Introduction

This is the final episode of “In Anticipation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: The Perspective of One Raised Between the Catechisms,” which I wrote in 1993 and which was originally published in the Summer 1994 edition of The Living Light: An Interdisciplinary Review of Catholic Religious Education, Catechesis, and Pastoral Ministry an “official publication of the Department of Education of the United States Catholic Conference.” It was later republished in abbreviated form as “Raised Between the Catechisms” in Catholic Digest, September 1994. It appears here, with the permission of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), in three parts (episodes one, three, and four; episode two is a digression), in the form in which it was submitted for publication in 1993 with some minor editing.

CHURCH OF AMNESIA

If we deny Catholics that religious education, we deny them an intimacy with that tradition that manifests the salvation experience of all creation and its articulation by the inspired prophets across the millennia. We must not deny young Christians that catholic relationship. One knows who one is in context. How can we deny Christians their catholic context, and then expect them to grasp their Christian identity in the world?

To deny the catholic context is to render an amnesic church. Yes, classes should discuss current issues confronting students in their own lives and in the lives of their contemporaries, but these must be discussed in light of the Judeo-Christian salvation tradition, the Catholic Tradition. This demands a systematic study of that Tradition. Otherwise, the Church is a church of amnesia, knowing its present without any sense of its past, and thus its context in space-time. And like any person with the same symptom, it is sick. It cannot properly relate to its world, because ultimately it does not know who or what it is.

Ours is the Church in which sacramental remembering—grace-filled, communal remembering that makes present—is central to our very existence.

CHURCH OF ANAMNESIS

In reality, ours is the Church of anamnesis, a Greek word used in the Eucharistic celebrations of the early Church that can be translated as memorial or remembrance (1 Cor 11:24, Lk 22:19). Ours is the Church in which sacramental remembering—grace-filled, communal remembering that makes present—is central to our very existence. Our collective memory begins with the ancient people of God, whose tradition set the context for the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Just as the Jews handed on the Passover tradition that provided the anamnes-ic context for the Paschal Mystery, so must we continue to pass on the tradition in our catechetical programs, lest the Church of sacramental remembering forget.

RESPECT WITHOUT APOLOGIES

So that we do not forget, I suggest that we start respecting the intelligence and maturity levels that young people of various age groups should have reached. Let’s respect the very real questions that these young people pose or will have posed to them, and challenge them to use those fine minds, with which our Creator has endowed them, to wrestle with these questions in light of the Gospel. Let’s stop trying to compete on the same level with what passes for entertainment on television and in the movies, and instead offer young people challenging alternatives.

The Gospel, if presented in a respectful, mature manner speaks for itself. Young people deserve to know that we respect them enough to realize that we do not need to trick them into coming to religious education by promising them what a middle-aged religious-education teacher thinks is “fun” for present-day high schoolers.

And this respect demands that we quit apologizing for the Gospel. What is good for us is not always fun. This should engender no surprise or embarrassment in a people who hold up the Cross as a symbol of their salvation experience. Let’s quit tiptoeing around the Gospel, with an attitude that seems to say, “Our religious education program is too cool to talk about God, until we’ve roped you in with a fun activity.” Let’s stop sliding the theology in around the edges of playtime. Let’s stop the coercion and start expecting a little more from young people. My experience is that they rise to the occasion.

So, if this is the most important area of life, does it not stand to reason that it should demand at least as much preparation as sports, or band, or the school play, or for that matter, the career?

GIVE RELIGIOUS EDUCATION A VALUE

Demands

If we do recognize the need for a substantial religious education, we will need to realize that it will make demands. Just as students will need to study, practice, and work to succeed in other areas of their lives, they will need to study, practice, and work to succeed in the religious area of their lives. And if we truly believe, we know that the religious area is the most important one, and that all other areas must fall within it for there to be any value in them. So, if this is the most important area of life, does it not stand to reason that it should demand at least as much preparation as sports, or band, or the school play, or for that matter, the career?

That being the case, we should not beg young people to attend religious-education programs and then offer them something less than substantial. Neither should programs allow volunteers to be misused with lack of adequate materials and training, and little disciplinary support. (Of course, adequate materials and training lessen the need for disciplinary support.) Catechists should be expected to teach real classes and be supported in doing so. Catechetical programs should offer these real classes and not apologize for offering them. Catholics should offer the support, spiritually and economically, necessary to an educational program that exists to educate Catholics in the most important area of their lives.

When I talk to students in religious education at the beginning of the year, I remind them that in the end they will be the ones to decide whether they are Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, atheistic, agnostic, or whatever. I remind them that that decision is one that will affect how they relate to the entire cosmos, and that no other decision will be as important, as all other decisions flow from that one. It is imperative that they make that decision from the best-educated standpoint. Thus, they owe it to themselves—or to their parents or other persons for whom they have the respect that motivates them to attend the classes—to get the most out of religious education. Every adult Catholic owes it to them to make sure they get the best religious education possible.

Study

Thus, students, as the word suggests, will need to study. Study demands something of us. When we meet the demands of study, we witness to the value of the subject. Let’s give religious education a value. Like those most popular sports, let’s require committed sacrifice. Do not apologize for examinations and progress reports, when appropriately used. I can still remember how enthusiastic our teachers at St. _______ were after their first class examinations. The students had studied and had actually learned about the sacraments, the gospels, Church history. The teachers, too, had learned so much. The students were pleased that they had done well, and they had made that information their own, available to serve them as their questions and understanding grow more profound.

They have no idea of what they have given up sacramentally, because they never learned much about what a sacrament is.

Memorization

For students to make the information their own, they will need to make use of an important educational tool that has fallen on hard times due to misuses in the past: memorization. I know that the word memorization registers as profanity in many religious-education and secular-education circles, but that has got to change. The narrow perception that memorization as a catechetical tool is outdated or primitive is based upon a misguided tendency to use memorization as an end in itself rather than as a means to an end. [Sadly, I am convinced from experience that at least some, if not most, of those of the clergy, religious, and laity who so energetically opposed memorization preferred ignorant clergy, religious, and laity for reasons questionable at best.]

People do need to memorize. Memory is basic to human identity and function. [Indeed memory relates to the theological virtue of hope, as intellect does to faith, and will does to love.] We could not relate to others, or even find our way home at night without memory. Memory tells us who we are. As mentioned above, a person or a church with amnesia is sick. We do not know who we are as the people of God, unless we remember our story, our teachings. How would Jesus have discerned his mission without the collective memory of Jewish salvation history and his own memory to pull it all together? What solace and encouragement might he have been denied throughout his passion had he been without the memory of Sacred Scripture, tradition, history, and fruitful events of his earthly life and ministry? What intellectual links have we missed because we have not stored the information necessary for the links. What enrichment and preparation are we denied by those who would spare us the effort to memorize? Can we afford to give up that effort of memorization as a component of effectual study? I do not think we can.

Application

If young people learn through study about Sacred Scripture, Holy Tradition, the Magisterium, and the provenance, history, and theologies of the Catholic Church, they will be better equipped to enter the world and see in it the active presence of the Creator and how he relates to the people of his creation.

I am reminded of a publishing-company representative who came to talk to me last summer about his company’s new, highly touted and immediately popular religious-education program. I looked over the program, as I had the previous spring, to no greater satisfaction. Finally, I frankly stated that I realized that this program taught about sunshine and water and farming and baking practices in various parts of the world, but that I found it deficient in teaching about the Catholic Church Tradition. He stated that in this program, theology serves the human experience. Though I am not sure how one separates human experience from theology, I believe religious education will be more effective if it first concentrates on the Catholic Church Tradition, systematically, equipping the young people—already endowed with the power to reason—to apply knowledge of the Tradition to draw orthodox conclusions about the world around them. Each classroom is overflowing with human experience from each of the students to the teacher. Teachers can present and adapt human experience that is more relevant to students’ lives than the generic human experience of a publication. We have rooms full of human experience. What we do not have, without study, is knowledge of the Christian Tradition.

Teachers can help students view and evaluate their experiences and every aspect of their lives in the context of the Christian Tradition. Through that evaluation process students can learn more fully about the sun in science class, or various types of baking in home economics, or various farming practices in social studies. But if they cannot learn about the Christian Tradition in religion class, where are they going to learn about it? And if they do not learn about it, how can they gain the right perspective on the world to render their own unique, orthodox theologies to guide their lives? How do they make the connections? How do they see the real value in the experiences and cultures of the disparate people about the globe?

We need to teach the Tradition validated by Jesus’ commissioning of the apostles, where method serves the matter, not vice versa. Students already have the power to reason, and it is a good thing to challenge them to exercise this power. Still, they need pertinent information to reason effectively.

If in their youth, Catholics develop a substantial base of Catholic teaching and an understanding of how and why it is taught, I believe that they will find it a great aid, not an encumbrance, during those tryings times of early adulthood.

Adults

We must also invite and challenge adults to continue in their unending catechesis, especially if their early religious education was deficient. For example, one of our catechists at St. _______ also attended the Reichert workshop mentioned above, and afterward the subject of Vatican II came up in conversation. Now, this teacher had been a convert, who had sought out the Catholic Church as a young man eight years previously. He had studied and been confirmed. He had taught in the religious-education program and been involved in the RCIA program. He attended Mass daily and was involved in all aspects of the parish. As we talked, something finally occurred to me and I asked him, “Do you know what Vatican II was?” He hesitatingly responded that he did not. Many of our generation will say the same. I did not know what it was until I heard about it in college and learned about it in graduate school. The single greatest ecclesiological event of the present century, and many Catholics have either never heard of it or have no conception of what it, as an ecumenical council, was. That is a symptom of amnesia.

CONCLUSION

To put it bluntly, the religious-education approaches of the 1960s and 70s have left many adult Catholics with insufficient understanding about the Church and its Tradition. It is time to learn from our failures and approach religious education with a little more discipline. I am increasingly aware of this as I meet former Catholics, who, seeking a meaningful religious education, have left the Church, ignorant of what they have left, to join fundamentalist denominations where members teach what they believe. These people who have left often have no knowledge or understanding of the united, apostolic, catholic Church. The local church that meets their needs and reaches out in its solitary way is enough. They have no idea of what they have given up sacramentally, because they never learned much about what a sacrament is.

Of this phenomenon the publishing representative mentioned above told me that we can take for granted that most Catholics will leave the Church in their late teens or early twenties, but most of them will eventually return. I do not accept that. If in their youth, Catholics develop a substantial base of Catholic teaching and an understanding of how and why it is taught, I believe that they will find it a great aid, not an encumbrance, during those tryings times of early adulthood. But that means that we must help young people develop that substantial base by making demands on them now, that it better serve them later. If we use it wisely, the Catechism of the Catholic Church could prove a valuable tool in that effort.

Thank you.

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Again, thanks,

P. A. Ritzer

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