The Impossible Dream...

Welcome back! I’m not very prepared this week, having just returned from a trip, so this might not be the most artfully written post you’ve ever read.

As promised last time, the topic of this week is catechesis.

This isn’t a place for analysis, but for sharing stories. My focus is those of us who actually experienced the direct fallout from the Second Vatican Council, say from 1964-1980 or so, but anything you’d like to share is welcome.

I’m going to begin with some background. Some of it is repeat.

I was born in 1960 of a Catholic mother and lapsed Methodist father. My mother was run-of-the-mill northeastern Catholic, Kennedy Democrat when I was born, but by the early 1970’s had gone Trad. Living in East Tennessee - not a land with thick with Catholics in the first place much less Traditionalists - she was pretty much on her own (although she developed a few connections later), living out her convictions through subscriptions and correspondence. I lived in a house with the Remnant and the Wanderer and my parents actually had lunch with Michael Davies when they visited England.

However, apart from arguments about a few things as I became a teenager, my mother’s concerns were her own. It’s kind of odd now that I think about it - that even as she grew more dissatisfied (and made that dissatisfaction known, certainly), she didn’t try to shield me from this Church that had caused her so much pain and confusion. She stopped going to Mass probably around 1974, but I kept going, my father driving me and waiting in the parking lot with his Sunday paper, coffee and cigarettes- until I got my license - and then me driving myself. I went to a normal diocesan Catholic high school for the period - the land of Jesus Livingston Seagull.

It didn’t strike me as odd at all at the time, that she felt so strongly and was acting on her beliefs in the ways she could (correspondence, reading, and, as time went on, probably helping fund an SSPX priest’s visits to East Tennessee) - but let me go on my merry way without trying to influence me at all, especially as I was so interested in religion from a stupidly young age - I am not kidding when I tell you that 13-year old me responded to her southern Methodist relations inquiry about what I wanted to be when I grew up with a perky: “A theologian!” Gross.

So anyway, that’s a mystery that just occurred to me. I suppose she might just have been so overwhelmed with other aspects of her life - her elderly relatives’ decline, too far away from her for her to easily help, marriage issues, her own problematic health - that well, if I was driving myself to Mass on Sunday at the age of 16, that was at least something.

Anyway, that’s the background: Serious Catholic but disaffected mother, non-Catholic but co-operative dad, moving around a lot because of my dad’s quest for a tenure-track position, living in mostly suburban areas and college towns, no deep ethnic Catholic background to speak of (French Canadians born in the US didn’t, in my experience, have a lot of that sort of thing going on), and public school until high school.

Let’s go.

1st grade: We were living in DeKalb, Illinois at this point, and my mother went to Mass at the Newman Center, which is where I remember taking religious ed. I remember nothing about those classes except the day my father dropped me off for class - when there was no class scheduled. It was fairly traumatic, and my memory is of sitting outside with an adult, waiting for my dad to return. So that’s first grade. Sorry not to have more.

2nd grade: This is a real mystery to me. I received First Communion, but I have no recollection of any classes. Further, I received First Communion, not in any parish in Arlington, Virginia, where we were living at the time (my father had some sort of year-long appointment with the Department of the Interior), but at my mother’s friend’s parish in Maryland. That photograph was taken at the brunch at her friend’s house. I was looking for something else from high school, and found this, the bulletin from the day - with corrections.

I’m guessing what happened was that either there was no religious education in the Arlington parish we attended or we arrived too late in the year to be a part of it. I’m assuming my mother taught me. I do remember sitting on the couch and unwrapping their First Communion gift to me - this cross, which I still hang on my wall. The Risen Christ is ironic, considering my mother’s future views.

3rd-7th grade This would have been 1968-1973. We were living in Lawrence, Kansas during that time, I attended public schools, and I recall exactly two years of religious education. I don’t know if there were more, but two, I remember. I’m thinking they were 5th and 6th grade. And in a way, they are a snapshot of the dynamics of those years. Both catechists were male.

The first fellow decided to teach us according to the signs of the times. The focus of every week was newspaper articles. We were to bring in newspaper articles and then we’d rap about them. Even at the age of ten, it struck me as very stupid and frustrating. I had not signed up (well, I probably hadn’t signed up at all…but…) for Sunday mornings of listening to other ten year-olds give their opinions on the news.

The next year was different. Just a bit. I don’t know if this guy knew what had happened the previous year, or he just took stock of our abysmal ignorance the first day or if this had been his plan all along, but I kid you not, our text for that year was….the Baltimore Catechism. And I loved it. He didn’t have us memorize answers, but I think I tried to anyway, you might not be surprised to hear. I think what struck me the most was the systematic aspect of it all, clear from both the text and the illustrations.

8th grade: Another weird one. This was the year we moved to Knoxville, and it was confirmation year. I was going to a public junior high school, and we were attending Immaculate Conception downtown. Again, I don’t know if they just didn’t have religious ed for public school students or what, but my confirmation prep ended up being me with a small group of adults preparing for confirmation, meeting weekly (I suppose) with the pastor. I don’t remember any text, but what I do remember is very obnoxiously answering all - I mean all the pastor’s leading discussion questions during sessions. Really proud of myself, guys.

Confirmation itself was with all the other teens, though. My main recollection of that event was that it was very, very long, it was in the evening, my mother had made a dinner of these big meatballs she used to make, and afterwards, I got really sick. Come Holy Spirit.

High School:

Of course, I wrote about this before here, but let’s go into a bit more detail.

Freshman year was solid. Miss Olson, hated by most, feared and admired by me, taught us both World History and religion that year. The World History was really interesting, taught from a book of primary sources, teaching us how to read those kinds of documents critically and how historians work. Religion, as I said was mostly Old Testament. We began with a reading of Dei Verbum, were presented with copies of the Jerusalem Bible in a ceremony, and off we went. It was solid. I have vague memories of another textbook, but not what it was I don’t remember how much the teaching was rooted in historical-critical theory, either. But it was a year I left understanding that this religion business was serious and rich. So thanks, Miss Olson.

Sophomore: Well, that was the year of Jonathon Livingston Seagull, wasn’t it? More on that here.

I do want to mention that by this point, we were also using Christ Among Us - it was going to be the primary text for the rest of high school. If you would like to peruse it, you can do so at archive.org.

Junior Year: That year, our teacher was a priest, fairly newly ordained (now deceased - I just looked him up). Aside from Christ Among Us, the main text that year was a very thin paperback about social justice. I remember it had a photograph of city buildings on the front, not much else.

The focus, though, of that year, spiritually speaking, was not so much the classroom, but the Search retreat. I’ll talk more about that, probably in the next comment-open post, which will focus on spiritual practices.

Senior Year (We are mighty, we are great! We’re the class of ‘78!): That was the year we were mainly taught by a young sister - we had several Sisters of Mercy in our school - whom we adored. She was very sweet. The focus of our study the first semester was the New Testament, the culminating project for which was, as I’ve mentioned before, a packet in which we were to imaginatively correlate the lyrics to The Impossible Dream with the Beatitudes. I am extremely bummed because I know I kept my project, and I know I’ve looked at it within the last five years or so, but I can’t find it. Well, here’s my Jerusalem Bible, at least, with some notes from the time. The sacrament-Scripture notes are from Freshman year, and the Matthew notes are from senior year.

But that wasn’t all. My sense is that the Powers That Were were getting a little concerned about our…lack of knowledge. Also about our class’s behavior. There were a few privileges granted to seniors during the second semester: being able to leave campus for lunch and not having to wear a uniform on Fridays were the two I remember. We…lost them for some reason.

Oh - and this will shock the youth out there - there was also a senior lounge in which smoking was allowed. We lost that, too, but not access to the outdoor smoking area. Yes, young friends, in the 1970’s, one might well find a legit, legal smoking pit for students on a high school’s property.

So - I don’t know if this was planned or a response to rambunctious ignorant Catholic youth, but my sense at the time was that it was a rather abrupt change in direction - the second semester, all the seniors (all 67 of us) were taught religion together, in the cafeteria, by the priest-principal, and we were taught straight-up apologetics, using a question-and-answer type book as our text.

What else do I remember from high school catechesis? Mostly moments related to changes - being taught about face-to-face Confession and receiving Communion in the hand. Actually, what I remember about the former happened in the parish Mass - a few weeks in which filmstrips about Confession were shown in place of homilies. So that was inspiring.

And that’s it. That was my religious education, 1966-1978. It was haphazard. When it was solid, it was solid. The haphazard nature of it had something to do with the haphazardness of the period and the movement away from a cohesive Catholic worldview. But for me, the haphazardness also had a lot to do with the fact that we moved around a lot, my mother’s increasingly fraught relationship with the Church, and the fact, honestly, that she didn’t drive (she never got a license). My father was very cooperative in taking us - and me - where we needed to go, but I do wonder if our distance from churchy things until I got to high school was somehow related to that.

It would have been, undoubtedly, a much different experience if I’d been in, for example, Catholic grammar school or even one parish program for most of elementary school. So that’s why I look forward to your tales.

It could have been better, it could have been worse. The experience is also skewed by my weird interest in religion, of course. Still is, isn’t it?

So what’s coming? Next week, I’ll have further, non-anecdotal reflections on post-Vatican II catechesis, and then after that, a comment-open post about spiritual formation I experienced - retreats, prayer services, and so on.

So get your stories ready!