Franciscan at Home

Eric Westby offers sound, practical advice for ways in which we can evangelize in our catechetical work.

I know I am not the only catechist who has prepared what I thought was the greatest catechetical session since the Sermon on the Mount, only to have it help the participants cure their most recent battles with insomnia. Over the years, as I have seen little impact from what I thought were well-planned sessions, it has forced me to look more closely at the process of conversion, specifically that which we do to prepare a person to hear the Good News. In Catechesi Tradendae 20, Pope John Paul II describes catechesis as a maturation of the process of evangelization. As a catechist, the better I assisted in the process of evangelization (the better I helped a person know, love and follow the Lord Jesus) the easier it became to catechize that person. In this article, I would like to offer practical ways we can evangelize in our catechetical endeavors, and in doing so, prepare the foundation for catechesis and lifelong conversion.

Is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity actually taught any more? This may sound like an alarmist question. One would imagine that the sign of the cross and its accompanying words, ‘In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen’, are still used and explained by the vast majority of Catholic parents, catechists and teachers. Sadly, this is not as common as one might have presumed in the past. In many catechetical resources circulating in Britain the Blessed Trinity is no longer mentioned at all. In this article I’ll be highlighting three simple points: a) that the Trinity is still being eliminated from some Catholic teaching materials, b) that this matters, and c) that we can know the reasons why the Trinity is not being taught and can thus retrieve effectively the very foundation of Christian faith, hope and love.

The Editor of The Sower recently revealed the following statistic: The Report of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales Working Party on Sacramental Initiation, On the Threshold, ‘manages to compile a 66 page report of recommendations about RCIA without once referring to the Trinity, to the Father, to the Son or to the Holy Spirit’.[i] The text uses unvaryingly the word ‘God’ throughout. Another document, from the Catholic Education Service, called, On the Way to Life,[ii] subtitled, ‘a framework for Catholic Education, Catechesis and Formation’, in its 99 pages, mentions the Trinity only once and that is in a quotation from Pope John Paul II. An electronic search of the document for ‘God the Father’ reveals that the phrase appears only twice and each time as part of the title of Mary Daly’s book, Beyond God the Father![iii]

Of course, these are not catechetical programmes in themselves but guidance documents. Surely, you might say, actual sacramental programmes will be imbued with references to the persons of the Trinity? At a recent diocesan day for catechists it was discovered that, in the participants’ examples of catechesis of the Christmas story, not a single catechist present referred to Jesus either as God or as the Son of God. Such catechesis about Christmas will be portrayed as a story of a strangely extraordinary man (or baby) if it is not explicitly taught that Jesus is God become man, Son of God sent by his Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. More and more frequently one finds catechetical texts referring to ‘Jesus’ and to ‘God’ and ‘Jesus praying to God’ as though he were a man like us and not God, or with a special relationship (never explained) with God.

There are, then, different ways of not teaching the doctrine of the Trinity. One, as we have seen, is by omission; the other is by teaching heresy. For example, the adult formation programme for the Archdiocese of Westminster, At Your Word Lord, began with a session on the Trinity as ‘three aspects’ of the one God. These three aspects, it continues, have a loving relationship with each other. The notion of aspects rather than persons having a loving relationship, sadly increases the confusion. Resources for Children’s liturgy in the United Kingdom almost invariably teach children the heresy of modalism on Trinity Sunday, prompting children to draw (or even wear in the offertory procession) three different types of hat.

‘I know that St Peter was a Catholic; was St Paul one as well?’

The Year of St Paul begins on 28th June 2008 and runs until June 29th 2009. This is the Year offered to us by the Church during which we can learn to appreciate even better the catholicity of St Paul. A consideration of this parishioner’s apparently naïve question can yield surprising insights and might provide us with food for thought when we are wondering what we might highlight during the coming Year. An immediate response to the question would be to point out that the Year begins on the Feast of St Peter and St Paul: the Church holds the two great Apostles together in her celebrations, in her memory, in her prayers. They are both of them together pillars and foundations of the Church; together they inspire the mission of the Church in every age. If we know that St Peter was a Catholic, we might think it a rational presumption that St Paul was as well!

As Catholics, we have the blessing of guidance from the See in which both St Peter and St Paul spent their final days. The first thing we can do is to avail ourselves of the grace of this Year dedicated to St Paul, and encourage those whom we are catechising to do the same. On May 10th the Holy See announced the indulgences which would be made available for participation in the Year. ‘Indulgences’ can remind us vividly of St Paul’s own deep awareness of the mercy of God. The Year is to be a Year of Grace, a Year of God’s special outpouring of loving-kindness.

In his Letter to the Romans, undoubtedly the greatest and most demanding of his Letters, Paul reflects on the history of salvation, in which human disobedience is met with ever-greater acts of divine kindness and indulgence, culminating in the disobedience of all, so that God ‘may have mercy on all’. He sings, ‘O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways!’ (Rom.11:33) God’s goodness and mercy so far transcend all that we can comprehend, as he turns all misery and sin into an opportunity for blessing: O felix cupla! This great hymn of praise is the pivot on which the Letter to the Romans turns, and St Paul then leads us into a profound consideration of human ethics and behaviour. Faced with the reality of God’s merciful action in our lives, how should we act? Listen to his language as he begins this section: ‘I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God…’ (12:1). Paul’s ‘therefore’ is meant seriously: act out of the mercy which you yourself have received. Paul’s ethics are a treatise on the practice of mercy.

As we begin the Year of St Paul, Alan Schreck assists us in our appreciation of the saints as the greatest educators.

The greatest teachers of the Catholic Church are her saints. True, many of them were not articulate or great preachers, and some were even illiterate. Nevertheless, they are recognised as ‘saints’ because their lives provide us with the clearest and the best instruction in what the Christian life is all about. And what is it all about? In a single word: Holiness, which means becoming like God in character and virtue. What does holiness look like? We see it most perfectly displayed in the Son of God incarnate (God among us in person, or literally ‘in the flesh’), Jesus Christ. But a nearly perfect reflection of holiness, the character and virtue of God himself, is seen in the saints. The saints teach us most fully what God intended us all to be and to become - truly God-like.

If we look at the ‘reflection’ of God in the saints, we don’t find just a single image or portrait, but a marvellous collage of images of God and his love as different as the sun and the moon, or as mountains and the ocean. There were saints who were kings and queens, and beggars; great intellectuals, and simple priests (like St. John Vianney) who couldn’t learn their Latin; girls and boys and octogenarians; world-traversing missionaries and mystics in their cloisters; bloodstained martyrs and ‘clowns’ of God (like St. Philip Neri). There were soldiers (from St. George to St. Joan), prophets and prophetesses, religious foundresses and mothers, servants of the poor and needy...yes, and even some who were teachers by profession. What they all have in common is a passionate love of God that grew in their souls and finally burst into full blossom. Marvellously, there is a saint for everybody - some saint whose life and experience will uniquely touch a particular person and open them more fully to God. The saints remind us of what we are all made for.

In this article, the President of Cor Unum provides keys for understanding the teaching of Pope Benedict XVI’s Encyclical, Deus caritas est, for catechesis on social justice. This article is extracted from a talk the Cardinal gave at the Maryvale Institute in Birmingham England on 8th April 2008.

Pope Benedict XVI’s first Encyclical, Deus caritas est (‘God is Love’), met with an unusually positive reception throughout the world. Newspapers and electronic media devoted extensive coverage and unreservedly affirmative comments to it. The Pope chose to place the central phrase of the New Testament Revelation at the centre of his message.

The Pontifical Council Cor Unum of which I am President is the Vatican office entrusted with the task of the realisation of the Pope’s diakonia. The fact that the Holy Father began his official papal doctrinal activity with the theme of charity has given our office a deeper consciousness of our mission. We wish to contribute to the dissemination of Deus caritas est; we want it to have a vast echo.

Yesterday, I addressed the Bishops of England and Wales on this very topic, and today I am grateful that Maryvale Institute, allows me to direct my comments more specifically to you, the Faculty and students of this Institute, dedicated to formation in evangelisation, catechesis, Catholic theology and philosophy both in this country and abroad. I am especially pleased to know that a particular emphasis of your Institute is to study the teachings of the Popes, most notably their Encyclicals, among which must number Pope Benedict’s Deus caritas est. It is also good to see so many priests and the seminarians studying at the Archdiocese of Birmingham’s Oscott College. What a privilege it is for me to deliver this lecture in the place once lived in by Cardinal Newman, the great prophet and advocate of ‘an intelligent and well-instructed laity’!

Writing from the first Catholic home of John Henry Cardinal Newman, who lived here at Maryvale Institute from 1846-1848, I am struck once again by the profound links between Newman, for whose beatification we continue to pray this year, and St Paul, whose life we celebrate in a particular way from June 29th, 2008 until June 29th, 2009. Both of them were, of course, ‘Men of Letters’; but much more than this, they are united by two great themes in their writings: the converting power of doctrine and the parallel converting power of personal influence.

Newman had a particular conviction concerning the vital role of doctrine in the Christian life. This conviction emerged from his own life experiences. In the Apologia he writes, ‘When I was fifteen (in the autumn of 1816) a great change of thought took place in me. I fell under the influences of a definite Creed, and received into my intellect impressions of dogma, which, through God’s mercy, have never been effaced or obscured.’ During his life, Newman had to fight against the ‘anti-dogmatic principle’ which characterized the evangelical movement of the time. But now he had discovered the converting impact of doctrine. Creeds and dogmas, he said, ‘live in the one idea they are designed to express’. Dogmas are alive; they are living, saving truths and they unite us to the One who alone has the power to save. The heart and the head belong together, and together they lead us to the One who is to be served faithfully with both.

St Paul, also, writes powerfully of the central doctrines of the Faith and of the living Christ dwelling in them. We who were once slaves to sin, he reminds his readers, are now ‘obedient from the heart’ to the rule of teaching, or doctrine, to which our lives have been committed (Rom 6:17). This teaching is folly to those who do not understand it and who are perishing; but to us, says St Paul, who are being saved, ‘it is the power of God’ (1 Cor 1:18). Paul contrasts what he calls ‘plausible words of wisdom’ with the ‘secret and hidden wisdom of God’, a wisdom based on revelation and taught to the Church by the Spirit. This latter wisdom is saving truth, the wisdom of revealed truth. It releases us from being ‘estranged and hostile in mind’ (Col 1:21), bringing us to a transformation and renewal of the mind (Rom 12:2).

In this final article, introducing Veritatis Splendor, Alan Schreck explains how John Paul II clarified Catholic teaching in relation to other moral positions.

A controversial topic that Pope John Paul II addresses in Chapter 2 is the modern theological concept of ‘fundamental choice’ or ‘fundamental option’. The Biblical basis for this notion is that the ‘obedience of faith’ (cf. Rom 16:26) by which a person entrusts his whole self to God (cf. Vatican II, DV 5; VS 66). In the Old Testament, Israel’s fundamental decision is whom they will obey or serve. ‘Choose this day’, Joshua urges the people, ‘whom you will serve!’ (Joshua 24:15). ‘The morality of the New Covenant is similarly dominated by the fundamental call of Jesus to follow him, ‘the invitation he gives to the young man’ (VS 66; Mt 19:21). We have the freedom to respond to that call to serve the Lord, but as St. Paul warns, ‘do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh’ (Gal 5:13).

Gerard Boylan examines examples of catechisms from both pre-Reformation and post-Reformation periods and finds them more varied than might be expected.

Effective catechesis, as we know, takes account not only of the content of the message to be handed on, but also of the personal circumstances of those being instructed, the situation of the national Church, and a host of cultural factors. Effective catechesis increases knowledge and understanding and thereby strengthens a person’s commitment to an essential assent already given, and this more formal instruction is internalised, and becomes an experienced truth in the circumstances life, when it is reinforced by the habit of prayer, by the example of other Christians whose lives encourage us, by our taking seriously participation in the Mass and the sacraments, by the practice of virtue and the avoidance of evil, by spiritual reading—in other words, by what the General Directory for Catechesis calls ‘on-going formation’ of many kinds.

St Mary’s College, Oscott, the seminary in north Birmingham, in England, is home to a significant Recusant and rare books collection of some 15,000 printed books and pamphlets. Among them are catechetical works dating from the late fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. They reflect the changing circumstances of their readers and the life of the Catholic Church in England over a period of some 350 years. Some of them correspond to the accepted definition of a catechism - a summary of principles, often in a question-and-answer format. But the majority are more extensive works, which contain not only a summary of Catholic doctrine, but in addition address the need for the ‘on-going formation’ that lay people needed in circumstances which were often inimical to the practice of their faith.

It is a work of God to convert a father to the gift and task of his fatherhood; indeed, we live in a society in which many fathers have abandoned fatherhood. It is even possible that fatherhood is more hidden than motherhood and more susceptible, in a way, to general neglect; nonetheless, like all naturally good gifts, it responds to appreciation, cultivation and instruction. I am sure, however, that fatherhood is from the very root of personhood and needs the grace of God to flourish. Just as God has given me seven children, plus two in heaven and one to be born in the next month, so I need God to help me to adapt to the varieties of personality and the everyday dynamics of family life. The transformation of my-ever shrinking time for ‘me’ into the treasurable time for ‘my family’ is at the heart of God’s action in my life. Sharing, then, what God is doing with me as a father, is a way of fanning into life one of the gifts of God which has been severely frostbitten.

If it is simple to say that I am discovering some of the dimensions of the ‘Father’ as catechist, it is not so simple sustaining the simplicity of this in the reality of daily life. What I want to pass on to my children is a beautiful wonder at the mystery which permeates each person’s life, beginning as it does with Creation and the act of God at the foundation of each person’s life. What I am in danger of doing is passing on a dreadful gloom in front of the practicalities of life: the clearing up, the clearing out of the house in time for school, the rushed return journey and the endless unfinished things that express the impossibility of fulfilling my perfectionist tendencies. Not to mention the dreadful fears that arise in my heart from what I read in the papers.

I was sitting about 20 feet from the steps going up to St. Peter’s Basilica on April 19, 2005, when the smoke went up from the stack of the Sistine Chapel. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger had been elected as the 264th Successor of St. Peter. My heart raced with anticipation to see my new Holy Father. One could see in his eyes humility, and perhaps a bit of disbelief, that Almighty God had chosen him to lead his family on earth. God called Abraham to do great things when he was 75 years old. Cardinal Ratzinger turned 78 years old three days before he was elected as Pope Benedict XVI.

I eagerly awaited Pope Benedict’s first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, a quote from 1 John 4:16 which means ‘God is Love.’ This would be the first dogmatic treatise on love in the history of the Church. Since then, the more I have taught from, and reflected upon, this encyclical the more I have realized that it is a model of catechesis. Pope Benedict takes into account all of the important aspects of catechesis.

The initial proclamation of the Gospel message has as its aim to illicit an initial moment of conversion and faith. What about catechesis?

‘The specific character of catechesis, as distinct from the initial conversion-bringing proclamation of the Gospel, has the twofold objective of maturing the initial faith and of educating the true disciple of Christ by means of a deeper and more systematic knowledge of the person and the message of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ (Catechesi Tradendae 19)

In his encyclical, Pope Benedict is giving us a catechesis on love, in both its both human and divine aspects, but he is also aware that, in catechetical practice, one must take account of the fact that ‘the initial evangelization has often not taken place.’ (CT 19) He therefore tells us, ‘I wish to emphasize some basic elements, so as to call forth in the world renewed energy and commitment in the human response to God's love.’ (Deus Caritas Est 1)