Chapter 1
Eight Practical, Realizable Goals

Bishops Teaching Children

A Practical Method
By Which Roman Catholic Bishops
Can Personally Direct
The Religious Education
Of the Children of Their Dioceses

John Kelleher
Cambridge, Massachusetts USA
Written in the Year of the Great Jubilee
A.D. 2000
 
 

• A Roman Catholic bishop can make himself personally responsible and directly accountable for the religious education of the Roman Catholic children in his diocese
• He can completely circumvent all religious education bureaucracies, whether in a national conference, a Catholic college or university, or his diocesan office, and take direct charge of the religious instruction of Roman Catholic children in his diocese
• He can personally and decisively defend the orthodoxy of what is taught to every child in his diocese
• He can personally shift the focus of all religious education in his diocese away from debates about educational methods and toward what children actually know and have learned about their faith
• He can directly create a climate that rewards and encourages the development of sophisticated and orthodox understandings of the faith in every Catholic
• He can personally ensure that all religious education is directly based on the Catechism of the Catholic Church
• Some number of bishops could voluntarily combine their individual efforts for greater effectiveness and efficiency, while each would remain personally and directly responsible and accountable for religious education in his diocese, and while the cooperating bishops would automatically retain complete and direct control of any coordinating agency
• Roman Catholic bishops from all over the world could directly assist the religious education of Catholic children in many nations