Letters

Catholic youth (letter)

Robert Denahy

Contents - Dec 2004 - Buy a copy now Editorial: Religious literacy: why not a national inquiry? - Michael Gilchrist US and Australian election results: the cultural revolution challenged - Michael Gilchrist News: The Church Around the World Gone fishing: Catholic Earthcare Australia adopts discredited Green agenda - Pat Byrne Administration: Cardinal Pell: Church administrators must put Christ's mission first - Cardinal George Pell English language: Will Rome ensure the completion of an improved Mass translation? - William Oddie Liturgy: Redemptionis Sacramentum on the liturgical rights of the faithful - CDF New Evangelisation: Rebuilding a lost Faith - Fr John Walter Archbishop Fulton Sheen: 25th anniversary - Martin Tobin Society: American surveys show advantages of sexual abstinence education Letters: Orthodoxy succeeds (letter) - Fr Adrian Head Letters: Seminary reforms (letter) - Fr Peter Thompson CM Letters: Election result (letter) - Maureen Federico Letters: Liturgical development (letter) - Msgr Peter J. Elliott Letters: Catholic youth (letter) - Robert Denahy Letters: Graham Greene a Catholic? (letter) - Malcolm Mackinnon Letters: Mass translation (letter) - Leo McManus Letters: 'Fem-speak' (letter) - C.V.Phillips Letters: Misunderstanding over 'Come As You Are' (letter) - Peter Hannigan Letters: Call to holiness (letter) - Mark Calleja Letters: Abortion (letter) - Maryse Usher Letters: Nihilism (letter) - Robert Prinzen-Wood Poetry: The Salami Treatment - Bruce Dawe Books: Decoding Da Vinci, by Amy Welborn - Anthony Cappello (reviewer) Books: Theology of the Church, by Cardinal Charles Journet - Michael Gilchrist (reviewer) Books: Making Sense of Private Revelations, by Fr Paul Newton - Msgr Peter J. Elliott Books: Architects of the Culture of Death, by Donald DeMarco and Benjamin Wiker - Jodie Brown (reviewer) Books: Inspiring Christmas Gifts Reflection: Today is born to us a Saviour of the world - Pope John Paul II

The nine answers that Father Frank Brennan gives to our searching Catholic youth will not solve the problem of the approximate 95 percent failure rate in Catholic education.

His suggestion that we "take them beyond their comfort zones; help them to count their blessings without feeling guilty; assure them that the balance holds, etc", smacks of the vacuous waffle that has passed for Catholic catechesis for two generations. It has been a disastrous failure.

A learned priest like Father Brennan would be familiar with the maxim, "Nil volitum nisi praecognitum" ("You cannot be enthusiastic about something you know nothing about").

Our students, during their ten or twelve years of education, need to be taught Catholic doctrine in its entirety. It is set out in the Catholic Catechism. It contains plenty of "do's" and "dont's": do pray daily, do be faithful to the Mass and regular confession, do obey Church moral teaching; don't disobey the ten commandments. The ultimate aim of all this is a close personal relationship with Christ.

If our students were presented with full-blooded Catholicism and its exhilarating challenges, their native enthusiasm and generosity would inspire many to embrace it. We have betrayed our youth by offering a Catholicism so watered-down as to be unrecognisable. Naturally they reject it.

Fr Brennan's endeavour to put Cardinal Pell and the Pope at loggerheads on the role of conscience demeans no one but Fr Brennan.

ROBERT DENAHY
Holbrook, NSW

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 17 No 11 (December 2004 - January 2005), p. 15