Seán O Conaill: Why Can’t We Talk About Adult Faith Formation?
Seán O Conaill asks why the synodal discussions of 2022 in Ireland came to a year-long pause, after highlighting ‘a crisis in the transmission of faith’ and ‘serious weaknesses in Adult Faith Development’.
“It is absolutely essential for the mature Christian to acquire personal, inner convictions in order to be a serious proclaimer of the gospel in a pluralistic world buffeted by conflicting opinions.”
Borrowed from the writings of Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini this was the theme of a homily delivered by Archbishop Dermot Farrell of Dublin in June 2023. Set against the conclusion of the Irish National Synodal Synthesis of August 2022 – that Ireland suffers ‘serious weaknesses in Adult Faith Development’ it surely identifies an issue of paramount urgency.
Why then has the momentum gathered by those 2022 synodal discussions not been maintained by continuing synodal discussion of this faith formation issue in all Irish dioceses thereafter, from the autumn of 2022 onward? Why has Ireland’s own ground-level synodal interaction apparently been put on hold, in the build-up to the assemblies of the 2021-24 Universal Synod in Rome?
Undoubtedly this preparation for the Rome synodal assemblies of 2023/24 was a distraction for the Steering Committee of the Irish Synodal Pathway. However, the Instrumentum Laboris for the Universal Synod published on June 20th 2023 makes no mention of adult faith formation as a substantive issue. It follows that an issue seen as vital for the Irish Synodal Pathway has in the summer of 2023 no obvious future pathway of its own – while synodality itself – the habit of ongoing parish-level discussion – has still not firmly taken hold in Ireland. This is doubly unfortunate, and should have been foreseen.
It will be even worse if the Universal Synodal process comes to no firm conclusions on the confinement of ordination to celibate males. It is not sensible to make this the primary focus of attention when it is far from clear that ordination in itself confers any dramatic evangelical or missionary charism, and when every lay person – and especially every parent – has a life context that calls us to be articulate and active in our faith.
Adding this situation to the known debacle of the ‘Share the Good News’ programme of 2011 it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Irish Bishops’ Conference is in a deep Irish ditch of indecision when it comes to adult faith development. Can this ditch be unrelated to another perception of the Irish national synodal report: ‘that the declining numbers of priests and religious means the Church is heading for a crisis as there will be very few people properly prepared to step into leadership and faith development roles’?
Who can fail to see here a basic perception that adult Irish Catholic faith could only be properly formed by a clerically approved and managed programme of adult faith formation – without ever investigating the varieties of Catholic faith that have been shaped by events in Ireland, and by adult experience over recent decades – in the total absence of any deliberate adult faith formation programme at parish level?
Are we all supposed to have been intellectually passive and inert since leaving school, and out of all possibility of meaningful contact with the Holy Spirit in the meantime? Yet again the ICBC’s reluctance to initiate reliable research, this time into the living varieties of adult Irish Catholic faith, has deepened the ditch it has been digging for itself since 1994.
Conscious that I cannot extrapolate from my own experience, I would nevertheless insist that the faith development of all Irish Catholics must have been deeply impacted by the church traumas we have experienced. Must not the story of US Cardinal Theodore McCarrick – to take just one example – have been part of the involuntary programme of faith development that the magisterium has organised for all of us – a stunning reminder of the advice of Psalm 146, never to put our trust in princes?
I insist that I am not being either sarcastic or facetious in saying this. It is a huge mistake to suppose that genuine faith can be formed only by intentional faith formation programmes – and the most persuasive models of faith development speak of entirely involuntary experiences of suffering as central to the deepest faith development. James A. Fowler’s Stages of Faith speaks of phases of doubt and of the impact of the failure of early adult models such as parents and church leaders in the development of a resilient faith in a transcendent reality. Out of the blue recently a friend who has had only a primary and lower secondary education, but who attends Mass every day, said of the clergy generally that they have taught him not to depend too much upon ‘the middleman’.
The Gospel itself tells us that the church’s greatest ever teacher, Jesus of Nazareth, tried in vain to prepare his own followers for the reality of apparent temporal disaster – that he was never bent on restoring the Kingdom of Israel by the only means they could comprehend: the violent overthrow of Roman imperial power. Their developed faith needed the experience of total disillusionment about that to mature into a faith that was itself prepared for martyrdom, and capable of outlasting any empire.
Similarly the illusions that Irish clericalism sought to maintain about itself before 1994 absolutely needed to be shattered for everyone to realise that the Holy Spirit is not contained or silenced by clericalism, and is calling all of us to integrity now – an indispensable aspect of holiness – from Confirmation onward.
Is it not obvious that an adult faith that has survived the revelations of the past few decades – and then the strident secular challenge, and the Internet – and yet impels those adults to turn up for synodal discussion – has been shaped by experiences of grace in times of challenge – and could in turn inform the faith of others, including the faith of clergy? Mustn’t most of those who have already participated have ‘acquired personal inner convictions’ that somehow relate to the Creed?
Mustn’t many also be active as grandparents or parents in grappling with the issues and questions of teenagers? What is it that inhibits at the very least an exploration of this experience in synodal discussion right away?
Only, I would suggest either a very limited understanding of how faith is formed or a clericalist attachment to the notion that the Holy Spirit must still also be under clerical supervision and control, never already busy with many in forming a deepened Catholic faith out of the fragments of our schooling, our early experiences of family prayer, our adult challenges and prayers.
Where in any case will facilitators of adult faith development come from if not from those who do volunteer right away for synodal discussion of this issue – who cannot have been asleep or idle while scandals rage? Some will be more expert in the Catechism than others but all will have something of value to contribute. The future of Ireland’s synodal pathway can only be assured if confidence is shown now in those who turn up for discussion of the Irish church’s most intractable and immediate problem. There is no excuse, and no time, for further dithering.
Sean
I agree with everything you say, I am a Grandparent who had to watch all of my children turn their back on the church when they left the primary school. The same can be said of most of the parents of that time and our children were telling us that there is no God. These same children are now parents themselves and have little or no time for the church so their children are doing the same.
I believe that the problem is in the religious education at primary level. I was recently at a First Communion Mass and was horrified when the children were asked to stand and confess that they had committed grievous sins in body and mind. I would have grave doubts if any 8 year-old would even know what constitutes a mortal sin.
Which brings me to my point about religious education. Children prior to their First Communion should be taught only in the love and mercy of Jesus and then in preparation for their Confirmation, by through the proof of the existence of God by the undeniable fact of the Resurrection, science which they are already taught should be incorporated into religious education as part of creation.
In order to achieve this there must be a system of organised catechists who are trained and paid (one could cover many schools). This is one area women would play a great role alongside their male colleagues and since the post of lay catechists has been agreed by Vatican II and promoted by Pope Francis I can not see why this should not be done in this country immediately.
If the children have a firm arguable Faith in God and the Holy Spirit then they will be in a place where they can rebuild the church.
I trained as a teacher of religious education at the Mater Dei Institute of Education in the 90’s and taught religion in secondary schools in Ireland and England. The quality of the theology courses at Mater Dei was second to none and in my PhD and my teaching and writing ever since, I still draw on lessons learned from the like of Msgr. Dermot Lane, Fr. Michael Drumm, Fr. Jack Finnegan, and John Devitt in English.
By contrast, I found the approach to religious education to be fixated on experiential catechesis, somewhat anti-intellectual, and not conducive to serious discussion of theological, philosophical, or moral issues. Student teachers were encouraged to devise classes around experiential activities and group work while expository teaching on doctrine and class discussion were deemphasized. I think this form of pedagogy took hold in schools and that students for the most part had a very weak grasp of Catholic doctrine from which to form their conscience and opinions.
For example, we know the tragic outcome of people thinking that the Catholic Church never approves of the termination of a pregnancy even when the life of the mother was in danger. Other examples of widespread ignorance include an assumption that the Catholic Church is opposed to science and the non-Christian religions and interprets the Bible in a literalistic manner.
In suggesting that a prevalent approach to religious education, favouring experiential learning, has played a role in this state of affairs, I am not at all suggesting that the exclusively lecture-based indoctrination of an earlier age was preferable. Indeed, the work of Thomas Groome, often cited as underpinning Mater Dei’s approach to Religious Education, encouraging a dialogue between experience and tradition. This dialogue however requires well-informed, candid, constructive dialogue with teenagers, young adults, and adults. Sadly, it seems many Irish people’s experience of religious education is that it was a “doss class”, a series of presentations by charity organizations (The Ballygall Project), and poster-making/ art and crafts. Not that any of these should be anathema, but students have been switching off their brains at the RE classroom door as well as at the church door, with little done to empower them to progress in James Fowler’s stages of faith.
Richard Kearney speaks of a stark exception to my observations when he describes his religion teacher at Glenstal Abbey, a Fr. Andrew who began his course by reading atheist authors with the pupils and thereby stoking up questions about God that the boys themselves wanted to pursue. Sadly, I think that was an exceptional experience and the rather brain-drain impression of Catholicism that many students have experienced is something that probably deserved to be rejected. The situation is generally somewhat better in the US where adult faith formation offers tend to be scheduled after Sunday Masses, sometimes addressing topics related to the Sunday readings and sometimes in the form of one-off presentations and courses related to particular topics. It is doable and maybe all the more so if Irish parishes offer fewer Sunday Masses and follow the liturgies with opportunities to trash out theological and moral questions, both timeless and timely, that matter to people.
Glenstal was a privileged catechetical environment, but at the North Mon we had Patrician Meetings, evening events which were very stimulating and created a theological culture in our infant minds (Brother Caelestius Gavin was the moving spirit — he got me to write a long, long essay on the Forthcoming Council in 1962, bedecked with newspaper cuttings). The crisis of the church is one of communication. Theology (especially scripture study) is like classical music — people love it when exposed to it imaginatively. But all sorts of impediments seem to prevent what flourishes in privileged enclaves from spilling over into the wider church community.
#2. But why for generations has zeal for adult faith formation been lacking in our diocesan clergy? And why the clerical ‘phobia’ re theology identified here on this site in 2014 by Joe O’Leary when I asked why no members of ACP, other than Joe himself, would engage here on the vital question of the theology of atonement? Joe’s reference to ‘phobia’ came as the final comment to that thread: no one contradicted him back then:
https://associationofcatholicpriests.ie/atonement-why-do-irish-clergy-avoid-this-issue/
My own initial fascination with the history of theology began in UCD during Vatican II. It was aroused by people such as Fergal O’Connor OP and Austin Flannery OP – who took my questions seriously – but never subsequently did I find that interest echoed by diocesan clergy when I began to teach. Something truly devastating happened to clergy generally in 1968 with Humanae Vitae, when everything came to pivot on that one aspect of doctrine.
The failure of Share the Good News, the 2011 ten-year programme centred on a new Irish Catechetical Directory, must also have had something to do with the unreadiness of diocesan clergy to engage with adult faith formation at parish level – but this too has always remained unexplained.
So we are where we are in 2023, with synodality not yet embedded and many priests not yet committed and reportedly feeling already overburdened. The Gospel for next Sunday – ‘Come to me all you that are weary …’ couldn’t be more timely.
Had the CDF been at the service of evangelisation during our lifetime, rather than invigilation and censorship after 1968, the story would have been different I think. Jesus’s parable of the sower didn’t cover the problem of sowing in a minefield, but that is what Humanae Vitae and the CDF made of the soil.
Transmission of the faith is literally the issue by which the church stands or falls. It should be the foremost theme of synods, as a matter of life or death. Clerical dread of the laity, the “sleeping giant”, has probably been the biggest impediment to effective and cooperative action on this front, ever since any of us can remember.
Cardinal de Lubac, in his doleful later years, diagnosed that the French had got tired of religion. But we should note that the religion they and now the Irish got tired of is what the clergy served up, a stale diet. A strong lay free thinking culture might have been a medium for vibrant transmission, and religion might have been the most exciting subject in schools. But “lost opportunities” (Brendan Hoban, 1979) accumulated.
The Vatican should be thrilled if there is any lay interest in the synodality project. Let them not squander it again.
As Pope Francis has said Synodality must include all the baptised.
When at the start of the process I asked for meetings I was told that the priest was too busy with parish work and the bishop said that he would have parish councils established in each parish which there was not enough time to achieve.
In my opinion there was and is still not any need for the priest to be involved except for the promotion of the Synodal system during sermons and the necessity of prayer and listening to the Holy Spirit.
There are plenty of lay people who I am sure would be willing to do the organisation. This could be done as part of the Irish 5-year process and would even at this late stage get people thinking about Synodality and where discussions on religious education, the decline in Mass attendance, etc. could be considered and could a meaningful outcome for the Irish Synodal path.
It could promote the Spirit led discussion so badly needed
This is not a repeat of a previous comment but is meant as a continuation of the discussion