The Catechism: Proclamation and Pedagogy | The Preface to "The Catechism of
the Catholic Church and the Craft of Catechesis" | IgnatiusInsight.com
The Catechism: Proclamation and Pedagogy | The Preface to The Catechism of
the Catholic Church and the Craft of Catechesis | Petroc Willey, Ph.D., S.T.L., Pierre de Cointet, and Barbara Morgan
http://ignatiusinsight.com/features2008/craftcatechesis_preface_july08.asp
In the fullness of time, God revealed himself and his loving plan of salvation
in his beloved Son, through the power of the Holy Spirit. God came and dwelt
among us, full of grace and truth. The Father teaches us by coming among us,
in his Son and Spirit. God's revelation and
the manner of its transmission cannot be separated. And in the fullness of
time, God's desire for embodiment received its perfect response:
[G]iving her consent to God's word, Mary becomes the mother of Jesus. Espousing
the divine will for salvation wholeheartedly, without a single sin to restrain
her, she gave herself entirely to the person and to the work of her Son; she
did so in order to serve the mystery of redemption with him and dependent on
him, by God's grace. [1]
In this revelation of the condescension, mercy and faithfulness of God, and in
the perfection of Mary's response, we see the whole of the craft of catechesis.
We see what the Church has called the "pedagogy of God". God has his
own way of teaching. And in this way, this pedagogy, which we are invited to
learn, God reveals what we are to teach, how we are to receive this
teaching, and how we are to participate, under God's grace, in its transmission.
The underlying thesis and conviction of
this small book, then, is that the Catechism of the Catholic Church not only offers us a new, definitive account for our
time of the contents of the Catholic Faith; its value for the
catechist lies more broadly in the pedagogy that informs every page. Those participating in the teaching mission of the
Church can learn from the Catechism not
only what is the Deposit of Faith
but also how to receive and to hand on that deposit in a truly ecclesial way. Appreciating this pedagogy
enables us to practice catechesis as a craft in which content and the methods of transmission are
united in a living whole: we are apprenticed into the Lord's own school of
learning and teaching. For this is how the Lord teaches, we believe, as act and
word together and, amazingly, as Word made historical flesh.
The Catechism is rightly
understood to be, in the first place, an annunciation, a proclamation, of the
Faith of the Church for our day. It is a presentation of the
"essential" and "fundamental" points of the Faith (see CCC
11). Every Catholic can refer to the Catechism to gain a secure understanding of the Church's
teaching on matters of faith and morals. For catechists, then, the Catechism
is the key reference work for their
teaching, the utterly reliable place to which they can turn. Approved by the
bishops of the whole Church, the Catechism is a uniquely collaborative work, drawing on the
wisdom and insights of Catholics from every culture. It is a work for teaching
all nations that has involved the bishops of every nation in its compilation
and writing.
It is less well known and appreciated that the Catechism of the
Catholic Church is also a superbly crafted
work from which to learn and to
teach. The teaching follows from the
learning, for as one learns from the Catechism one gains not only a deepening understanding of God's
gratuitous plan for our salvation, but also a sense of growing wonder at the
learning process itself, as one's heart and mind are enlarged to welcome and
receive these truths in one's own life. The Catechism is utterly faithful to the truth that God's
revelation is his very act of transmission,
his gift of himself to us. And we are invited into that truth, to hand
ourselves over to it (see Rom 6:17), so that we can ourselves hand on the Faith
to others. And it is from this love of learning from, and with, the Lord that
the catechist is able to discover in his own life a growing love for God's
revelation of himself in Christ, for the process of learning and transmission,
and for the learner. The introduction to the Compendium of the
Catechism of the Catholic Church points us
precisely to this pedagogical dimension of the Catechism, speaking of the "wisdom of its
presentation":
In fact, the Compendium is meant
to reawaken interest in and enthusiasm for the Catechism, which, in the wisdom of its presentation and the depth
of its spirituality, always remains the basic text for catechesis in the Church
today. [2]
For these reasons, the Catechism is
not a work to be read briefly or hastily; one needs to stay with the text, pray
with it and immerse oneself in it to appreciate fully its visionary power and
the compelling sense of beauty, goodness, and truth that radiates from its
pages. In these pages we meet the Spirit at work in his Church. The Catechism
is a place of "personal
encounter" (see CCC 2563), and it is in and through this. encounter that a
truly Spirit-led pedagogy can emerge and inspire one's teaching methods, a
pedagogy flowing directly from one's prayerful understanding of the Faith. It
is in and through this encounter that the authentic craft of catechesis can
arise.
To read the Catechism in this
way, searching its depths and allowing oneself to be questioned and challenged
by it in order to teach effectively from it, one needs to understand some of
the elements that structure and inform its pedagogy of the Faith. When these
elements are firmly grasped and their significance appreciated the Catechism
can become one of the most transforming and
penetrating teaching tools the Church has ever possessed.
It is no small thing to be, as the Catechism is, an excellent instrument for both learning and
teaching, just as it is no small thing to
be oneself both a learner and a teacher. This requires the drawing together of
the contemplative and the active dimensions of our lives, the uniting of the
two. [3] A learner must be able to contemplate things as they are; a book to assist
learning must help in this. It must assist in a contemplative attitude toward
things, enabling the mind to grasp them as they are. This the Catechism
does par excellence. It is structured,
organized, and written to support a deeply contemplative appreciation of the
doctrines of the Faith. It offers us an unveiling of the meaning of doctrine
through the twin avenues of reasoning and the focus of a "humbly attentive
heart" (CCC 2668), "a gaze of faith" (CCC 2715). On the one hand, the Catechism asks the mind to engage actively with the
annunciation ofthe Faith, following its tight, reasoned presentation of
doctrine. On the other hand, it invites a mode of learning of the Faith not
unlike that of lectio divina. In leaio
divina, or "divine reading", the
scriptures are read slowly and attentively, the mind resting on the words and phrases
in a way that has been described as a little like a cow cudding. [4] The Catechism
benefits from this slow reading aloud of
its text, this pondering of its meaning, of its precise, taut, yet
contemplative text.
A good teacher also needs to see things with the eyes of the one he is
teaching, thereby needing to focus on the vision that the learner will have of
the subject. A book, if it is to assist in the craft of teaching, must
facilitate this work of the teacher as well. The Catechism achieves this too. As well as emphasizing the
necessary distinctions among learners that the teacher needs to bear in mind
(see CCC 24), it adopts a structure and organization that enable the teacher
always to begin with what is small, individual, the beginning point in
understanding and study, so as to move on from there to what is greater and perhaps
harder to grasp. The writing of the Catechism text in short, numbered paragraphs is an example and
a practical outworking of this intention. It also adopts a style that enables
one to enter into each subject with the fresh awareness of one approaching it
for the first time. The Catechism employs
a gracious and classical style, straightforward, precise, and elegant. The text
communicates a reverence and love for the subjects with which it is dealing,
drawing the reader into a simple and direct relationship with the various
doctrines, and in and through these doctrines to a deepening adherence to the
Person of Christ.
The present book, then, aims to bring to light the pedagogy embedded in the Catechism,
setting out the principles and steps for
putting this pedagogy into practice. It explains very simply how every
catechist can discover the key principles that enable one to learn
from and teach from the Catechism, so that we are nourished and enriched by our Mother, the Church, even
as we teach. Chapter by chapter, this book builds up a full picture of this
pedagogy, explaining the catechetical "keys", making clear why they
are of such importance, and illustrating them with numerous examples. In this
way, it aims to help catechists to see how the Catechism may be used directly as the basic resource for
catechetical work and as the reference point for planning and teaching.
On a practical level, the book helps catechists to see how the Catechism
identifies key teaching points for any
subject and how to immerse one's catechesis in the living, ecclesial sources of
the Faith, so that catechetical sessions are occasions for a deepening
attachment to Christ, who is revealed and handed on to us in the Church's
Tradition, Sacred Scriptures, and liturgy. Above all, the book follows the Catechism
in highlighting the inseparability of the
delivery of catechesis from the person and prayer of the catechist: as a work
of the Church, catechetics is rooted in the incarnational reality of the Word
becoming fleshbecoming flesh in the person of the catechist and becoming flesh
in those to whom catechesis is delivered.
This little book, then, is both a manual for practical use and an invitation to
seek and to find a renewal of one's spiritual life through the ministry of
catechesis, in which the catechist can gratefully draw, in prayer, on the life,
gifts, and interior guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Catechism offers us the possibility of discovering an
"organic connection" between the spiritual life and dogma as the
secret for the renewal of both catechesis and spirituality, both being avenues
toward the One who is all-good, all-true, and all-beautiful.
A pedagogy of the Faith
That the Faith has its own specific pedagogy may perhaps be a new idea for us.
The General Directory for Catechesis, however,
calls upon catechists to consider "the demands" and "the
originality" of "that pedagogy which is proper to the faith"
(no. 31; this source hereafter abbreviated GDC). The Church has certain
"demands", or requirements, with regard to pedagogy. She has
expectations not only concerning the content of what we teach, but also how we
teach it. This is the case because the Faith generates its own pedagogy. The
Faith is inseparable from pedagogy, the pedagogy of God, and our catechesis is to
follow this pedagogy. To discover such a pedagogy is not to uncover a single or
restrictive methodology—we need to distinguish carefully here between a method
of teaching on the one hand and the pedagogy
of God on the other. By method we mean a
specific way of organizing and structuring one's teaching so as to bring about
learning. This book is not directly about such methods of teaching; it concerns
God's pedagogy, which is something much more all-encompassing. In fact, this
pedagogy is informed by a largesse that
can welcome every authentic and creative teaching style.
The Directory also says that the
pedagogy we are invited to follow is an original one. The word "original" signals two
connected things here. In the first place, there is something uniqueabout the content of the Faith. Pope John Paul II
often wrote about the sense of wonder and amazement that we have as we
contemplate the Faith we have received. In the second place, the word
"original" indicates that the uniqueness of the Faith is
intrinsically related to its origin. The Faith is not generated out of human experience, whether individual
or collective. It is not simply the result even ofthe accumulation ofcenturies
ofhuman wisdom and analysis. It is not the creation of man. It is given from
God (see CCC 51).
When describing the word "pedagogy", then, "original" does
not simply mean "unusual"; it also means a pedagogy rooted in the origins
of the Faith. We turn to the sources of the
Faith and the media of revelation to discover it. John Paul's introduction to
the Catechism clarifies this
point when he speaks of the Catechism offering us a "catechesis renewed at the living sources of the
faith". [5]
The pedagogy we shall be exploring in this book is one that is derived from the
Faith of the Church and follows the content and contours of that Faith. The Catechism,
as a work of collaboration between the Holy
Spirit and the successors to the apostles, is written with this divine pedagogy
flowing through it. The heart of the Deposit of Faith, its center, lies in the
revelation of the Heart of God in the Person of Jesus Christ (see CCC 478,
609). The pedagogy of God, therefore, has its culminating point in the
appearing among us of the Savior, Jesus, the one in whom we find our happiness,
the fullness of truth, and our way of return to the Father. We shall see that
catechesis is conceived by the Catechism to be the annunciation of this and the invitation to participate in the
fiat of Mary, in the paschal
grace and work of an ever-deepening conversion and conforming of our lives to the
image of the Son in his Bride, the Church.
This book is written for all those involved in the work of catechesis in the
Church, whether this takes place in the parish, the home, or the school. It is
offered to bishops and to those to whom they delegate responsibility for
catechesis at the diocesan level. It is offered to priests, and to those
religious and laity working in collaboration with them. It is also intended to
be of assistance to parents, the principal educators of their children in the
home.
This work does not offer a history of catechetics, nor does it see its focus as
lying in discussions of current debates in catechetics. Nonetheless, both of
these aspects are relevant to the presentation of catechetics outlined here. On
the whole, however, the reader will find both the historical and the more
discursive elements in the footnotes. This leaves the main text free to develop
the exposition of the pedagogy of God, drawing on Scripture and Tradition and
guided by the texts of the Magisterium.
The book begins with an essay by Christoph Cardinal Schönborn on the Church's
mandate to teach, a mission from which we may draw strength and grace. An
appreciation of this point lies at the heart of all endeavors to participate
fruitfully in the pedagogy of God. The first chapter follows, setting forth the
foundations for developing the craft of catechesis using the Catechism.
The pedagogy of God, especially as it is
revealed to us in the Catechism, is
then explored in seven further ways, each way offering us pedagogical
"keys" for our learning and teaching. Through these chapters, then,
the meaning of the most important terms in this pedagogy are systematically
unpacked and their catechetical implications uncovered. We hope that readers are
led to see the beauty, necessity, and practicality of the catechetical principles
that are presented both explicitly and implicitly in the Catechism.
The focus of the final chapter turns more
explicitly to the life of the catechist: the significance of the theological
virtues for the life of the catechist is uncovered, as well as their
pedagogical importance, and the place of the spiritual gifts and the life of
prayer crowns the book.
ENDNOTES:
[1] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 494;
this source hereafter abbreviated CCC; cf. LG 56.
[2] Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, "Introduction", in Compendium
of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (London: Catholic Truth Society, 2006), no. 3.
[3] On this see Josef Pieper, Guide to Thomas Aquinas (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 1991), pp. 93-97.
[4] See Andre Louf, Teach Us to Pray (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1974),pp. 46-47, and see Ezek
3:1-13.
[5] John Paul II, Apostolic Constitution Fidei Depositum, p. 3 (October 11, 1997); this source hereafter
abbreviated FD.
Related Ignatius Press and Ignatius Insight pages and articles:
• Catholic Faith Explorers | Adult Catechetical Series
• Faith and Life | Catechism Series, Grades 1-8
• Image of God | Catechism Series, Grades 1-8
• Understanding
The Hierarchy of Truths | Douglas Bushman, STL
• Liturgy, Catechesis, and Conversion | Barbara Morgan
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