Edith Stein, Pope Leo X, and Augustine. Other than being pillars of the Church the other thing these three and scores of other giants of the Faith have in common is that no one in my son’s seventh grade class knows who they are.
I know, because I have asked them.
It would be one thing if my son went to the local public school and did not know who these people were, it’s quite another that my son, as with most of his classmates, has spent his entire grade school life within the confines of our archdiocese parochial school.
It’s a pity that children teetering on their turbulent teenage years don’t know some of the most important figures in human history let alone the spiritual history of their own church. As a not-so-grizzled veteran of the Catholic parenting game, I now have children in three different stages of Catholic education, the aforementioned seventh grader, a fourth grader, and a kindergartner. The school my children attend is staffed by a dedicated group of teachers who show their love of the Faith in a variety of ways. Our pastor is involved and is a good man in whom I have no business finding fault. If the road to hell is paved with the best intentions, so too has the state of religious education in my archdiocese's school system been similarly blacktopped.
There is plenty of peace love and understanding in our Parish school, enough that one could get an elevated sugar count from it. Now I’m all for peace love and understanding, but not when it is bland and soft and in my experience, there is an institutional blandness in the religious curriculum. If Catholicism is anything, it isn’t bland and soft.
I have recently come across a book that could serve as the template for a segment of primary Catholic education that has been severely neglected. It’s titled Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church written by H.W. Crocker III. This historical rendering of the life of the Church on earth takes us from the time we emerged from the catacombs up to and including the pontificate of John Paul II. The book reads like a novel and is rich in vivid detail illuminating the incredible people the Church has been blessed — and cursed — with. Bland it isn't, nor soft.
The book is worth including in any Catholic school curriculum just for the story of the Emperor Constantine we find inside it. The life of this very important Roman emperor unfolds before us like a multi-part television drama about the power of a mother’s faith, about weakness at moment’s of truth, and how the power of the truth can lead anyone — and I mean anyone — to conversion.
These days, Crusader is a dirty word. In Triumph we get the historical and religious context of the Crusades — in unabashedly politically incorrect language — how they were a reaction against Islamic aggression and not the other way around. The failures of the Crusaders are not seen as evidence of the immorality of their cause but as further documentation of the ravages of original sin.
My son asked me what the Inquisition was. His text book said it was a Church court that judged and convicted heretics, that it was often abused, and “Many Protestants who appeared before it were tortured. Others were sentenced to death when they refused to change their beliefs.” My work was cut out for me so I turned for help in Triumph and showed my son another view of the Inquisition. How it was actually the trial of choice by most who stood accused because the Church was almost always more lenient than civil courts.
Without getting too heavy handed with my seventh grader, I tried to explain, with the help of Triumph, that the Inquisition was mainly targeted against a very serious and dangerous heresy. I told him there were people — the Albigensians — who not only rejected the Church but believed that death was preferable to life, that marriage was wrong, and that abortion was the answer to any and all pregnancies. And it was the responsibility of the Church to declare the Truth.
Figuring that the next stop would be Galileo, I have initiated a pre-emptive strike by showing the teacher how the Church was not anti-science in its position on Galileo and how Galileo himself, was wrong on some pretty important scientific facts. This book has armed me to protect my son's youthful faith — and I couldn't be more grateful.
Look at the biggest grossing motion pictures of all time and you’ll discover a huge preponderance of genre fantasy films. What all these films share in common is an emphasis on heroism. Kids love heroes and they go to see these kinds of movies over and over and over. It would not be an unlikely stretch to surmise that these children, who can quote chapter and verse on the royal lineage of Luke Skywalker, would also be attracted to the real life heroes of Catholic history.
Not understanding history is not understanding the present. The problems we see in the Middle East are the result of hundreds, if not thousands of years, worth of historical events. What more important history could there be for a Catholic school age child than to grasp where his or her Church has been? It may give children a greater sense of where the Church is going. The book Triumph by H.W. Crocker III could be the remedy for Catholic schools to place the proper emphasis on the role the Church has played on the history of the world and how that history has shown, over and over again, God’s guiding hand. It could be, but I won't have my kids wait for their school to start using this book.
Robert Brennan is a professional television writer based in Los Angeles. He and his wife, Melissa, are members of St. Cyril of Jerusalem parish in Encino, CA.
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