Franciscan at Home

To learn more: go to www.franciscan.edu/ssd or email [email protected] or call 740-283-6402.

When you began working in the Church, how many friends did you have who were also serving in ministry? For me, it was several dozen. These youth ministers, Catholic school teachers, missionaries, and seminarians all began their work with so much zeal for the mission ahead of them.

Yet, nearly ten years later, I can count on one hand the number of those friends who are still involved in full-time ministry. Maybe you’ve experienced something similar. Most of these friends of mine devoted several years of their lives to a university formation and tens of thousands of dollars to be trained for effective ministry. Yet, when I talk with former parish employees, the majority of them have fled from parish ministry with plenty of hurt and a noticeable level of bitterness toward their experience.

There’s a few obvious reasons—salary limitations and simply discerning a different calling are common ones. However, I’ve experienced another much more troubling and harmful reason: too often, Catholic parishes are some of the most dysfunctional places to work.

I can say this confidently having worked as a leadership consultant with hundreds of pastors who have told me this themselves, as well as having been an employee at two parishes myself. While a Catholic parish office is meant to be a hub of prayer, evangelization, and true Christian friendship, it is far more common that it is a festering pool for mediocrity, confusion, and frustration. This dynamic begs the question: why? What is causing this exodus from parish ministry?

The biggest reason people leave employment in a parish is not because of issues with liturgy, music, programs, or hospitality—things that often get lots of attention. They leave because the organization is unhealthy and tolerates low standards. Without healthy and clear leadership, the best homily or most dynamic video series will only get you so far. This is completely counterintuitive to almost everything that we are taught in studies and formation! We spend hours and hours crafting plans and reading theology (which are extremely important), yet almost no time learning how to effectively lead the people entrusted to us. When I discuss this with pastors, I can’t tell you the number of them who have incredulously told me, “No one ever teaches you this in seminary!”

Tiredness. Little support. Overwhelm. Dryness in prayer. Lack of fruit.

Anyone who has served in ministry in any capacity for any amount time has likely experienced some stage of exhaustion, disillusionment, or even burnout. The work of ministry in the name of the Lord—be it as a parish catechist, a schoolteacher, a hidden IT worker, or a customer service representative—is demanding. It always carries with it the possibility of losing heart and throwing in the towel completely.

I worked at a Catholic high school for close to a decade, and I have many friends laboring to help young children approach their First Communion and First Reconciliation with reverence. Whether it’s dealing with obstinate parents, baseball tournaments that always seem to take priority over Mass, or even just the plain drag of routine and lack of visible results, the grind of ministry can take a toll. Discouragement can find us all if we aren’t taking the time to sit at the feet of the only one who can provide us with rest and renewal for the work we are called to.

We Can’t Give What We Don’t Have

I’ve always loved St. Paul’s expression, “I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls” (2 Cor 12:15). There’s true beauty in that sentiment of a life generously lived in service for others, and we rightfully extol the labors of people like St. Teresa of Kolkata for this reason. But I’ve often twisted St. Paul’s words to justify a workaholism that leans on the work of my own hands instead of the God who called me to his vineyard in the first place. “I’ll rest when I’m dead,” I’ve thought to myself, with a not-so-hidden whiff of unholy self-reliance behind those words.

It’s easy to fall into a semi-Pelagian attitude—to work in ministry more like a practical atheist than a disciple trusting in a Father who will come through on his promises. “I got this, God,” we assert. “No one can handle this task but me.” Only recently have I become more aware of a masochistic “savior complex” that might be at work within a deeper part of me. And even if we don’t fully fall into that subtle pride of self-reliance, it’s still easy to feel beaten down by the tsunami of a culture that’s antagonistic to Christianity and by the forces of this world blinding so many of our peers to the Gospel (see 2 Cor 4:4).

I worked as a firefighter for a brief period after college, and one of the lessons hammered into us was to take care of our own oxygen masks before helping others. “You can’t give what you don’t have.” It’s no good to run into a burning building to try and save someone if by my own recklessness or pride I also become unconscious. In Renewed and Received, Ascension Press’s recent resources for First Communion and First Reconciliation prep, my wife Jackie and I emphasize several points of encouragement for catechists and others working in ministry. That pithy advice, “you can’t give what you don’t have,” is an apt expression for the spiritual life, parenting, or any other important labor. We must ensure that the engine we’re running on relies on God and not our own strength.

Sometimes God allows us to falter; sometimes our efforts fail from an earthly perspective. Here, too, we can see God’s mercy at work, ensuring that we don’t fall into a dangerous state of pride. In these moments we can choose to recognize that we can’t “fix” every problem for every student, parishioner, or person we encounter. Jesus is the Savior—we are not.

The vast majority of catechists today take part in this essential ministry in the life and mission of the Church for a simple yet significant reason: they have a passion for handing on our faith, for doing their part to form vibrant, radical disciples of Jesus Christ. They burn with a missionary zeal to lead and accompany others—men, women, families, young adults, teens, and children—ever closer to Jesus in and through his Church (cf. CCC 4). They have been captivated by him and have entered into relationship with him themselves, and in turn they want others to experience what they have experienced: the beauty and power that comes from knowing the one true God and Christ Jesus, whom he has sent.[i]

Many catechists perform this work as a volunteer in their parish for years or even decades. In some cases, however, those with a passion for catechetical ministry find themselves not engaging in the work of catechesis directly but rather with a primary focus of forming and leading those who do. This, of course, is the parish or diocesan catechetical leader.

The Responsibility of the Catechetical Leader

It is an honor, a privilege, and a great responsibility to serve as a catechetical leader, and those who take on this role recognize the importance of the part they are playing in the mission of the Church to make disciples (see Mt 28:19–20). To be able to deepen the faith, skill, and ability of catechists in a parish or diocese is a special kind of gift.

For some catechetical leaders, though, serving in this important role can, over time, take on an unexpected weight: the administrative duties and responsibilities the work entails. In some cases, that weight even becomes a burden.

Again, most catechists’ deep desire and joy is to be able to participate in the Church’s mission to make disciples. But most catechetical leaders’ participation in that mission isn’t as “direct” as is the typical catechist’s, or at least not in the way that most of those involved in catechetical ministry imagine it. The role of the catechetical leader oftentimes entails much more “desk work” and many more meetings, phone calls, emails, and so on. In other words, what many people think of as administrative work. And because this isn’t necessarily what someone with a zeal for catechesis signed up for, the excitement and enthusiasm for the work can diminish and be replaced with burden and burnout.

Mark your calendar for the upcoming 2024 Steubenville Conferences for adults, held on our beautiful campus in Steubenville, OH. Registration will open in late January, 2024. NOTE: The St. John Bosco Conference for Evangelization & Catechesis is being postponed until summer of 2025 because of our involvement with the National Eucharistic Congress. Hope to see you there! Questions? Call 740-283-6315.

During his tenure as the secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education (now part of the Dicastery for Culture and Education), Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, delivered a talk that outlined the five essential marks of a Catholic school. His fifth mark called for schools to be “sustained by a Gospel witness,” a responsibility borne primarily by the dedicated men and women who serve the students in the classroom every day.[1] The archbishop wrote, “More than a master who teaches, a Catholic educator is a person who gives testimony by his or her life.”[2] Later published as The Holy See’s Teaching on Catholic Schools, the archbishop’s text has become the framework on which the Office of Catholic Schools in the Diocese of Columbus has built its strategic vision for the future of Catholic education in central and southern Ohio.

In our diocese, we have actualized the archbishop’s vision of education into a mission of being an authentic and unapologetically Catholic school system. In order for this vision to become a reality, it requires us to strengthen and fortify in a deliberate and well-structured way the witnesses who make Catholic education happen in every classroom. Archbishop Miller emphasized the importance of those who serve in the ministry of schools by citing Gravissimum Educationis: “it depends chiefly on them whether the Catholic school achieves its purpose.”[3] With that high calling in mind, we must regard our administrators and teachers as ministers of our faith and support them in their essential mission as catechists.

Forming Missionary Catechists

Starting in 2019, the Diocese of Columbus recognized the importance of actively and intentionally forming our administrators and teachers so that they can be excellent catechists. Dr. James Pauley observed, “Today’s catechist is a missionary, though not in the sense of traveling to distant lands. Rather, we offer the content of the Gospel to people who live near us, yet who experience cultural influences increasingly foreign to Christianity.”[4] In Catholic schools, administrators and teachers are missionaries in their classrooms, inviting their students to know and love Jesus Christ every day while combatting the foreign influences of the secular culture.

In the foreword to Dr. Pauley’s book, Dr. Scott Hahn emphasized, “Everybody needs a catechist. Even catechists need to be catechized. Even theologians need to be catechized. We all need to revisit and review the basics.”[5] In that same spirit, we realized that we must intentionally catechize the catechists of our diocese through a program of formation for the nearly 1,200 school employees in our diocese. Our goal was to ensure that a common, baseline knowledge of our faith and vision for Catholic instruction was shared among everyone coming into contact with our Catholic school students. Enrolling our new school employees in Franciscan University of Steubenville Catechetical Institute proved to be the ideal method for achieving this goal.

Part Seven: the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2005) and the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults (2006)

This series of articles has explored an extraordinary 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), Sharing the Light of Faith: National Catechetical Directory of Catholics in the United States (1979), The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (1987) and the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1993), the Catechetical Committees of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops 1992– 2012, and the General Directory of Catechesis (1997) and the National Directory for Catechesis (2005). In this final article of the series, we will turn our attention to the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2005) and the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults (2006).

Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (2005)

The contract between the Holy See and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)  that governed the publication and distribution of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in the United States specifically prohibited any abridgement or synopsis of the Catechism. But only 13 years after its promulgation by Pope John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI approved and promulgated the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. While the reception of the Catechism of the Catholic Church was generally positive, almost from the beginning some had asked for the publication of a more concise formulation of its content. A formal proposal for such a compendium emerged from the participants at the International Catechetical Congress in October 2002. Pope John Paul II accepted the proposal and, in February 2003, entrusted the work of preparing such a compendium to a commission of cardinals presided over by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. During the process, a draft of the Compendium was circulated to all the members of the College of Cardinals and to the presidents of episcopal conferences throughout the world. Both the concept of a compendium and the draft text of the Compendium were received and evaluated favorably.

Pope John Paul II died while the draft of the Compendium was being finalized and the presiding officer of the Commission of Cardinals for the Compendium, Joseph Ratzinger, was elected his successor. In the first year of his pontificate, Pope Benedict XVI presented the Church with what he termed “a faithful and sure synthesis of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It contains, in concise form, all the essential and fundamental elements of the Church’s faith, thus constituting, as my Predecessor had wished, a kind of vademecum which allows believers and non-believers alike to behold the entire panorama of the Catholic faith.”[1]

The Compendium was not intended to stand alone or to replace the Catechism of the Catholic Church but rather make the latter more widely accessible and better understood. In fact, the Compendium is replete with marginal references to the Catechism. In that sense, the Compendium constantly points to the Catechism and emphasizes its primacy as the fundamental text for catechesis today. In the introduction to the Compendium, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: “There are three principal characteristics of the Compendium: the close reliance on the Catechism of the Catholic Church; the dialogical format; [and] the use of artistic images in the catechesis.”[2]

The Compendium was structured along the same lines as its parent. It has the same four major divisions as the Catechism: the profession of faith, the celebration of the Christian mystery, life in Christ, and Christian prayer. The very words of the Compendium, like those of the Catechism, also seek to promote a common language of the faith in which people of every nation can discuss its content.

In a departure from the structure of the Catechism, however, the Compendium is organized in a dialogical format. A dialogue, or a series of questions and answers, is an ancient catechetical genre for the presentation of the faith used by some of the Church’s most effective catechists and most widely used catechetical instruments throughout her history. This methodology sets up a virtual conversation between a master and a disciple that encourages the disciple to discover the truths of the faith, reflect on them, and understand them more fully. It was adopted by the editorial commission because by its very nature the question and answer format emphasizes what is essential and lends itself to brevity. In all, there are 598 questions and responses in the Compendium.

This is a paid advertisement in the April 2023 issue. To schedule a demo, scan the QR code below or email Hallow at [email protected].

To learn more or to register, please go to steubenvilleconferences.com/adult/sjb or call 740-283-6315. Or scan the QR code below. Talk titles listed below.

The General Directory for Catechesis (1997) and the National Directory for Catechesis (2005)

General Directory for Catechesis (1997)

In light of the publication of the Catechism, it was decided that the General Catechetical Directory (GCD) was in need of revision. A portion of the task was given to the Congregation for the Clergy’s International Catechetical Commission (COINCAT). Even before the members and experts of COINCAT gathered, a thorough, international consultation on the proposed revision of the GCD had been conducted. The presidents of episcopal conference catechetical commissions, representatives of catechetical institutes and organizations throughout the world, and the members of COINCAT were asked to respond to a series of specific questions relating to a proposed revision of the GCD. Those responses were collated by the staff of the Congregation for the Clergy and woven into the Instrumentum Laboris, a document over seventy pages in length. The Instrumentum Laboris reflected three fundamental perspectives on the proposed revision of the GCD. The first seemed to advise only a slight revision, the second a moderate revision, and the third a more substantial rewrite.

The Ninth Plenary Session of COINCAT was held in Rome in September of 1994. Jose Cardinal Sanchez, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy and president of COINCAT, called upon Archbishop Sepe, the Congregation’s secretary, to provide the more specific outline of COINCAT’s work for the week. In this outline, Archbishop Sepe first addressed the necessity for the revision of the GCD. He noted that it had been almost twenty-five years since its publication, that several important magisterial documents had been issued, and that much renewal had been undertaken within the ministry of the Word. He also pointed out that the pope had issued the call for a “New Evangelization,” that there had been significant development in the catechetical sciences, and that the Catechism had been recently published. Quoting Pope John Paul II in Catechesi Tradendae, Archbishop Sepe underscored the importance of the GCD and the need for its revision: “a Directory remains a fundamental document for the stimulation and orientation of the renewal of catechesis in the whole Church . . . it remains the norm of reference.”[1]

Archbishop Sepe then provided the parameters for the revision of the GCD. Based on the findings of the surveys, a moderate revision was indicated. That meant that all material that remained useful and relevant would be included in the revision; the universal character of the document would be preserved; and the information contained in magisterial documents published after the GCD would be incorporated where possible. Also, the Catechism would thoroughly inform the revision.[2]

The provisional scheme for the revised GCD has an introduction, five parts, and a conclusion. The general outline is as follows:

Introduction: The Purpose of the General Catechetical Directory

Part One: The Ministry of the Word of God

Part Two: The Christian Message

Part Three: The Pedagogy of the Faith

Part Four: Those to Whom the Catechesis Is Directed

Part Five: Catechesis in the Pastoral Action of the Church

Conclusion: Catechesis: The Work of the Holy Spirit[3]

The work of revising the GCD was divided into three main segments: Part One and the conclusion, Parts Two and Three, and Parts Four and Five, with one day of COINCAT’s plenary session spent on each. The last day would be spent formulating a table of contents for the revised Directory and suggesting the next steps to take for the timely completion of the project.

To this provisional scheme the working group added some criteria for redaction of the GCD. These criteria did not have the benefit of revision within the working group because there simply was not enough time to do so. Therefore, the criteria were understood as a provisional first draft subject to later revision. They were as follows:

1. Continuity and enrichment. The present General Catechetical Directory comes with valuable elements. We should seek improvement by adding that which seems to be necessary.
2. Be mindful of events that followed the publication of the General Catechetical Directory in 1971: the two synods regarding catechesis; the apostolic exhortations Evangelii Nuntiandi and Catechesi Tradendae; the 1983 Code of Canon Law; the encyclicals Redemptoris Missio and Veritatis Splendor; and finally, the publication of the Catechism.
3. In the new structure of the General Catechetical Directory there are elements that should be replaced in view of a new synthetic ordering.
4. Literal citations of the documents of the Magisterium should be placed in the new text.
5. The four parts should be presented as criteria of the unity of life in Christ, the aim of catechesis.[4]