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Theology in Wonderland

Teacher Training in Orange Diocese

By Charles A. Coulombe

What is tradition? What is Catholicism? These are questions which, since the Council of Nicaea, appeared to have been answered for a Catholics for all time -- all time, that is, until our own day. The question has apparently been re-opened, at least in the diocese of Orange.

During the summer of 1999, teachers in that diocese, according to participants who have asked (for career reasons) to have their names withheld, were required to attend a course given through what was then titled the Orange Catechetical Institute [since renamed the Institute for Pastoral Ministry] which is the official training organ of the diocese of Orange. The institute, headed by Ruth Bradley and Joan Kulik under the direction of Father Chris Heath and, ultimately Bishop Tod Brown, is responsible for preparing catechism and adult religious education teachers. The enrollment for the institute is not limited to the laity; priests and deacons also attend classes there. The course is part of the certification requirements for those involved in catechesis throughout the diocese.

One of the courses offered was "Catechetical Methods," taught by one Patsi Wagner. Not supposed to teach doctrine, the course was designed to help teachers to learn various teaching styles and techniques designed to hold student interest and to appeal to various styles of learning ("multiple intelligences") to facilitate the teaching of "religion." Wagner's course, given to about 30 adult catechists, included a game where each person chose one of the four corners of the room (a common teaching tool) -- each corner representing an idea about God, including "coach," "buddy," and "judge." Persons were to choose the corner of the room which best represented their own understanding of God, and to explain why that particular corner had been chosen. Only one person had chosen "judge," and she shared with the group that she was still "struggling" to get over her "guilt" and her perception of a judgmental God. Wagner approached the woman and encouraged the class to affirm her courage, declaring that a number of people struggle with this image of God as judge.

Participants in the class took the Myers-Briggs personality test to determine their personalities, were encouraged to share feelings about various topics, hold hands and pray in a large group circle, and dabble in amateur psychology. One evening participants received a "letter" which had supposedly been written by Jesus to each of them; they were then to go off to a private space with the letter, meditate, and come back and share their feelings.

Once, Wagner strayed from discussion of catechetical methods to let the class know that she had been director of religious education at Saints Simon and Jude parish in Huntington Beach. Wagner related how, when working at Sts. Simon and Jude, she ignored the priest's formula for mixing tap water and holy water (which would render all of the water still holy water). She said that she simply put regular tap water in the holy water fonts instead of holy water, because "all water is blessed." She told the class, "I could bless that water ... anyone could bless that water." After saying this she stated that she had better not go on because she "might get in trouble." Wagner also informed the class that she had always been a good Catholic girl and struggled with the faith in her early adulthood. During this period, she said, she once deliberately missed Mass on a Sunday just to see what would happen, and "no bolt of lightning" had struck her.

But perhaps the most exotic training tool employed by Ms. Wagner was a video entitled, Tradition. This video was written and narrated by Father Micahel Himes, professor of theology at the Jesuit Boston College. Wagner praised the film, saying that it was people in the Church such as this man who make her proud to be a Catholic.

In the film, Father Himes compared the Church to a store which in order to stay at the height of fashion, must always change. Quoting Cardinal Newman out of context, ("to live is to change, to live perfectly is to change frequently"), Father Himes defined tradition as "changing;" any attempt to maintain the Catholic faith as it has been lived in the past, he said, is to destroy the Catholic faith.

He made the comparison already noted of the Church with a department store. Such a store, if it's to keep its reputation of being at "the height of fashion," must constantly change its window displays. So too with the Church. Tradition is not maintaining the Faith unchanged since the time of Christ ("as Catholics often said when I was growing up," Father Hines said), but altering practices and dogmas in accordance with time and place.

To illustrate his point further, Father Himes quoted Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. In a rich voice, reminiscent of the animated pudding Alice confronts at the end of the story, the priest related her confrontation with the Red Queen in the midst of the tale. "Telling Alice to run, she leads her faster and faster, until at last she stops. Alice falls breathless to the ground. Then Alice notices that they are where they started. 'Oh, yes,' say the Red Queen. 'Here we must run as fast as we can to stay where we are. To get anywhere else we must run much faster than that.'"

Father Himes than went on to redefine the communion of saints. "Setting aside, if only for the moment," the traditional view of this dogma, he goes on to satirize it as a sort of celestial bank. He spoke of the Church triumphant as those who have "retired to a sort of spiritual Florida;" the Church suffering in purgatory are "those who have gone bankrupt;" while the Church militant on earth are "those who are still putting into the system." The Holy Ghost, said Himes, is the "CEO," who applies profits to those in bankruptcy. This "mythic" view of the communion of saints, the cleric assures us, is "probably not helpful in the long run."

Far better, Father Himes consoled his viewers, is his own view of the communion of saints as a "conversation" between those living here today and those who lived elsewhere and at other times. This, he asserted, frees us from trying to understand "the Mystery" purely in contemporary terms.

Indeed, said Himes, any manner of understanding the Faith in any given time and/or place is insufficient to grasp the "Mystery." Showing a baroque woodcut of a procession with the Blessed Sacrament, he intoned, "what is appropriate for Medieval Europe ... [cut to African nuns in habits swaying with fans]..." may not be appropriate for twentieth century Africa. What is splendid in twentieth century North America ... [cut to a home Mass around a coffee table with the priest passing the chalice to the person sitting next to him on a couch] ... may be incomprehensible in seventeenth century Latin America..." [cut to print of a saint's fiesta]. For Father Hines, nothing was defined or definable in the faith.

He did allow for a "magisterium" of sorts, to "guide the conversation," and he placed it primarily in the hands of the "college of bishops and the bishop of Rome, the pope." But this magisterium is not a body of clergy with "a privileged access to the Faith;" rather, all Catholics who have ever lived or who ever will live, the entirety of the people of God, define the Faith in what they believe and how they practice their religion.

Father Himes sternly warned that the Faith cannot be defined by what's in a catechism, and cautioned us against those who would "stand pat." This was personified by a cut to a grim old codger reading a copy of The Catholic Catechism written in the 1970s for the United States by Father John Hardon, at the request of Pope Paul VI. Later, while Himes spoke pejoratively of "standing pat," the elderly man was shown (sans catechism) in a discussion with other, obviously spiritually upbeat people, around a table -- he appeared to be at odds with them, and finally folded his arms in a closed and unfriendly gesture of disapproval.

At last, Father Himes approvingly quoted "the eminent Lutheran Scholar, Jaroslav Pelikan, a professor at Yale University, who tells us that 'tradition is the living faith of the dead, while traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.'" Himes ended by saying that "traditionalism may be a great heresy, but tradition is a great gift."

Intrigued by Father Himes' film, I showed it to a homeschooling family I know. "You say this is being used to train diocesan teachers?" said Mrs. C. "It is just this kind of attitude we didn't want the children exposed to."

Mr. C. became very thoughtful. "Of course, there is some truth to it; tradition is not just doing what was done in the '50s. But he mixes this with nonsense! He doesn't seem to believe in any universally, objectively true version of Catholicism."

The next person I shared it with was a Catholic educator, formerly a headmaster of a Catholic academy. "Fr. Himes raises more questions than he answers. What does he mean by 'continuity' in tradition? He says that tradition is the story of how things have changed -- but isn't it also the story of how things haven't changed? Is there anything that cannot change? He says that the older idea of the communion of saints is a 'mythic notion' -- does that mean that it is untrue? Where does he get his idea that the magisterium is charged with 'maintaining the conversation,' but is not a 'yardstick' to measure everybody's way of living the Faith? Is the pope's contribution to maintaining the conversation only equal to everyone else's? What authority do older expressions of the Faith have, anyway?"

Does the diocese of Orange actively promote such materials as the Tradition video tape? Joan Kulik, director of the Institute for Pastoral Ministry, told me that, for the most part, the teachers are responsible for choosing their own materials. Further, she said that there has been a lot of positive feedback from participants of Wagner's classes. Kulik said she would give my phone number to Wagner, who would contact me. Wagner, at this writing, had not contacted me.

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