Franciscan at Home

Just a few weeks ago I left a coffee shop after an hour-long conversation with a Director of Religious Education, a conversation for me that has seemingly repeated itself over recent years. These conversations usually start with catechists saying: “our Mystagogy is flat”; “we had thirty-something in our catechumenate and now we have an average of three in our follow-up adult-ed program”; and worse yet “our neophytes have little interest in being involved in Church life.” All of these comments focus on what they need to change in their Mystagogy and other follow-up adult-education programs, with no emphasis on the need to change their current catechetical programs. (To some degree this is understandable as we all have the tendency to fix the immediate, rather than go a little deeper.)

After discussing with them their respective follow-up formation programs, I redirected their attention back to their catechumenate programs by inquiring into how they approached catechesis in its nature, structure, method, and content. From these dialogues I discovered that they all had one thing in common: their catechesis had lost its sense of vigor and proclamation of faith and failed to summon the catechumenate into a living, spirit-filled relationship with Christ.1 This proclamation that starts with those all-important words “Jesus Christ loves you; he gave his life to save you; and now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen and free you.”[2]

For some parish formation programs, zeal for Christ and his message is robust, and it beckons us into a perpetual courtship that is alive and well. For other parish programs, encouragement and reminders are necessary and on going. Collectively, it is imperative we understand that catechizing for discipleship is quintessential to any formation program that is going to be fruitful and life giving.

How can catechesis awaken desire for God? This question is especially relevant at a time where the practice of the Catholic Faith in the Western world tends to depend less on cultural and family values and more on personal adherence. How can catechesis foster this personal adherence through awakening desire for God?

Although there are few references to desire for God and its importance in catechesis in the documents of the Magisterium, they are all unanimous in pointing to desire for God as an essential element of human life whose finality, at once personal and universal, is found in God. The most important statement is at the very beginning of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

‘The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.’1

This desire for God is therefore inseparable from the ‘“desire for true happiness’2 and resounds when man is faced with making moral choices. This desire for happiness finds an earthly fulfilment when the Beatitudes are taken as a rule of life.3 Moreover, it is this desire for happiness, this desire for the coming of the kingdom of God, which prompts our prayer and petition to God,4 and it is out of desire to see ‘the Face of the Lord’ that we enter into prayer and into the liturgy.5

Here we continue the series about putting twelve ‘keys’ of the pedagogy of God into practice in our catechetical sessions. We are looking at how we can adapt, in small practical ways, what we normally do in order to come closer to the pedagogy of God in our sessions. These ‘keys’ that we have been examining in the series have all been drawn from the very structuring of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and are discussed in The Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Craft of Catechesis, by Fr Pierre de Cointet, Professor Barbara Moran and Dr Petroc Willey.

One of the keys is to ensure that our catechesis is ‘purposeful’ – that is, that it is a catechesis which keeps God’s purpose clearly to the fore. We are workers in his vineyard and we join the Blessed Trinity in the Church where God’s purpose, his plan, is being fulfilled. God’s purpose, his plan, can be stated in many ways, and we might summarise it by saying that it is the salvation of each person, ‘to reconcile and unite in himself, those who turn away from sin’ (CCC 234).

How, then, can we make our catechesis purposeful? Here are four ways.

‘Attractiveness’ is one of the keys of the pedagogy of the faith that Petroc Willey, Barbara Morgan and Pierre de Cointet write of in The Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Craft of Catechesis. In this work we are helped to see how essential this characteristic is considered to be by the Church. To encapsulate this point the Catechism of the Catholic Church has, on the front cover of every edition, the image of a shepherd playing panpipes to attract and comfort the sheep at his feet. Let us look at how to be attentive to the importance of this key in practice.

God himself is, of course, completely beautiful, utterly attractive. Catechesis is about God and therefore it is logical to think that in order to be true to the nature of God, beauty should in some way be integral to catechesis. Catechesis should be attractive, should attract. This raises many questions. What attracts people? What is a Catholic understanding of beauty? When we use the word ‘beauty’ in relation to catechesis, we need to be aware of both the physical resources we are using and, also, spiritual beauty, which has an attraction entirely its own. There can be spiritual beauty even in the midst of ugly physical surroundings. In this sense, we say, faith is beautiful, or, trust is beautiful. The beauty of trust in God can appear even in the most dismal and upsetting of surroundings.

Since its beginnings in 1954, the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd has used the Montessori method of education to incarnate the themes at the heart of Christianity in materials that children can use to nurture their relationship with God.

Montessori’s approach was used both in the development of the materials and their use. Dr. Sofia Cavalletti, a Hebrew scholar, and Gianna Gobbi, a student of Dr. Montessori, were partners in this development. They would create a material for the children, but before pronouncing it finished the material was introduced to the children and their response was observed.

Each material is meant to be used independently by the child after its introduction. This independence creates a space for meditation – a meeting between the child and God – that is not dependent on the adult. Cavalletti and Gobbi watched for repeated use of the material by the children, a sense of satisfaction and joy as they worked, and comments or artwork that indicated the theological content of the material was accessible to the children. When these three conditions were met, the material became a permanent part of the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. Two key themes of their work are Gift and Sign.

Montessori’s name is associated with a teaching methodology for children that is particularly attuned to their needs and capacities.  We might wish to take this thought as a springboard for how God provides for us as his children, with the provision of a catechetical environment enabling us to receive all that we need for our growth as his free sons and daughters.

What is an effective and truly engaging model for Catechesis? R Jared Staudt argues that a new approach is needed, one that cultivates every aspect of faith to create a dynamic experience of the Christian life for those being catechized.

In a short piece entitled “Models of Catechesis,” Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., describes various approaches to catechesis practiced by the Church in the twentieth century. Foremost among these Dulles lists doctrinal catechesis, which “relies heavily on the authority of Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church,” and whose “objective is to produce Christians who are confident and orthodox in their faith.”[i] It is not surprising that a dire crisis in both confidence and orthodoxy afflicted the Church in the late twentieth century when doctrinal methods of catechesis were virtually abandoned.[ii] In what follows, I will argue that new approaches to catechesis, rather than being completely abandoned, should be integrated in a holistic fashion in which the doctrinal method holds priority. Such “holistic catechesis” will lead to a vibrant spiritual life for those catechized in which the faith that is learned is also encountered and, ultimately, lived out.

In this article Sr Hyacinthe examines the ways in which Notre Dame de Vie’s catechesis provides for an encounter with God to take place.

All catechesis can be thought of as a response to the fundamental human desire for God.

‘The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God’[i]. God is the origin and finality of the human person. Catechesis should never be thought of as something imposed arbitrarily and somehow artificially on children and young people just because Christianity happens to be the religion in which they are brought up. Catechesis is rather there to answer a need which corresponds to a thirst, present in all human beings created for God.

The first part of this article explored this desire for God and introduced the catechetical work of Notre Dame de Vie, a French programme and approach which I believe engages in a profound way with this desire.

In this second part of the article I would like to examine how Notre Dame de Vie’s catechesis provides for this encounter with God to take place and recount some catechists’ experience in using the programme Viens, suis-moi, tracing its impact in the sacramental, moral and prayer life of the children, in these ecclesial expressions of the life of grace.

What does it mean in practice to teach faithfully?

This series is about catechetical methods and how these methods are chosen ‘in the light of the pedagogy of God’ (GDC 148). So far in this series we have covered methods for teaching gracefully, prayerfully, biblically, liturgically, holistically, personally and attractively. By ‘methods’ we do not mean a fixed schema such as the ecclesial method or the method of shared praxis but a host of small practical ways of contributing to a session to enhance its unity with God’s own way of ‘treating us as sons’.

The GDC, as we know, sums up the need for faithfulness in the useful double principle of ‘fidelity to God and fidelity to man’(GDC 145). Fidelity to the Church is a perfect expression of this since it is in the Church that we find both God and man in the mystical body of Christ. The incarnation reminds us that as Christ is fully God and fully man, so our catechesis is to fully faithful to God and fully faithful to man, not a little bit faithful to each. It is useful to keep the distinction in mind, of fidelity to God on the one hand and fidelity to man on the other, in order to ensure that both are properly served because we each have a tendency to consider one more fully than the other. Fidelity to God means being faithful to all that God wants to reveal to his people. Fidelity to man means delivering the message in such a way that people can receive it, receive Christ.

Towards which half of the distinction are you inclined? Let us look at two examples to help identify the two tendencies. Consider a priest giving a faith-filled talk to a parish gathering for families - he spoke at such length that children started wandering around, then babies began crying, mothers began feeding them, fathers began finding games for the children to play quietly at the side of the room and still the priest continued, determined that the fullness of the message of the gospel would be expounded. By the time he had finished most of the people had left their seats empty in front of him. The example is an extreme one but a true story of fidelity to God - with no consideration of the audience.

Thomas Aquinas is not generally thought of in relation to catechesis. In fact, he is not referred to in the General Directory for Catechesis. However, Aquinas can render a valuable service to catechesis today as a model of pedagogy and a doctrinal resource for catechists.

In his essay entitled “Thomistic Theology and Religious Education,” Fr. Mark Heath provides a great service in bringing Aquinas into modern catechetical discourse. He lays out three main points, which he claims define Thomas’ contribution to catechesis: synthesis (systematic), theocentricity, and doctrine. Thomistic theology integrates all true insights (as seen especially in Thomas’ Aristotelianism), treats all things through and in relation to God, and is ordered toward a deeper understanding of the faith. These three points stand in stark contrast to current trends in catechesis, which focus on experience and praxis, as well as theories that emphasize whole-community catechesis. Therefore, Heath’s essay provides a helpful service in addressing the current crisis of catechesis, particularly by bringing Aquinas back into the discussion.

However, Heath’s essay can only be viewed as a preliminary effort. While he effectively brings forth key elements of Thomistic thought, the full catechetical significance needs further exploration. The content of Aquinas’ theology is actually tightly knit into a methodology intended to order one’s mind and heart to God. By focusing on the content of Thomas’ catechetical sermons (as well as of the Summa Theologiae) one can grasp how Aquinas’ presentation of doctrine is meant to draw the listener/reader into a deeper engagement with the realities that he presents.