A reader writes

You off and on write about the Church Militant. I appreciate such reminders because its easy to slide into a fortress mentality, fearful and defensive, when we should be cheerful (jolly, even) foot soldiers of the Lord.

With that in mind, I thought you might enjoy a recent post by Father Z, where he analyzes the Collect for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost and relates the story of a woman at the deathbed of her father.

Powerful story and an interesting point.

I think the virtues of Polly Parrot learning are under-rated among those who could really stand to see what is good about rote learning, and overrated among those who often give the impression that rote learning is the only sort of learning there is. There’s a lot to be said for having certain things tattooed on to your brain from earliest childhood and “spirit of Vatican II” types dismiss that at their peril. Prayers, in particular, are best taught by rote memorization to the very young, so that when those prayers are necessary, we are not suddenly faced with the task of trying to compose something when we have just been informed that our wife is dead in a car crash or we have cancer. I suspect a lot of people who despise rote learning are simply forgetting they were children once and are falling prey to the pride that says things like, “I am an integrated adult personality. I don’t need to be talked down to.” Sorry, but when God is talking, we often need to be talked down to. We are, after all, fools. Much of the pedagogy of ancient Israel was rote learning and endless repetition of various words and rituals.

At the same time, the “Let’s get rid of the Universal Catechism and get back to the good old Baltimore Catechism” crowd don’t seem to appreciate the fact that lots and lots of Catholics who were instructed by the Baltimore Catechism never got past the parrot repetitions to actually understanding the interior structure of the faith they were professing. I run into lots of Catholics who knew what to say, but not why they were saying it, nor where it came from. That, quite frankly, is why so many of them so easily fell prey to the “Spirit of Vatican II” crowd who sold them various forms of gnosticism as the “meaning” of the Catholic faith. Had they known the meaning and not merely the external rote forms of the Faith, they would not have bought that bill of goods so easily. So while I appreciate the real value of rote learning, I think it important to recall that the spirit (the Holy Spirit, not the spirit of Vatican II) is as important as the mere letter.