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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.

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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]

Where should a modern-day catechist turn for practical advice? While there are abundant resources in our day and age, I was surprised to find some of the most relatable help I’ve ever read in a fifth-century document written by an early Church Father.

St. Augustine wrote The First Catechetical Instruction in response to a request for advice on how to pass on the faith to others.[1] Augustine was a convert, catechist, and bishop who was born in the fourth century. Even though Augustine wasn’t baptized until later in life, he’s known as a Doctor of the Church and the Father of Catechesis.

Unlike the Church Fathers before him, Augustine was dealing with hordes of people who wanted to be baptized—but for all the wrong reasons (politics, social status, you name it). I was touched by how loving Augustine’s words for catechists were in facing these challenging situations. Instead of scholarly and dry, I found Augustine’s writing warmly empathetic to people who are “in the trenches” of catechesis in today’s world. Here are some insights that stood out to me as I read.

God loves a cheerful catechist. Augustine has great empathy for the catechist. He recognizes the tendency to grow weary, the desire “to have something better for your hearers,” and the frequent dissatisfaction with your own catechesis after the fact (FCI 3). Still, he maintains that “our chief concern is what means we should adopt to ensure that the catechizer enjoys his work . . . For if in the case of material wealth God loves a cheerful giver, how much more in that of spiritual?” (4). What a beautiful priority, and one I don’t often see with those who are recruiting catechists (especially when we’re desperate—often any warm body will do!). What a difference it makes when catechesis begins in joy.

The reason people come for catechesis isn’t always the reason they stay. Augustine speaks a great deal of a person who is being catechized wishing “to become in reality what he had decided to feign” (9). In other words, a person may begin their inquiry into faith with a superficial or selfish reason, but during their journey Jesus can transform that “feigned” reason into true devotion. It reminds me of an important principle I’ve learned: “The reason you come isn’t always the reason you stay.” I’ve seen this especially in the RCIA. We should never look down on a person’s seemingly shallow motives (getting married to a Catholic, wanting a sacrament because it’s important to Grandma), since those motives are often purified in their inquiry process.

When Pope Francis introduced his motu proprio Antiquum Ministerium to the Universal Church in May of 2021, we members of the Dicastery for Evangelization were aware that it would be welcomed most especially in the United States.

Catechetical Committees of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1992–2012

This series of articles seeks to explore 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). In this article, we will turn our attention to the remarkable developments within the structure of the U.S. Bishops Conference that accompanied the Church’s publication of these documents, as well as the historic renewal of her catechetical ministry.

Just as the composition of the Informative Dossier for the Catechism of the Catholic Church was being completed by the staff of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in 1992, the bishops of the United States voted to form an Ad Hoc Committee to Oversee the Implementation of the Catechism in the United States. The chair of the Committee was Bishop Edward Hughes of Metuchen. “The mandate of the ad hoc committee was twofold: to prepare for the reception of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) in the United States and to assist the bishops of the United States in planning its implementation in their (arch)dioceses.”[i]

The Catechism itself was still more than a year away from the Holy Father’s approval, but both the Holy See and the U.S. bishops were preparing for its publication—the Vatican by preparing the Informative Dossier and the American bishops by establishing a committee to provide for its oversight. These two decisions would prove to be instrumental in paving the way for the favorable reception of the Catechism worldwide and, in a special way, in the United States.

There was no small amount of resistance at the time to the publication of a “universal catechism.” Especially among the ranks of some established national, diocesan, and parish catechetical leaders in the United States, the concept of a single catechism that would be pastorally applicable to all Catholics throughout the world was not possible, let alone desirable. The significant advances that had been made in the necessary inculturation of the Christian message in such documents as Evangelii Nuntiandi, Catechesi Tradendae, the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, and several of Pope John Paul II’s encyclicals seemed to argue against a “universal” catechism.

At the same time, in the minds of many in the United States, the use of the word “catechism” conjured images of outmoded and ineffective catechetical methodologies. It reminded many of the Baltimore Catechism, which taught in a question-and-answer format and was intended to be committed to memory. The Baltimore Catechism and other similar instruments had been replaced in favor of materials that were age-appropriate and suitably adapted to the conditions of the person being catechized.

The shorthand designation of “universal catechism,” however, can be misleading. In fact, the mandate given by Pope John Paul II was for a catechism for the universal Church, not a universal catechism. This distinction is important. It is true that there can be only one catechism for the Church throughout the world because the Church holds and teaches the same truth in every place. But a catechism for the universal Church must be the point of reference for the development of national or regional catechisms and other types of catechetical materials. Such catechisms and catechetical materials must be prepared in light of both the catechism of the universal Church and the particularities of the individual cultures in which they will be used. They have to adapt their teaching to the capacity of those who receive it but, at the same time, must transmit the fullness of the truth that God intends to communicate in his self-revelation. In his remarks to the Catechism Commission in 1986, Pope John Paul II addressed this issue:

The catechism which you are called to plan is situated within the church’s great tradition, not as a substitute for diocesan or national catechisms, but as a “point of reference” for them. It is not meant to be, therefore, an instrument of flat “uniformity,” but an important aid to guarantee the “unity in the faith” that is an essential dimension of that unity of the church which “springs from the unity of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”[ii]