Why are students from Catholic schools doubtful, skeptic, and not firm in faith?

Question (from a reader): 

Can you comment on my observation that most students who graduated from Catholic schools tend to be the ones who are doubtful, skeptic and not firm in the faith?  What must be done?

Response

In the study of theology, we must study all objections to the faith in order to present the truth of the Catholic faith.  This is what St. Aquinas did in his Summa Theologiae.  First he presents the question, then raises all objections or difficulties, and finally presents his resolution.  I think the problem in the current teaching of theology is that it limits itself to presenting the question and raising the objections, but never the Catholic resolution.  Even if the official Catholic teaching is presented, it is presented in such a way that it is only one of the many interpretations or resolutions.  Thus, the student ends up choosing for himself what truth is, which leads to Cafeteria Catholicism.

Surprisingly, it is possible to teach the Catholic faith even to Muslims, Buddhists, and Pagans, by phrasing the question as follow: “What does the Catholic Church officially teach about such and such question?”  This is an objective question which demands an objective response that does not require assent of faith.  The problem with some theology courses, they go to higher ordered thinking skills without making sure the simple objective questions are easily answered by the students.  For example, the student must first be able to state the dogma of the Transubstantiation, before he can discuss in what sense is the Church the Mystical Body of Christ and how it is different from the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  Other theology courses also uses reading lists which has majority written by of modern theologians which are considered by the Church as heretical; only a small fraction is by the Doctors of the Church or the Encyclicals of the Pope.  And the Catechism is even never mentioned in the discussions.

How do we improve the teaching of theology?  I shall recommend only one thing which the popes themselves recommend: teach St. Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae.  As Pope Leo XIII wrote in his Encyclical Aeterni Patris:

“Z 1. But, furthermore, Our predecessors in the Roman pontificate have celebrated the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas by exceptional tributes of praise and the most ample testimonials. Clement VI in the bull In Ordine; Nicholas V in his brief to the friars of the Order of Preachers, 1451; Benedict XIII in the bull Pretiosus, and others bear witness that the universal Church borrows lustre from his admirable teaching; while St. Pius V declares in the bull Mirabilis that heresies, confounded and convicted by the same teaching, were dissipated, and the whole world daily freed from fatal errors; others, such as Clement XII in the bull Verbo Dei, affirm that most fruitful blessings have spread abroad from his writings over the whole Church, and that he is worthy of the honor which is bestowed on the greatest Doctors of the Church, on Gregory and Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome; while others have not hesitated to propose St. Thomas for the exemplar and master of the universities and great centers of learning whom they may follow with unfaltering feet. On which point the words of Blessed Urban V to the University of Toulouse are worthy of recall: “It is our will, which We hereby enjoin upon you, that ye follow the teaching of Blessed Thomas as the true and Catholic doctrine and that ye labor with all your force to profit by the same.”(35) Innocent XII, followed the example of Urban in the case of the University of Louvain, in the letter in the form of a brief addressed to that university on February 6, 1694, and Benedict XIV in the letter in the form of a brief addressed on August 26, 1752, to the Dionysian College in Granada; while to these judgments of great Pontiffs on Thomas Aquinas comes the crowning testimony of Innocent VI: “His teaching above that of others, the canonical writings alone excepted, enjoys such a precision of language, an order of matters, a truth of conclusions, that those who hold to it are never found swerving from the path of truth, and he who dare assail it will always be suspected of error.”(36)

St. Aquinas is the most lucid of all theologians: straight, direct to the point.  An oral exam in Theology courses usually takes 15 minutes.  This would just be enough to explain one question in Summa, with its objections and resolutions.  Teach Aquinas and in four years, the students will leave the university with a firm faith in the Catholic teaching.

The Book of Job: a Prophecy on the Catholic Church in the 20th Century?

The Book of Job is a story about an upright man who was blessed by God with good health, many children, and lots of possessions.  Every day, Job offers a holocaust for her children for the forgiveness of their sins.  One day Satan asked God’s permission to test Job’s faith, for Satan believes that Job only believes in God because of his many blessings.  God gave Satan the permission.  Then Job’s oxens and asses were taken away by Sabeans and Chaldeans, his servants were put to the sword, fire from heaven burned his sheep and shepherds, his sons and daughters were killed by a gale, and Job himself was struck with malignant ulcers from head to foot.

Is the story of Job a prophecy for the church in the 20th century?  I think it is.

Job represents the Catholic church.

As Job offers holocaust for the forgiveness of the sins of his children, so does every priest of the Catholic Church offer the Body and Blood of Christ in every mass for the forgiveness of sins of many.

Satan asking God to test the faith of Job corresponds to the year 1880, when Pope Leo XIII overheard near the tabernacle the conversation between Our Lord and Satan:

The guttural voice, the voice of Satan in his pride, boasted to Our Lord: “I can destroy your Church.”

The gentle voice of Our Lord: “You can? Then go ahead and do so.”

Satan: “To do so, I need more time and more power.”

Our Lord: “How much time? How much power?”

Satan: “75 to 100 years, and a greater power over those who will give themselves over to my service.”

Our Lord: “You have the time, you will have the power. Do with them what you will.

The oxens and asses represent the Papal States

Papal States were the gifts of Constantine and the donations of Pepin the Short.   In 1870 the Papal States were captured and annexed to the Kingdom of Italy.  The Pope never accepted the indemnity for the lost Papal States and he considered himself as the prisoner of Vatican City.  In 1929 the Lateran treaty was signed between Vatican and Italy, making Vatican City an independent sovereign state.

With the loss of Papal States, Pope Pius IX, in his encyclical Saepe Venerabilis (1871), institutionalized the Peter’s Pence, which is an ancient Anglo-Saxon custom of giving tithes to Pope.  Every year, on the Sunday closest to June 29, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the church collections for the Sunday mass are sent to the Vatican for the Pope’s financial support.

The sword that killed Job servants represents persecution of the Church

This persecution is against the Christians in general and the Catholic priests and friars in particular:  Philippine Revolution (1898), French Secularization (1905), Mexican Revolution (1917), Bolshevik Revolution (1917),  Spanish Civil War (1930′s), Chinese Communism (1949 to the present), Hindu Fanaticism (2008), Islamic Jihad (Jihad Watch), and the present Obama Administration (Georgetown IHS, Notre Dame Scandal, and FOCA).

The fire from heaven that burned Job’s sheep and shepherds corresponds to the first World War I and World War II

Sheep corresponds to the Christian faithful and the Shepherds are the priests and bishops, because Peter, as the head of the church, was commanded by Christ to feed and care for His sheep.

The fire from heaven recalls the fire which burned the offering of Elijah, in the presence of the priests of Baal and the people of Israel, as proof that there is no other God but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Fire also means war: World War I and II, which raged in Europe and throughout the world, killing millions of men and women.  World War I started in the assassination of Ferdinand, the Archduke of Austria, the last Holy Roman Emperor.  World War II ended with Cold War between the West  and Communist Russia.

Bur fire also gives light.  This is the prophecy of Our Lady of Fatima:

This war will end [WWI], but if men do not refrain from offending God, another and more terrible war will begin during the pontificate of Pius XI.

When you see a night that is lit by a strange and unknown light [this occurred on January 28, 1938], you will know it is the sign God gives you that He is about to punish the world with war and with hunger, and by the persecution of the Church and the Holy Father.

The gale that destroyed the house where the sons and daughters of Job feasted represents the tempest that followed after Vatican II.

There is a new spirit blowing in the church after its windows were opened to the fresh air of the modern world.  It is not the Holy Spirit.  It is the Spirit of Modernism.  The Spirit of Vatican II.  Pope Paul VI calls it the Smoke of Satan.

After Vatican II, the people of God walked in the darkness and found themselves no longer in Rome, according to the Prophecy of 200-Day March of Don Bosco.  The Catholic Church cracked from forces within as the Dragon swept a third of the stars : the priests, bishops, and cardinals who defy the pope, calling for women ordination, political correctness, collegiality,  inculturation (liturgy), contraception, ecumenism, modernism, homosexuality, and liberation (theology).

The result? The church attendance and vocations dwindled worldwide.  The 40,000 strong Jesuits, the Church’s greatest missionaries, halved.  Europe, once dotted by churches, are now emptied and converted to  mosques.  And the U.S., whose dollars are marked with  “In God we trust”, became a godless abomination.

Job’s malignant ulcers is the Sexual Abuse Scandal

Sexual abuse is a sin of the flesh, and worse if the abuse was made by priests and bishops, the epitome of Catholic sanctity.  The homosexual subculture persisted for decades, with homosexual bishops transferring erring priests to another diocese to cover the priests crime.  One by one, as sexual abuse litigations arose, Catholic dioceses went bankrupt, as they sold their buildings and lands to pay for the victims of sexual abuse.

Homosexuality is sexual sin and many homosexuals, because of their multiple sexual partners, acquired AIDS.  If you wish to imagine what Job looks like, look at the picture of an AIDS patient.

Fr. Debrosse, S.J. and the Confraternity of the Holy Hour

The Holy Hour devotion can be traced back to Christ Himself.  In His apparition in 1674, commonly called “the third great revelation,” He asked St. Margaret Mary to prostrate herself on the ground between the hours of 11:00 and 12:00 on the night of Thursday, to share the agony He suffered in the Garden of Olives, to assuage the wrath of God and beg mercy for sinners.  He bade her also to honor and relieve the heaviness of heart He experinced, the weariness He felt when His disciples could not watch one hour with Him.

Among the devotions to the Sacred Heart, the Holy Hour has always been held in high esteem.  In his Encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor, Pope Pius XI explicitly praised and recommended it:

12. And truly the spirit of expiation or reparation has always had the first and foremost place in the worship given to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, and nothing is more in keeping with the origin, the character, the power, and the distinctive practices of this form of devotion, as appears from the record of history and custom, as well as from the sacred liturgy and the acts of the Sovereign Pontiffs. For when Christ manifested Himself to Margaret Mary, and declared to her the infinitude of His love, at the same time, in the manner of a mourner, He complained that so many and such great injuries were done to Him by ungrateful men–and we would that these words in which He made this complaint were fixed in the minds of the faithful, and were never blotted out by oblivion: “Behold this Heart”–He said–”which has loved men so much and has loaded them with all benefits, and for this boundless love has had no return but neglect, and contumely, and this often from those who were bound by a debt and duty of a more special love.” In order that these faults might be washed away, He then recommended several things to be done, and in particular the following as most pleasing to Himself, namely that men should approach the Altar with this purpose of expiating sin, making what is called a Communion of Reparation,–and that they should likewise make expiatory supplications and prayers, prolonged for a whole hour,–which is rightly called the “Holy Hour.” These pious exercises have been approved by the Church and have also been enriched with copious indulgences.

In the year 1829, at Paray-le-monial, Father Debrosse, S.J., founded the Confraternity of the Holy Hour, which was repeatedly enriched with indulgences by the Popes, and which was raised to the rank of Archconfraternity by Leo XIII.  An agreement exists between this Confraternity and the Apostleship of Prayer, by virtue of which all members of the Apostleship of Prayer who make the Holy Hour enjoy the same privileges as the members of the Confraternity.

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Source: Foreword to a Holy Hour booklet.  I added a quote from Miserentissimus Redemptor.