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Though A Parent’s Catechism: Passing On The Catholic Faith did not completely fit its title, the book offered a useful, consise base of information on the Catholic faith.

As a Catholic mother, I was instantly drawn to the title A Parent’s Catechism by Dana Paul Robinson.  I was no less interested after reading the foreword.by Fr. Ronald Rolheiser who embarked on the need to ground ourselves in our faith and transmit it to our children.  That is the need: to find ways to pass on our faith to our children.  I am always looking for material that can help me transmit my faith in a way that my kids can pick it up on their level of understanding. 

I was disappointed to find that the book did not expound on how our faith can be taught to our children, however.  Instead the book exhibited the second part of it’s title:  a catechism. 

In accepting that the book was something other than what I hoped, I aspired to review it from another angle.  Did this book offer something engaging to my own faith? 

As I read, I found an adequate synopsis of basic Catholic faith.  New information emerged in various places throughout the book, but for the most part, I did not find a great wealth of enlightenment worth the cost of the book.  I found the first part of the book especially hard to get through because of my own mother’s successful implantation of Biblical scholarship.  What she could not instill, four years at a Christian university could.  There in again, I must confess I Clepped out of several hours of required Biblical classes.  In other words, it is hard to throw something new on my path and expect me to pick it up and examine it.  I’ve probably already run across it and have a matching set at home.

But not everyone has such a background (nor does everyone envy it) which rendered A Parent’s Catechism boring and this book certainly had many redeeming qualities.  First of all, if taken as a reference book, the book offers short passages about the basic tenets of the Bible, our Catholic faith, and the Church that are easily accessible and quick reads in and of themselves.  If you have a question about the beatitudes or the Mass, you can scan the table of contents and flip right to the answer.  Reading A Parent’s Catechism in this way, I also found the author’s style engaging, which is not something you hear about reference book authors.  If he had broken up his subject matter into several books and taken his time exploring each topic, I would have chosen a topic I had not yet learned about and enjoyed his teaching edge.

Second of all, for all the basics, therein lies the beauty:  this book is grounded in scholarship and historical context while still making the faith principles understandable to the novice of Biblical study.  While I may not have found a great newness, I do not ask that my faith be reborn or I would not have found comfort with it to begin with.  This book does a superb job covering what our faith IS, not rewriting it into another creature.  This alone makes it a great reference for those who have forgotten long ago lessons and are now presented with a question from Junior that they can’t quite articulate.

If you remember your faith, but need a refresher course in the specifics, A Parent’s Catechism may be just the thing for you to become reacquainted.

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