From Doug McManaman, teacher of high school religion, re Msgr. Dennis Murphy's "Unified in our Catholic Community".

I can't say I disagree with many of the points in Msgr. Murphy's most recent article "Unified in our Catholic Community" (Catholic Register, August 22-29, 2004), but the annoying irony that typically colours his articles on Catholic education was certainly not lacking in this piece.

It is indeed true that a real problem with Catholic education today is that large numbers of parents, students, as well as some educators and trustees, have only a vague grasp of what most of us would call the Catholic faith. But Monsignor Murphy refers to "The Christian story", and the "tradition which inspired our school system," and says that there is, in his words, "too little clear understanding of and too much warm fuzziness around our heritage". But it is just such vagueness and warm fuzziness that have characterized all I have heard and read from the Monsignor since I began teaching in this province, seventeen years ago. In my own experience, it is he who, more than any other representative of Catholic education in Ontario, insists on over-using such vague, warm, fuzzy, and tired buzz-words as "Christian Catholic community", "our journey", and "our Christian story," that say and mean nothing to young people, but practically define the Religious Education curriculum. What is a young student to think when the Catholic faith is generally referred to as "our story" and "our myths"?

He also writes: "All Catholics, but particularly those who are being initiated into the life of faith, need to be exposed to more than the notions, ideas, words, and language of Christianity. If these words and this language are to transform their lives, they must also share the experience of people striving and indeed struggling to follow in a secular society the way of life, the journey, as revealed in the Gospel story. Such has always been the dynamic of Catholic education."

Very vague, very 70s, and very fuzzy. Moreover, it seems to give evidence of a false dichotomy between head and heart that has characterized Religious Education for the last 30 years. But it is simply not up to anyone to try to create religious experiences for our students or transform their lives. When will we learn that God's grace is God's, not ours? Our task is to get back to the ideas and language of Scripture and the basics of the Catholic faith, teach them with conviction, and leave the rest to God. When you give kids the basics, they respond. When we try to create "relevant" experiences for them, we usurp a role that belongs to God, and all they end up with is the warm fuzziness that the Monsignor complains is all too prevalent in our schools today.

Moreover, you reap what you sow. In earlier articles the Monsignor has made public his dissent from Rome on matters like personal Confession and the place of general absolution, Confession before First Communion, priestly celibacy, and the role of bishops, implying at the same time that Rome is out of touch with us sophisticates in Canada (see C.I., July/August 2000, pp. 10-11). And now he wonders why Individualism is so pervasive in our Catholic schools. If bishops and priests can dissent from Rome, then we can dissent from our parish priests and their bishops. As kids are wont to say these days: "duh!"

Finally, it is no wonder students, teachers, trustees and parents have only a vague grasp of the tradition which inspired our school system. Many of them have been taught to regard it as "pre-Vatican" and thus not worth the time required to become familiar with it, for "it fails to meet the spirituality of today;" after all, it was a tradition in which there was personal Confession, even for kids just before their First Communion, and in which bishops taught in "community" with the Holy Father. Why "tinker with a Model A Ford" when you can drive a 2004 on "our modern expressways"? If you role-model dissent and sow its seeds, you reap its fruits years later, and the Monsignor has described those fruits with accuracy and precision.

Toronto, ON