Everybody agrees the Catholic Church is suffering a crisis of catechesis. Say that at any parish faith formation meeting, and you will get plenty of nodding agreement.
It is rare, however, for parishes to address this problem at the root. More and more time and money are poured into the leaky boat of childhood faith formation. When it fails, we simply blame the parents. They are the “primary catechists”, after all.
To fix the catechetical crisis, we need look no further than the liturgy and the virtue of piety.
In Western culture, “pious” is somewhat of an insult. It suggests being fussy, nitpicking or even a pharisaical “holier-than-thou” attitude. These attributes would be a vicious excess of piety, better described as fanaticism or scrupulosity.
However, piety itself is a virtue and will prove indispensable for solving the catechetical crisis.
Augustine says piety properly means the worship of God, what the Greeks called eusebeia. Aquinas expands, saying piety is the gift by which, at the prompting of the Holy Spirit, we pay worship and duty to God as our Father. It comes from the spirit of adoption, by which we cry “Abba, Father” (Rom 8:15).
There are certain demands placed on us when we come to worship God. For Americans like me, our attitude makes us bristle at piety. We don’t bow down to kings. We don’t like being told what to do or feeling compelled to do something. But piety – proper worship of God – demands exactly that. It demands we change our usual posture and conform it to the sacred moment.
Without piety, the celebration of the sacraments is demystified. The Mass becomes mundane and secular. This is the root of the catechetical crisis. When we don’t change how we act during Mass, we are de-catechising ourselves to think of the sacred mysteries as neither sacred nor mysterious.
In his encyclical on catechesis, Pope St John Paul II says, “Catechesis is intrinsically linked with the whole of liturgical and sacramental activity, for it is in the sacraments, especially in the Eucharist, that Christ Jesus works in fullness for the transformation of human beings.”
Later in that same paragraph, “every form of catechesis necessarily leads to the sacraments of faith. On the other hand, authentic practice of the sacraments is bound to have a catechetical aspect. In other words, sacramental life is impoverished and very soon turns into hollow ritualism if it is not based on serious knowledge of the meaning of the sacraments” (Catechesi Tradendae, 23).
Pious celebration of the sacraments coupled with formal instruction (in the homily or elsewhere) form a virtuous cycle where catechesis opens up the intellect’s understanding of the Faith and the receptive heart is open to receive the grace that strengthens it.
On the other hand, impious reception of the sacraments creates a vicious cycle where the intellect is dulled to the sacredness of the sacraments, which neuters the efficacy of sacramental grace.
The latter situation is abundant in many of our parishes, and impiety must be the first thing we address as pastors and lay ministers if we want the catechetical crisis to change.
The knee-jerk reaction to this will be to devolve into a liturgy war about the relative reverence of the Tridentine Mass versus the Novus Ordo. That debate is irrelevant to the topic at hand. The things which inspire piety in the faithful are readily available to those who celebrate the Novus Ordo; it is simply a question of whether we use them.
Latin responses, sacred music, beautiful vestments and architecture all signal to the people that this place is different and something extraordinary is about to take place. Care can be taken during the homily or before Mass to encourage people to take a posture of piety during the liturgy.
The situation is not as dire as many suppose. It is often the case that people simply do not know how to be reverent during the liturgy. Social cues and habit are difficult things to overcome. If everyone is loudly chatting right up until the opening song, it is unlikely the entire congregation will decide to prayerfully prepare themselves for Mass overnight. If everyone wears flip-flops and football jerseys, it is unlikely they will wear suits next week.
The average Catholic does have the power to influence the general reverence of their parish. In high school, my friends and I learned that the congregation is supposed to kneel after the Agnus Dei. For some reason, my parish always stood. We all sat together and knelt at that point in Mass, and over time it spread across the congregation and became normal. When our pastor explained why we kneel, the rest of the parish knelt, too.
Ultimately, it is incumbent upon priests and other parish leaders to clearly define what is reverent at Mass and what is not. Model it yourselves, explain why certain things are happening, and people will typically go along with you.
Parish workers ought to contemplate this responsibility. Many spend so much time trying to prepare children for Communion even though those children cannot say the Our Father. Compare the effort that goes into a year of faith formation with the relative effort of an announcement before Mass. The latter will have a great effect on piety, which will help adults have a better understanding of the sacraments and make catechesis of their children easier.
Greater focus on piety will not lead to a more scrupulous Church as many fear, but rather to a Church with a deeper understanding of the sacred mysteries of our Faith.
(Photo: Joseph Shaw)
