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The Catechism & the New Evangelization: Gathering the Fragments

People involved in the mission of handing on the faith will discover a reliable reference point for content and pedagogy in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This series examines how to make use of this gift of the Church for the task of evangelization and catechesis. A moment at the end of the feeding of the five thousand vividly captures the task of the new evangelization. After all had eaten from the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and fish, there was one further task to be undertaken: “And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish” (Mk. 6:43). The image of broken pieces left after a feeding that prefigures the Eucharist—the sum and summary of the faith—is a compelling image. The ecclesial culture that Pope St. John Paul II asked us to mend, as the priority for the new evangelization (a priority on which the mending of a Christian society depends) is a fragmented one: "Without doubt a mending of the Christian fabric of society is urgently needed in all parts of the world. But for this to come about what is needed is to first remake the Christian fabric of the ecclesial community itself present in these countries and nations."[1]

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Dr. Petroc Willey BD, STL PhD, PhD (Lateran) studied theology at King's College, London and Maynooth in Ireland and philosophy at Liverpool University in England and the Lateran University in Rome. From 1985-1992, he was Lecturer in Christian Ethics at Plater College, Oxford. From 1992 until October 2013 he worked at Maryvale Institute, Birmingham, where he was Dean of Graduate Research overseeing a doctoral program in Catholic Studies at the Maryvale Institute, offered in collaboration with Liverpool Hope University. He was appointed by Benedict XVI as a Consultor for the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization and is currently a Consultor for the Dicastery for Evangelization. He is a professor at Franciscan University for the Office of Catechetics. His publications include Become What You Are: The Call and Gift of Marriage (with Katherine Willey), and The Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Craft of Catechesis (co-authored with Professor Barbara Morgan and Fr. Pierre de Cointet, and with an introduction by Cardinal Schonborn), and has articles in collections of essays and in journals such as The International Journal for Catechesis and Evangelization, New Blackfriars, Faith, The Nazareth Journal, The Catholic Canadian Review. He was the Host of the EWTN series Handing on the Faith (2007).

This article is from The Catechetical Review (Online Edition ISSN 2379-6324) and may be copied for catechetical purposes only. It may not be reprinted in another published work without the permission of The Catechetical Review by contacting [email protected]

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