I wonder how many of the people who take stands different from the Church actually know what the Church teaches and why.
Instead of thinking of ways to make the Church smaller, why not think of ways to get the message out.
My guess – and it is only a guess – is that for most Catholics, formal religious education ended when they were in high school. Confirmation is so often seen as “graduation” from religious education classes.
What kinds of additional formation do parishes offer? In many cases, not much. If they do offer a lecture here or there, it’s not in the context of anything comprehensive.
Unless people educate themselves, they’re not going to know very much about what the Church has to say. Of course they are influenced by the secular culture and the morals of those around them.
I work with RCIA and adult confirmation. I would love to offer more classes for the parish as a whole, but there’s only so much one volunteer can do. What are you doing to help spread the word?
You have touched on a HUGE problem within the Catholic church: the lack of continuing religious formation. In most places that I have observed, any formal education (and often it isn’t very “formal”) ends by the junior year of high school or sooner, depending on when young people are confirmed.
I have surveyed several Catholic parishes, mostly by talking to parishioners, reading their bulletins and checking their websites. There is an amazing lack of adult faith formation. Compare that to most Protestant and Jewish faiths, and the Catholic church is woefully behind.
I have brought this question up with several priests, catechists and others. Most don’t realize there is a problem, and some point to what they do offer, which is usually on a week day, not in the evening or on a weekend. So the only people who can attend are the unemployed and retirees!
I have even tried to find programs on a diocesan level, and have found only a few offerings which may require driving 40 or 50 miles to attend. And most of those are also offered only during the day.
There are several causes for “cafeteria Catholics”, one of them being that anyone who is baptized into the Church is “Catholic” no matter what they believe or what they have been taught. That is like giving out a diploma to someone who never read a book or took a class.
But the biggest reason for the variety of beliefs and misinformation is simply that Catholics are not educated in their faith. And, unfortunately, most don’t care to be, as I have heard from priests and DRE’s who have tried to offer programs to adults and got few if any takers. Apparently most adult Catholics have no interest in truly forming and understanding their faith.
Here is a little secret. Many years ago, I was an instructor for my former parish’s Confirmation program (a scary thought for those who have read some of my posts). At Confirmation, the catechists for the final year (I did the first year) were asked to declare to the parish, the Bishop and the parents that the students were prepared to be confirmed. I told the DRE that it was a good thing that I was not asked to make this statement, as I would have had to say they weren’t ready (or that only one or two of my 12 or 14 students were ready).
These young people were confirmed yet for the most part had no real understanding of their church or its key doctrines. Why would we expect that to change when they became adults?
