Young Catholics: when labels don't fit

Commonweal, Nov 19, 2004 by Cathleen Kaveny

Let me call the parallel segment of the more conservative group the defenders. They view themselves almost as members of a legal team, charged with safeguarding the interests of the faith in a culture perceived as hostile to it. Taking their cue from magisterial pronouncements, they are alert for any occasion when any proposition of official Catholic teaching (as clearly set forth in the Catechism) is questioned, let alone departed from or disparaged, whether it occurs in the classroom or in the dorm chapel. On such occasions, they spring to the church's defense, not with emotion or intimidation, but by calmly marshaling every argument available to them. They also try very hard to be good persons, but their notion of what counts as such is informed in detail by the intricacies of traditional Catholic moral teaching, canon law, and liturgical rubrics. For them, "reason" is an effective tool to be used in pinning down and defending the unambiguous claims of "faith."

What characteristics do the defenders and the compartmentalizers have in common? First, both groups are deeply affected by the dissonance they perceive between the broader culture and the Catholic faith; one group takes a "fight" mentality, while the other prefers "flight." Second, both groups perceive the church as fragile; the defenders spring to its aid, while the compartmentalizers refrain from impolitely agitating it.

The third common characteristic, in my view, is the most troubling. In different ways, both groups treat their intellects in an almost exclusively instrumental fashion. The compartmentalizers use intellect in order to achieve worldly success--good grades and good jobs. The defenders use intellect to protect the interests of the church. But intellect in the Catholic tradition is not merely a tool, it is a point of human contact with the divine. We can come to know God, not just propositions about God, through the activity of our intellectual life, and in coming to know God, become more like God.

In my view, the fundamental challenge we face in educating members of the next generation is helping them understand their own minds in a noninstrumental way. We can do this, by showing them how they can be fully intellectually engaged in the exploration of their faith. A crucial task, in my view, will be nurturing them in the confidence that the church, the tradition it passes on, and the God whom it proclaims, are strong, not weak. They are strong enough to deal with the difficulties and doubts that will inevitably arise in attempting to bring Catholicism and contemporary culture into an honest, open conversation. They are strong enough to deal with the questions, even the hard ones, allowing them to remain questions rather than too quickly silencing them with a pat response. The basic mode for catechesis, in my view, cannot be the detached certitude of the new Catechism, but the intellectually and existentially relentless encounter with God carried out by St. Augustine in the Confessions.