Speaking of Education...

There will be more to come later regarding the Barat Academy Freshmen Theology outline since the previous post was limited to the beginning of the first quarter of the year and a general overview. Interestingly, it may appear to the parents or child that, among other things, Church history begins with the Second Vatican Council - but more on that later.

As recent article by George Weigel, "Please pass the ontology," confirmed what many have known for a number of years - that many Catholics really do not understand what they profess to believe:

A philosophically-minded young friend recently sent me a fine rant, after having watched a presidential candidates’ cattle call on CNN. The discussion had focused on religion. Several candidates, who identified themselves as Catholics, had indicated that their Christianity was rather easily bracketed when they put on their hats as public servants. “Does ontology mean nothing to these people?” my friend asked. “Do they even know what it is?”
Well, no. They don’t.

And that’s a problem.

By “ontology,” my correspondent was using the technical vocabulary of philosophy to re-capture an image once familiar to generations of Catholics from the Baltimore Catechism, the image of an “indelible mark” imprinted on the soul by certain sacraments. This image of the “indelible mark” was intended to convey a basic truth of Catholic faith: that the reception of certain sacraments changed the recipient forever, by conferring on him or her a new identity — not in the psychological sense of that overused term, but substantively. Or, if you’ll pardon the term, ontologically.

Of course, many professed Catholics would castigate Weigel for making a reference to the "Baltimore Catechism," as if the latest decades of pedagogical experimentation in catechesis were something of which to be proud.

Decades of faux-catechesis, in which the only “indelible marks” to be found in religious education classrooms were made by magic markers on felt banners, have left us severely weakened in our self-understanding, such that too many Catholics imagine their Christianity to be the religious variant of their membership in other voluntary organizations.