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Sharing the Light of Faith (1979)

Catechism of the Catholic Church (1993) 

This series of articles seeks to explore the rather remarkable fifty-year period in the history of the Church’s catechetical mission. We have already looked briefly at the outcomes of the International Catechetical Study Weeks, the General Catechetical Directory (1971), Evangelii Nuntiandi (1974), and Catechesi Tradendae (1979). In this article, we will consider a document of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Sharing the Light of Faith: National Catechetical Directory of Catholics in the United States (1979) and two documents of the universal Church, The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (1987) and the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1993).

Sharing the Light of Faith: National Catechetical Directory of Catholics in the United States (1979)

At the conclusion of the Synod of Bishops on catechesis, Archbishop Joseph Bernardin of Cincinnati, who had previously served as the General Secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, described a project that had been undertaken by the US bishops shortly after the publication of the General Catechetical Directory in 1971: “Our Directory, which has been under development for nearly five years, is a comprehensive, practical statement of policy and guidelines governing the content and methods of catechesis in all forms and at all levels . . . The intent of the Directory is to codify the best of responsible, tested catechetical thought and practice, in light of the Church’s teaching and traditional wisdom, and so serve as a normative guidepost as well as an incentive for catechetical endeavors.”[1]

Indeed, work on a national catechetical directory had begun six years before. In fact, the bishops of the United States were among the first conferences of bishops in the world to follow up on the directive of the General Catechetical Directory for bishops “to prepare directories for their own nations or regions.”[2]

Shortly after the publication of the General Catechetical Directory, the administrative board of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops turned to their chairman of the Committee on Education, Bishop William E. McManus, to devise a plan for the development of a national catechetical directory for the United States. In 1972, the general assembly of bishops approved two committees to prepare the national directory: an oversight committee and a working committee. The oversight committee, composed of seven bishops (called the Bishops’ Committee on Policy and Review), was to set policy for the development of the directory and to review the efforts of the working committee. The working committee’s task would be the actual writing of the directory.

The resolve of the American bishops to produce a national directory was confirmed when they added two staff members to execute their plan. In 1973, Msgr. Wilfred Paradis and Sr. Mariella Frye were appointed project director and assistant project director, respectively. Along with Archbishop John Whelan, a member of the Bishops’ Committee on Policy and Review and an ex-officio member of the working committee, they initiated a nationwide consultation to determine who would be invited to serve on the working committee. In time, the working committee came to be known as the National Catechetical Directory Committee. It was composed of twelve members—four bishops and eight other members representing the diversity of the Church in the United States.[3] Committee members came from different regions of the country and different cultural backgrounds. They were professional catechetical leaders and volunteer catechists. They were parents, teachers, parish religious education directors, and campus ministers.

Between 1973 and 1975, several preliminary drafts of the document were circulated to bishops, theologians, priests, religious, diocesan and parish directors of religious education, catechists, and parents. I remember vividly as a seminarian in 1974 being included in one of the final consultations on the directory. It was the first time in history that a document with such a high level of authoritative significance as a catechetical directory was the subject of such wide and deep consultation. The result of all this work and extensive consultation, Sharing the Light of Faith: National Catechetical Directory for Catholics of the United States, was approved by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1977 and by the Congregation for the Clergy in Rome in 1978. It was published in 1979, the same year as Catechesi Tradendae.

At some point in your career, you may struggle with burnout, job dissatisfaction, or simple boredom with the daily monotony. Perhaps you have resigned yourself to projects left incomplete or finished half-heartedly. Something is better than nothing is a tempting motto. On the flip side, I have met people, particularly people working for the Church, who feel that working hard for a promotion is too “worldly” and not fit for a Christian. It may surprise you that a saint once wrote, “A person with no professional ambition is of no use to me.”[i]

Inferior Work Is Not Christian Work

That was expressed by St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei. He wrote those words because he clearly saw the connection between work and virtue. The virtuous Christian, regardless of whether he or she is working in the Church, the office, or at home, is working to the best of his or her ability and always striving for perfection.

Professional ambition, while it can be wrongly ordered, is not only the worldly or greedy. Success in our professional lives is not antithetical to the Gospel. Rather, a good Christian will be a good worker. We often think of virtue in terms unattached from daily living. But the life of grace is built on the everyday, normal life of the Christian.

Virtue is found in doing daily work well. St. Josemaría warned, “Since we should behave at all times as God’s envoys, we must be very much aware that we are not serving him loyally if we leave a job unfinished; if we don’t put as much effort and self-sacrifice as others do into the fulfillment of professional commitments.”[ii]

We cannot strive for virtue at only certain times of our day or in particular environments. The woman who cuts corners at work, the man who is lazy at the office, and the student who does not study are not virtuous. Striving for excellence and virtue cannot be compartmentalized into certain arenas of life. Escrivá continues, “people who neglect obligations that seem less important will hardly succeed in other obligations that pertain to the spiritual life and are undoubtedly harder to fulfill.”[iii]

Self-knowledge here is important. If I am constantly cutting corners or neglecting obligations, are these the result of choices I am making and behaviors I could remedy? On the other hand, if we live with ADHD or another medical condition, our struggle to make deadlines might have a very different cause. I am not insinuating that those who must work with disabilities are less holy. Those who live with the challenges of neurodivergence are called to strive for virtue in work, too, but it will look differently for all of us.

For Christians, the celebration of the mystery of Christ is, on the one hand, formative and, on the other, an opportunity to offer praise and thanksgiving. This is especially true for Catholics because the events of our salvation in Christ are recalled daily, weekly, seasonally, and annually. The awareness of the liturgical cycle may not be immediately evident to the average churchgoer. Even the topic of the “liturgical year” may well evoke a range of responses. Some will shrug shoulders in indifference; others will give a blank stare of confusion; still others may light up with enthusiasm. For catechists and religious educators, the organization of the Church’s liturgical seasons offers a fruitful way of contemplating the mysteries of our salvation and a powerful means of forming Christians in the fundamental values of our faith.

An Initial Principle and the Liturgical Calendar

A few principal ideas can help bring into focus what might otherwise seem a daunting task. The first is this: If you want to know what the Church believes, pay attention to what she says when she prays. In other words, the Church herself provides the key that allows access to the meaning of the liturgical year. This occurs concretely in a liturgical ritual celebrated on the Feast of the Epiphany. Sometimes called the Epiphany Proclamation, it is known officially as “The Announcement of Easter and the Moveable Feasts.” The texts and music for it can be found in Appendix I of the Roman Missal. Without reproducing the entire text here, a summary will suffice.

On the day of Epiphany, during which Christians celebrate the manifestation of Christ to the nations as the world’s redeemer (the liturgical context is significant), the liturgy makes an explicit link between Christmas and Easter: “As we have rejoiced at the Nativity of the Lord, so we also announce the joy of the Resurrection.” These are the two pivotal events of the liturgical year. The Announcement goes on to note the most significant celebrations, the dates of which change from year to year: Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Lenten season, the date of Easter, the Ascension, Pentecost, Corpus Christi, and the First Sunday of Advent. A previous edition of the Missal provides additional commentary:

Through the rhythms of times and seasons let us celebrate the mysteries of salvation. Let us recall the year’s culmination, the Easter Triduum of the Lord: his last supper, his crucifixion, his burial and his rising.... Each Easter, as on each Sunday, the Holy Church makes present the great and saving deed by which Christ has forever conquered sin and death.... Likewise, the pilgrim Church proclaims the Passover of Christ in the feasts of the holy Mother of God, in the feasts of the Apostles and Saints, and in the commemoration of the faithful departed. To Jesus Christ, who was, who is, and who is to come, Lord of time and history, be endless praise, for ever and ever.[1]

The Church celebrates in time the great mysteries of human redemption. Careful attention to the rhythms of the liturgical calendar can help us to honor the sacrality of time and notice how God works our salvation through the different seasons.

A first point that emerges from this liturgical proclamation can be seen in the structure of the calendar. The Paschal Mystery (Easter) is central to everything Christians do, central to the way we live. That conviction is made visible, sensible, in the unfolding of the liturgical year with each season’s emphasis on one aspect or other of the mystery of salvation. A second, no less important, point is that every Sunday is a remembrance of the Lord’s Day, the Resurrection. The richness of Sunday is beautifully developed by Pope St. John Paul II’s 1998 Apostolic Letter Dies Domini (On Keeping the Lord’s Day Holy), in which he reflects on five aspects of the first day of the week.[2] A familiarity with these can be a tremendous source for an educator’s reflection on the liturgy.

Who could survive a low-paying, time-consuming, unpredictable, and exhausting job for more than a few years? And if they do survive, who could possibly thrive, especially as a family? We are living proof that it is possible, but it takes an important skill that many of us were not taught: building and protecting boundaries.

The first requirement to continue in ministry for more than a few short years is, of course, knowing ourselves to actually be called by God to this work. When we are called by God, bringing others into a deeper union with Christ and his Church in a substantial and concrete way becomes our overarching purpose. All Christians have this call by reason of their baptism, but not everyone is called to make it his or her professional employment. When considering full-time ministry work, there are important questions about boundaries that require clear answers. Can we do God’s will to the fullest in just the forty hours a week we are hired for? Does having time clearly set apart when we are completely removed from work limit our ability to love and serve unconditionally? If we are not at every event or providing several weeknight activities each week, how will we reach people well?

The General Catechetical Directory (1971) – Catechesi Tradendae (1979)

In this series of articles exploring a rather extraordinary fifty-year period in the Church’s catechetical mission, we have already considered the impact of the six International Catechetical Study Weeks. We now turn our attention to three pivotal catechetical documents promulgated at the level of the universal Church: the General Catechetical Directory(1971), and two apostolic exhortations, St. Paul VI’s Evangelii Nuntiandi (1974) and St. John Paul II’s Catechesi Tradendae (1979).

By the time the final report of the International Catechetical Study Week at Medellin, Columbia was published in 1969, the Holy See was well into the process of developing a catechetical directory for the universal Church. That process had been set in motion by the promulgation in 1965 of the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Pastoral Office of the Bishops in the Church Christus Dominus. It specifically prescribed that “directory should be composed concerning the catechetical instruction of the Christian people.”[1]

General Catechetical Directory (1971)

In June 1966, the task for implementing the conciliar mandate for a directory was given to the Congregation for the Clergy under the leadership of its prefect, Cardinal Jean Villot. At that time, the Congregation for the Clergy had the competence to oversee the Church’s catechetical ministry. (Pope Benedict XVI subsequently transferred that responsibility to the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization.)[2] Cardinal Villot gathered an international commission in Rome in 1968 to plan the directory. The commission was also responsible for the composition of the directory and consulted with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Congregation for the Sacraments throughout the process. The commission also consulted directly with the world’s bishops. The commission developed a proposed outline, which was reviewed at a special plenary session of the Congregation for the Clergy. The Foreword to the Directory states, “After that, a longer draft was prepared, and once again the Conferences of Bishops were queried so that they might express their opinion about it. In accord with the advice and observations given by the bishops in this second consultation, a definitive draft of the Directory was prepared. Even so, before this was published, it was reviewed by a special theological commission and by the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.”[3] A draft text was developed and then released to all the episcopal conferences in the world for further consultation.

As is evident, the task of preparing a catechetical directory for the universal Church in a post-conciliar Church was not only challenging because of the nature of the task itself but also because of the methodology employed by the congregation; namely, an exhaustive process of multiple, multi-tiered, worldwide consultations. In fact, this rather cumbersome process became the standard for the preparation of the two succeeding catechetical directories of 1997 and 202,1 as well as for that of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The General Catechetical Directory was published on Easter Sunday, April 11, 1971, bearing the signature of Cardinal John Wright, who had by then become the prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy. Its purpose was “to provide assistance in the production of catechetical directories and catechisms.”[4]

If you find yourself in a fight, your extremities get cold. Your adrenaline kicks in and blood rushes to your core to pump your heart, support your lungs, and power your muscles so they can keep you alive. Moments of crisis are signals to get back to the heart of things. This isn’t only true of your body but of any institution. If a business is about to fail, it desperately needs to rush back to its “why”: Why do we exist? What are our core values? Are we being true to those values?

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Born into a Catholic family and baptized when I was sixteen days old, I grew up accepting the Church, receiving from her, but not understanding much about her identity.