Franciscan at Home

The values of secular society are increasingly divergent from those of our Catholic Faith. We live in a time that seems to fit St. Paul’s description of a people who are “ingenious in their wickedness” (Rom 1:30). The task of forming Catholic conscience in children and youth might at times seem impossible in today’s world, and we might be tempted to despair. Indeed, no human methodology could accomplish this task. “For human beings this is impossible, but for God, all things are possible” (Mt 19:26).

Catechesis, in the mind of the Church, however, is not rooted in human methodology, but in the pedagogy of God. It is the Church’s mission to be a “visible and actual continuation of the pedagogy of the Father and of the Son.” How can we as catechists use the divine pedagogy, the way God teaches, to form the consciences of our learners? Here are five ways, corresponding to five aspects of the pedagogy of God.

Invite the learners to be their best selves

The pedagogy of God is invitational and person-centered. Jesus invited his followers into relationship with him (and continues to do so today). He often saw potential in people that they did not see in themselves. Consider St. Peter, for example, who tells Jesus to go away, saying he, Peter, is “a sinful man” (Lk 5:8). But Jesus sees what Peter could be, what he was made to be. While we might think many different things will make us happy, the only true and lasting happiness is found in each becoming the person God created that person to be.

The Catechism is an outstanding teaching tool that can provide excellent guidance for our lesson and session planning. The crucial element in any planning is first to become clear about the aim and then about the intended outcomes of a lesson. This is the subject of the current article. Focus on the Center The overall goal of all catechetical activity—and therefore of every resource, every program, and each individual catechetical encounter—has been famously described in Catechesi Tradendae, St. John Paul II’s seminal teaching on catechesis: the definitive aim of catechesis is to put people not only in touch but in communion, in intimacy, with Jesus Christ.[i] This articulation that Christ is the central aim of catechesis is a rich and inclusive one, which points in several directions. As we ponder the meaning of this teaching, we can call to mind all the nuances of the term “Christ-centered,” as it is unfolded in the General Directory for Catechesis.[ii] Thus, in our catechetical work, we are helping others to find Christ; and finding Christ includes finding him in all of his relationships. When we find Christ, we find, at the same time, those whom he loves. He would not have it otherwise. He does not allow us to find him alone, isolated, as some barren sola Christi. His names and titles reveal as much: he is Jesus, “God saves”—a name pointing us simultaneously upwards towards the Persons of the Trinity and downwards to those whom he redeems and lifts from the misery of their sin; he is “Son,” a name that identifies a relationship, and reminds us of his heavenly Father, who is his source; he is also “Christ,” that is, the one anointed by the eternal Spirit. To speak of the aim of our catechetical work as putting people “in communion, in intimacy, with Jesus Christ” therefore entails, as St. John Paul II put it, leading others “to the love of the Father in the Spirit” in order to “make us share in the life of the Holy Trinity.”[iii] A christocentric aim, furthermore, necessarily implies a Trinitarian christocentricity.[iv] Christocentricity is also to be understood in terms of what the Tradition has called the “whole Christ,” Christus totus. The Church uses this phase to remind us that Christ is Head and members together, forming one Body. Jesus is not found apart from those whom he disciples; or, according to a parallel image, Christ is inseparable from his Bride, for whom he gave himself up and to whom he united himself in everlasting love. The Scriptures speak of the bride’s longing for her groom, which is a longing for that union that marks the end of earthly time, when Christ finally unites to himself, in the embrace of love, all whom the Father, throughout history, has drawn to himself through the Son in the Holy Spirit.[v] Christ is the living heart of the Father’s plan for creation and redemption. The Catechism provides catechists with this rich christocentric account at the heart of its annunciation of the faith. Every part, and each chapter and section, has been written in order to lead us to this center, revealing “in the Person of Christ the whole of God's eternal design reaching fulfillment in that Person.”[vi] When planning lessons, then, we can turn to the Catechism in confident trust that we will find there a Christ-centered presentation of material.

Noëlle Le Duc, a member of the Carmelite secular institute Notre Dame de Vie, was a pre-school and kindergarten teacher who worked with three to seven-year old children, in order to awaken their faith. Her work with children formed a foundation for the later development of the Come Follow Me program. She believed that even very young children can enter into a lively personal relationship with God and live this out through prayer, as well as in all the dimensions of human life. This relationship grounds catechesis and allows it to bear lasting fruit. In this article, we will begin to examine the baptized child’s capability for a dynamic relationship with God. A Powerful Inspiration at the Beginning Before we examine Le Duc’s contributions, we must first understand the Carmelite founder of the Notre Dame de Vie Institute she entered in the 1950s, Ven. Fr. Marie-Eugene of the Child Jesus, whose cause for beatification is currently being examined. Fr. Marie-Eugene was a spiritual master, who highlighted especially the treasures that come with baptism. Fr. Marie-Eugene believed that catechesis must not only teach the truth about God, but it also has to “give the sense of God” and to teach people how they can “put into practice” the capacities given by grace. He thus explains what the catechist must do: the catechist has to awaken the child to all the supernatural realities present in his soul; therefore, it is necessary to teach the child how to put the theological virtues into practice. Then the catechist must foster in the child the habits inscribed in the depth of his soul, where the reflexes that guide human nature are mainly to be found. The purity and the simplicity of the child increase his capacity to put into practice this “supernatural organism” of the theological virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit that are integral to the working of baptismal grace. The catechist has to teach the child how to find God, to have regular personal encounters with him, and to remain in his presence. Thus faith becomes keener and penetrates more deeply into God. In this way the child acquires incomparable spiritual riches that will benefit him his whole life. Emphasizing the act of believing, Fr. Marie-Eugene challenges catechists: what pedagogy can bring children to God and help them adhere to him in faith? How can the catechist help them discover God as a living and loving person, whom we can trust and who wants to enter into dialogue with us?

At the 2015 St. John Bosco Conference for Catechesis and Evangelization this summer, Sr. Hyacinthe will offer training for this new catechetical program, written by members of the Notre Dame de Vie institute in France, an institute with whom Franciscan University’s Office of Catechetics has enjoyed a close institutional relationship. This article provides an overview of this children’s catechetical program and demonstrates its continuity with the Holy Father’s vision for catechesis. Catechesis is a proclamation of the word and is always centred on that word, yet it also demands a suitable environment and an attractive presentation, the use of eloquent symbols, insertion into a broader growth process and the integration of every dimension of the person within a communal journey of hearing and response.[1] This short but rich paragraph from Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation encapsulates the essential principles upon which Come follow me catechesis is founded. Come follow me is a catechetical program for children aged 7 to 11 developed in France by Notre Dame de Vie Institute in the last 30 years, and published recently in French and partially in English (Years 1-2). We are now going to take the main aspects of Pope Francis’ description, and, in a brief overview, see how they are applied in Come follow me.

If we peruse the foundational catechetical documents of our time, we learn that we are called to a catechesis that is modeled after the pedagogy of God. Indeed, this is an essential component of the Church’s mission to evangelize. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that the Church is called to be “a visible and actual continuation of the pedagogy of the Father and of the Son.”[1] The General Directory for Catechesis says it this way: “Catechesis, as communication of divine Revelation, is radically inspired by the pedagogy of God, as displayed in Christ and in the Church.”[2]

For far too long, catechesis in the United States has been bogged down in the mire of a debate regarding the relative importance of content and methodology. The GDC addresses this issue: “concerning pedagogy, after a period in which excessive insistence on the value of method and techniques was promoted by some, sufficient attention is still not given to the demands and to the originality of that pedagogy which is proper to the faith. It remains easy to fall into a ‘content-method dualism.’”[3] This false dichotomy that pits content against methodology has done considerable damage to the ministry of catechesis, manifesting itself most tragically in generations of poorly formed and disillusioned Catholics who have left the Faith, either because they never knew the true teaching of the Church or somehow found it irrelevant to their daily lives. Without a marriage of good content and methodology, the truth is not heard and lived. It doesn’t matter how theologically precise we are in our catechesis if we never communicate it in a way in which the learner can hear it and apply it. Likewise, the most developmentally-appropriate methodology will do the learner no good if the content is inaccurate or incomplete. In either case, the truth goes unheard, and the stakes are too high when that truth is the Gospel we are called to proclaim.

Adapting principles of sound pedagogy provide us a way to extract ourselves from the fruitless debate concerning content versus methodology and turn our attention to principles that can govern both. Dr. Petroc Willey, perhaps the foremost expert of the pedagogy of God, states, “Pedagogy and methodology are not one and the same, but rather pedagogy, with respect to catechesis, may be defined as ‘overarching principles of transmission which govern the nature of catechesis precisely as the transmission of the faith.’”[4] A sound pedagogy, then, can guide us both in our scope and sequence of content and in the methods we use to communicate it to the learner. But how shall we operationalize the pedagogy of God? How can we move from the philosophical, or theoretical, to principles that guide our everyday work as catechists? I would propose the following five principles, which I call “aspects of the divine pedagogy.”

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.