For as long as anyone can remember, Catholic parents have expressed the sentiment that Catholic religious education provides children with a strong moral foundation. This sentiment is often among the primary reasons that parents enroll their children in a Catholic school or in a parish religious education program. 

There is a certain measure of truth in this perspective, but there is also a measure of deception. The truthfulness of the belief that education in the Faith provides effective formation of conscience is obvious enough; the deceptive aspect of this belief, however, is less obvious. 

The truthfulness of the belief in the value of religious education is easy to demonstrate. Every person agrees that there exist morally right and morally wrong actions, but not all agree on how to discern between right and wrong. The difficulty of discerning between right and wrong creates the need for a reasonable, faithful moral code and a reliable means of communicating that moral code to individuals. An adequate education in the Catholic Faith fulfills these two requirements. 

Catholicism has a large and intricate belief system that is recorded and expressed in the Scriptures and Church teaching. As most of these texts are complex and historically conditioned, Catholicism provides modern explanations of the material found in those texts. Some of that explanatory material is found in the Church’s Sacramental rituals; some of it is recorded in documents like the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1992 and the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults, published in 2006. An adequate education in the Catholic Faith consists of a knowledge of those materials that is sufficient for an average adult to fulfill her or his baptismal vows. 

The deception inherent in the belief that education in the Faith provides effective formation of conscience for children is the consequence of ambiguity about the notion of “truth.” Children are capable of knowing “truth” only as something external to themselves; adults alone are capable of knowing truth as something that has been internalized consciously in their personalities. 

Prior to reaching adulthood, a person’s grasp of “the truth” is largely the result of the person’s parents’ statements about “the truth.” For example, parents often tell their children to avoid a particular neighbor, or relative, or friend. The reasons given for this warning vary, but all are some form of moral judgment about the person to be avoided. Children readily grasp the moral judgment, but children are rarely capable of understanding the reasons for the judgment. In a child’s mind, a neighbor who supports a sports team that is rival to the parents’ favored team is equally to be feared as the neighbor with a criminal record. Only when the child grows into adulthood does she become able to understand the fundamental difference between personal taste and public morality. 

For this reason, the religious education of children is necessary and valuable but it is never more than inadequate. Unless religious education continues into adulthood, a person develops a grasp of facts but will lack a grasp of the distinction between truth and falsehood. Catholic philosophy and theology describe this situation with the words “extrinsicism” and “intrinsicism.” A child’s mind grasps truth as judgments made and enforced by others. This is extrinsic truth; it is knowledge that is attested to be truthful by another person. In adulthood, when the mind matures fully, one becomes capable of testing truth claims and appropriating the results of that testing as verified truth. This is intrinsic truth; it is the result of personal experience and rational thought. 

The religious education of children is capable of providing only extrinsic truth. An intrinsic grasp of the truth of the Catholic Faith is possible only for adults – for those who are capable of an adult’s experiences and judgments. The claim, then, that relgious education provides children with a strong moral foundation is demonstrably true only during the childhood years of those who are being educated; when those being educated grow into adulthood, the claim becomes false because a child’s knowledge of the Faith is inadequate to an adult’s life. 

Unfortunately for you, my readers, it took a long time and many abstractions to get to the point of this homily. Please accept my apologies.  

The final sentence in today’s second reading, taken from the letter to the Philippians, says, “Conduct yourselves in a way worthy of the gospel of Christ.” (Phil 1:27) What does it mean to conduct oneself in a way worthy of the Gospel of Christ? The answer to that question depends on the way one sees “truth.” Those with a child’s grasp of truth conduct themselves according to rules and regulations established and enforced by others. Those with an adults’ grasp of the truth have examined the formulations of truth about faith and morals that were handed on to them by others; they have experienced the truthfulness of those formulations, and internalized them as part of their personalities. This is the only way of grasping truth that is adequate to lead an adult to fulfill her or his baptismal vows. 

Today’s first reading contains a familiar admonition about the essential distinction between God and God’s creation. Speaking on God’s behalf, the prophet Isaiah prophesied, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord. (Is 55:8) This is clearly a warning about the fact that there is One God, and that God is not a created thing among the other created things in the universe. There will never be a time when we can comprehend fully God’s nature; further, we should never delude ourselves that such a time can ever come. 

This prophecy might also be a warning about the danger of falling short of the goal of attaining an adult’s faith. Every believer is obliged to gain an adequate grasp of God’s thoughts and ways. Not only is it possible, it is necessary that each believer learns to know God and imitate God, albeit, in a small, created way. Truth is an internal reality for God because God is Truth. Truth ought to become an internal reality for us because internalized truth is the substance of an adult faith. 

When we hear the prophet’s warning about the fundamental distinction between Creator and created, we should also heed the prophet’s warning about the obligation to appropriate for ourselves the truth about the world, human existence, and God. God intends and requires us to make God’s truth internal to our personalities and, in this limited way, to become familiar with the thoughts and ways of God. To do so is, in fact, the only adequate way to learn to discern between right and wrong.