In today’s episode I share another great quote from Pope John Paul ii’s great document on Catholic education called Catechesi Tradendae. He shares with us the truth that students have a right to learn the fullness of the Catholic faith even if our post-modern world is not too excited about doing so. Listen in as I provide some encouragement for all those teachers who have ever wondered if they are allowed to teach what the Church really teaches.

Author

Jonathan Doyle

Jonathan Doyle is an international speaker, author, businessman and executive coach who has spoken around the world to more than 400,000 people on topics related to personal development, peak performance, leadership, relationships and much more.

His recent keynote addresses include the NCEA National Convention in St. Louis Missouri to 10,000 delegates and he is a frequent keynote speaker in the US, Asia and Europe.

He is also the founder of an influential education and media business that delivers training content to hundreds of organisations and thousands of individuals around the world on a weekly basis.

Jonathan holds an undergraduate degree in education from the University of Canberra, a Masters Degree in Leadership and Management from the University of Newcastle and has also undertaken post-graduate study in philosophical anthropology.

He is the author of numerous books on relationships and peak performance and each day shares these same ideas with a large global audience via The Daily Podcast with Jonathan Doyle.

Finishing Strong is a loud and clear call for every young person to make the very best of their final years of school. Based on hundreds of seminars around the world to a huge number of students Jonathan Doyle offers powerful, practical advice that can make a major difference.

Each chapter offers inspiring stories, clear principles and actionable steps for identifying and moving forward in study, life, friendships and each key area of life.

Jonathan also includes journal questions and guided reflections at the end of each chapter to maximise learning and ensure the ideas and principles can be made real, personal and achievable.

If you want to help your child or students make the very best of their final years of high school then it;s time to help them finish strong!

TRANSCRIPT:

Well, hey everybody. Jonathan Doyle with you once again. Welcome, friends, to the Catholic Teacher Daily Podcast. God bless you for your amazing vocation. Whether you’re still in COVID lockdown or you’re back in the classroom, good things are going to happen. The Holy Spirit is going to be active in your vocation the more that you open to the spirit and good things are going to happen. What a wonderful vocation you have and what amazing good you can do in the world as you partner with the Holy Spirit in reaching young people.

Now, a little bit of housekeeping. If you haven’t got a copy of my new book, do me a favor, go to onecatholicteacher.com and go to the resources tab. My new book there is called Finishing Strong. I want you to grab that book. If you’re in high school, you’re a high school teacher, or an educator in any sense, go check that book out. Onecatholicteacher.com, resources tab, get the new book, Finishing Strong.

Listen, today I’m going to get a little controversial. You get old enough, you live long enough, and you just start to think, “You know what? I’ve got to say what I really think here.” I think, you know how we see old people, especially old men, sometimes they’re really opinionated. I don’t want to be that guy, but I just think we have a beautiful rich tradition in our Catholic faith, and one of the greatest things we can do is share the fullness of it with young people, have the courage to do that.

I mean, young people, I think, don’t want mediocre. They don’t want bland. They would rather have the faith presented to them and reject it. I know, famously, Cardinal George Pell, who many of you will be familiar with, many years ago was drafting a new RE curriculum, and people were criticizing it, saying, this is too orthodox. He famously said, “Well, I at least want the young people to know what it is that they’re rejecting.”

I always liked that line. He was always like, well, if people are going to reject it, let them reject what the church actually teaches and says, not some ameliorated, watered down version of it that’s palatable to modern sensibilities. Let’s give them the faith. Let’s present Catholic doctrine, and truth, and beauty, and let the cards fall where they may. Let’s have the courage to teach it, and first to know it. So I want to give you some backup to that.

I’m sharing quotes at the moment from Catechesi Tradendae, a great document from a Pope John Paul II. Catechesi Tradendae translate as catechesis in our time. So listen to this. He’s going to talk to us today about the rights of young people to hear the faith. So he’s really suggesting that young people shouldn’t just be passive inputs in our system. They have rights. We’re a culture that’s obsessed with rights, but we don’t often think that young people have a right to hear the faith fully.

So listen to these words here, John Paul II, in Catechesi Tradendae says, “The young … ” Where is it? Wrong quote. Here it is here. “The young person who becomes a disciple of Christ has the right to receive the word of faith, not in mutilated, falsified, or diminished form, but whole and entire in all its rigor and vigor. Unfaithfulness on some point to the integrity of the message means a dangerous weakening of catechesis and putting at risk the results that Christ and the ecclesial community have a right to respect from it.”

That’s heavy, isn’t it? I mean, he’s not really pulling any punches there. He saying that what we pass on to our young people shouldn’t be mutilated, falsified, or diminished. Mutilated, falsified, or diminished. So the doctrines of faith, the beauty of faith, is something that we need to have the courage to pass on to our young people. Even if it’s, to our modern sensibilities, at times hard to do, I think we need to find the courage to say, this is what the church teaches. This is what Christ has spoken into the church. This is what the sacred texts actually say.

Definitely since the Second Vatican Council, if you look at John XXIII, I mean, I was finishing reading Athanasius Schneider’s book last night, and his take was that since John XXIII, there’s been this kind of desire, often at the highest levels of the church, to accommodate the church to the surrounding culture. It was like we had this idea that if we make the surrounding culture like us, if we’re not too offensive, if we kind of use the language, and the corporate structures, and the marketing ideas of the surrounding culture, then maybe they’ll like us, and if they like us, maybe more people come to church.

Well, let’s be honest, friends, how has that worked for us so far? I mean, are the churches fuller now than they were 50 years ago? Is the church in a stronger position than it was 50 years ago? Yeah, I don’t know. I mean, if the church was a business, I’m not sure how much stock I would have been buying based on that curve from 50 years ago. So I just think that, what else can we do, than know the faith, present the faith, share that faith with young people, not in an overly dogmatic way that’s …

We know when people are like that, and they get ultra-orthodox, and they just get rigid, and … Sure. We get that. I mean, that’s not going to win a lot of converts, but what does win people is witnesses, people like you and me who are witnesses to the apostolic faith, that love the Eucharist, that love prayer, that love the sacred texts, that love the tradition and want to share that with young people. I mean, that’s really, I think, what will become appealing.

So, friends, that’s enough for me. Hope I haven’t lost too many of you with that, but I think it’s time that I just started to encourage us all in what I actually think and feel is going to be a blessing to young people. All right. That’s it from me. You can find me on Instagram, jonathandoyle47. If you’re on Twitter, I’ve got a pretty solid presence there on Twitter, beingcatholic1. Beingcatholic1 on Twitter, come and say hi, give me a follow, reach out. Everything else is on the website at onecatholicteacher.com, especially the resources tab. Hit that resources tab. Everything’s there. My name’s Jonathan Doyle. This has been the Catholic Teacher Daily Podcast. God bless you for your work, and I’ll have another message for you tomorrow.