Equip our children properly in the faith!

by Letters Editor · June 28, 2012

From John Lee, Johannesburg

Many thanks for the excellent editorial of June 6, �Are Catholic Schools still Catholic?�. Many Catholics are concerned regarding the apparent disparity between the so-called �Catholic Ethos� and the quality of religious education for Catholics in our schools in recent years, and possibly, since Vatican II.

"The answer lies in implementing the New Evangelisation with a vengeance..."

Many Catholic schools are teaching only �common ethics and values� without reference to the power: God in Jesus Christ, in a dynamic relationship empowered by the Holy Spirit, as well as a thorough grounding in the truths of Catholic Christianity as revealed by Jesus Christ.

I was a pupil at Christian Brothers College, Boksburg from Grade 7 to Matric, from 1954-59. This was before Vatican II, and yet in addition to the normal subjects on the school curriculum, we had additional periods, daily, for scripture and religious instruction for the Catholics in the class.

From Grade 7 to 9 our scripture study course was on the gospels of Luke, Matthew and the Acts of the Apostles. In Grades 11 and 12, we studied in detail, the book Hart�s Catholic Doctrine, which still remains fresh in my memory. We were thus thoroughly equipped in knowledge of the New Testament and in Catholic doctrine.

Once a year, Mgr Desmond Hatton would come from Pretoria to test the class in the quality of its knowledge of the faith. Out of a class of an average of about 40 learners, about 50% were Catholic. The one Jewish pupil in our class had a special religious syllabus (Old Testament) prepared for him by the Brothers, in consultation with his rabbi.

I came from a home where my mother, though not Catholic, by a special grace of God, had my five siblings and me baptised and educated in Catholic schools, for which I am more and more grateful as I grow older. My mother was converted to Catholicism virtually on her death-bed in 1958.

My father was sadly a life-long lapsed-Catholic. For my strong Catholic faith, I am deeply indebted to the initiative of my mother, the Christian Brothers and the Dominican Sisters at Springs, before that.

With the quality of religious education in many Catholic schools today, do we wonder why the number of young Catholics not practising, or who have left the Church for the many anti-Catholic fundamentalist evangelical sects, is at an all-time high? Are our private Catholic schools today only affordable to well-off families?

The answer lies in implementing the New Evangelisation with a vengeance to adequately equip our young people to really know Jesus Christ and �to be able to defend the Church he founded against the many non-Catholic agents before which many of us stand today in lamentable helplessness�, in the words of Bl John Paul the Great.