abortion is on TV. I watch a nice lady tell me things that are only partly true but I did not know the plan.

All of this is hurting me - spiritually and emotionally. Why? Why?

1973 The Supreme Court, not the people, legalize killing babies in the womb. Jane Roe in Roe v. Wade never got an abortion. Her real name is Norma McCorvey. She is an anti-abortion activist.

We were lied to.

Ed

 

[edwest2]

And the rest of the damage done by the dissidents on the inside during the period?

wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704586504574654282563939764

From Pope John Paul II to Pope Francis today, the ship of the Church has been gradually turning. Bit by bit.

ncregister.com/daily-news/benedicts-men-u.s.-vocations-strengthen-during-his-eight-year-papacy/

ncregister.com/daily-news/seminaries-incorporate-more-counseling-into-formation-years/

People today ask why? Those are the key reasons.

Ed

 

[commenter]

Catechesis is intended to follow evangelization.

I think the people you speak of are not evangelized. Their hearts may not be converted and they may not have chosen to live a life pleasing to God.

One can be sacramentalized but not evangelized. And that, I think, is a big problem with the classroom religious education model we are used to. We can use the best materials on the market, but if the students’ hearts are not for Christ, the books make little difference.

…slippery slope warning…

The pre-1965 model of religious education emphasized doctrinal content in Religion (and Science, and History, etc). That does not mean it neglected evangelism. There was also attention to devotion, to sacraments, to prayer, to living out Christian morality, to personal relationship to God. Some students accepted the personal relationship to God. Some didn’t. It was a false dichotomy that people used afterward: “What’s more important, living your faith or - instead - studying dogma?” etc. As if you must choose one or the other.

Catholic schools began to omit grades for religion class. They stopped teaching Catholic Theology, to “religious studies”, where the student **looks at **Catholicism, rather than looking from Catholicism, towards life. Later it was modified so that the student looks at all religions, equally; that giving preference to Catholicism is “unequal”, which is evil. My old high school had a Latin motto “Fortis in Fide” which in 1965 was translated “Strong in the Faith”. Now it is translated “Strong in Faith”. The prior translation put the emphasis on God. The current one puts the emphasis on faith; any faith. The older model facilitated conversion, to the Truth (Christ). The current model promotes subjectivism, and impedes conversion, since each one defines truth for themselves. I have heard students say “My Jesus is very important to me”; but “their” Jesus (non doctrinal; in other words, fictitious) simply means following their opinions (i. e. the media), which means no conversion. It’s like worshipping my mirror.

I agree it takes more than accurate knowledge to form the Christian heart. It is necessary but not sufficient. But it is inaccurate to assume that religious ignorance or indifferentism or relativism will somehow transfer over to an evangelized child/adult. What I found is that schools that are strong in doctrine are strong in evangelism, and weak in one are also weak in the other. Many religion classes are mostly current events classes, following the priorities of the media.

It takes more than books but some books are far more effective than others. In my city we formed a new Catholic high school, to offer parents an alternative to the non-doctrinal Catholic high schools.

 

[JimG]

…slippery slope warning…

The pre-1965 model of religious education emphasized doctrinal content in Religion (and Science, and History, etc). That does not mean it neglected evangelism. There was also attention to devotion, to sacraments, to prayer, to living out Christian morality, to personal relationship to God. Some students accepted the personal relationship to God. Some didn’t. It was a false dichotomy that people used afterward: “What’s more important, living your faith or - instead - studying dogma?” etc. As if you must choose one or the other.

Catholic schools began to omit grades for religion class. They stopped teaching Catholic Theology, to “religious studies”, where the student **looks at **Catholicism, rather than looking from Catholicism, towards life. Later it was modified so that the student looks at all religions, equally; that giving preference to Catholicism is “unequal”, which is evil. My old high school had a Latin motto “Fortis in Fide” which in 1965 was translated “Strong in the Faith”. Now it is translated “Strong in Faith”. The prior translation put the emphasis on God. The current one puts the emphasis on faith; any faith. The older model facilitated conversion, to the Truth (Christ). The current model promotes subjectivism, and impedes conversion, since each one defines truth for themselves. I have heard students say “My Jesus is very important to me”; but “their” Jesus (non doctrinal; in other words, fictitious) simply means following their opinions (i. e. the media), which means no conversion. It’s like worshipping my mirror.

I agree it takes more than accurate knowledge to form the Christian heart. It is necessary but not sufficient. But it is inaccurate to assume that religious ignorance or indifferentism or relativism will somehow transfer over to an evangelized child/adult. What I found is that schools that are strong in doctrine are strong in evangelism, and weak in one are also weak in the other. Many religion classes are mostly current events classes, following the priorities of the media.

It takes more than books but some books are far more effective than others. In my city we formed a new Catholic high school, to offer parents an alternative to the non-doctrinal Catholic high schools.

I agree with this. It was my experience that there was not a lack of evangelization in pre-conciliar catechesis. The emphasis was on both evangelization and doctrine. Kids in my grade school were encouraged by the nuns to make visits to the church for a few prayers during recess, and children did just that. The nuns were not only teachers of doctrine, they were examples of Faith, which they lived out in their own lives. Even as children we were imbued with a sense of sacramentality and grace and prayer. When the new methods of catechesis arose, it wasn’t with a renewed emphasis on evangelism. It was more a watering down of both doctrine AND evangelism. Teaching us to draw pictures and be nice to each other could be taught in public school; there was nothing particularly Catholic about it.

 

[edwest2]

I still have one of my original school books from the period: Living in God’s World (dated 1960, original copyright 1953). And it was an Elementary School Science book.

Religion Class meant nothing if we did not as Christ told us, do as He said. Which we did and were the better for it. I did not understand adults yet, but I knew my parents were a lot like all the parents I met. We all had shared values. I lived in a Christian community. And as the media degraded, making fun of nuns was important for them. I trusted our nuns implicitly and we had a Convent on school grounds.

Ed