The Holy Father on Renewing Faith and Catechesis

Working in Catholic education allows one to see the Church from many angles. We live in a time when Mass attendance is very low for those who attend Catholic schools across our nation. Handing on the Faith is a great challenge in the current situation in which we find ourselves. It is no secret that we are in a faith crisis in the West and catechesis is indeed what is needed in schools and parishes. The debate really is to question what is good catechetical material. One of the things we are losing is faith in the doctrine of creation. Another one is faith in the moral law of God and the result is we are becoming more and more anti-nomian. What sort of an effect is the loss of faith in the doctrine of creation having on the doctrine of God proper and even Christology? What is the loss of catechesis in the moral law of God (Ten Commandments) having on the doctrine of the Christian life?

The secular society has very wisely gone after these two fundamental areas of catechesis and sought to destroy them by making them wishful archaic thinking at best and complete irrelevance and an 'evil' against the secularist dogma at worst. But, these are the very starting points for Christian catechesis if we are to have faith in the God of Creation that results in a desire for a holy life as a result of our faith. The Catholic Faith is not about psychology or sociology, but the material created order of God and his entering into it to save mankind by his blood shed on Calvary. Hope in the resurrection is dependent upon the God of Creation and creation itself. The material world is not a world simply relegated to the departments of physics and engineering but to the hands of the God of Creation. Pope Benedict has rightly said,

Today there is a fatal tendency, wherever matter comes into play in the beliefs that we proclaim, to balk and retreat into the symbolic; this happens starting with creation, through the Virgin Birth of Jesus and his Resurrection, to the Real Presence of Christ in the transubstantiation of bread and wine, and on to our resurrection and the Lord's Second Coming. It is hardly an indifferent theological debate when the resurrection of the individual is relocated in death, which is not only to deny the soul, but also to dispute the genunine corporeality of salvation. A decisive renewal of faith in creation is thus the prerequisite also for the credibility and depth of Christology and eschatology. Handing on the Faith in An Age of Disbelief

The second problem is the basic understanding that the Gospel has done away with the Law. But that is the very opposite of what Jesus has said in that he did not come to do away with the Law but to fulfil it. The negative view of the Law is really a Protestant hermeneutic creeping in based upon a Lutheran negative approach to the Law as something that alone condemns us but has no redeeming quality for life. Basically, the Law is good for bringing us to Christ. Paul's critique of the Law is not that sort of a critique. NT scholars such as the Anglican scholar N.T. Wright has made this quite clear in his work. So, why would the Ten Commandments be fading to the back burners in catechetical instruction? The Holy Father reminds us that

When the Ten Commandments are taken out of catechesis, this affects its fundamental structure, and then it does not really accomplish its task of introducing the catechumens into the faith of the Church.

The problem we are facing is the problem of taking the Bible out of its proper place of interpretation. The Holy Father refers to this as the hermeneutic locus "Church" as the only place that one can really adhere to the Scriptures and accept them as meaningful and true. What cannot be forgotten by those who instruct in the faith is that there is a BIG difference between "text" and "commentary". The problem comes when the two are confused as a result of personal agendas...The "text" cannot disappear into the "commentary". This is why the preservation of Church teaching is essential to catechetical instruction in our schools and parishes. The source of this instruction is divine love. This love and message can only come down to others through a living and unique community, which has remained the same since the apostles. Faith has to be nourished by the same faith that nourished the apostolic source. Therefore we teach what we learn from the apostles. The result is nourished souls who grow in faith and love for the God of Creation who gives a blueprint for living that pleases him in all things.