Mary Charles Bryce, O.S.B.

Mary Charles Bryce was a leading voice in the catechetical renewal movement which called for a shift from traditional Catholic religious education, which relied upon catechisms and doctrine, to a new approach emphasizing personal experience. Born to a wealthy and influential family in Ramona, Oklahoma, Mary took a leisurely pace with her education graduating with her bachelor’s degree from Benedictine Heights Catholic College at the age of thirty. Over the next six years she worked on her M.A. degree from Catholic University of America. Her thesis was A Study of Some Attempts to Integrate the Life of Worship into Catechisms in the Modern Period (1960).

During her graduate program she became good friends with the Chair of the Department, Gerard Sloyan, who would eventually offer her a teaching position at CUA. Mary exercised a major influence on the first department designed to focus on instructing lay catechists. Her new catechesis program drew heavily on emerging fields of psychology and sociology, as well as adopting the perspective of secularist educational theorist, John Dewey. While the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) was still in session, Mary published a small booklet Come Let Us Eat (1964) and its complimentary parent-teacher manual to be used to prepare students for First Communion. Her text diverged from traditional catechesis anticipating shifts to come in the new catechesis movement.

Among American Catholic scholars and laity the Baltimore Catechism, the officially sanctioned national catechism, had traditionally been viewed as one of the crowning achievements of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1884) bringing clarity and unity in religious education. Mary Charles Bryce used her dissertation to argue that since America had become a culturally diverse and inclusive country, the time of the catechism was past. She offered criticism of the text and its use within catechetical literature. As the most in depth academic treatment of the Baltimore Catechism up to that time, her work transformed the national opinion as to the value of the text, leading many catechists to abandon its use in their parishes.