Concilium

2002 / 4

Religious Education of Boys and Girls

Introduction: Problems and Possibilities of Religious Education Today

Werner G. Jeanrond and Lisa Sowle Cahill

The religious formation of boys and girls is undergoing dramatic changes in the different Christian contexts of our world. Many traditional channels of religious formation no longer function or have lost much of their former impact, while new modes of religious formation are only slowly emerging. Many parents, teachers, priests, bishops, youth and parish workers have voiced their frustration over the difficulties of handing on their faith to the next generation. Many children are expressing an inability to appropriate their parents’ faith and express their critique of traditional forms of religious education. The changing roles of the family, the school, the neighbourhood, the parish/church, and the media in the religious formation of boys and girls need to be studied. Moreover, questions concerning the role of gender in religious formation must be pursued. There can be no doubt that current difficulties with bringing up boys and girls in the Christian faith call for a careful analysis of the situation and for new approaches. Alternative models of religious formation need to be developed, if the increasing disruption of religious formation and the resulting overall threat to the handing on of the Christian tradition of faith in our time is to be overcome.

In order to approach these problems this issue of Concilium aims to explore the current situation of religious formation in different parts of the church. In the first part, important aspects and specific problems in Christian religious education today are analysed. These initial articles reflect upon the changing significance of the family home, of the school, of the local church, of gender roles, and of the media for religious formation of boys and girls. In the second part possibilities and conditions for religious formation are assessed from the perspectives of the parents-children relationship, the particular demands of young adults, and the mutual relationship between faith development in boys and girls on the one hand and the local church community on the other hand. Finally, some emerging proposals, models [8] and concepts of religious education are discussed in order to offer the reader some orientation in how some of the pressing issues of religious formation could be approached in a more promising way in the church of the third millenium.