The Sacred Responsibility of Teaching by Word and Deed

Recently, I came across a post by an acquaintance of mine through a mutual friend. It's entitled "Growing up Catholic: Misgivings." And I'm afraid the substance of the post is no less forlorn than its title. It was a bit of a sad posting and certainly cause for reflecting on our sacred responsibilities as parents. I want to share some of these reflections below.

This fellow left the Catholic Church after high school. He gives many reasons, which are probably all too common. They have precious little to do with dogma and are so much more grounded in practicality. I cannot help thinking that the reasons he gives for leaving, such as they were, are anything but common for countless others just like him who left the Church once upon a time mostly due to, well, a lack of reasons for staying in it. What a grave situation and ironic too.

Vatican II was held in the early 1960's for several reasons, but a chief one was for the renewal of the Church. But in cases similar to these, we can see just how much She has not yet seen this renewal. So much so that rather than everybody prior to Vatican II not having much of an idea what's going on or why (and attributing that to the Latin mass), now we can all be equally confused in the vernacular languages of our culture!

Hoorah.

Clearly something has been missing or has been just not good enough to produce the sought-after renewal in the Catholic Church. Allow me a moment to reflect on what I take to be one of the reasons why?

Our Lord Jesus Christ taught by both word and deed. He spoke the truth, to be sure, but he equally lived an excellent life overflowing with charity. And an expectation of anyone who calls himself His disciple is this: that the disciple would be like the master in these respects. Both word and deed are required. But, through weakness or whatever else, many Christians will often err on the side of one or the other: of either knowing all the right things or of doing all the right things. We typically reduce what it is to be a Christian to a one-sided account, rather than a healthy balance of both, probably just because it's more work to be balanced. And who wants more work to do? It seems to me that post-Conciliar Catholic parents took it very easy and casual on the "word" portion of the "word and deed." They seemed to think that if one just does all the right things, this will be enough for the children to be just fine. Besides which, who knows how much of the truth they had to fulfill that "word" portion of the requirement for good parenting anyway? Perhaps they were rather confused owing to the crisis that any post-Conciliar time experiences.

But, the grace created by goodness, as everyone has seen, only goes so far. If the further graces afforded by truth-telling are not added, the faith of one generation can almost disappear in the very next one. Amazing! Amazing testimony to the requirement of parents to be like their Divine Master: you raise a child in both word and deed. It is not only about doing all the right things. It is also about knowing them and passing on that knowledge to the future generations.

It's incredible that Pope St. Pius X, in his encyclical Acerbo Nimis (1905) covering the establishment of CCD in all parishes everywhere, specifically ennumerated the reasons for doing so. He writes,

23. V. In the larger cities, and especially where universities, colleges and secondary schools are located, let classes in religion be organized to instruct in the truths of faith and in the practice of Christian life the youths who attend the public schools from which all religious teaching is banned.

But how many of us know these reasons? We think it's for drive-thru sacrament reception. That's why CCD exists. Little does anyone know it's designed to supplement the lack of religious education in the government schools, and which religious education is (further) designed to supplement the teaching supposedly coming from the first evangelizers and catechists of children: their own parents.

Renewal of the Catholic Church in the West (and especially in America) is apparently just as badly needed today as ever it was. May that not continue with our generation. May all Christians everywhere come to embrace the unmistakable connection between word and deed. How could any of us tolerate another generation of Catholics abandoning the Faith, only to find themselves later struggling for any authentic religion, mostly due to our parental irresponsibility? We do well to heed the words or our Lord when He says, "No disciple is above his teacher, no slave above his master," (Matthew 10:24).