Catechetics is Not Enough

Extract

Gabriel Moran has written an important and disturbing book. It is disturbing because it challenges practically every axiom of modem Catechetics. Just when it seemed we were getting somewhere we are made to wonder if we have to start all over again.

For about sixty years now the Catechetical movement has been working away to bring new life into the teaching of religion, to make religion relevant to the lives of the pupils; and in this it has achieved considerable success.

One of the first things that Catechetical experts turned their attention to was the danger of verbalism and jargon. Thus, the ‘penny Catechism’ with its archaic, involved and abstract vocabulary was soon under fire. Although not long ago Catechetics was regarded by many as the off-beat hobby of a few cranks, recently (and especially since Vatican II) it has become respectable and even fashionable. Catechetical books pour on to the markets, and phrases such as kerygma, Salvation History and the Four Ways are to be heard in staff-room and presbytery. And it is just this that worries Brother Moran! He is conscious that Catechetics has reached a crisis. There is a danger of complacency and fossilization. We may wake up and find that instead of a renewed theology we have merely a new jargon.