On Sept. 17, we will celebrate the 65th anniversary of the Holy See's establishment of Catechetical Sunday. This commemoration affords all of us in the Church an excellent opportunity to reflect upon the nature and importance of catechesis, the progress that has been made in faith formation over the past 65 years and the challenges we must continue to address.
As the General Directory for Catechesis states, "Catechesis is nothing other than the process of transmitting the Gospel as the Christian community has received it, understands it, celebrates it, lives it and communicates it in many ways." It is that awesome privilege of making the Good News of Jesus Christ meaningful and relevant for the people of our day.
Different soil
However, as we bishops note in our recent statement, "In Support of Catechetical Ministry," "the soil of culture into which the seeds of faith are planted today is far different from the culture that existed when the first Catechetical Sunday was celebrated. For us in the United States, our culture offers significant challenges that influence how the Gospel is proclaimed."
Our statement notes, for example, that "we live in an increasingly secular and materialistic society which is often at odds with our Christian message and values. The emphasis on individual rights has eroded the concept of the common good and our ability to call people to accept revealed teaching that cannot be changed by the democratic process.
"The disintegration of the community and social structures that once supported religious faith and encouraged family life have been replaced by a media and technology-driven culture that makes catechesis especially difficult. Religious instruction and catechesis compete against entertainment and sports for time in people's busy lives."
Challenging task
Those who catechize today, then, face the difficult task of communicating the Christian message through creative and effective means that will enable it to be heard, accepted and understood authentically in this culture.
They must reach out to those who are unevangelized and uncatechized as well as work with a large number of people today who are not fully catechized.
Further, the approach they employ must be comprehensive, namely, forming disciples by shaping their minds, hearts and spirits through promoting knowledge of faith, imparting liturgical education and moral formation, teaching how to pray, and offering education for community living, social justice advocacy and doing the work of evangelization.
Complicated effort
Catechists today, then, face the monumental task of passing on the precious heritage of our Catholic Christian tradition in a wholistic, understandable and culturally sensitive manner.
It is a role that is frequently misunderstood, occasionally maligned and fraught with a plethora of logistic hassles, presupposing knowledge and skills related to curriculum content, pedagogy and administration, and requiring the wisdom of Solomon as they seek to address and resolve the ofttimes conflicting expectations of Church leaders, other teachers, parents and students alike.
Yet the ministry of those who serve as catechists is of an enormous importance since they are the ones who set the tone for how the Good News is proclaimed, reflected upon, discussed, and put into practice through prayer, worship and service. The vision they articulate, the curriculum and textbooks they adopt for classroom use, the sacramental policies they help to formulate and implement, and the adult education they impart through the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults and parental preparation programs have enormous influence on the religious development and spiritual formation of our people.
Credit given
So I welcome the opportunity Catechetical Sunday affords to salute our priests and deacons, and all those who work with them -- directors and coordinators of religious education, parish catechists, principals, Catholic school teachers, youth ministers, Rite of Christian Initiation for Adult team members, and parents, who bear the primary responsibility for the faith formation of their children -- for their sterling efforts to share the Good News of Salvation with those entrusted to their care.
To these people, I say:
You are truly instruments of hope in an age of uncertainty and despair; you are heralds of that ageless wisdom of self-forgetfulness, of dying to self, and living a life of love and service on behalf of others in an era of narcissism, consumerism and individualism, and you are bearers of that 2000-year-old tradition of our Catholic Christian heritage rooted firmly as it is in the Scriptures and in the Church's liturgical and sacramental life in a world whose memory seems not to extend beyond yesterday's headlines.
For all of this, and so much more, I thank you profusely.
More to do
And looking to the future, I would cite two critical challenges which must be addressed in catechetical ministry.
The first challenge is to place greater emphasis on catechesis as a life-long process of initial conversion, formation, education and ongoing conversion. This will mean (as the documents of the Holy See and our Bishops' Conference have urged repeatedly) that we must shift from a mindset, still all too common today, which perceives faith formation as basically a classroom enterprise directed primarily, if not exclusively, to children and teens, to a model of catechesis which gives primacy to adult education and formation as the chief form of catechesis.
The importance of this transition cannot be stressed strongly enough. For in science and art, in economics and politics, in medicine and technology, Catholics are, at least quantitatively, a highly educated group of men and women. Through the media, the internet and foreign travel, they are aware of the bewildering diversity of the world in which they live in a way that no generation before theirs could have been. And yet this educated Church of ours is by and large, illiterate when it comes to Christianity.
Life-long process
Hence, it is imperative that we engage in intensive efforts at both the parish and diocesan level to develop the personnel (professional and volunteer), programs, technology and fiscal resources which will enable people, especially adults, to avail themselves of opportunities to understand their Catholic faith more fully, and to integrate it with real-life issues such as marriage, divorce, human sexuality, mid-life crisis, suffering, illness, death, loss and grief; or with issues of social justice and the need for communication and parenting skills.
People cannot be expected to cope maturely with these and other issues if they still have only a childhood or rudimentary understanding of our Catholic faith.
And make no mistake about it: This move from an almost exclusive emphasis on imparting faith through parish religious education programs and Catholic schools to the recovery of an older vision, according to which the following of Christ is best understood as a life-long process is no easy task.
Rather, as Nicholas Lash points out in an excellent article in The Tablet, "It will require such a revolution of imagination, such a fundamental redistribution of personal and fiscal resources, such a comprehensive rethinking of the ways in which we learn, teach and preach, that no single generation could accomplish it." However, I would advocate fervently that the responsibility for initiating this revolution is ours. And it is one from which we can shrink only with grave negative consequences for the Church.
Job corps
The second challenge, already alluded to, is that we work diligently to recruit, train and retain catechists who are well prepared for the task of faith formation.
The more than 500,000 men and women that we involve formally in faith formation in our country (including more than 6,000 in our own Diocese) deserve our best efforts. As Sister Maureen Shaughnessy of the U.S. Catholic Conference Department of Education notes, "This will require a threefold approach: attending to the personal faith development of our catechists; assuring that they are well versed in the content of our faith tradition and about the social cultural situation of those to be catechized; and helping them to develop the skills to communicate the message well."
I would note further that just as there is an urgency to promote vocations to the priesthood and religious life these days, there is also the critical need to insure that the current catechetical leaders in our Church, who have done such superb work in bringing us to this new moment in catechesis, be replaced by a new generation of leaders who have the vision, energy, enthusiasm and passion for seizing the torch and exercising this vital ministry in the Church.
Hence, I ask everyone to discern if this is a ministry to which the Lord is calling you and to respond generously. I assure you that we will offer the resources and support such a response requires and that the ministry itself is immensely rewarding.
Finally, I ask the prayers of all within the Diocese for those who exercise the catechetical ministry in our midst that God will bless them abundantly and give them the strength to be faithful and spirit-filled heralds of the Good News in our day.