The NDC: Right Living, Right Believing:
Discipleship—Right Time

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.

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?

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.”

D. Scott Miller, of the NFCYM staff, surveys the state of adolescent catechesis as we enter the era of the new NDC.

'Round the Regions...

...reporting from:

• Region 5—NCCL meets in Louisvlle
• Region 11—LA Congress
• Region 12—Diocesan Office Balancing Acts