Catholic culture: How we practice the faith

January 23, 2015
Melanie Morey

Religious belief has become a “private” matter in secular American culture. Americans understand they are not supposed to reference religion in justifying their political or social views and attitudes. While that may be the way of things in society, religion cannot be a private matter in Catholic schools. In Catholic schools religious content and practice must be related to all the students are learning.

Teachers understand that learning requires making connections and they help students make those connections. Good teachers link science learning with literature and literature with history and all of it with what their students experience in their daily lives. And learning requires repetition, doing things again and again until they come easily or are mastered. This is the way children learn. The same is true of how they learn the Catholic faith, by understanding it in relation to ordinary things, and by knowing when and how to “practice the faith.”

A Catholic school is a place where Catholic faculty, coaches, administrators, and staff share their faith and are expected to do so. For some Catholic school teachers, especially those who have absorbed American public cultural cues, this can be a problem. But Catholic schools create a private culture – a Catholic culture and teachers are the ones who create that culture for students. Doing so requires they overcome their reticence to address Catholic beliefs and practices. As long as parents support the culture at home, most children flourish in a religious culture, because it makes so much sense to them.

A common definition for culture – any culture – is “how we do things around here.” Culture is not absorbed through osmosis. Culture is about doing. In other words, it is about practices that when combined with witness and content shape a person’s entire way of being. In order to build a strong culture, schools must develop an intricate network of practices that students engage in either daily or weekly. Frequent and consistent practices shape personal habits and ways of being. Occasional behaviors do not.

Most parents understand what it takes to change children’s behavior. It takes good modeling and countless reminders. Repetition is the mother of learning and of culture. And, as most parents and teachers know, structure helps children thrive. They enjoy repetition, as long as it includes some variation. Liturgical seasons, saints, hymns, prayers, the Bible, sacraments and the Catechism of the Catholic Church offer both repetition and great variation.

People young and old are always trying to make connections. For many young people, music is especially integrative. One reason why is that they can relate it and the images conjured up by lyrics to their own ideas and to the emotions that well up within them. For hundreds of years, sacred music was popular music. Over the centuries this music, with its meaningful phrases and repetition, helped Catholics make connections. In many ways Catholic culture is like sacred music. By related patterns of repetition and meaning, it helps people make critical connections.

In the heyday of American Catholic schooling in the United States, Catholic cultural practices were an integral part of the educational experience. Whether it was putting a cross at the top of all papers or saying prayers before each class or going to Mass as a community every week or making daily visits to the church or chapel or praying before each athletic event, students constantly engaged in small behaviors that reminded them again and again of the Catholic faith. Without this kind of constant reinforcement, Catholic institutional culture dissipates.

Morey is the director of the newly created archdiocesan Office of Catholic Identity Assessment.