Confraternity of Christian Doctrine

Ok, bear with me.

It's Sunday, and I have to work at seven. Normally I'd do a switch or lie cheat or steal to get a later start to fulfil my obligation to teach ninth grade Catholic History at my parish. Being that I've missed a boatload of work due to my illness, this week I'm not able to do it. So the inevitable call to my coordinator to say I'm not making it.

Long story short, I lose a very valuable class at (and I cannot overstate this) an absolutely critical time of year. The Second Vatican Council is lost.

The entire process of CCD, youth education within the Catholic Church to students who attend public school, falls under the auspices of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, an organization whose foundation was set in the Council of Trent in 1563. Granted, the CCD we see today has much more to do with St. Pope Pius X and his work during the turn of the twentieth century, but the key to the organization is a confraternity, a group of lay people and clergy dedicated to the education and catechises of the youth of the Church. For reasons apparent to all and far too numerous to individually address, the Confraternity has degenerated to various parish councils, perhaps an overworked and underpaid parish Director of Religious Education, and maybe, (if a parish is exceptionally lucky) a dozen volunteers.

My coordinator, a particularly well read and educated diaconate candidate named MJ, proposed a kind of "team teaching" program to be launched next year. An established teacher will take a partner under his/her wing, and as a team they will cover the year. In that sense if someone can't make a particular Sunday the partner can cover.

So then the inevitable question comes. "Who do you have in mind? Anyone?"

* * * *

Like it or not, heathen as Ryan may be, we are a confraternity. And it seems for the time being that I am a teacher without a peer, or for the immediate future a partner. So over the course of the next few months I will use this blog to bounce my lesson plans off my fellow members. Never has it become more apparent to me than this instant how vital the Confraternity is to individual teachers. Titus will back me up, I learned far more in discussions and conversations with other teachers and coordinators about my Catholicism than I ever did in parochial school or my CCD program in my teen years.

All this done in the light of Pope Benedict's visit is appropriate, but it's also kind of sad. I've got a class that won't get Vatican II hammered into their skulls and no matter how pretty you try and paint the picture, no matter who is at fault or who isn't at fault, it's an opportunity lost. The worst part about the Bund being scattered is that someone, even a heathen, could have stepped in with a prepared lesson and covered. Damn it.

Rant done.