Whole Community Catechesis in Plain English Huebsch

Title: Whole Community Catechesis in Plain English

Author:

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Content

Section 1: The new framework

• • GDC says "In giving attention to the individual, it should not be over- looked that the recipient of catechesis is the whole Christian community and every person in it. (Article 168)"
  • Writing in 1995, Francoise Darcy-Berube laid the ground on which a new framework within which to approach catechesis could be built. In Religious Education at a Crossroads, she asked this question:
  • There will be three main ingredients in doing this, she went on to write: 1) A truly personalized educational care for each child and adolescent through a variety of small groups concerned with catechesis, spiritual life, and apprenticeship in Christian life. 2) A much closer, personalized, diversified, and lasting cooperation with the families of these youngsters. 3) A more efficient support network made up of meaningful, personal, inter-generational relationships and of a variety of small intentional communities within the larger community. (from pages 20-21)
  • Maria Harris, Gabe Moran, Tom Groome, Peter Phan, Kate Dooley OP, John Westerhoff, John Roberto, Berard Marthaler OFM, Maureen Shaughnessy SC, and countless others (this list leaves many unmentioned) are 2 all pointing to the need for new language, models, structures, and goals.
  • I doubt we will see one model or one program style emerge.

Chapter 1 The Schoolhouse Framework

• What's not working in the schoolhouse framework?
  • First and foremost, what's missing is the essential link between catechesis and the Sunday assembly for Mass.
  • But ministry is a seamless garment.
  • The liturgy is the source and summit
  • Second, in the schoolhouse framework the participation of the whole community is very often lacking.
  • Regardless of their age, members of every household have their most profound formation right in the living rooms, kitchens, and bedrooms of their home.
  • Second, faith-sharing (which is "natural" catechesis and a rich avenue toward ongoing conversion) is not being done very often, even at the parish level itself.
  • Religion can become merely an object to study
  • The problem of graduation is critical
  • The classroom format resists spontaneity
  • Teaching is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Not all volunteers have the gift.
  • Whole community catechesis, in most cases, surfaces lead or master catechists who genuinely do experience the gift of teaching their lives.

=== An overview of Whole Community Catechesis

• A new framework
  • Whole community catechesis, in sum, is a new framework within which we can provide religious education at the parish level.
  • Plank #1: A link to the whole community and the Sunday assembly. The first plank of this new framework is that in whole community catechesis, the total parish is involved in learning and sharing about the faith. Every Christian of every age in the parish is involved, not just children. The Sunday assembly at Mass is the font from which all this flows.'.
  • Plank #2: Christian households of faith and the parish as resource center. it the households of the parish become the main focus of redesigned parish programs.
    • The parish programs don't go away, of course.
    • The church is the people of God, gathered and living wherever they are. The parish is actually a resource to the church!
  • Plank #3: A constitutive part of Christian life - Whole community catechesis starts with the premise that faith formation or learning about the faith is part and parcel of being Christian.
    • Sharing one's faith is catechesis.
  • plank #4: A movement within God's people and the vision of the leaders it is more like a movement within the parish than a program.
    • Everyone is welcome here. Everyone is offered a place at the table.
    • the framework of whole community catechesis serves to tie together (1) all the formal instruction which the parish provides (homilies, children's instructional programs, sacra- mental preparation, leadership training, preparation for various pastoral care and liturgical ministries, biblical study, and spiritual growth opportunities) with (2) the informal sharing of faith which whole community catechesis implants into everything else, especially every- day household and parish life.
    • The single factor which makes renewal movements (such as TEC, Search, Marriage or Engaged Encounter, Cursillo, RENEW, AA, Al Anon, ana others) work is that the people involved in these movements share their lives of faith together.

Summary - In whole community catechesis, he says, the new goal outcome is "adult Christians of mature faith," wing the Way of Christ, sharing supper and Eucharist, working hard for justice and peace, and turning their hearts to Christ over and over again through their lives

• Section 2 Nuts and Bolts -

Other facts

• Used for: History and Theory of Catechetics II TRS 751C

• Purchased: September 2015

Bibliographic info

Personal name Huebsch, Bill. Main title: Whole community catechesis in plain English / Bill Huebsch. Published/Created : Mystic, CT : Twenty-Third Publications, c2002. ISBN 1585951846 LC classification (full) BX1968 .H84 2002 Dewey class no.: 268/.82