The Risk of Teaching Against Christ

At the beginning of his letter to the Colossians, St. Paul exhorts the newly baptized to strive for perfection and live under Christ and not against him. The attention should now focus on heavenly things and on embracing a life of grace, mercy, virtue, and fidelity to Christ and his Church. The narrative of this first chapter calls upon the faithful to forsake the world and place our entire disposition toward Christ in heaven.[1] The specificity by which St. Paul directs the faithful to live a life centered on Christ expresses the urgency to immediately begin to act on the gift of grace given to everyone who was initiated into the Catholic Church. The degree to which St. Paul emphasizes the necessity to engage a heavenly view of the world reveals the importance of forging an active relationship with Jesus Christ.

Another aspect of his teaching to the Colossians is the importance of spiritually elevating the soul from the ways of the past. He intends to assist the new Christian to engage the battle between good and evil with grace in order not to easily succumb to the wickedness of the world. St. Paul the Educator carefully instructs the faithful that Christ has now ransomed their lives. The way of the Cross is now understood differently and possesses a new identity for the newly initiated, that of the Corpus for the neophyte. He provides us with a reasonable approach to the teaching of religion focused on Jesus Christ, his teachings, and the institution of the Catholic Church, founded by Our Lord to safeguard what He taught.

The teaching of religion, which can also be identified as the process of catechetical instruction, or the re-echoing of the teachings of Jesus Christ, is described by St. John Paul II in the following way,

Christocentricity in catechesis also means the intention to transmit not one's own teaching or that of some other master, but the teaching of Jesus Christ, the Truth that He communicates or, to put it more precisely, the Truth that He is. We must therefore say that in catechesis it is Christ, the Incarnate Word and Son of God, who is taught - everything else is taught with reference to Him - and it is Christ alone who teaches - anyone else teaches to the extent that he is Christ's spokesman, enabling Christ to teach with his lips.[2]

St. John Paul II reminds us that sound catechesis rests on the principle that what you are echoing, i.e., teaching, is Christ to guide the person to develop an intimate relationship with Him and thus deepen the person's understanding of Jesus’ story, and our place within His plan of salvation. St. Paul’s instruction to the Colossians and St. John Paul II’s exhortation on catechesis offer a correlation on the importance of the teaching of religion within the life of Jesus Christ and the Church, and not outside of it. Hence, a principal aim of religious instruction is to help the person understand where he comes from and how Christ came to help him come out of his own darkness.

If the aim of teaching religion is to lead the person out of darkness and into the salvific light of Jesus Christ through the sacramental life of the Church, this would suppose that we teach within and in communion with the teachings of Jesus Christ and not against him. But what happens if we teach outside of the Church, if we actively choose to convey a message contradictory to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, or worse, completely reconstruct the teachings of Jesus Christ to satisfy one’s own personal interpretation of religion? St. John Paul II provides us with a very succinct answer to this question,

Whatever be the level of his responsibility in the Church, every catechist must constantly endeavor to transmit by his teaching and behavior the teaching and life of Jesus. He will not seek to keep directed towards himself and his personal opinions and attitudes the attention and the consent of the mind and heart of the person he is catechizing. Above all, he will not try to inculcate his personal opinions and options as if they expressed Christ's teaching and the lessons of His life. Every catechist should be able to apply to himself the mysterious words of Jesus: "My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me." St. Paul did this when he was dealing with a question of prime importance: "I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you." What assiduous study of the word of God transmitted by the Church's magisterium, what profound familiarity with Christ and with the Father, what a spirit of prayer, what detachment from self must a catechist have so that he can say: "My teaching is not mine!"[3]

Two very important elements stressed by St. John Paul II are that teaching the faith is intimately bound with our behavior towards Christ and his Church. More succinctly speaking, our internal disposition or attitude should emanate joy when teaching the Catholic faith and not hostility, ambivalence, or worse, hostility. The great Frank Sheed, when asked the content of religion should look like in a catholic school he said that the indispensable minimum is that the Catholic coming out of our schools should emerge with a tremendous devotion to Christ, Our Lord, with an awareness of Him, a considerable knowledge of His Life and Personality, and a desire to increase that knowledge.[4]

The risk of teaching religion outside of the Church of Jesus Christ is that you eliminate the opportunity doe the student to encounter Jesus Christ. You deny him the opportunity to build on the grace received at baptism, you dispel any notion of seeking grace, and you avoid the near occasion of sin. Further, one runs the risk of creating an alternate view of God and the world that is devoid of Christ. The content of Christ becomes a subject versus a way of life. The importance of engaging in the sacramental life is now replaced by the religion of the day, based on how you feel. Even worse, when one chooses to teach religion outside of the message of Jesus Christ, it strengthens the students' ability to say “no” to Christ instead of saying “yes” to Him.

To conclude, in his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul provides us with a clear example of how to avoid teaching religion outside of the Catholic Church;  

And his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ; so that we may no longer be children, tossed back and forth and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, makes bodily growth and upbuilds itself in love.[5]