by Joseph Stoutzenberger
In the 1990s, at one of their annual meetings, the U.S. Catholic bishops lamented that the vast majority of Catholic married couples practiced artificial birth control, which was declared immoral in a 1968 papal encyclical. They concluded that the problem was that the teaching was not explained well enough in Catholic schools and parishes.
I had taught religion in a Catholic high school for eleven years and later in Catholic colleges, so I was very interested in what was happening in Catholic education. I made the topic the subject of my Ph. D. dissertation: Catholic High School Religion Textbooks: Do They Liberate? Catholic religious education is not to be indoctrination, but it is intended to bring students to an appreciation and understanding of Catholicism and its teachings. However, for the past fifty years accrediting agencies evaluate schools on how well they incorporate “critical thinking” into their curriculum. The study of Catholicism, as with other subjects, should offer students opportunities to analyze, question, and critique. Critical thinking happens in social studies classes; shouldn’t it also take place in religion courses?
In my dissertation research, done in the 1980s and early 90s, I came across two studies that raised questions about education as liberation. A conservative Christian school incorporated critical thinking into its study of the church it was affiliated with. The study found that, after graduating, most of the students left the church! A longitudinal study of students who graduated from a Catholic high school in New Mexico discovered a similar result. Four years after graduation, most students had rejected official Catholic teaching on a number of issues, most notably, the teaching that artificial contraception is immoral.
Does including questioning and critical thinking in its education undermine Catholicism? Can Catholicism itself be liberatory, a place for free exchange of ideas and of questioning authority? Should it be? If Catholics are to question dominant secular norms, should they also be open to analyzing and critiquing Catholicism itself? According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus began his own teaching career proclaiming that he came to bring liberation to captives. He meant people physically in prison, but also people imprisoned in their narrow point of view. All during his public life he constantly asked thought-provoking questions. His death on the cross was an exclamation point but also a question mark to his message. His early followers struggled to make sense of it; it went against established expectations about what the messiah would be. Jesus’s questioning of authority eventually led to a break by his followers from the dominant norms both of Jewish and Roman establishments.
Catholicism today can play the role that Jesus did in his day. In the 1980s, the U. S. Catholic bishops issued two pastoral letters that questioned prevailing positions on two timely topics: the economy and war and peace. Their letters met with rejection and even condemnation from some powerful voices. Individual Catholics can also find in their faith the impetus and inspiration to raise questions and put forth alternative points of view. A few years ago, I was called up for jury duty. The case was that of a young man who had killed a police officer, so the death penalty was a possibility. Potential jurors were asked if anyone was against the death penalty. I raised my hand and was brought into the judge’s chamber. I was asked upon what basis I objected. I said that as a religion teacher in a Catholic school, I knew that Catholic teaching viewed the use of capital punishment as morally wrong in today’s world. The Irish judge and the Italian lawyer, both probably Catholic themselves, didn’t know what to make of my answer; but they dismissed me from the jury pool. The Catholicism they knew was not so counter to the laws of the land as I understood it to be.
Vatican Council II offers a guideline for those who want to see education as liberation: “The human spirit must be cultivated in such a way that there results a growth in its ability to wonder, to understand, to contemplate, to make personal judgments, and to develop a religious, moral, and social sense” (“The Church in the Modern World,” #59). Wonder, think, question, make judgments, be attentive to others—hallmarks of liberatory pedagogy. Didn’t Jesus want his followers to cultivate these very qualities?
Joseph Stoutzenberger 