Religious education must become a training ground for thinking and not just indoctrination, Father Michael A. Morris told the South Deanery of the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Women.

Father Morris, director of the Office of Religious Education, was the speaker Sunday at the meeting at St. Philip Benizi Church, Jonesboro. His topic was “Toward A Theology of Christian Maturity.”

“No matter how enlightened the content, no matter how up-to-date the teaching techniques, we fail if we do not develop in the students some facility in thinking as religious persons.”

Father Morris said, “If we look at the typical adult Catholic today, we find that he is largely unable to think for himself in the religious sphere.”

“All too often, he is entirely conditioned by the religious training given him as a child. When a situation arises for which he was not specifically prepared, then he tends to become very confused. Sometimes the only way of resolving this confusion is for him to adhere rigidly to the religious solutions of childhood, or, even worse perhaps, to jettison his religious heritage altogether. This, I think is tragic and unnecessary and it makes for great anguish in the face of change.”

He said in the past Catholic life was very stable, but that today’s changes have caused certainties of a highly dogmatic structure to give way before the complexities of the modern world.

“A strong moral code which offered clear, precise and sometimes minute answers for every conceivable situation (and even for some situations which were hardly conceivable at all) has lost its power. In the face of these facts, it would be difficult to overemphasize the need for help which the Catholic laity and even priests must have in order to understand what is happening to the Church in the modern world.”

Discussing the ways to approach some of the problems, Father Morris said the most important thing is the attitude of the teacher or parent.

“Have we, you as parents and we as priests, catechists or religious educators ever thought out what our beliefs really mean in personal terms, or do we merely repeat what we once learned from others?” “Do we act like someone who simply has the truth, or do we realize that the Christian life is still a search for the truth by which we live?”

The speaker said all must have a fundamental openness to the truth, adding that fear, timidity and insecurity will destroy all efforts to help others.

“Secondly, we must appreciate a vital need to understand the development of dogma. The fact of rapid and far-reaching change in the Church makes this understanding of development of doctrine imperative.”

“This lack of understanding the theology of development of dogma is a major cause of so much suffering and confusion for Catholics today.” “People just cannot understand how the Church teaches something different now from her teaching in the past. The pity is that we just do not have an adequate theology of development of dogma and for this reason, priests and religious teachers have shied away from talking about it in the past.”

He said the need to understand development becomes more vital as the Church faces more clearly her role in the modern world.

In making his third point, Father Morris said the parent or religion teacher cannot regard himself as provider of answers.

“One cannot presume to answer satisfactorily the really deep questions about God, about the relationship between a person and his God, nor can we offer a rule of thumb which solves all moral problems.”

“I think, students, especially teen-agers, learn much more respect for religion when we help them see how God’s ways utterly transcend what we can say about Him.”

“This, of course, does not rule out legitimate answer giving. For example, when a student asks what the teaching of the Church is on war and peace, we can summarize what the Second Vatican Council has said on the subject and what the American bishops have said in their respective statements on the matter.”

However, Father Morris said what should be done in religious education is contributing to a sense of wonder which forms attitudes of openness, in mind and heart, to all reality.

The religious education director said children and students should be helped to assimilate all religious knowledge which is taught. “This means that truth must become a part of us and our children or students.”

“It is not enough for a doctrine or moral principle simply to exist ‘in itself,’ ‘out there,’ as something totally other, objective and therefore distant. It must become part of the personal life of the student,” he said.

“Finally, this approach to maturity involves listening to the students. No teacher can promote independent thinking among his students unless he finds out how they are thinking by hearing them express themselves.”

“Encouragement of their first tentative and halting efforts at religious ideas is a must. The teacher, who is adventurous enough to approach religious education in this way, or parent, who is willing to see the religious formation of his child like this, will not fear young people departing from long enshrined textbook formulations of Christian morality or dogma.”

“He will see this as a healthy stage on the way of growth toward maturity. The person who simply parrots the correct response, or who demands the parroted response, limits himself to failure in the life of the mind and heart. And that is inhuman and tragic.”