Reading for confirmation

My neighbor stopped by today to borrow some books. Her daughter and my two older sons are in the confirmation class at the base chapel together.  While our last church had a 3 year confirmation program for high schoolers, this chapel has the superfast confirmation for eighth graders.  One of the hazards of moving is making sure you don't miss any sacraments.  So this program was supposed to be a year, but the archbishop for the military is coming in January, so it is being shaved down to a 5 month program, minus holidays.  Not ideal, but I feel like the boys have a pretty good grounding in the faith, and we're doing a little catechesis of our own at home on an irregular basis.

Meanwhile the neighbor's daughter is a little more precocious.  She is frustrated in the class because it rehashes all the catechesis that a regular participant in religious ed. should have picked up years ago, but because stragglers show up for sacramental classes, I guess the thinking is that basics like the parts of the Mass need to be covered AGAIN.  Meanwhile, she's being pressured to accept for life a faith that she's not sure she is ready to assent to.  From what my neighbor has told me, I guess after being a quick learner of all the Bible stories and faith as a child, as a preteen she is beginning to question the contradictions in the stories, the corruption in the history, and the apparent conflict between science and faith.

Since I'm not her mom upset by her doubts, I think she's showing a lot of maturity for an 8th grader. Questions about God's existence and Christ's divinity haven't come up at our house. If our boys have them, they aren't asking us.

Anyway, her mom and dad have a pretty good grounding themselves it sounds like, but her mom asked if I had any books at home to loan her. I sent her home with a stack, but I'm not sure any are just what she needs.  The one that came to mind first was Augustine's Confessions, maybe because St. Monica was just in our reading book.  Too hard for an 8th grader? Or will she relate to the story of another young adult's questioning, rejection, and final acceptance of the faith of his birth.

Since the Thomas Dubay book was written for someone seeking to deepen his faith, not accept it, I didn''t send that. But before I had finished Thomas Dubay's book, I had picked up a couple other books on faith at the libary.  I skimmed 15 Days of Prayer with Thomas Merton by Andre Grozier. I meant for it to be a part of this prescription for change, and the book is intended to be a guided meditation book, something to spend some time with, not to skim.  But while quotes from Merton provide plenty of substance for meditation, the questions this book asked were rather bland.  “Think about a time you felt… What do you remember about… How did you feel when….”  I should just read more Merton.  He is a fascinating figure, but I seem to only find books about him at the library and not books by him, except the Seven Story Mountain.

Perhaps what interested me the most in the 15 Days book were the last couple chapters about interreligious dialogue.   I also happened to pick up off the library shelf a book on the same issue, God is Not One by Stephen Prothero, out of curiousity.  This book is a comparative religion survey, meant to be an unbiased look at the teachings and characteristics of the major world religions.  It might actually be of interest to my neighbor's daughter if she is sincerely wondering what other religions teach.  Prothero begins with an argument against the idea that most religions are similar and share the same God, the God of Abraham. He also rejects the idea that all religions are different roads travelling to the same location – some sort of metaphysical state of transcendence.  He argues that it’s a fallacy to focus on similarities between world religions in order to downplay religious zealousness or superiority and to encourage tolerance. But instead, downplaying differences encourages misunderstanding.

Rather,Prothero argues that even though major world religions share the qualities that make them religions (ritual, community, creeds, metaphysical longing), at heart they are quite different. They are like members of a family who outwardly resemble each other, but whose personalities and talents are completely different. So while Jews, Muslims, and Christians all worship one God, Prothero argues that because they worship in different ways, profess different dogmas, and describe God differently, it is a falsehood to claim that they have much in common.

So rather than diffuse radical fundamentalism by saying all religions are one, Prothero proposes to move toward understanding the differences in each religion by studying what each religion believes is the primary problem of human existence, its solution, its techniques to reach the solution, and its exemplars. It’s disingenuous to say that it doesn’t matter to true believers what god you worship because true believers are convicted.

I only skimmed the book, but it’s provocative.  Prothero does seem to evaluate fairly and without prejudice each religion, and seems to have genuine respect for believers. I would guess he’s an agnostic who appreciates the willingness of believers to ask big questions and seek their answers. I agree with him that it is important to understand what other believers profess and how they worship and live in accordance with their faith. 

I’d like to be able to hand a book to my older kids and say, here read this, and then ask them how they would defend what we’ve been trying to teach them.  But I’m not sure if they are quite ready for that challenge.  I remember being in high school and sitting in the library reading books about the Dao and Buddhism, maxims of Marcus Aurelius and the sayings of Confucius, and wondering what the Jewish holy days were all about, trying to figure out what my own answers to the big questions were.

Now I can't lay a finger on what convicted me about Catholicism. Reading magazines at Crisis and First Things at my grandparents' house probably had something to do with it. The example of my parents.  The Christian emphasis on love and serving your neighbor matched well with all the novel reading I was doing.  Confirmation retreats.  Lots of little pieces.

So a prayer that my sons' and my neighbor's daughter will pick up and put together some of those little pieces, too. At least my neighbor's daughter is honest about it and doesn’t want to be a hypocrite by taking the sacrament just to make her parents happy.  My husband and I sat down with our boys the other day and asked them some questions about confirmation and what they would say to an unbeliever, and they were able to parrot back the idea of a First Mover, and the idea that the order of the universe suggests an Original Designer, but from our conversation it was hard to tell if these arguments are personal to them.  At the cusp of adolescence and young adulthood, they seem ready to start taking ownership of what they believe. It’s an interesting age.