Church history, more specifically. You know, the history of our Catholic faith, full of saints, thinkers, artists, glories and horrors, beauty and (unfortunately) even some blood and gore.
Where did it go?
For various reasons, I’ve spent many a recent hour checking out the websites of Catholic high schools across the land, taking a particularly close look at theology curricula. I’m here to report that the study of Church history seems to be pulling a Chesire Cat from the course listings: little remaining left but the faintest of rueful grins.
As a person who’s designed a theology curriculum, I can attest to the difficulty of that very task. There really is quite a bit you have to try to get into four years: Scripture, sacraments, prayer, morality, social justice, world religions and that obligatory senior “lifestyles” course all vie for spots in the course catalogue.
But skipping Church history? Are you serious?
According to my informal survey, apparently so.
At this point, the experts will point out that church history happens to be what most elementary religion series focus on in the eighth grade. I say, big deal. Children study U.S. history in grammar school, too, but that doesn’t stop us from putting it in the high school curriculum, too.
So what’s going on? Why does Church history always seem to be first to vanish when something’s got to go?
The first reason, I’m sorry to say, is that a lot of teachers would just rather not mess with it. Church history seems to be right up there with Old Testament as Subjects To Avoid At All Costs If You Can Possibly Swing It.
And the reasons for that basically come down to two: There’s a residual distaste for the whole field of history, period. Ask most adults what their least favorite subject in school was, and most of them say “history.” Oh yes. Then they’ll roll their eyes. Secondly, it’s hard to teach.
You can imagine why. It’s hard to teach any subject which demands attention to content to adolescents. And given the options, who wouldn’t prefer devoting a leisurely hour of discussing the moral stress of peer pressure or retelling the parable of the Good Samaritan for today’s world to talking about the Avignon Papacy?
Well, I would. But I guess you already figured that out.
But, the argument follows, isn’t it more important for kids to hash out their very contemporary life problems than talk about the dusty past?
Sorry, no, especially not for four years solid. Here’s why:
When it’s well taught, Church history is anything but dusty. All the questions are there – the pressure to be unfaithful to Christ, questions of justice, the interplay between faith and culture, women and the church, and lots more. When you don’t talk about those issues in the context of something – whether it be Scripture, Church teaching or yes, history , you end up with a class session that really might as well be taking place in a public school classroom, for as much good as it does in tying life to faith.
We are who we are because of our history. I fail to see how a Catholic child can have anything close to a full Catholic identity without some sense of where we’ve been as a people: why the Mass is the way it is, why our churches are named after saints and who these people were, and on down the endless list.
In recent years, there's been some concern (although not an excessive amount of it) over the issue of "Catholic identity" among children and youth. Educators wonder why that sense of unique Catholic identity is declining. Catechists wonder how to retrieve it. Again, the answer is painfully obvious, when you take a look at most Catholic catechetical texts. First, they don't stress Catholic identity period(and I have my own theories as for why that is - I seriously doubt most textbook writers care about it at all, and, speaking more practically, given the high proportion of non-Catholic kids in Catholic schools, particularly high schools (I never taught in a school that wasn't less than thirty percent non-Catholic myself), it doesn't make economic sense to promote heavy duty Catholic textbooks to schools that are overly concerned about keeping non-Catholic students and their families happily unalienated. There.).
Secondly, they neglect history, and there's no way you can make sense of our faith if you do that. No way.
Finally, if our children are formed in way that ignores our ties to the past, they’re absorbing the rather arrogant conviction that when it comes to faith, the present is all that matters. And do I really have to quote Chesterton here? Okay, I will, just like everyone else when they discuss these matters: "Tradition," he said, "is the democracy of the dead."
And when you’re a Catholic Christian, that doesn’t – or shouldn’t - compute.
We're nearing the end of the Christmas Season, the time in which we pay particular attention to the Incarnation. God coming into the world. Into history. Get it? If we’re paying attention, we’re reminded during this season that ours is not a faith of abstracts nor is it a narrow focus on the present.
Our faith is one that is rooted in God stepping into the reality of human life, from Abraham to Christ to Pentecost, and one that is built on the telling and retelling of those stories, giving honor to God’s work in the past and a context for discerning His will in the present.
It’s just a fact. And if we fail to teach that to our children, you know what happens, of course.
We are, in a word – history.
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