ARTICLES

Catechetical Coup

Danville Parish Adopts Questionable Text

BY PHIL SEVILLA

The bishop had spoken.

At a February 24 meeting of the St. Isidore pastoral council, the parish’s representative to the Oakland diocese bishop’s council announced that Bishop Allen Vigneron “would like to have consistent, uniform programs throughout the diocese, including confirmation.” The confirmation program at St. Isidore’s, meanwhile, was “viewed [by the diocese] as a well-structured, positive program that could be used as a model in the diocese.”

No one ever informed St. Isidore’s volunteer confirmation coordinator Kathy Ramies or her all-volunteer confirmation-preparation staff that the chancery had recognized their program as a model. Instead, just eight days after the pastoral council meeting, assistant pastor and acting director of religious education, Father Tony Herrera, dismissed Ramies.

According to concerned parishioners, Father Herrera reportedly said that because “the chancery” liked the Ignatius Press Faith and Life texts utilized by Ramies and her team of confirmation instructors, that series would continue. Could Ramies, Father Herrera continued, therefore finish updating the scope and sequence outline for the following year’s curriculum, though she would no longer direct it, to include increased involvement by parents and sponsors throughout the preparation period? Shocked at her abrupt dismissal, Ramies nevertheless agreed to complete the requested task. That effort would turn out to have been wasted, as Faith and Life would itself be jettisoned four months later.

Two days after speaking with Ramies, Father Herrera followed with two memos, with copies to St. Isidore’s other priests and parish staff, including religious formation volunteers. In one memo, directed to Kathy Ramies, Father Herrera said he could “appreciate your wanting to take a rest from this ministry and look forward to working with you in the future in other ministries.”

The other communication thanked the new director of youth ministries, Keith Machi, for accepting that position and other responsibilities, including the confirmation program. Both Father Herrera and Machi hail from Pleasanton’s St. Augustine parish, where dissent workshops led by Father Dan Danielson and homosexual “friendship blessings” resembling weddings have been conducted.

Machi’s wife directs the confirmation program at St. Augustine, utilizing a controversial text series, authored by Thomas Zanzig, Confirmed in a Faithful Community, that has been widely adopted throughout the Oakland diocese. In January, a few weeks before dismissing Ramies, Father Herrera asked Ramies to consider using Confirmed in a Faithful Community in St. Isidore’s confirmation classes.

Ramies, having examined the program briefly in her previous evaluations of class materials, recalled grave reservations about the Zanzig series. She asked Sharon Arata, a 14-year confirmation team veteran and a certified and experienced English teacher, home tutor and catechist, to review the suggested series.

Arata was appalled at what she found. Since she had other matters to discuss with Father Herrera, Arata asked Ramies if she could meet with Herrera directly in order to present a detailed analysis of the new text series to him. Arata says she had some difficulty initially getting a meeting-date commitment. Greatly concerned, she took the opportunity provided by Bishop Vigneron’s February 7 presentation in Concord on John Paul II’s Theology of the Body to hand the Bishop a copy of the Zanzig series analysis and to express concern that the series was under consideration for use at St. Isidore.

The next week, Arata was able to meet with Father Herrera and to provide him a copy of the Confirmed in a Faithful Community review, expressing her own deep concerns about the series. It was then just 12 days before St. Isidore’s existing confirmation program was described at the pastoral council meeting as “a model in the diocese” and 20 days before Father Herrera dismissed Kathy Ramies as confirmation director.

Archbishop Alfred Hughes of New Orleans, chairman of the United States bishops’ ad hoc committee to oversee use of the Catechism, reported in December that the committee has urged that bishops limit the use of catechetical texts to those that the committee has judged to be in conformity.

Among deficiencies noted by Archbishop Hughes in two-thirds of examined texts that do not conform, and openly observable in Confirmed in a Faithful Community, are these (as reiterated in the analysis delivered at St. Isidore): a) relativism in approach to Church and faith — e.g., students being led to believe that Catholicism is just one religion among many equals; b) a presentation of the sacraments as still changeable over time; introductions to doctrine that begin, “Catholics believe this or that” — a tentative formulation that implies a variety of legitimate teachings, rather than unitary Catholic truth; c) the fact that “often the moral life is not adequately presented. There seems to be a reluctance to name premarital or extramarital intercourse as sinful;” d) an “approach to church [that] often overemphasizes the role of the community;” and e) the phenomenon that “unfortunately, the widespread use of these [nonconforming] books perpetuates a religious illiteracy that is all too prevalent in the Church today.”

According to the catechist’s guide for the Zanzig series, in confirmation preparation “the young people should be assured that a personal commitment to Christianity or Catholicism may be an outcome of the process but is not a prerequisite for it.” [Emphasis in original] The series ‘ author Thomas Zanzig rejects the “soldier of Christ” model of confirmation as “pre-Vatican II.” But the Catechism of the Catholic Church says otherwise: “Confirmation brings an increase and deepening of baptismal grace ... it gives us a special strength of the Holy Spirit to spread and defend the faith by word and action as true witnesses of Christ, to confess the name of Christ boldly, and never to be ashamed of the Cross.” The Catechism further states that “a candidate for Confirmation who has attained the age of reason must profess the faith, be in a state of grace, have the intention of receiving the sacrament, and be prepared to assume the role of disciple and witness to Christ, both within the ecclesial community and in temporal affairs.”

And as Arata’s Zanzig series analysis notes, Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium said those confirmed “are more perfectly bound to the Church by the sacrament of Confirmation, and the Holy Spirit endows them with special strength so that they are more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith, both by word and by deed, as true witnesses of Christ.”

“Even believers must admit,” claims the Zanzig series, “that undeniable logical or empirical proof for believing and trusting in God does not exist.” But the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that, “starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world’s order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and end of the universe.”

According to the Zanzig series, “Jesus, like each of us, struggled to find his place in the world. His baptism was apparently a pivotal time of self-discovery, an ‘aha! moment’ in which he came to some recognition of what he was being called to by Yahweh.” But the Catechism of the Church says of Christ’s self-knowledge, “by its union to the divine wisdom in the person of the Word incarnate, Christ enjoyed in his human knowledge the fullness of understanding of the eternal plans he had come to reveal.” The Zanzig series asks of Christ’s miracles: “are they truly miracles or just symbolic stories? The major task confronting Catholics is.to comprehend the meaning of these stories in light of the entire ministry of Jesus....”

The Zanzig series only briefly lists the Ten Commandments; instead, it emphasizes “communal sin” and four negative cultural values: excessive consumerism, extreme individualism, immediate gratification, and sexual permissiveness. The last behavior develops as “the desire for immediate gratification leads to the inability to wait for sexual fulfillment until a person is in a committed, lasting relationship.” Examples of “communal sin” given in the Catechist’s Theology Handbook focus on poverty and environmental destruction but do not include abortion, pornography, homosexual perversions, and young couples living together without benefit of marriage.

Arata and Ramies note that the emphasis in Confirmed in a Faithful Community is not on heterosexual marriage but on “a committed, lasting relationship” — and that this formulation is re-emphasized in the student text. “Our culture,” according to that text, “says that sex without commitment is normal and natural. Jesus says the only thing that gives meaning to relationships is commitment and concern for the whole person..” In the Zanzig series, sin is primarily “About Relationships, Not Just Rules.”

The Zanzig series reconstructs the doctrine of the Real Presence. “The church is a community of persons,” it says, who “gather with others to share and celebrate” an awareness of the risen Christ “through signs and symbols such as the breaking of the bread, which we recognize as the Eucharist.” Nowhere in Confirmed in a Faithful Community is the essential role of the ministerial priesthood explained nor the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

In the series’ Candidate’s Handbook, Zanzig says, “at times, the church stumbles around in ignorance and selfishness and makes mistakes. In other words, the church remains human with all the strengths and weaknesses of human beings. Perhaps the best evidence that God is with the church is that it has survived for two thousand years despite its often embarrassing shortcomings.” According to Arata, a crucial omission by Zanzig is a full understanding of the institution of the Church as Christ’s mystical body on Earth.

The series’ omissions are as noticeable as its challenges to Church teaching. It treats the sacraments superficially, for example, relegating some to just a sentence or a short paragraph — in contrast with Faith and Life’s chapter-long discussions of each sacrament.

Arata and Ramies say many of the series’ suggested classroom and retreat activities are childish, intrusive, or otherwise inappropriate for high-school-age students. For example, Jesus is represented thematically as a pet rock. The series suggests “story time” with the catechist in bathrobe and slippers, new-age meditations, and a “Designing Your Own Headstone” exercise borrowed from “death education” curricula. The series offers preparation for penance with no reference to the commandments, as well as an open-ended discussion of “what would you most like to change in the church and why.” Students are to pretend to be bishops deciding how to make the Church “relevant to young people in the twenty-first century” (with instructors advised to “resist the urge to theologize or argue against the recommendations of the young people.”)

On March 19, a group of 20 St. Isidore parishioners, many involved in parish ministries, sent a letter to pastor Father Daniel Cardelli detailing several concerns. The letter addressed, among other matters, the replacement of Kathy Ramies with new, paid-staff personnel; student misgivings about a retreat conducted in December by the newly-appointed youth ministry director; and Cardelli’s decision to remove the Catechism of the Catholic Church as a student resource for confirmation classes.

On March 25, Father Cardelli wrote back, stating that “nothing is decided without [his] perusal and consent.” He said that he was “excited and pleased ... to help the Religious programs in our parish,” and to look for an announcement in the parish bulletin the following Sunday, March 28. That bulletin announced the appointment of Sister Gladys Guenther, another newcomer, as director of religious education.

The concerned parishioners reiterated a request to meet directly with the pastor — a meeting which finally occurred on May 29. Meanwhile, on May 6, members of the confirmation staff, including Ramies, Arata, and confirmation co-director Diana White met with Sister Guenther to discuss the 2004-05 confirmation preparation program, recommending retention of Faith and Life as a program approved for catechetical instruction by the ad hoc committee of the U.S. bishops. They provided Sister Guenther a copy of the Confirmed in a Faithful Community analysis, emphasizing that the latter program is not only unapproved by the bishops’ committee but that it exhibits all the faults cited by the bishops in their review of deficient programs. Sister Guenther at the meeting stated her desire for a more “experiential” confirmation program than the one in place.

On May 28, Sister Guenther cancelled a Youth 2000 retreat scheduled by Ramies for Confirmation students in November. Ramies learned of the cancellation only when Youth 2000’s coordinator called her.

At the May 29 meeting with Father Cardelli, three parish leaders representing the group of concerned parishioners, presented the pastor with a one-inch thick binder documenting the evidence for their concerns and including the analysis of the Zanzig series, though Father Cardelli had already been made aware of the critique. Soon after, Father Cardelli said he would need “time to digest the report and pray over it.” He reiterated his approval, as expressed in the meeting, for presenting the binder to Bishop Vigneron — which did occur.

On June 9, nearly the entire 2003-04 Confirmation instruction team, including Kathy Ramies, met with Sister Guenther to discuss the 2004-05 program. Sister Guenther led the group in singing “Ode to Joy.” She then asked the confirmation teachers to enumerate the beneficial features of their existing program while new confirmation director Keith Machi wrote these on poster paper. Then Sister Guenther announced that a new program would be implemented to include all those features and more — Confirmed in a Faithful Community.

The confirmation team immediately reminded Sister Guenther of the serious deficiencies of that program and the fact that it was unapproved by the relevant bishops’ committee. She responded that the criticisms were taken “out of context” and that the program had an imprimatur, after all. But one confirmation instructor then noted that the National Catholic Register had just reported that the same bishop who granted that imprimatur had said he would no longer grant such an approval unless the ad hoc bishops committee approved the text in question. Sister Guenther waved off the objection and said that Father Cardelli had approved the new approach, regardless of objections lodged. Father Cardelli has since confirmed his approval of Zanzig series, while answering none of the content-specific objections to the new text series.

St. Isidore’s confirmation teachers stated that none of them would return to teach Confirmed in a Faithful Community.

When I spoke to Sister Gladys Guenther on July 30, regarding the objections parents and catechists expressed about the introduction of the Zanzig series, she said that she did not wish her name mentioned in the paper and hung up. Father Cardelli was on a lengthy vacation and unavailable for comment; Keith Machi (confirmation director) was on a weeklong retreat, and Father Anthony Herrera did not return calls.

Several appeals have been sent to Bishop Vigneron. As of the Faith’s press date, Vigneron was to meet with Father Cardelli, who has said he will defer to the bishop’s authority.

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