The Crisis in Catechesis and Fraternizing With our Separated Brethren and the Pickle In Which Scelata Finds Her Self

Cardinal Burke says,

One of the biggest challenges is the defective catechesis in the Roman Catholic Church—I can speak from my experience in the United States—for the past 40 to 50 years. Children and young people are not well catechized with regard to marriage. pretty much everything having to do with the Faith.

Okay, His eminent Eminence didn't really say that, I of course edited  the end.

I have a delighful child in RelEd.
She never, but never shuts her mouth and has a question about every word I say, including "in", "and" and "the."
I love her, she's good-hearted, really funny, and inquisitive and she completely wears me out, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Here's the thing....

She's not in the local public, she's attending private school. Okay.

It's evangelical protestant. Okay.

She comes in every week with some new objection to Catholicism, clearly, (because I recognize the phrasing instantly,) taken straight from the Dont-Really-Know-Anything-About-Catholicism-Except-That-As-A-Good-Protestant-I-Hate-It playbook.

Why do we Catholics want to keep  Jesus on the cross?
Why do we worship Mary?

It seldom has anything to do with the intended lesson for the day but it needs to be addressed, and it neds to be addressed right then.
And it's hard, hella hard to make a point to a mouthy child of that age strong enough for it to stick, without her exaggerating it.

They said we make too much of a fuss about Mary, but I know she's just as good as Jesus.

Okay, Jessie, that's not quite it....

And of course, the fundagelical influence on one kid aside, everything needs to be repeated, oh... umptyleven thousand times for there to be a (holy) ghost of a chance of it sinking in and staying with them.

I explained once that she must be polite and obedient at school, but understand that her teachers may not quite "get" what we know as Catholics, and that for now, it might be better to avoid getting into it with them.
But the fact is, I don't know her parents, don't know her situation - for all I know, it's a mixed marriage. For all I know her parents may be completely uncatechized cultural Catholics.
For all I know they don't practice.

I'll have to talk to the DRE about this, and at very least - she can be my project for the year.