Franciscan at Home

The Catechetical Institute at Franciscan University has officially launched it's LMS (Learning Management System) FranciscanAtHome.com for online catechist formation in all areas of catechesis; we're adding new courses weekly. You can try it out for as little as $5 for the month, just for enrichment, or $13 for a month with a mentor to accompany you.

Go to https://steubenvilleconferences.com

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My early years as a high school religion teacher overflowed with exciting moments of watching teens open up to the Lord in the midst of my efforts to bring them to him. Students’ faces lit up as they understood a truth of the faith for the first time; students expressed a sense that God was speaking to them in prayer; students turned away from serious sin because they realized God wanted more for them. But one year I had an extraordinarily difficult class. None of my previously successful efforts engaged these students, and try as I might to identify other successful means of reaching them, each of those failed as well. I recall sharing a part of my testimony with them, a story that had previously been very effective, and they burst into derisive laughter. While other teachers spoke of this group’s extreme immaturity, I thought I must be a failure as a teacher and a catechist. As the year dragged on, I experienced a growing conviction that I could not reach these students, or any students, and that I did not belong in this ministry. I lost hope that these students could meet the Lord, hope that God was at work in this situation, hope that I was even called to this ministry to begin with. The end of the year found me physically and spiritually exhausted, and hopelessly convinced that God had abandoned me. Catechetical ministry is often fraught with challenges to hope. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the future Pope Benedict XVI) observed, “The drama faced by our contemporaries is…that of living without hope in an ever more profane world.” The drama we face as catechists is to remain steadfast in our own hope and to help those to whom we minister grow in hope as well. According to Cardinal Ratzinger’s synthesis of Augustine, Aquinas, and others, beauty brings us to an encounter with Christ Jesus our Hope, giving us hope to carry on. By imbuing our catechesis with beauty, we nourish our own hope and create the conditions for realizing the definitive aim of catechesis: “to put people…in intimacy with Jesus,” stirring our “hope [that] he invites us to.”

When I was a full-time parish youth minister many years ago, Brian, who had been recently initiated into the Church, invited his younger sister Erin to our parish youth program. She was unbaptized and knew a little about Jesus through her family, who did not actively attend a church. Brian began by bringing her to our social events, where she was welcomed and began to meet “nice” teens, as well as fun, safe, and holiness-striving adults. As these relationships began to grow, Erin soon attended our youth group meetings and eventually our retreats. It was during these retreats that the love of Christ and his call became clear to her. Of her own free will, Erin decided to attend our weeknight prayer group. Little did she realize that this meeting was really a full, complete, and systematic unveiling of the teachings of the Church done in an attractive youth-ministry manner. We did not pressure her to attend; we simply invited her to our events and welcomed her when she participated. At all our gatherings, Erin heard us say that if any teen was ever interested in becoming Catholic, we would be happy to talk to him or her about it. For months, even though she was a regular participant at our social events, youth group meetings, retreats, and prayer group, Erin never said she wanted to become Catholic. Eventually, one day she came to us with the firm conviction to enter the Church. Since then, not only was she initiated into the sacramental life of the Church, she served the youth program as a young adult, did mission work, and is now a devoted young wife and mother. Watching Erin grow in faith was not only a joy, but was a living testimony of the Church’s wisdom as seen in the stages of conversion in the catechumen ate. If you are a coordinator of youth ministry, you are probably saying to yourself, “Oh no, this article is giving me another thing to do.” If that’s what you’re thinking, you are correct! However, what I want to discuss here is not another program to add to your workload but a process that will shape and define your ministry. In short, developing a teen initiation process has the potential of directing the entirety of our youth ministry to evangelization and conversion. To do so, we need to make initiation the heart of our programming for teenagers. In this article, I will first show how the parish youth program can be used as the foundation for a vibrant and solid teen initiation process, then demonstrate how the stages of the catechumenate can be the foundation for parish youth programming. I will also discuss how parishes without youth programs can serve teenagers who want to be initiated into the life of the Church. Second, I will highlight key components of an initiation process for adolescents, including important moments in the process and the issue of parent involvement.

When I had an opportunity to return to study in England after many years of active missionary life in East Africa, I took the opportunity to investigate the phenomenon of “school strikes” in Kenya in the hope of understanding what they were saying about moral decision making in adolescents. The school strike is a problem that has bedevilled Kenyan schools for many years, leading even to loss of lives and causing enormous damage to property. Many an education have been compromised by school strikes, which are basically student protests—often violent and destructive—against perceived injustices in the school system.

My own interest was primarily derived from a personal experience of a school strike that had taken place in the girls’ boarding school where I was working. Although no physical harm came to anyone, nor was there any damage to property, relationships between the staff and among the students themselves were strained, because many students were not even involved in the strike. It was difficult to simply return to a “business as usual” approach when there were so many unanswered questions surrounding the underlying reasons for the strike; the trust that had previously characterized our relationships had now been compromised. When asked afterwards—one by one in front of their parents—what grievance had provoked the strike, most of the girls had simply shrugged their shoulders and mumbled the word “influence.” Only some three or four felt they had some genuine reasons for protest but their influence had been strong enough to prevail over the majority.

As I investigated this phenomenon further with the participation of students from a number of other schools, layers of meaning were gradually uncovered. At surface level, a mistrust of authority emerged, expressed as outrage against the neglect and lack of concern for the welfare of the students demonstrated by school administrations in general. This was coupled with a sense of anonymity; one was known only by one’s peers but not by any significant adult within the school context. At a still deeper level, however, there emerged a much more preoccupying issue: a lack of a sense of life’s meaning and purpose that might guide moral decision making.

The most striking conclusion of the research was that, although most of the students were at least nominally Christian and many Catholic, very few of the students were influenced by their Christian faith. Their decisions were effectively pragmatic, a response to circumstances but without any reasoned consideration derived from principle.

In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis speaks of two necessary “arts” for evangelization: the “art of accompaniment” and the “art of listening.” The Holy Father stresses that these intrinsically linked arts should mainly focus on the persons being evangelized, by truly seeking to know them and binding ourselves to walk with them wherever they are at in life:

As a Clinical Child and Family Psychologist who works primarily in the field of catechesis, one particular interest of mine is the integration of what both faith and science tell us about the human person. In secular society, and even among some individuals in the Church, there is the misconception that science and faith are somehow incompatible. However, some of the greatest minds both in science and religion have disputed this assumption. For example, Albert Einstein famously said, “A legitimate conflict between science and religion cannot exist. Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”1 Similarly, in a letter to Director of the Vatican Observatory Reverend George V. Coyne, S.J., St. John Paul II wrote, “Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish… We need each other to be what we must be, what we are called to be.”2

Christians have viewed the field of psychology with skepticism from its very beginning. After all, Sigmund Freud, considered by many to be the founder of psychology, called religion “an illusion.”3 But as the field of psychology has grown and its methods have improved, many have found it to be more and more compatible with Christian thinking. In fact, what we find by science to be true about the human mind and human emotion would necessarily have to be compatible with our faith, since God himself created us to think and to feel.

Using what we know about how people think, feel, and behave can make us more effective in faith formation. The following is a discussion of five pressing questions in the field of catechesis that may be answered, at least in part, by research in the social sciences.

Los profesores de la fe católica en las escuelas, los catequistas parroquiales y coordinadores de la pastoral juvenil (para nombrar solo unos cuantos) se ocupan todos de la catequesis de los jóvenes. Desafortunadamente, estos ministerios a menudo no se coordinan entre sí. Hace diez años, miembros de la dirección de la Asociación Nacional de Educación Católica [=National Catholic Educational Association, o NCEA], la Conferencia Nacional para el Liderazgo Catequético [=National Conference of Catechetical Leadership, o NCCL] y la Federación Nacional de Pastoral Juvenil Católica [=National Federation of Catholic Youth Ministry, o NFCYM], y con la representación de la Conferencia de Obispos Católicos de los Estados Unidos [=USCCB], se reunieron para formar la Asociación para la Catequesis del Adolescente [= Partnership for Adolescent Catechesis, o PAC, por sus siglas en inglés]. Uno de los objetivos de este grupo fue de crear una visión y un lenguaje compartidos para todas las personas que se involucran en la catequesis de los jóvenes, sin importar el contexto. El fruto de aquella coalición es el recién publicado documento, La alegría de la catequesis para adolescentes.

Fue para mí un honor ser uno de los principales escritores, junto con Miriam Hidalgo, Presidenta de la Federación de Catequesis con Hispanos [= Federation for Catechesis with Hispanics]. Nuestro equipo de escritores representaba a personas del largo y ancho de la nación, provenientes de varias etnicidades, y diferentes campos catequéticos. Sabiendo que los jóvenes latinos son ya el grupo más grande de jóvenes católicos en los Estados Unidos, nos dedicábamos a la elaboración de un documento que fuera multicultural desde su fundamento, y no como algo que a la larga simplemente sería "traducido".

La alegría de la catequesis para adolescentes fue escrito para inspirar, educar y retar a lo que transmiten la fe a los jóvenes. Para las personas que carecen de formación en la catequesis, se espera que este documento pueda proporcionar una visión global sobre la misión y los objetivos de este ministerio. Para las personas que están familiarizadas con la catequesis para adolescentes, el documento se empeña en revitalizar el ministerio con una visión centrada en Cristo que potencia a los catequistas en ayudar a los jóvenes a que se conviertan en discípulos misioneros.

Los retos que enfrenta la Iglesia al catequizar a los jóvenes son muchos y significativos. Las estadísticas nos dicen que los jóvenes se están alejando de la fe a una tasa alarmante. "Aquí no pasa nada" ya no es una opción, a menos que los Estados Unidos se convierta en uno más de aquellos países descristianizados donde las iglesias son "más como museos que lugares de culto".[i] El documento sirve como "invitación para examinar, con profundidad y honestidad, los supuestos y sistemas actuales con tal de fomentar la creación de nuevas relaciones y pautas ministeriales". [ii]

El documento no aborda temas específicos catequéticos, ni tiene el propósito de ser una "caja de herramientas" para los catequistas. El documento no se adentra en los aspectos prácticos de la catequesis, porque el estilo de catequesis en un salón de clases de teología en una escuela católica puede distar mucho del de un programa de preparación para la confirmación en una parroquia. Más bien, se busca unir aquellos varios estilos y marcos dentro de una visión en conjunto que pueda permitir una mayor colaboración.

Catholic school teachers, parish catechists, and coordinators of youth ministry (to name a few) are all concerned with catechizing teenagers. Unfortunately, these ministries often are not coordinated with each other. Ten years ago, leadership from the National Catholic Educational Association, the National Conference of Catechetical Leadership, and the National Federation of Catholic Youth Ministry, with representation from the USCCB, came together to form the Partnership for Adolescent Catechesis (PAC). One of the goals of this group was to create a shared vision and language for all of those who are involved catechizing adolescents, regardless of the setting. The fruit of that partnership is the recently published document, The Joy of Adolescent Catechesis.

I was honored to be one of the primary writers along with Miriam Hidalgo, President of the Federation for Hispanic Catechesis. We had a writing team that represented people from across the country, various ethnicities, and different catechetical fields. Knowing that Latino young people are now the largest group of Catholic teenagers in the US, we were committed to making a document that was multi-cultural at its foundation, not just something that would be “translated” at the end.

The Joy of Adolescent Catechesis was written to inspire, educate, and challenge those who pass the faith on to young people. For those without a background in catechesis, it is hoped that this document could be an overview of the mission and goals of that ministry. For those more familiar with adolescent catechesis, the document endeavors to invigorate that ministry with a Christ-centered vision that empowers catechists to help young people to become missionary disciples.