Sunday, May 7, 2017

Properly catechized. . .

I believe it was Harry Wendt who once said something to the effect that in church we teach the children to entertain the parents.  It is a sad indictment of much that goes on in Sunday school, VBS, and catechism classes -- not to mention youth programs in general.  We treat children as if they are somehow hindered from learning when, in reality, they are sponges soaking up what we teach them.

A comment on a post a while ago said, "If kids can learn calculus and chemistry, they can be properly catechized."  It was a simple statement and yet so profound.  Read through much of what passes for Sunday school, children's church, Vacation Bible school, and catechism curricula and you see that we prepare with the idea that much of Scripture and doctrine is beyond the children so that they must be entertained instead of taught.  Yet at the same time you can hand a little child a cell phone and they can find their way to the video on it or the games they want to play.  We send them to school and they are taught how to read and write in classes that stretch across the better part of a day.  They can memorize lines from their favorite movies and recall intricate details of how to get past this or that obstacle in a video game.  But in Church we assume the best they can handle is an object lesson from a children's sermon or a coloring book to play with while we adults do the real stuff of worship.

We are not losing our children into young adulthood because they have been too well catechized.  We are not losing them because we have failed to teach them religion is fun and doctrine is fluff.  We are losing them because we never really had them.  We did not give them a chance.  We offered them books with more pictures than substance.  We gave them busywork to occupy them instead of nurture them into the faith.  We had them sing in church to make us proud or bring a tear to our eyes (with a digital sound track designed to sound like what they listen to in their ear buds).  Then when they wander from the faith we wonder what happened?

Someone a long time ago told me that if you gave a youth to a Roman Catholic Church until age 10, that child would remain Roman Catholic (at least in outlook) for the rest of their lives.  One thing I do admire about Rome is how they expect the child to have a common perspective in catechesis and the mass.  Watch a typical acolyte in a Lutheran church and you see someone generally bored or uninvolved unless are actually doing something.  Watch a typical altar server in a Roman mass and you see reverence offered no matter what the altar boy is doing.  Reverence expected is reverence given.  I am not saying we should pander to things Roman but to learn the lesson.  We do our children no favors by dumbing down worship and catechesis or by deceiving them as if church itself were as fun and entertaining as a movie or video game.  In effect, we have taught them to take nothing of the faith all that seriously.  And they learned that lesson well!

All our attempts to dumb down the things of church and school have not helped one bit to keep them in the faith or give them a solid education.  They rise to the expectation we set for them.  If we expect little, they will gain little.  If we expect much AND give them real tools to learn through good catechesis, we will not lose so many of them as they move into young adulthood.  Are we really losing kids who were properly catechized or is it more true to say we never had them, never gave them a chance, and squandered the opportunity their youthful interest and attention offered?

22 comments:

John Joseph Flanagan said...

I can only offer anecdotal examples of what can and often does happen to some of us who underwent Catholic school education and early childhood instruction in the Christian faith. The good things....introduction to Jesus, the word of God, and basic lifelong Christian truths. The bad: Papal infallibility, church veneration of the Saints, worship of Mary as co-redemptress and intermediary for Christ, purgatory, holiness ascribed to relics, prayers for the dead, and extrabiblical apparitions. The result: God calls many away from Catholicism to the plain truth of the Bible, as the Holy Spirit leads the elect safely out of the toxic false ideas taught by the Roman Church for centuries. Many singles, couples, and families I have known in my life were once Catholic, even attended parochial school...as I did for 9 years. On the other hand, I knew a Protestant preacher, raised as a Catholic, attended Catholic schools, even studied in seminary to be a Jesuit. He left in his last year at seminary...and left Catholicism forever. He had two sons which were also raised in a Christian household and under Christian early education. One left home and never saw his family again, having unresolved issues in his family life. The other son became a lawyer and a practicing atheist. So what do we conclude here? We conclude that it is God who elects, God who calls, and we cannot even assume early Christian education can guarantee the results we desire.

Carl Vehse said...

To be blunt, while Luther's Small Catechism is commonly (?) used in catechism class, if the catechumens never even hear the names of the other Lutheran Symbols mentioned in class before they publicly confirm their subscription to the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church contained in Holy Scripture and exposited in the Book of Concord of 1580, they have not been competently catechized.

David Gray said...

Just a reminder to observers who have not heard the vows taken all that is being assented to is the doctrine contained in the small catechism. Mr. Strickert's willful and highly idiosyncratic attempt to reinterpret the vows notwithstanding. I just heard my son take those vows last month, they are fresh in my ears.

Carl Vehse said...

The confirmation vow has been discussed previously. The confirmand publicly confesses the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, drawn from the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures to be faithful and true. The doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church is exposited in the Book of Concord of 1580.

The confirmand is not confessing simply to some limited (quatenus) part of the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, which he learned from one of the Symbols, the Small Catechism, with an optional public subscription to the other Symbols possibly occurring at some unspecified time in the future.

In LCMS congregations, communicant members (including new confirmands) are those baptized members who accept (submit to) the confessional standard of the LCMS congregation's constitution, which is the confessional standard of the LCMS constitution (Article II).

There are not two types of Lutherans: BOC-subscribing Lutherans and SC only-subscribing Lutherans. Lutherans are those who subscribe to the BOC. Lufauxrans (and Lufauxran church bodies) subscribe to something less.

David Gray said...

I think most people can read this and understand it.

"Do you confess the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, drawn from the Scriptures, as you have learned to know it from the Small Catechism, to be faithful and true?"

OldSouth said...

As a layman and parent, I applaud Pastor Peters' essay, and suggest that it be read carefully and taken to heart. I am watching watching churches, once stable and prospering churches, vaporize. Forty-something years of dumbing down and trivializing Christian faith have succeeded. Parents in their thirties now consider Christianity as dumb and trivial.

Carl Vehse said...

Lutherans who have been competently catechized will understand their vow of confessing the Lutheran doctrine is not only to those articles of doctrine contained in the Small Catechism, or those articles of doctrine contained in the Apostles, Nicene, or Athanasian Creeds, but to the entire doctrine drawn from the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures and exposited in the Book of Concord of 1580.

LMMV (Lufauxran mileage may vary)

David Gray said...

Vows aren't defined by bit players with imaginations. They are defined by the words that constitute the vow. Everyone can read the vow.

Carl Vehse said...

The Lutheran understanding of the vow is that it is a Lutheran vow made at a Lutheran confirmation.

Lufauxrans will likely imagine it to be a less-than-Lutheran vow made at a less-than-Lutheran confirmation.

"So what is it to be a Lutheran?

"Being a Lutheran is being a person who believes the truths of God's Word, the Holy Bible, as they are correctly explained and taught in the Book of Concord. To do so is to confess the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Genuine Lutherans, confessional Lutherans, dare to insist that "All doctrines should conform to the standards [the Lutheran Confessions] set forth above. Whatever is contrary to them should be rejected and condemned as opposed to the unanimous declaration of our faith" (FC Ep. RN, 6)."

David Gray said...

People can read the vow.

Lutherans can speak English, these days.

This Lutheran can.

Carl Vehse said...

Good. Recognizing the vow is in English is a first step.

Now the next step is to recognize the vow is a Lutheran confession, not a less-that-Lutheran one.

David Gray said...

I don't think confusing a vow with a confession moves us forward.

Carl Vehse said...

Well, right there is one problem in reading English where the confirmand is asked, "Do you confess the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church..."

To which the confirmand is expected to answer "I do", and not "I do, but only for that fraction of doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church as I have learned to know those selected articles of doctrine from the Small Catechism."

David Gray said...

Mr. Strickert,

You are correct that this vow is also a confession. However you argue like a liberal.

This:

"Do you confess the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church..."

is only understood in the context of this:

"Do you confess the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, drawn from the Scriptures, as you have learned to know it from the Small Catechism, to be faithful and true?"

People can read the vow for themselves.

And then they can remember the nature of your reasoning in this matter and apply it to all other situations in which they find you active.

Carl Vehse said...

"However you argue like a liberal."

It's always reassuring when ad hominems get tossed in, which indicate that the accuser is scraping the bottom of his rhetorical barrel.

And who is actually being liberal? A person who conforms to the understanding of what a Lutheran (including a Lutheran confirmand and communicant member) confesses, or one who seeks to sophistically minimize the meaning of a Lutheran confession to selectively learned pieces of doctrine?

As previously stated, the person who makes the Lutheran vow confesses the entire doctrine (singular) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, drawn from Scripture, as he has learned to know IT from the Small Catechism, to be faithful and true.

This does NOT mean a confession of only those partial articles of doctrine as he has learned to know THEM from the Small Catechism to be faithful and true, with the other remaining articles of doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, drawn from Scripture and exposited in other Lutheran Symbols to be acknowledged at some unspecified time.

The understanding of the confirmand's vow of a quia confession to the entire doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church as exposited in the Book of Concord of 1580 is reinforced by a subsequent question answered affirmatively by the confirmand, “Do you desire to be a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church and of this congregation?”

Such a question means that the confirmand has given his unconditional (quia subscription to the Lutheran Symbols in the Book of Concord of 1580 as a Lutheran communicant member of a Lutheran congregation which declares itself to be part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. There is no liberal wiggle room for another Lutheran definition.

There is of course, lots of liberal Lufauxran wiggle room for many definitions of Lufauxran subscriptions with Lufauxran understandings by Lufauxran members of Lufauxran congregations which practice open communion for anyone who holds less than a Lutheran confession.

Carl Vehse said...

In his "The Evangelical Lutheran Church the True Visible Church of God on Earth," C.F.W. Walther states in Thesis XXI:

A. The Evangelical Lutheran Church is sure that the teaching contained in its Symbols is the pure God's truth because it agrees with the written Word of God in all points.

B. The Evangelical Lutheran Church requires its members and especially its teachers unreservedly to confess and vow fidelity to its symbols.

C. The Evangelical Lutheran Church rejects all fraternal and churchly fellowship with those who reject its Confessions in whole or in part.

David Gray said...

The only thing binding on someone who takes a vow are the words of the vow. Mr. Strickert, why not go out in the open, under your own name, and lead a glorious movement to revise the vows? That would be good honest, honorable work.

Carl Vehse said...

The words of the vow are clear to Lutherans who subscribe unconditionally to the Book of Concord of 1580. The words are less clear to those who have been not be competently catechized.

"why not go out in the open, under your own name, and lead a glorious movement to revise the vows?"

I did. On November 14, 2015, I made such a suggestion in a comment to the Reporter's November 11, 2015, article, "Symposium to focus on 21st-century confirmation issues. The Reporter staff deleted it.

David Gray said...

Oh, come on. People who have been adequately catechized regarding the eighth commandment recognize that vows mean what they actually say.

Let the words speak for themselves.

Carl Vehse said...

The words do speak for themselves as they state the confirmand is confessing to the doctrine of the Evangelical Lutheran Church as he has learned to know it from the Small Catechism.

The words do NOT speak to mean:

• the confirmand is confessing only to the articles of doctrine found in the Small Catechism, or

• the confirmand is confessing only to the articles of doctrine that he happened to learn to know from the Small Catechism.

The words also speak for themselves when the confirmand answers the question of whether he desires to be a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the congregation in which he will commune. As C.F.W. Walther (and others) pointed out, such a membership requires an unreserved confession to all the Symbols in the Book of Concord of 1580.

David Gray said...

The fact that you attempted to alter the vows to mean what you wish they meant demonstrates that they do not presently mean what you wish they meant.

Carl Vehse said...

No, it just means I recognize the poor reading and comprehension skills of those who suggest the vow has a limited (quatenus) Lufauxran meaning.