Catholicism for the next generation

EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT

A new study, attempting to address the ?crisis of transmission? in the Church today, argues that a confident spiritual culture can be built, but the critical role of schools in this essential work is left open for debate

The success of Catholic schools seems to present a contradiction: at a time when classrooms have never been so full, the churches they serve have never been so empty. For all their popularity with parents, and for all their much-praised success in generating communities of love and trust, often in defiance of the fragmented conditions immediately outside the school gate, Catholic schools have had no success at all in halting the precipitous downward slide in church attendance.

Are they struggling, along with parishes and parents, to counter the advancing forces of secularism? Has a more liberal Church lost the confidence and authority required to transmit a sense of belonging? Is the decline in attendance to do with a perceived weakness in Catholicism?s message, or a perceived attractiveness in the distractions and alternatives?

These are the questions at the heart of a new study from the Catholic Education Service, On The Way to Life, to be launched with much ceremony next week. It comes 20 years after the publication of Patrick Purnell?s Our Faith Story, setting out the Church?s vision for religious education, and is intended both as a review of how the position has changed in the intervening years, and as the starting point for a national discussion.

Any teachers, priests or parents expecting clear answers, however, should be warned that there are few to be had, not even for those who persevere through the 90-odd pages of argument. An investigation of how the Church can respond to the many challenges of modernity was never going to be an easy read, and this is an essay armour-plated with academic reference from Hannah Arendt to Ludwig Wittgenstein and Mary Wollstonecraft. (No wonder the CES is issuing CD-Roms, in which the authors explain their thinking.)

On The Way to Life starts from the position that there is a ?crisis of transmission? in the Catholic faith, pointing to the combined inability of home, parish and school to secure the sort of commitment to the Church from younger generations seen in the past. It argues for an open debate about what for many remains an extremely sensitive area. But it also insists that a positive outcome is entirely possible. Accepting the reality of modern life, it concludes, does not mean striking damaging compromises, let alone rolling over completely. Instead, the authors place their hope in the vision of the Second Vatican Council and the promise of a distinctively ?Catholic modernity?, together with an attempt to reclaim the confident spiritual identity of the past. On The Way to Life ? Contemporary Culture and Theological Development as A Framework for Catholic Education, Catechesis and Formation, has been written by Fr James Hanvey SJ and Fr Tony Carroll of the Heythrop Institute for Religion, Ethics and Public Life, part of the University of London. It falls into three sections: a sociological survey of the current position; a theological review; and some notes suggesting a way forward.

Part One, the survey of the current position, cites figures ? mainly taken from the European Values Survey ? charting the decline of belief and church-going across the denominations, with a formidable 73 per cent of the adult population apparently believing the churches are failing in their approach to social problems. Only 58.1 per cent think their Church gives adequate answers to their spiritual needs. A YouGov Poll has suggested that the 77 per cent who reported believing in God in 1977 had dwindled to 44 per cent by 2004. A different set of statistics claims that between 1979 and 1998, attendance in the Catholic Church declined by 42 per cent. This section also looks at a number of current explanations, such as the strength of secularism; the appeal of subjective rather than communal or congregational spirituality; the impact of the economy, mobility and technology on identity and social interaction; and in particular the extent to which the language of spirituality itself has been hijacked by a culture which insists that the present is all. There is, it states, a crisis of transmission in the culture as a whole, not just in the Catholic Church ? because so many meanings and understandings are current at any one time.

Part Two, the theological context, says it is by no means inevitable that faith will be pushed to the margins by the secular world ? a view it ascribes to Protestantism. The Catholic Church, instead, is capable of resisting the pressures from society either for it to become a ghetto or to be absorbed. But for this, says Part Three, the Church needs to find a language which can promote a ?Catholic sacramental imagination?. Catholic theologians, historians, scholars, educationists and catechists should all be enlisted to help develop such a vision.

What of schools in all this? In one sense they appear to be the main targets for the study. A national teachers? conference will debate the issues it raises in December. Schools and parishes are to be issued with explanatory materials. The work is written with a clear knowledge of schools and their workings: Fr Hanvey is a former headmaster of St Aloysius? College in Glasgow, and has been working closely with the Association of RE Inspectors, Advisers and Counsultants.

Yet schools barely make an appearance in the study ? and this is not because their role in the crisis of transmission or the attempt to overcome it is taken as read. Far from it. Large secondary schools, after all, face great difficulty when it comes to the explicitly Catholic side of their mission. It would be a mistake for the head of any Catholic secondary school to assume that church-going was a fixed part of his or her pupils? lives. The most basic concepts ? authority, the possibility of shared values, the possibility of community, or even the possibility of meaning itself ? are often doubted. Catholic schools do valuable Catholic work, but the message tends to be implicit, demonstrated through the shared life of a school community rather than spelled out in the catechetical language of previous eras. Can this life be framed in a new language of ?sacramental imagination?? There is a great deal to be debated.

On the Way to Life: Contemporary Culture and Theological Development as a Framework for Catholic Education, Catechesis and Formation, by Heythrop Institute for Religion, Ethics and Public Life, is available from the Catholic Education Service.