Thursday, August 4, 2022

What We Catholic Kids Didn’t Learn In The 80s

There’s a joke, sort of, about what we Catholic kids didn’t learn in the 1980s. And the 1970s, for that matter. In the last couple of decades, some of us have tried to make up for the lack and have studied up on the Faith. What we didn’t know….

This is my list of terminology, let alone what is behind those terms:

  • Catechesis
  • Doctor of the Church
  • Church Founders
  • Apologetics
  • Deposit of Faith
  • Sacred Tradition
  • Apocrypha
  • Sanctifying Grace

And much more.

We who came of age in the 1980s, and were “educated” in the Faith in Catholic schools were exposed to a lot of ideas, some Scripture and exchanges on morality, but concrete education on what the Church teaches, why it is taught that way, and how to defend those teachings was not part of the package. That, for many of us, had to be learned later.

Thankfully, when Pope Saint John Paul II put out his Catechism, the understanding began to dawn, as did the idea that Church history MUST be taught right alongside the rest so that we can understand that the Church is on a continuum, and no matter how bad the leadership is or how many people fall away, the Faith itself does not change.

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