How To Pass On The Faith To The Next Generation

When it comes to teaching the next generation the faith as a catechism teacher,

“A slackly prepared lesson on God is one way of taking God’s name in vain.“

– Frank Sheed Are We Really Teaching Religion? | EWTN

I wonder if I have ever taken God’s name in vain in this way. Many of the CCD classes I used to teach throughout my life I didn’t quite prepare for well. My prayer before every class was always “Holy Spirit make up for my lack of preparation.” I believe that this prayer along with my knowledge of scripture and dogma made up for my poor preparation. The reason why I had any knowledge of the faith at all was do more to the private instruction from my father then from my CCD teachers, not that they did a bad job. My religious instruction was once a week for about an hour, and this was my time slot when I taught young kids learning about their faith. Sometimes it was on a Monday night with Kristin teaching CCD in another classroom. But looking back my father’s devotion to his faith sparked my own faith. It was alive for him and it was real and He passed that on to me. This is how you pass on the faith to the next generation.

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This seems to be the key point that Catholic author Frank Sheed is making in his small book, ’Are we really Teaching Religion.’ That a person alive with the faith will make others alive with the faith. This is how the Apostles spread the Gospel message at the beginning of the church. This is how it was passed on to me. My father did more for me with His example of faith then any amount of knowledge I gained in books would ever do for me. Sheed admits that one could make it to heaven without much real deep knowledge, BUT, one can really love God more, the more one knows more about Him. It is a heart that is alive with Christ combined with a mind alive with Christ that causes one to stick by the faith of His fathers. There was a time when questions were asked about my faith that I was unprepared to answer, which caused me to look for Christ in other areas. Sheed would have loved Pope John Paul 2’s encyclical on Faith and Reason, which talks about using reason as a tool along with Faith in order to understand and contemplate faith in Christ. Perhaps if my intellect had been formed better I might have stayed a practicing Catholic during the time I was searching back in the early 90’s. I at least have always believed that Christ was God, so my father and CCD teachers did something right.

The Church remains profoundly convinced that faith and reason “mutually support each other”; ¹²² each influences the other, as they offer to each other a purifying critique and a stimulus to pursue the search for deeper understanding.- Faith and Reason 100

Sheed believes that everybody coming out of religious instruction should be able to articulate his faith with intelligence and conviction. It is not enough to just learn Catholic kids facts and figures about church dogma and doctrine, one should be given the tools to be able to go out and fight the good fight. You can know what the church teaches in the catechism without really knowing what the teaching is really all about. You can teach a class without really knowing what your teaching, you can bluff your way through a lesson. You can actually teach without knowing scripture. Ignorance of scripture is however ignorance of Christ. Only a teacher who really knows the material with his head and heart can equip a young head and heart to stick by his faith during difficult trials and circumstances and to answer the hard questions that will be thrown His way by those same two things. The religion teacher is not just teaching faith, “She is there as a mature member of the Catholic Church, trying to convey, to less mature members, just what treasures the church has.”

More is caught than taught. If the faith is not real in the teachers lives it will not be real in the kids that they teach. If the faith is alive but the mind is not formed, they will not be prepared when challenges arise to shake their foundation. It is also important to not teach with an iron rod of snarls and sneers. If love is not shown along with a conviction about how real faith is and how reasonable it is, the truth of religion is not taught. How many stories have been told about how Sister really whacked you good for goofing off in Religion class. If Sheed’s book was relevant to a 1953 audience, in an era I thought really instructed their children well in Catholic religious thought, it is much more prevalent today where the catechetical instruction of Catholic kids is in continual danger of banal religious education. Sheed believes that any questioner of the Catholic Faith should be able to ask any Catholic on the street to instruct them about the Catholic faith. If they have been prepared properly in religious education there is no reason why they should not be able to do just that.

If your not fully equiped there are some places online that can help you.

Ascension Presents – YouTube

Biblical Evidence for Catholicism – Catholic biblical apologetics (patheos.com)

Catholic Bible Highlights with Kenny Burchard – YouTube