Religious knowledge in the U.S.
September 29, 2010, 9:21 am
Posted by Joseph A. Komonchak
The Pew Research Center has just released the results of a survey of religious knowledge in the U.S. You can find their summary here, and the actual questions and answers here: I didn’t find most of the questions very interesting, but I guess they were looking for knowledge about religion, one’s own and those of others. I wish their breakdown had made it easier to tell what members of the various religions were replying to the questions. This is mentioned in the summary report but I didn’t find it broken down in the replies. I’m always interested also in the level of education in religion that the respondents have had.
Another item I saw on this survey stated that only 55% of Roman Catholics believe that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, which suggests that the Roman Catholic Church has more basic catechetical problems than the ones that generate so much controversy and media coverage. (From a former Roman Catholic, now EPiscopalian)
I must say the poll wasn’t getting a lot of love from the religion writers I know, as it doesn’t seem to tell too much about religious knowledge and spirituality, more about religious factoids. Atheists read sacred texts literally and do not believe and fundamentalists read sacred texts literally and do believe. Take your pick.
I would never underestimate American illiteracy on other religions or their own, and battling ignorance is a good thing. And who knows how we really stack up against other generations, or how some of the great saints would stack up as far as knowledge outside their own spiritual genius.
One question/finding that always intrigues me (as it scandalizes many Catholics) is the one on transubstantiation. The figure is always lower than the 100 percent it should be, and I don’t discount poor catechesis etc. But I always wonder how much those questions really tell as they are so simplistic (per force) in their phrasing that I’m not sure how I would respond sometimes. It’s easy to interpret those questions in a literal way of magical thinking about the Eucharist that marked earlier times, I suspect. The Eucharist is at the heart of my Catholic faith and practice, but it’s also the hardest element of the faith (and practice) to communicate easily.
The knowleedge of Catholics is not like days of yore where many went through parochial school, Catholoic high and many on to Catholic college.
Beyond that, education has become more specialized and discrete as one progresses up the ladder.
Further, the way we learn is being transformed by our information age and how information is relayed and frequently manipulated.
So what does this say about educating catholics in the faith?
I see that Abp. Dolan in New york is talking about closing a number of schools (perhaps hoping to up financial support?) but economics and the factors above indicate the old models are not going to happen on any grand scale.
Charter schools have a set of problems and questions.
Credibility issues raise problems for a solely catechism based knowledge.
A better recognition of the fact that our faith and its implications are a lifelong process to acquire and that adult formation continues to languish should lead us to rethink what is happening.
On the CNN report by Gary Tuchman on the Poe and sex abuse, the observation was offered that policy makers in the Church seem to value what people think over what they do; I think ther eis indeed a need for not only more balance, but more emphasis on a reimagined, more adult centerted religious education.
“only 55% of Roman Catholics believe that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ”
Not sure if this poll does, but all other polls I have seen addressing this question also show that the more often one attends Mass, the more likely they are to believe in the Real Presence.
Would like to see a similar poll on belief in the Real Presence circa 1960. Higher %?
I wonder what percentage of catechists themselves believe in the Real Presence.
Just saw David’s post and want to add that there’s a VOTF discussion today on the explanation of “consubstantial” coming in the revised liturgy.
It underscores the problem of how we’re moving (backward?) in educating the laity under the guise of upholding tradition.
“only 55% of Roman Catholics believe that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ”
Appending to previous comment: given that less than 50% of Catholics attend Mass every Sunday, the 55% figure is unsurprising. Unfortunately, you cannot catechize Catholics who are not at church. So, the very first step is to get them back into the church, no? I see this not as a direct failure of catechesis but a failure to keep Catholics in the pews in the first place.
What was weekly Mass attendance circa 1960?
In my lifetime I’ve seen a greater emphasis put on acting over knowing the Faith. But i wonder if the pendulum hasn’t swung too far from the knowing pole. Somebody pointed out that in the Old Testament we are told to love God with our whole hearts and our whole souls, while in the New Testament we are told to love God with our whole hearts and our whole souls and our whole minds. Once you divorce action from knowledge you don’t have human action anymore. You might as well be a dog. At best you have sentimentality.
I was not surprised that 45% “of Catholics did not know that their church teaches that the consecrated bread and wine in holy communion are not merely symbols”. The focus of the clergy and the hierarchy has become so narrow, that the old beliefs and practices are disappearing.
I was surprised at how few Jews know Maimonides was Jewish.
(Happy Michaelmas!)
P Flanagan, do you believe that the bread and wine are physically transformed into actual flesh and blood?
And I was surprised to see how much Mormons know about other religions. I don’t think non-Mormons know much about Mormon beliefs and practiices.
I doubt that many non-Mormons know about Heavenly Mother:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavenly_Mother_(Mormonism)
I wonder how clear a distinction was made between notions like “Catholic”, “practicing Catholic”, “lapsed Catholic” and so on. I also wonder how you filter for the desire of people to state their own opinion if (almost) given the opportunity. If you’re a practicing Roman Catholic and you believe (as, let’s be honest, many do) that the Eucharist is body and blood in a purely symbolic sense, aren’t you likely to want to get that on record because it’s what you believe, even if it means ignoring the “what the Catholic church teaches” part of the question?
“do you believe that the bread and wine are physically transformed into actual flesh and blood?”
If that is a reference to the complication in asking poll questions on the Real Presence, your point is well taken. If it is a serious question, then:
CCC 1376 “Because Christ our Redeemer said that it was truly his body that he was offering under the species of bread, it has always been the conviction of the Church of God, and this holy Council now declares again, that by the consecration of the bread and wine there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our Lord and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change the holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation.”
“Physically”? The “accidents” of bread and wine remain (you could still get drunk on a large amount of consecrated wine), but their substance, their essence has changed. This is a metaphysical reality, not a physical one. No scientific test could ever “prove” the Real Presence, because its Truth is not a physical matter (no pun intended). The sacraments make visible the invisible, and in that context, the Eucharist is the meeting point of the eternal, invisible sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the physical world which we humans require to spiritually comprehend such mysteries.
Like David, I would say that the Eucharist is at the heart of my Catholic faith and practice, but it’s also the hardest element of the faith (and practice) to communicate easily. And, in my case, to understand. Maybe, as Ann says, all I have is sentimentality; or maybe there is a mystery, and not understanding it clearly is normal.
The experts on http://www.praytellblog.com/index.php/2010/09/22/falling-mass-attendance/
help me at least understand that it is unsurprising that I am perplexed. Some comments in there, good for head-scratching. Hardly the kind of understanding that can be tested in a quiz with a “yes/no” answer!
“I don’t know how else to state this: if someone says the eucharist is not a symbol, they are uneducated, and they need education in what Real Presence is and the manner in which symbols are real. If someone says that the presence is physical, they are uneducated, and they need educating in what bodily presence means. I don’t think there’s any way to state this any gentler with accuracy.”
“I think too if I were a lay person hearing that the Eucharist is symbolic but not physical, in terms of real presence, then I’d be a bit confused. I think most Catholics who are serious about Holy Communion simply believe they are receiving our Lord in Holy Communion, that it is a “real presence” not a symbolic one. Now obviously, we don’t receive Christ in a physical way, for most of us that would be displeasing to our sensibilities when it comes to appetite. Our Lord has made it possible to be in “communion” with Him through the sacramental principle He establishes which indeed is pleasing to the sensibilities of our appetite and the manner in which we physically eat and drink the physical signs and symbols. The physicality of Bread and Wine that are signs, symbols and metaphors for the “real presence” of Christ are powerful physical symbols and signs of the real presence. The sacramental principle is that after the consecration the bread is not Jesus, but Jesus is Bread and all that this means as it concerns the life-giving qualities of real bread and real eating in community and the physicality of it all. The same for the Consecrated Wine; wine is not Jesus, Jesus is Wine and all that wine is in reality and physicality. Transubstantiation makes perfect sense in this context and does not obfuscate the reality as other philosophical terms often do. The “substance” changes, but the “accidents” remain is a marvelous way of speaking about metaphor and focusing on Christ who is substantially present through the sacramental metaphors (accidents) we receive.”
“Another item I saw on this survey stated that only 55% of Roman Catholics believe that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Christ, which suggests that the Roman Catholic Church has more basic catechetical problems than the ones that generate so much controversy and media coverage. ”
That we have basic catechetical problems, there can be no doubt.
P Flanagan, yes, my point is about the difficulty of communicating this in a poll question, and also perhaps highlighting that those who simply check “yes” to that question may also not understand adequately (if there is such a threshold) the mystery of the Real Presence. I think understanding what Catholics of all levels of practice know or think they know would be key to developing a constructive catechetical program, which is certainly needed.
Here’s another unsettling bit from the survey:
“However, even after controlling for levels of education and other key demographic traits (race, age, gender and region), significant differences in religious knowledge persist among adherents of various faith traditions. Atheists/agnostics, Jews and Mormons still have the highest levels of religious knowledge, followed by evangelical Protestants, then those whose religion is nothing in particular, mainline Protestants and Catholics.”
Dead last, even after people whose religion is “nothing in particular!”
Is there any way we can get the survey to try to take it? My son will have his confirmation in 1 month and has 9 years of CCD education under his belt, plus weekly Sunday Mass homilies. I wonder what he knows at this point.
“Is there any way we can get the survey to try to take it?”
Questions asked are here.
Are these their entire sample sizes on page 65? (page 6 of the .pdf) If so, I’d be inclined to skepticism on group comparisons. It looks like they’re based on responses of one atheist and two Mormons.
I wonder why respondents were told to count only biological children, not adopted childen.
Felapton: “These are among the key findings of the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey, a nationwide poll conducted from May 19 through June 6, 2010, among 3,412 Americans age 18 and older, on landlines and cell phones, in English and Spanish. Jews, Mormons and atheists/agnostics were oversampled to allow analysis of these relatively small groups.”
Hello All,
Thanks to Fr. Komonchak for alerting us to this study. Like some others here, I am having real trouble interpreting some of the data. The executive summary says that 3,412 Americans were polled. But in some of the summary data it looks like very few responded. I saw at least one question that indicated to me that only 24 Roman Catholics responded to some of the questions and another indicating that only 31 respondents identified themselves as having been Catholic when children. Are the respondent data really that sparse?
Also, does anyone know why the Pew study gives summary data on “White Catholics” and “Hispanic Catholics”? There are obviuosly not exhaustive categories of Catholics in this country. I noticed analogous breakdowns such as “White Evangelical Protestant”, “White Mainline Protestant” and “Black Protestant” in the executive summary, but no “Black Mainline Protestant” or “Black Evangelical Protestant”, at least not in the executive summary. Does anyone know more about why the data were broken down in this manner?
I believe that once again Pew has provided us with a very useful set of findings, carefully and conscientiously assembled. I am constantly amazed at the readiness of people to minimize what we learn from these studies because they don’t resolve even bigger and more difficult issues. At the same time, most of us rely extensively on anecdotes or random reading for our opinions about so much in our own religious bodies or in others. We badly need these studies as reality checks.
The Pew study is perfectly clear about what it is examining and what it isn’t. It is not exploring spiritual profundities or the extent of devotion or holiness. The questions do not necessarily deal with what is most important in different faiths. They are simply indicators of the extent of religious knowledge broadly conceived in areas like Bible, Christianity, religion under the U.S. Constitution, and other world faiths.
The methodology is spelled out in painful detail. All the efforts to control for education, demographic factors, and various other things are very impressive, providing a firm basis for Jeanne Follmann stark comment about Catholics: “dead last” in the kind of religious knowledge measured here.
I do think that p. 65 pdf is confusing about the numbers that some people have cited. Those are (to me) clearly percentages not the number of people interviewed, though that is not clearly marked.
More on the Eucharist, but not now.
I wonder if Jews, Mormons and atheists/agnostics are knowledgeable, at least in part, because they are oppressed or discriminated against, and they ‘get to know their oppressor’ as a coping mechanism?
The question about the Eucharist on the Pew survey was as follows:
Which of the following best describes Catholic teaching about the bread and wine used for communion?
1 The bread and wine actually becomes the body and blood of Jesus Christ, or
2 The bread and wine are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ
The poll takers recorded other replies including “Don’t know” and “Refused,” although they did not offer these as choices.
The words “becomes” and “symbols” were underlined for the poll takers to emphasize.
I would have liked them to emphasize “best” as well. The point is always which of the alternatives comes closest to what is inevitably complicated.
The question is meant only to measure what people (not just Catholics) think that the church teaches, not whether they believe it or how they believe. After all, 40 percent of evangelicals and Mormons, and 41 percent atheists/agnostics had the right answer.
That only 55 percent of Catholics identified this teaching as that of their church is terribly significant. To what extent it proves the failure of cataches or the difficulty of the doctrine can be argued. Go to it. But to maintain that the results tell us very little or nothing significant because such polling must be simplified (even if the simplification is done very carefully) strikes me as willful denial of a discomforting finding.
Peter, I suspect that most Catholics hearing that question will not have paid attention to the first part and will have understood instead:
“Choose one of the following two options for communion:
1 The bread and wine actually becomes the body and blood of Jesus Christ, or
2 The bread and wine are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ”
Don’t you think that that’s likely?
Aha, Dr. Steinfels is exactly right; the numbers are percentages. The mutually exclusive categories on page 65 add up to 100.
“I wonder if Jews, Mormons and atheists/agnostics are knowledgeable, at least in part, because they are oppressed or discriminated against, and they ‘get to know their oppressor’ as a coping mechanism?”
Sorta, if you’ll allow my anecdotal evidence from having been raised by agnostic Unitarian parents. They often claimed to be oppressed by the religious majority. But in reality they weren’t denied jobs, housing, admission to restaurants, or the like because of their agnosticism. My grandmother did threaten to cut my dad out of her will if he didn’t go to church, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
My parents were certainly annoyed and pestered by various individuals, eagery beavery type evangelical neighbors and relations who had already saved some of the small prey among the religiously indifferent and wanted to bag som real live big game heathens. But my mother has very strong jaws, big teeth, and could usually out-argue them.
FWIW, that agnostic upbringing put me in good stead. I scored 100 on the quiz. My mother read us the Bible a lot, mostly to point out inconsistencies, events that strained credulity, and stuff that proved the Judeo-Christian God was vindictive and mean.
“willful denial of a discomforting finding”
little wonder we are adrift!
Poor lost Bob! Cling to the Barque of St. Peter along with the rest of us — all will be well!
BTW, not sure if the link to an abbreviated quiz was provided. Here it is, 15 questions from Pew:
http://features.pewforum.org/quiz/us-religious-knowledge/index.php
Best score gets a free catechism.
I just tried the test on my son, who is in his 9th year of CCD and has been going to Sunday Mass all his life. He believes in God but is not too certain, doesn’t know if the Bible is the word of God, thinks that Jesus was born in Nazareth (“Jesus of Nazareth”), that communion is a symbol, that salvation comes through faith alone, that the gospels were written by Mark, Luke, John and Paul, and has never heard of Job. In terms of factual knowledge, it’s a total failure.
That, after 2 years of CCD in France, 4 years in a suburban US parish, and 2+ years in an urban US parish. One can’t help but wonder: what’s the point of CCD? And do old-fashioned priests have a point when they say that instead of always Scripture-centered homilies, at Mass there should sometimes be sermons explaining some points of our faith?
Faith with intellectual content – what a concept! A little ironic for the religion which prides itself on the coherence of faith and reason.
I think there is a lack among the faithful and often the clergy of a straightforward understanding of the intellectual content of faith; we don’t have a coherent framework that makes it intelligible and makes it all hang together. And we don’t have a trusted authority to legitimize the coherent framework we don’t have. Who are we going to listen to, the bishops, going off half-cocked in the political arena and tainted with the sex abuse coverup? The Pope, who rails against the use of condoms to fight against AIDS? They have squandered their intellectual credibility.
Dave,
I seem adept at exposing one or another of your raw nerves. How else account for such precipitous, persistent, and jejune rejoinders?
What is being done at Catholic Universities regarding spirituality (courses, service, and especially the Eucharistic celebration) is paramount to the Church in America – 18 to 21 year olds want to know first the history of salvation and then be re-introduced to Christ – then they want to know what they are being saved from or saved for- they want to know what Jesus meant when he said ” your captivity is over” – only the Eucharist and the constant message of SALVATION draw them to the Church and its teachers – and then they look at their priests and want to see men who are holy in word and action and want to see a poverty of spirit.
Jejune! That at least allows me an aura of sophistication, Bob. For that I thank you. Just trying to offer you some comfort amid the storm.
Now off to ease my neurasthenia with a glass of red wine. I hope you’ll join me. Peace.
I think that a very big problem with our Eucharistic catechesis is that we stop at the elements, the bread and wine. Bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ so that we can become the body and blood of Christ. The aim is that the people are transformed and become more and more like Christ throughout their lifetimes. The eastern Church calls this transformation theosis. IN the west, we have gotten into a dead end of impossible physics rather than going further into the spiritual journey and the Eucharist as food for that journey. HOW? That is a mystery: through the power of the Holy Spirit and the prayer of the priest, these elements become the body and blood of Christ. We can’t prove it (despite bleeding hosts, etc, etc) but if we believe it, what it points to is that we are being nourished and strengthened in our journey of love.
Molly – you are so right – we also stop at the resurrection!! College students are enthused when we talk about the “appearances” (ophthe: Jesus let himself be seen) after the resurrection – and then they use their imagination to intelligently conclude that since the Eucharist is the very existence of the Church, Jesus certainly shared the “Last” Supper again and again with his disciples as the resurrected Jesus – again, Catholic teaching must begin with salvation and the Eucharist and the encounter with Christ – that is what moves people to charity and social justice, not the other way around.
So much of traditional teaching has gone by the wayside because it’s old school, associated with the “urban Catholic ghetto,” or not particularly rational. But the whole point of faith is to deal with mystery, so expecting it to be rational is, well, irrational.
We all accept the reality of looking at the Church as a creature of history which can develop and change. It might be useful to look at the past 50 years (where we obliterated so much of the tradition as old-school) from the same context.
If taking internet quizzes is your kind of thing, you can now take the Pew Forum’s “U.S. Religious Knowledge Quiz”:
http://features.pewforum.org/quiz/us-religious-knowledge/
According to the site, “This online quiz includes 15 of the 32 religious knowledge questions that made up the telephone survey.” I am proud to say I scored 15/15, despite overthinking a few (the hazards of multiple-choice).
I am not surprised by this finding, although it still surprises me how Catholics could not know these things. Still, I would note that most of the “collective” or group oriented activities that I participated in when I was an active part of the parish rarely focused on close examination of primary sources, whether the Bible, the catechism or anything else. It was just kind of assumed you knew those things once you had been confirmed. Whereas, Bible study (often supported by exegetical materials) is a basic activity in my husband’s Protestant church, and it is lifelong. His dad taught an adult men’s Bible study for more than 50 years and, basically, knew the entire Bible by memory.
I would also agree that whether it’s parish priests or the archbishop, the hierarchy almost never focuses on explicating distinctive Catholic teaching. Some focus on social justice messages, others on more purely political messages, both of which ostensibly arise out of beliefs, but rarely are “core beliefs” tested or explained on an ongoing basis.
Grasping the concept and doctrinal origins of transubstantiation seems pretty daunting to me. I’m not suprised that many Catholics (including me) are confused.
“One can’t help but wonder: what’s the point of CCD?”
There’s a mouthful.
My kid did not know the answers to most of the questions (10 years in the most abysmal CCD program in the Western hemisphere, I’d wager), but became irate halfway through the test, said none of that mattered except to old people afraid of death, and that now he has jumped through the hoop of Confirmation, he will go to Mass if required, but will not be taking communion.
I might have made a better Catholic out of him had I had a big beef with religion like my mother did. So much for making the effort to attend Mass, engage him in positive discussions about Church teaching, and giving a fair amount of cha-ching to that rotten program.
On the upside, maybe now that the kid has rejected Catholicism, Raber won’t have a huge cow if I go back to the Anglicans. (I’ll say “hi” to Blessed Henry Newman when I pass him on my way back across the Tiber.)
I too don’t find the results that surprising. They seem to me to show that those most actively committed to their stance *on* religion – either for it or agin it – tend to be the most knowledgeable *about* religion (at least in the limited way inquired into by this survey, anyways). Makes sense to me. What’s interesting to me is the widemiddle range of apparent lack of active engagement in wanting to understand the faith one claims to adhere to. Does that mean the claim is lip service belied by actual lack of attention? That a kind of short hand or shallowness has become a cultural modus vivendi even when it comes to things we value? Laziness? Anti-intellectualism? or …?? and…?
This topic of handing on the faith is the most important issue the Church and Commonweal must address now and for years to come. ” Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations…” (MT 28:19)
As a former priest, out almost 30 years, I retired at 57 from my job and wanted to spend my retirement years teaching at a Catholic High School in the Archdiocese of NY – I wanted to do my part in bringing the message of salvation to these young people and assist in preparing for the liturgies – the principal (a priest) would not even return my five phone calls after having received the resume on his desk – with a wonderful theological education from the likes of Imbelli, Komonchak, Meier, Dillon, Craghan, along with management/supervisory/public administration skills from work experience, I was deemed not worthy to teach Catholic kids based on Canon Law – instead I went to two college campuses to teach World Religions and Business Ethics – is there anyone interested in the passing on our faith???? Does it matter???
What strikes me as worth careful consideration, is that the ignorance about religion, one’s own and others’, seems to be a near constant across denominational and secular lines – except for a minority of folks deeply commited to their beliefs about religion (in the findings of this survey, this includes atheists, Mormons, some evangelicals …). Beneath or in addition to institutional and denominational problems, there is something more basic, and common to the culture as a whole, going on.
I agree Sara. We used to “receive” the faith full-blown from the figures of authority that in the past legitimized belief (Pope, bishops, priests). You followed the rules and got the benefits. Now all that’s changed — now we make up our own minds, for a number of reasons, including the Church destroying its intellectual credibility with Humanae Vitae. It’s a question of trusted authority. There is little trust left, except for the orthodox. We all make up our own minds, creating meaning from those bits of the tradition that make sense to us. Needless to say it’s a bit overwhelming.
And as Jim s. points out, the institution gets in its own way all the time, thanks to the trickle-down effect of maintaining the only absolute monarchy left in the West. Talk about destroying your own intellectual credibility.
Jeanne, I think you point out something very important: the overwhelmingness (is that a word?) of not just a plurality of possibilities within a tradition, but a seeming infinity of choices among, between and outside traditions as well. (Thinking of C. Taylor’s take on our secularity as one of “options”). Implications? The serious need for skills of discernment … which takes time, effort, knowledge, formation … in other words active engagement. have we (as a culture) decided it is not worth it? become incapable of seeing the worth? without resources for gaining the needed skills? What in the culture cultivates or militates against these? In the practical experience of Church? If these conflict, which “wins”? Questions compound questions …
Jeanne – trusted authority (bishops,priests) is the not the foundation of faith – if it was, Christianity would have been dead long ago – regarding the intellectual credibility of the Church per Humanae Vitae (which is rarely read because of it conclusion), I always remember the spirituality of marriage and the great compassion in it: “the Holy Spirit of God … illumines from within the hearts of the faithful and INVITES their assent.”
Jim s., you are right that the bishops and the priests are not the foundation of the faith, yet the institution was the thing that enabled the faith to be passed across generations. I think one of the reasons there is so much confusion today is that there is so little trust in the institution itself. The structures of institutional authority need to be re-created from the bottom up, which is where the real foundation lies.
And you’re right HV did start out great. It just didn’t end well.
But the Church (through Catholic grammar and high schools) did that – only provided the teaching (via catechism) and the pagan baby fund – I never knew what the priests were talking about in their sermons until I got to the seminary
When I think of my students (undergraduates), they certainly tend have a sense of mistrust of “institutional religion” as they call it – but that is not limited to the RC insitution (though sharper regarding *Western* institutions), they have some sense of “institutional religion” as a sort of universal entity (we spend some time picking that one apart!) But their mistrust is largely second-hand, indirect, inherited from their parents’ generation, as the young folks have little actual direct personal *experience* of institutional religion (unless they are recent or first generation immigrants). This is partly a reflection of our location, in Montreal – Quebec is one of the least “churched” cultures in N. America so very different from the US in some ways, though similar in some ways too. More accurate than mistrust is sheer dismissal, or even more: not even considering the “institution” as one of the options vying for their attention in the first place. They are of course very intelligent people, operating with knowledge about “religion” that they have absorbed from the culture: the media, mostly, though there is a subtler kind of osmosis that goes on too – yet they flock to classes in theology, interestingly, especially if the word “spirituality” is in it … (and by far most students in intro level courses are *not* theo or religion majors, but come from across the disciplines.) Maybe the weight has shifted from church to academy as far as where the decide to search these questions … and what are the implications there?
“have we (as a culture) decided it is not worth it? become incapable of seeing the worth? without resources for gaining the needed skills? What in the culture cultivates or militates against these? In the practical experience of Church? If these conflict, which “wins”? Questions compound questions ”
Great questions, Sarah. I wonder what the answers of the bishops would be. In some cases we know — they see the fundamentla problems as relativism, hedonism and unwillingness to take direction. But I think that is entirely, entirely too simple.
Jim S. –
Not was a priest. Once a priest, always a priest. Ways of serving change. Thank you, and God bless you.
Ge, David -jejune -I guess you’re not judicious enough and touched a raw nerve.
I had hoped this thread would offer some ideas going forward about dealing with the acknowledged lack of religious knowledge and the eucharist in particular as the center of Catholic life. Much of what’s here I see as bemoanin gour current stae but realistically what will work to change that?????
Sara – you have said plenty with great insight – the students love spirituality – they do not go to bookstores for self-help books – they have not read the Habits of Covey or the Secrets of Byrnes – they enjoy movies like City of Angels (where an angel leaves eternity out of love for a human) and talk about the “if only ” line by Tom Hanks in You’ve Got Mail – they don’t want to say when they are older about their faith “if only” – they are searching – only at the Catholic college/university level will the Church find its way again – what a responsibility we have! What a responsibility the students have!
Hi Ann, Yes simply fingerng “relativism/hedonism/individualism/etc etc etc” is too simple. But these are not irrelevant either and are deeply formative of our horizons, self-orientation, and action: hence our *probabilities*, if not exactly our *possibilities*. Not that any of this is entirely new to our time/place – but there are certain cultural trajectories in our culture that cherish and nurse them. You ask what the bishops would say … from my perspective, for the most part, that is not even a concern among the huge majority of people I know. I don’t know if it’s different in the States – though I suspect because *we* are concerned, we may tend to over-emphasise it as a concern of others. Can’t help but feel that ship has sailed, as far as the wider culture is concerned. So now what? (Sigh … I seem incapable of ending a post on declarative …)
Jim S., re Catholic colleges/universities: I am in an interesting position, in that I am teaching in a department of theological studies in a secular university that also has a distinct and separate department of religious studies. (All of this a consequence of a peculiar institutional history). This is a very creative, complex, in-process sort of situation, not without its problems! But I think it is exactly the sort of “location” for critical intellectual exploration of “religion”, faith, and our engagement and experience of these that will be more and more relevant in our secularised societies.
BTW – I mentioned that the majority of students taking intro theology classes come from across the disciplines (are not theo majors). The majority is also not made up of practicing Christians – though I would say a smal majority has “unchurched” Christian background (some nonetheless Christian “believers”, some atheists/agnostics, and New Agers) with sizable minorities across traditions: a few committed Christians of various denominations, as well as Jews, Muslims, Hindus — and a small scattering of Buddhists, Sikhs and other traditions. (Monteal is a very multicultural city and my uni is esp reflective of this.
When I stop to think about it, I’m a little annoyed that I have put up with the CCD requirements, as well as my parents, siblings, and children, even though we’re all firmly convinced of its uselessness. Had we refused to comply, we might have been challenged to think of an alternative. (But what, I don’t know — waiting until college or seminary doesn’t seem good.)
I was surprised that atheists had some very high scores, but the questions were quite simplistic. I find that atheists know a lot about controversial or obvious religious facts but very little about the Bible or a deeper view of faith.
For instance, say to an atheist “I heard this voice, fell off my horse and went blind. A few days later the scales fell off, though.”
They have no idea what you are talking about.
I do agree with whoever it was who noted that this was a survey to test knowledge *about* religion.
I’ve always thought that there is a lot to the notion, put forth by Fr. Greeley, who is following David Tracy, that Catholics approach their faith via an analogic imagination, and so images and poetry are what soak most deeply within us. We’re probably not so great at memorizing collections of facts (or Biblical verses, for that matter).
Our people may not be able to articulate clearly what the Eucharist is or is not, but their faith in it is undeniable.