The recent publication in the BOE of the new curricular objectives for the Religion subject, within the framework of the Concordat between the Church and the Spanish State, once again brings to the table an unsettling paradox: in the name of a supposed academic neutrality and an acceptable approach, it empties of content precisely what makes Religion a culturally essential subject.
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Because it is worth saying it without beating around the bush: a person who is unaware of the difference between venial sin and mortal sin; who ignores what purgatory, hell, or heaven is; who does not know what a canonization or beatification doctrinally implies; who does not understand the Catholic doctrine on marriage, prayer, liturgy, or the sacraments; who has never heard of transubstantiation nor understands what happens in the Holy Mass; who is unaware of the commandments, the role of the Virgin Mary, the redemptive meaning of Christ’s work, or the elementary issues of the Gospel, is not simply a person without faith: is an uncultured person.
And not in a moral or pejorative sense, but in the strictest and most academic sense of the term.
Religious inculture, cultural inculture
Anyone who lacks these basic notions is objectively ill-prepared to understand the culture on which the West has been built. They are someone who will visit the great museums of the world without knowing how to interpret what they see; who will approach poetry without understanding its symbols; who will listen to classical music without grasping its background; who will enter a cathedral without being able to gauge or contextualize what they observe.
We are not talking about faith. We are talking about knowledge.
Theology, liturgy, sacraments, dogmas, councils, schisms, the difference between Catholics and Protestants, the Christian conception of man, sin, time, suffering, redemption, or death, are basic intellectual categories for understanding European history, art, philosophy, and politics.
To dispense with them is not neutrality: it is cultural amputation.
The deliberate confusion between moralizing catechesis and academic teaching
The underlying problem of the new curricular approach, which endorses what has been happening over the last three decades, is a serious conceptual confusion. When the Religion subject is oriented toward vague objectives such as “ethical sensitivity,” “personal experience,” “civic values,” or “individual moral discernment,” it is paradoxically invading the terrain that does belong to catechesis and pastoral accompaniment, rather than to the academic realm.
Moral discernment, spiritual direction, maturation of faith, religious interiority, belong to ecclesial life, to the realm of the parish priest, the Christian community, not particularly to the school curriculum.
Curricular subjects are not so much the forum for forming religious consciences, but for transmitting knowledge. And religious knowledge, when taught with rigor, is perfectly compatible with absolute neutrality in conscience.
A subject that should interest even atheist families
From this perspective, the Religion subject—properly understood—should be attractive (even mandatory) for children from non-believing families. Not as a disguised catechism, but as an essential intellectual tool so that the student can understand the world they inhabit.
Because no one can understand Europe without Christianity. No one can understand Spain without Catholicism. No one can understand our architecture, our calendar, our law, our literature, or our conception of human dignity without knowing Christian doctrine.
And this does not require faith. It requires study.
The absurdity of a curriculum that dispenses with the essential
It is therefore profoundly contradictory that a curriculum that presents itself as “academic” does not place at the center precisely the objective elements of religious knowledge: the sacraments, dogmas, commandments, councils, schisms, great theological controversies, doctrinal differences between Christian confessions.
They are not confessional elements. They are fundamental cultural contents.
Eliminating or relegating to the background behind a soft ethics of catechetical collage these contents does not make the subject more neutral; it makes it irrelevant. And turning Religion into an ethereal subject of generic values with Jesus as a superficial figure is not respecting the Concordat: it is emptying it of meaning.
Recovering religion as knowledge, not as a slogan
Catholics—and also educational authorities—should understand that the Religion subject should not be a moralistic platitude. It should be doctrinal, historical, cultural, and intellectually demanding like Literature or History.
In some cases, that knowledge will help persevere in faith. In others, it will simply be a call of knowledge. But in all cases, it will be a decisive contribution to the formation of truly cultured people.
Because those who are ignorant of the religion that has shaped their civilization are not freer. They are simply more manipulable. And, above all, more ignorant.