Crossing The Line

In my tradition you cannot receive the Eucharist unless you know stuff and agree that the stuff you learned is true.  The stuff is called theology or catechism.  It is basically a head trip, or intellectual exercise, though for a child, and many others, the head and heart seem to work closely together.  The child wants to receive communion, believes that it is Jesus and that something wonderful will happen.  Since my tradition treats most people as children, this is how we teach about the Eucharist.

Then the child becomes a teenager.  No longer does the Eucharist hold the magic.  The head and heart seem to go separate ways.  The belief might be there or waver, as it often does, when we think belief requires a felt experience of "Wow!"  What does the teen do? Find another place for the wow.  Go to movies, read vampire novels, drink from the god of Bacchus.  Then there is always sex which of course prevents the receiving of Eucharist because teen sex is forbidden in my tradition.  Confession first.  Look around and see how few teens there are in church.  There are the packed Newman Centers and some teen masses that do well.  Not much else.  Must be a better way.  Maybe the traditional way of mind first/catechism/information does not have much staying power.