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Participants at the Mid-Winter Gathering of Cathechetical Team Leaders break into discussion groups.
Carol Baass Sowa | Today's Catholic |
By Carol Baass Sowa
Today's Catholic
SAN ANTONIO • Dan Mulhall, keynote speaker for the Catechetical Center’s Mid-Winter Gathering of Catechetical Leaders on February 25 at Blessed Sacrament parish, is known for breaking into song during workshops to catch listeners’ attention.
Opening with “How Can I Keep From Singing,” Mulhall, national catechetical advisor for RCL Benziger, used this song as the launching point for a look into the implications for ministry today, five years after the National Directory for Catechesis (NDC) which he helped develop while working for the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops from 1998 to 2007.
“Our task in catechesis,” he said, “is to try to help get the song of faith stuck in the hearts and the minds of the people whom we catechize, so they want to learn the song.” Too often, he related, we view the NDC as something from an earlier time, but what the Holy See wants us to do is examine it through the lens of the Catechumenate ? the Right of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) ? and use that as the model for all catechesis.
He pointed out that in the RCIA, adults are enculturated or acculturated into the living community that is the church. Enculturation is the process by which we learn the culture we are born into; acculturation is the process by which we learn someone else’s culture.
It is important to start with the culture of the people being catechized, he said, before evangelization (helping them to know and fall in love with Jesus and the church) can begin. In order to do this, we must we must find a way of inculturating people with the Gospel message, inculturating being church terminology for the process by which the Gospel penetrates the culture.
There is a difference between teaching and telling, Mulhall noted. “Teaching, in its widest and best sense,” he said, “is that concept of being able to take what I know and believe, what is precious to me, and help the hearer understand that.” That is what catechesis should be about.
What you see is what you think about, and what you think about is what you do, he related. “The key is trying to capture the imagination of young people so that they see the presence of Christ in their lives and how it shapes their world.” This is difficult when youth today are bombarded by the culture they live in, one of instant gratification, high technology and, as an audience member volunteered, “sex, drugs and rock and roll.”
Most people are unaware of how they are shaped by the society in which they live, until they “bump” into another culture, he explained, and it is our culture that gives us the lenses through which we see and understand the world. However, it is possible to work to change our culture for the better.
Noting our faith is always grounded in culture, he related the church has been most successful when it has intentionally engaged with the culture at hand. In working with children today, our challenge is to enculturate them into the Christian way of life by taking into consideration the culture in which they live.
Instead of operating under assumptions of a previous time, we must find ways in our parishes to actively engage people into a life of faith, such as offering mentors and guides to young parents, who can help them learn how to pray, read the Bible together and understand the importance of church. He added that young people who are actively engaged church activities, such as work camps, stay with the church at higher rates than those who do not.
Like the RCIA, this new formational system must be seen as a process, rather than a program, retaining instructional and doctrinal elements, but always operating with the end in mind ? a relationship with Christ through the church.
“The key to remember here,” he said in closing, “is that what we’re looking for is how do you create a new model that will work effectively here today ? in your diocese, your parish, your community ? that will bring people to discipleship.