Forming Catechists in Being, Knowing, and Doing

When we speak of someone being a well-rounded person, we are referring to the fact that that person is fully developed and possesses knowledge, capabilities, and skills in a wide range of areas. Catechists are most definitely called to be well-rounded!

The new Directory for Catechesis continues to use the language of the previous General Directory for Catechesis that insists that catechist formation be “three dimensional,” focusing on the areas of being, knowing, and doing. Formation that emphasizes these three areas envisions catechists who are well-rounded human beings.

Being

Years ago, there was a movie called The Right Stuff, which told the story of the first American astronauts (the Mercury 7) and the personal attributes and character traits they possessed that made them suitable for the pioneering task at hand. We refer to people having the “right stuff,” meaning that they have the necessary or ideal qualities or capabilities needed for a specific situation or task.

Catechists need to have the “right stuff” if they are to be effective, and this means more than simply possessing encyclopedic knowledge of the faith or flashy teaching skills. It means being people who possess virtues and qualities that enable them to flourish as healthy human beings and authentic disciples of Christ. Before we give potential catechists a test to see if they know the Catholic faith or have them audition to demonstrate their teaching skills, we want to know that they are “put together” well.

Likewise, while a textbook or video can show how to pray the Sign of the Cross or recite traditional prayers, it cannot share or teach about an affective relationship with God. This can only be accomplished by a human being, namely the catechist. Only a human being can answer questions, guide conversation, tell personal stories, share feelings, empathize, or articulate the experience of mystery. Only a human being can lift up his or her heart to God and invite others to do the same. Only a human being can truly accompany another human being.

Therefore, the person of the catechist is crucial to the process of evangelization and catechesis. Serving as a catechist is a vocation—a calling from God. A vocation, like a plant, needs to be nurtured. Just as we make sure that a plant receives water, sunlight, and the nutrients it needs to grow and thrive, we also need to make sure that the vocation of each catechist is being nurtured.

Catechist formation, then, should help people to mature as human beings. It should help them grow in their emotional health, their ability to think critically, their ability to relate to others in a healthy manner, and, above all, it should enable them to grow in holiness.

Knowing

In their book, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton suggest that the “de facto dominant religion” among today’s young people in the United States can be thought of as “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”  They surmise that this “religion” is characterized by the following beliefs:

1. A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when he is needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.

In other words, when pressed to talk about God, young people are at a loss for words to describe specifically what God has revealed through his words and actions or to summarize, even in general terms, the narrative of salvation history. This is unfortunate, because the truth is, our God has revealed himself and his plan for us through specific words and actions over the course of salvation history. A well-formed Christian should be able to articulate an understanding of that revelation.

We need to be able to articulate specific knowledge about people with whom we claim to have an intimate relationship. If all I can say about my wife of 40 years is that “She’s nice,” one would wonder if I really know her! If all we can say about God is that he wants us to be nice to each other so we can get to heaven, then we really don’t know God.

For catechists, this is a crucial dimension of our formation: knowing. We do not have to have an advanced degree in theology, but we need to have the ability to articulate a basic understanding of the Catholic faith (namely, the four pillars of our faith: creed, sacraments, morality, and prayer) and a basic understanding of the narrative of salvation history (and its central themes of rescue, restoration, and reassurance), which is climaxed in the Person of Jesus Christ.

Doing

When I was in college, I decided I wanted to become a teacher, and I wanted to teach religion at a Catholic high school. To achieve this, I double-majored in theology and history, and I also minored in education for the purpose of achieving a teaching certificate for the state of Illinois. I did that because I wanted to excel not only in the knowing aspect of teaching but also in the doing aspect. Upon graduating, I was one of two people hired at a Catholic high school to teach religion, both of us with degrees in theology. However, as the year progressed, it was clear that the other new hire was struggling mightily in the classroom, namely because, while he was prepared in the knowing aspect of teaching, he had no training or preparation in the doing aspect.

When it comes to proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ, there are skills we can and must learn as catechists that will help us to be more effective and engaging. However, most catechists are not professional teachers. Formation in the area of doing (referred to in the Directory for Catechesis as “savoir-faire”) is designed to ensure that the catechist is skilled in various methodologies and capable of effectively engaging those they teach in order to build relationships, effectively transmit the content of our faith, and facilitate the transformation of hearts and minds through prayerful encounters with Jesus Christ.

God wants all of his children to be well-rounded, and it is especially crucial that catechists are formed in these three dimensions as we are called to be models of discipleship for those we teach.

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