In the age of helicopter parents, dads spend hours with their children practicing sports, hoping their child will be the next Tiger Woods (In light of recent revelations, I hope less fathers dream about their children playing professional sports), and moms work themselves into a frenzy trying to get their toddlers into the best preschools. How often do parents pick up the religious education textbook and review it with their children?
A further systemic problem is the lack of content in Catholic education, a reaction to the style of education before the Second Vatican Council. Upon reviewing the old catechism and talking with many older Catholics, I discerned that the previous system was based on rote memorization of key church teachings. Older Catholics know basic doctrines, but they lack the knowledge as to why they should believe them.
The “old” Catholic education did rely on rote memorization of the catechism. Not once in the 1st eight years of my parochial school education was there any attempt to link the catechism to the Holy Scripture. Had I gone to a lay Catholic high school instead of a preparatory seminary, I would have had twelve years without any sense of how Catholic theology and liturgy were rooted in the Scriptures. From what I’ve seen of contemporary Catholic education and the trend toward the restoration of the system to which I was exposed nearly sixty years ago, I have little hope that future Catholics will be anymore biblically literate than they were then.