Tag: NCD

Jesuit “Recommendations” Would Mar National Catechetical Directory

Share

Jesuit “Recommendations” Would Mar National Catechetical Directory

By WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

THE WANDERER
March 14, 1974

PART I

Msgr. Wilfrid Paradis, director of the National Catechetical Directory project, has received 23 pages of highly dubious recommendations from an outfit called the Commission on Religious Education (CORE) of the Jesuit Secondary Education Association (JSEA). The recommendations touch on such sensitive areas as the nature of sin, freedom of conscience, the act of faith, the obligation to attend Mass, the Sacrament of Penance, and youth ministry.

Continue reading “Jesuit “Recommendations” Would Mar National Catechetical Directory”

Some Priorities For the National Catechetical Directory (Part III)

Share

Some Priorities For
The National Catechetical Directory

By WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

THE WANDERER
February 21, 1974

Part (III)

The shopping list of things that ought to go into, or be kept out of, the National Catechetical Directory is too long to be contemplated in our short lifetime here below. In happier days, we had religion teachers who could figure out what to do and what not to do, once they had absorbed a few rules. Docility to the tradition of the Church kept them on a sensible path. Today, however, the religion teachers have been convinced that they should “rethink” everything and, while they’re at it, come up with radically new ways of “presenting” what they have “rethought.” The result is a complete chaos in which the teachers cannot be relied upon to respect any tradition, to un- derstand any dogma. or to avoid any idiocy. Hence, you have to tell them everything, like chimpanzees who cannot natively understand that, having put on one shoe, it is wise to put on the other as well.

Continue reading “Some Priorities For the National Catechetical Directory (Part III)”

Some Priorities For the National Catechetical Directory (Part II)

Share

Some Priorities For The National Catechetical Directory

By WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

THE WANDERER
February 7, 1974

(PART II)

Every Catholic priest, parent, and teacher has a special stake in seeing to it that there is a “next generation” of Catholics, by which I mean to suggest that, today, such a generation cannot be taken for granted. Already the decline in Mass attendance (which, admittedly, is only one yardstick, but an informative one) is “catastrophic” by all accounts. Nowhere is it more catastrophic than among young people. You don’t have to be a prophet of doom to see that instead of a “next generation,” we could easily end up with a “remnant.”

Continue reading “Some Priorities For the National Catechetical Directory (Part II)”

Some Priorities For The National Catechetical Directory (Part I)

Share

Some Priorities For The
National Catechetical Directory

By WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

THE WANDERER
January 31, 1974

(PART I)

The catechetical battle, which has involved more Catholic laypeople in bruising controversy since Vatican II than any other single issue, save the liturgy, is coming to a head. During the next three months, ordinary Catholics across America will have an opportunity such as never existed before to influence the content of a crucial document which will determine the nature of Catholic religious education in this Country for years to come.

Continue reading “Some Priorities For The National Catechetical Directory (Part I)”