Connections

Man asks of religion, "What is it for?"
Religion asks of man, "What are you for?"
–––Keiji Nishitani

The National Directory for Catechesis (NDC), approved by the U.S. bishops in 2003, has been awarded its recognitio (approval) by Rome. The anticipated publication is May 2005. The NDC provides guidelines for the content, methodology, and organization of catechesis. It has much to say for those of us in pastoral work with youth and provides a new opportunity for the field of youth ministry. Now is the moment to reclaim our collaborative role in adolescent catechesis and renew our commitment to passing on the full history, tradition, and faith of the Catholic Church to our young disciples.

An Opportune Moment

This is an opportunity to reconsider and re-evaluate: to take a more critical look and assess what is working well in passing on the faith, and what is not. The field of youth ministry has a wealth of foundational documents that guide and shape us in living out the vision and passing on the faith. Each of us must ask, how well are we living up to this heritage and the challenge of apprenticing young people in the faith?

Naming the Challenges

In outlining the history that led to the new NDC, Bishop Leonard Blair of Toledo commented on some recent trends in catechesis. A shift occurred, he suggested, to “what might be called a theology of human works.” Where this shift might have been deficient was in the lack of adequate “attention to the primacy of the triune God’s self-revelation in Christ, reflected in the truths of faith that are to be believed as a part of the communion of faith.” Our challenge, Blair suggests, is to equally emphasize “orthopraxis—right living—as well as orthodoxy—right believing—so that they might become intertwining parts of the one symphony of Christian life.”

This complements the conclusions of Dr. Christian Smith as he published his results from the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) in his recently released book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. In this book, he describes what appears to be a major transformation of faith in the U.S., away from the substance of historical religious traditions and toward a civil religion, which he calls "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism." This is a style of faith that believes that God has “got our back” without placing expectations in our face. This is a faith that “provides mental, psychological, emotional, and social benefits that teens find useful and valuable" but fails to provide “life-transformative, transcendent truth.”

Bishop Blair suggests that to train one in the language of faith, which can be formal and abstract, without guiding one in the experience and skills of faith, is ineffectual. He further challenges religious educators and the adult faith community with regard to the apparent lack of knowledge often demonstrated by today’s young people. So too, Dr. Smith characterizes youth as, “incredibly inarticulate about their faith, their religious beliefs, and practices." Smith goes on to challenge us, "In our culture, the language of faith is becoming more and more a second language, a foreign language."

As the NDC is published and utilized throughout the church and the fields of catechesis and youth ministry, we can be delighted that we have been “getting it” or understanding the complex issues of adolescent catechesis. The NDC, when speaking of adolescent catechesis, makes considerable use of “our” document, Renewing the Vision: A Framework for Catholic Youth Ministry. Nonetheless, we cannot point to this reference as a complete affirmation of our present work. The NDC both invites and challenges us to have another look at our present efforts.

A Vision for Adolescent Catechesis

A consistent vision regarding adolescent catechesis has emerged over the past decades. Signs of this vision are found in the teachings of Pope John Paul II with young people. Through his many encounters with young people, especially during the World Youth Day events, he called young people towards discipleship based on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. In his visit to St. Louis, he told young people, “Each of you has a special mission in life, and you are each called to be a disciple of Christ.” The General Directory for Catechesis echoes this emphasis on discipleship when it states, “the definitive aim of catechesis is to put people not only in touch, but also in community and intimacy, with Jesus Christ.” (GDC, 80)

The U.S. bishops both affirm and emphasize discipleship within their own documents as well. In Our Hearts Were Burning within Us: A Pastoral Plan for the Adult Faith Formation in the United States, the bishops remind us of “Pope John Paul II's apostolic exhortation on the laity, Christifideles Laici, and [their] own reflections in Called and Gifted for the Third Millennium [where they] envision a laity who are living witnesses [disciples] to Christ: well-formed in faith, enthusiastic, capable of leadership in the Church and in society, filled with compassion, and working for justice.” (Hearts, 30). Finally, in Renewing the Vision: A Framework for Catholic Youth Ministry, they identify the goal “to empower young people to live as disciples of Jesus Christ in our world today.”

The original Vision of Youth Ministry offered the model of the Emmaus story where Jesus linked the truth of the faith with the truth of the disciples’ experiences. Renewing the Vision added a goal for Catholic youth ministry “To empower young people to live as disciples of Jesus Christ today.” In Renewing the Vision, it is because “all ministry with adolescents must be directed toward presenting young people with the Good News of Jesus Christ and inviting and challenging them to become his disciples,” that the bishops emphasize “catechesis is an essential component of youth ministry and one that needs renewed emphasis.”

In The Challenge for Adolescent Catechesis (NFCYM, 1986), we are reminded “the Good News of Jesus and the dynamics of Christian discipleship are the energizing core of catechesis.” The Challenge of Catholic Youth Evangelization (NFCYM, 1993) states that, “Evangelization calls young people to live daily as disciples of Jesus.” Moreover, in From Age to Age: The Challenge of Worship with Adolescents (NFCYM, 1997), young disciples are invited “to add their faith experiences to the unbroken tradition and unchanging faith of the church.”

Our challenge has been and remains: to courageously and unabashedly engage both the head and hearts of our adolescents so they commit their whole being to Christ. In responding to Christ, they in turn will extend and dedicate their hands to the building of God’s reign. If we engage the heart, but fail to inform the head, we have little hope for the committed use of their hands for the kingdom, or hope that their feet might grace our church doorways in the future. Bishop Blair called for a symphonic approach, bringing together the sweet sounds of faith from many corners and instruments into one full and rich harmonic effort.

Adolescent catechesis requires our collaboration with each other and the Holy Spirit in the lifelong formation of right living and right believing disciples. The publication of the NDC provides us with the right time to get down to the business of building upon our rich heritage and framework for Catholic youth ministry.