By Sean Gallagher

Bishop Blase Cupich addressing educators. (Photo Courtesy of Momentum Magazine)

   INDIANAPOLIS (CNS) — Helping today’s youths grow more deeply in their faith is a key role for Catholic educators, Bishop Blase J. Cupich told participants at the annual National Catholic Educational Association convention March 26 in Indianapolis.

   “How can we pass on the faith in a way that gives the children and grandchildren of today and tomorrow the same experience of God and of Christ and of the church that shapes our hearts?” he asked.

   The bishop cited a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life that said 33 percent of all Catholic Americans have left the church. According to the study, 10 percent of all Americans identify themselves as former Catholics while 25 percent of all Americans between 18 and 29 have no religious affiliation.

   The study showed that those who left the church did so mainly from an apathy “that stems from a lack of knowledge about the faith,” Bishop Cupich said.

   He said this lack of faith knowledge stems from the “collapse of the catechetical infrastructure.

   In the past, he said, the church relied on women religious to pass on the faith in parish schools and religious education programs. The challenge now, he said, is for the laity to take on the role of faith transmission and for publishers to produce textbooks that harmonize both the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and the church’s broader traditions.

   Bishop Cupich also said that people today tend to form their identity more from modern society and the media than from their religious traditions.

   He humorously illustrated this by recounting the story of how his 5-year-old niece took 15 prayer cards from his episcopal ordination to her preschool for show and tell.

   The prayer card showed Bishop Cupich wearing a miter and a chasuble and holding a crosier. His niece asked her classmates who was the person on the card.

   “Very quickly, their fertile little 5-year-old minds came to a consensus,” he said. “I was a ninja warrior.”

   Bishop Cupich also said our consumer-driven culture has led many youths and young adults to want a “satisfaction-guaranteed ... consumer-friendly religion.

   “Those are factors that we have to take into consideration to try to understand how we got to where we are,” he said. “The real task, then, is for us to translate the ancient faith into a language that has meaning and yet has not been compromised by the dominant culture.”

   Bishop Cupich said educators can face the daunting challenge of effectively proclaiming the faith by “mining the tradition” of the church. He also urged them to follow the example of St. Augustine who advised bringing people to a personal encounter with Christ before explaining church doctrine to them. “It’s when we begin to do that that a number of other things will fall into place,” the bishop said.

   He emphasized that Catholic educators need to show how the faith is rooted in ancient stories but that their protagonist — Jesus Christ — is still alive here and now and that they need to place themselves in that story.

   Bishop Cupich illustrated this by noting that in the church’s rite of confirmation the sacrament is celebrated after the proclamation of the Gospel but before the homily.

   Those to be confirmed are “a part of the story. They’re the newest chapter in the good news. I can’t preach the good news until their names are announced.”

   “We need to do that in many different ways with young people,” Bishop Cupich said, “to let them know that they’re continuing the next chapter of this wonderful story in the history of salvation in which Christ brings about his redemption.”