Thursday, September 11, 2008

A new discovery!

I learned from my most admired professors of liturgy and preaching that the Mass, and in particular preaching, is not primarily meant to be didactic. The church ought not to be treated like a classroom.

What I have learned from the Understanding by Design program, and from recent experience, is that the classroom itself ought not to be treated like a classroom.

Who knew?

1 comment:

Matt of CG said...

Makes sense. The needs of a particular community are unique to that community. St. Paul's letters are curtailed to the nature of the community he writes to. Is the efficacy of the message in St. Paul's letters lost from one community to the next? Nope.

The classroom only serves to assimilate students to a particular style of learning for generations. The alphabet song will always be taught starting with the letter, "A."

That's what I think is cool about The Bible- it is simultaneously relevant in a universal and individual way. I couldn't say that about any other peice of literature on earth.

----

The handing of the New Testament to a Transitory Deacon seems to make more sense to me now.