Coffee Cup Catechesis
1
Today, I offer to you an analogy on the quality of our catechesis.
Just the other day I purchased a 20oz. dark roast coffee from a national chain coffee shop. I always ask for the coffee the same, “A venti dark roast with no room for cream, thank you.” The employee always verifies that I do not desire any room for cream. “Correct,” I say, “fill it up.” I empty out my wallet for a cup of coffee that appears full.
10 minutes later, when I go to take my first sip (yes, I have an easily burnable tongue) I notice that the cup is not full. In fact, there is almost an inch of space in my cup. Now, when I pay that insane amount for a cup of coffee, which I enjoy to drink, I would expect to get what I paid for.
You may reply, “well, they don’t want coffee to spill out the sipping hole.” I will quickely rebuke by stating, “then why do they also hand out little sipping hole plugs?” Yup, I win that argument.
I think catechesis is far too often like this cup of coffee. People want it full, expect it full, receive it thinking it is full, only later to realize they only received about 80 or 90 percent of what they asked for and expected.
When does this happen? Reflect on your own tendencies. Do you leave out certain truths that are uncomfortable? Do you minimize the Church’s full teaching about contraception during a session of RCIA? Do you provide a “fluffy” catechesis when teaching on salvation in and outside the Church? (FYI – the Catholic Church’s teaching on this is actual the most meriful of all Christian churches and communities) How about when it comes to entertainment? Confession? “Divorce”? Sexual education? Virtues? Vices? Hell?
Is your catechesis 80 percent on while appearing to provide the fullness of truth? Are you filling in 10 percent of your catecheis with random filler, or “angelic rambling” because you don’t know what your talking about? Yes, this happens…all the time. Any person can merely state what the CCC states, but can you really catechize on the topic at task?
I was talking with Mike a couple weeks ago about a talk he gave to a youth group a few days prior. (He has no idea until now that I am sharing this as an example) He was asked to speak on the Sacraments and how to live them out in daily life. He catechized some on the Sacraments, but when it came to “how to live it out” he said, “I don’t know.” “I can’t tell you how it should look in daily life for you, but I can tell you some things that the Church tells us should be fruits of this grace.” He discussed the virtues and transformation of the heart and so on. It is easy to just provide actions that show the grace at work, but pagan’s can “do” most, if not all, items that are usually listed. But they can not “be” fully alive as the Christian can be. What Mike arrived at with the youth was the ‘heart’, to the descreasing of me, and the increasing of Christ within me. That is the difference; the higher level of living. From my estimation and knowledge of Mike, he spoke the essentials, but with the witness of ‘real’ life, and with a growing wisdom of ‘reality’ – what life is and how we ought to receive and enter into grace.
Catechesis, life, is more than a fancy looking cup of coffee that is not even full. The method used will only get you 80-90 perfect of the way there, Christ ‘in’ you will get the catechesis the rest of the way.
The Holy Father and catechesis to our youth (from CNA)
0Vatican City, May 7, 2012 / 03:38 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI told a group of U.S. bishops that educating young Catholics in the faith is “the most urgent internal challenge” facing the Catholic Church in America.
He emphasized that responding to the challenge requires schools to have a strong Catholic identity and for theology professors to teach in unity with the Church.
“(T)he question of Catholic identity, not least at the university level, entails much more than the teaching of religion or the mere presence of a chaplaincy on campus,” Pope Benedict said May 5 in an address to U.S. bishops from Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. The bishops were at the Vatican for their ad limina visit.
“All too often, it seems, Catholic schools and colleges have failed to challenge students to reappropriate their faith as part of the exciting intellectual discoveries which mark the experience of higher education.”
Pope Benedict said many new college students find themselves disassociated from their family, school and community support systems that previously helped transmit the Catholic faith to them. This fact should “continually spur Catholic institutions of learning to create new and effective networks of support,” he said.
The Pope said in his English-language address that many U.S. bishops have noted the need for Catholic colleges and universities to “reaffirm their distinctive identity in fidelity to their founding ideals and the Church’s mission in service of the Gospel.”
He specifically called on Catholic universities to comply with canon law and the 1990 apostolic constitution “Ex Corde Ecclesiae,” which both require theology teachers to receive a mandate from the “competent ecclesiastical authority.” The mandates, which usually are given by the local bishop, ensure that the teachers are in agreement with the Church’s teachings.
This requirement, the Pope said, shows ecclesial communion and is especially important in light of “the confusion created by instances of apparent dissidence between some representatives of Catholic institutions and the Church’s pastoral leadership.”
This “discord” harms the Church’s witness and “can easily be exploited to compromise her authority and her freedom,” Pope Benedict warned the bishops.
His remarks also stressed the positive aspects of Catholic education.
It is inspired by “an intellectual charity” which recognizes that leading others to truth is “ultimately an act of love.” Faith recognizes the “essential unity” of all knowledge and protects against the “alienation and fragmentation” of reason detached from “the pursuit of truth and virtue.”
The Pope praised the “great progress” in improving catechesis and reviewing texts for conformity with the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
He also lauded efforts to preserve the “great patrimony” of America’s Catholic elementary and high schools, many of which face problems because of changing demographics and increased costs.
Snap Shot: Evangelii Nuntiandi
0From Evangelii Nuntiandi articles 14-15
It is a task and mission which the vast and profound changes of present-day society make all the more urgent. Evangelizing is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the Church, her deepest identity. She exists in order to evangelize, that is to say, in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace, to reconcile sinners with God, and to perpetuate Christ’s sacrifice in the Mass, which is the memorial of His death and glorious resurrection.
15. Anyone who rereads in the New Testament the origins of the Church, follows her history step by step and watches her live and act, sees that she is linked to evangelization in her most intimate being:
- The Church is born of the evangelizing activity of Jesus and the Twelve. She is the normal, desired, most immediate and most visible fruit of this activity: “Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations.”[37] Now, “they accepted what he said and were baptized. That very day about three thousand were added to their number…. Day by day the Lord added to their community those destined to be saved.”[38] – Having been born consequently out of being sent, the Church in her turn is sent by Jesus. The Church remains in the world when the Lord of glory returns to the Father. She remains as a sign – simultaneously obscure and luminous – of a new presence of Jesus, of His departure and of His permanent presence. She prolongs and continues Him. And it is above all His mission and His condition of being an evangelizer that she is called upon to continue.[39] For the Christian community is never closed in upon itself. The intimate life of this community – the life of listening to the Word and the apostles’ teaching, charity lived in a fraternal way, the sharing of bread[40] this intimate life only acquires its full meaning when it becomes a witness, when it evokes admiration and conversion, and when it becomes the preaching and proclamation of the Good News. Thus it is the whole Church that receives the mission to evangelize, and the work of each individual member is important for the whole.
- The Church is an evangelizer, but she begins by being evangelized herself. She is the community of believers, the community of hope lived and communicated, the community of brotherly love, and she needs to listen unceasingly to what she must believe, to her reasons for hoping, to the new commandment of love. She is the People of God immersed in the world, and often tempted by idols, and she always needs to hear the proclamation of the “mighty works of God”[41] which converted her to the Lord; she always needs to be called together afresh by Him and reunited. In brief, this means that she has a constant need of being evangelized, if she wishes to retain freshness, vigor and strength in order to proclaim the Gospel. The Second Vatican Council recalled[42] and the 1974 Synod vigorously took up again this theme of the Church which is evangelized by constant conversion and renewal, in order to evangelize the world with credibility.
- The Church is the depositary of the Good News to be proclaimed. The promises of the New Alliance in Jesus Christ, the teaching of the Lord and the apostles, the Word of life, the sources of grace and of God’s loving kindness, the path of salvation – all these things have been entrusted to her. It is the content of the Gospel, and therefore of evangelization, that she preserves as a precious living heritage, not in order to keep it hidden but to communicate it.
- Having been sent and evangelized, the Church herself sends out evangelizers. She puts on their lips the saving Word, she explains to them the message of which she herself is the depositary, she gives them the mandate which she herself has received and she sends them out to preach. To preach not their own selves or their personal ideas,[43] but a Gospel of which neither she nor they are the absolute masters and owners, to dispose of it as they wish, but a Gospel of which they are the ministers, in order to pass it on with complete fidelity.
Snap Shot: Other Catechetical works
0From Catechesi Tradendae, 49
Therefore, it is not enough to multiply catechetical works. In order that these works may correspond with their aim, several conditions are essential:
a) they must be linked with the real life of the generation to which they are addressed, showing close acquaintance with its anxieties and questionings, struggles and hopes;
b) they must try to speak a language comprehensible to the generation in question;
c) they must make a point of giving the whole message of Christ and His Church, without neglecting or distorting anything, and in expounding it they will follow a line and structure that highlights what is essential;
d) they must really aim to give to those who use them a better knowledge of the mysteries of Christ, aimed at true conversion and a life more in conformity with God’s will.
*A Reflection Essay on this article has been posted in our Members Section. Email us at catfoundations@gmail.com to learn more about Membership with Catechetical Foundations.
Snapshot: Memorization from Catechesi Tradendae
0
Memorization
55. The final methodological question the importance of which should at least be referred to-one that was debated several times in the synod-is that of memorization. In the beginnings of Christian catechesis, which coincided with a civilization that was mainly oral, recourse was had very freely to memorization. Catechesis has since then known a long tradition of learning the principal truths by memorizing. We are all aware that this method can present certain disadvantages, not the least of which is that it lends itself to insufficient or at times almost non-existent assimilation, reducing all knowledge to formulas that are repeated without being properly understood. These disadvantages and the different characteristics of our
own civilization have in some places led to the almost complete suppression – according to some, alas, the definitive suppression – of memorization in catechesis. And yet certain very authoritative voices made themselves heard on the occasion of the fourth general assembly of the synod, calling for the restoration of a judicious balance between reflection and spontaneity, between dialogue and silence, between written work and memory work. Moreover certain cultures still set great value on memorization.
At a time when, in non-religious teaching in certain countries, more and more complaints are being made about the unfortunate consequences of disregarding the human faculty of memory, should we not attempt to put this faculty back into use in an intelligent and even an original way in catechesis, all the more since the celebration or “memorial” of the great events of the history of salvation require a precise knowledge of them? A certain memorization of the words of Jesus, of important Bible passages, of the Ten Commandments, of the formulas of profession of the faith, of the liturgical texts, of the essential prayers, of key doctrinal ideas, etc., far from being opposed to the dignity of young Christians, or constituting an obstacle to personal dialogue with the Lord, is a real need, as the synod fathers forcefully recalled. We must be realists. The blossoms, if we may call them that, of faith and piety do not grow in the desert places of a memory – less catechesis. What is essential is that the texts that are memorized must at the same time be taken in and gradually understood in depth, in order to become a source of Christian life on the personal level and the community level.
The plurality of methods in contemporary catechesis can be a sign of vitality and ingenuity. In any case, the method chosen must ultimately be referred to a law that is fundamental for the whole of the Church’s life: the law of fidelity to God and of fidelity to man in a single loving attitude.
