This past weekend the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles hosted the annual Religious Education Congress in Anaheim. In general, I think religious education has to die and be reborn as faith formation and spiritual formation for transformation would involve a total and creative overhaul of much of what takes place across the board in Christian communities of faith whether for children, youth, or adults. This slightly revised excerpt is the concluding paragraph from an article I wrote in 2001 titled “Prayer and the Religious Educator” which can be found at “Articles” under THE WRITTEN WORD. I think it still applies a decade later. Note– The word catechesis literally means to resound.
The Greatest Downfall
Some commentators claim that contemporary catechesis flounders because it is all warm-fuzzies and construction paper instead of a systematic instruction of the tradition. But the greatest downfall of our catechesis is simply the failure to communicate clearly with conviction, to young and old alike, the depth of God’s love, that Jesus is the fullest expression of that love, and how our response to that love gives meaning, dignity and life to our existence. The actualization of our humanness as Christians lies in our willingness to wonder, to give thanks and praise, to extend mercy to others, and to re-create the world with God. The catechetical challenge is a microcosm of the universal human predicament: to decrease the incongruity between the divine gratuity of being alive and the paucity of the human response; to learn to live in a way that is compatible with the gift of abundant life. When catechists evaluate themselves they should ask, “Am I creating an apprenticeship in wonder and awe, gratefulness and praise, sympathy and justice, creativity and communion?”
In the end, the quality of our catechesis and the effectiveness of our teaching will be measured not by how many students we have informed well of Christian propositions, but by how many apprentices of Jesus we have formed well as people of compassion and praise, not by how much religious information our students have consumed but by how transformed are the hearts of those who see themselves as pilgrims on the way, not by how many experts we produce, but by how many lovers we give to the world.