Religion: Prayers & Lollypops

In some 10,000 Roman Catholic schools and colleges in the U. S., 89,000 priests, brothers and nuns teach about 2,500,000 grammar school, highschool, college and seminary students. Last week as Catholic schools were opening for the year, many a Catholic teacher was scandalized to hear orthodox religious education roundly and rudely excoriated, flayed not by some Protestant iconoclast but by a Jesuit of good repute.

When parochial teachers of Rochester, N. Y. gathered for an annual conference, 800 priests and nuns heard a speech by Rev. Francis Peter LeBuffe, S. J., business manager of the able Jesuit weekly America. An expert at making points of dogma crystal clear, Father LeBuffe had a blackboard handy, covered it with white, red, green, yellow chalk marks demonstrating the meaning of the Trinity, Original Sin, Transubstantiation, Incarnation. And then Father LeBuffe went on to say:

"Whether we like it or not, we Catholic teachers must realize that our courses in Religion are not being taught as they should be. They are frequently voted by the students to be 'the worst-taught courses in the curriculum.' We must teach fundamental dogmas rather than the frills and accidentals of Religion. . . . There is too much fluffy-ruffle stuff in pious books—entirely too much. I would like to take 90% of the spiritual books written and make a glorious bonfire of them, and their authors too, because they do not tell fundamental truths."

Finally Jesuit LeBuffe paid his respects to novenas—the Catholic act of faith which the devout spend nine days performing, usually saying numerous prayers in honor of a saint or a feast day. Said he: "Now I carry a medal of the Little Flower with me and pray to her daily, but I am not sure I'd die for a novena to the Little Flower. There is too much Novena-itis, too many spiritual lollypops in presentday religion. I favor novenas, of course, but I do not believe that God is ultimately going to save us by numbers. If I am going to face a firing squad, I will die for something that means more to me than life itself. Hence, we must teach our young people rock-bottom dogmas, which are worth more than life itself. And you can make the truths of faith so thrilling, so gripping, that men and women, young and old, will literally listen to you spellbound."