Promoting vocations and religious practice

I found this post at Young Fogeys interesting.

It has some echoes of an article in the April-June 2009 issue of The Sower. The article is by Amette Ley, and is entitled "God's Pedagogy and the call to obedience". It is one of Amette's "On the Spot" articles which seeks to suggest responses to difficult questions or situations which might arise in the work of the catechesis.

In this article, Amette draws on the idea of a "divine pedagogy", that is found in the General Directory for Catechesis, and examines the idea of response to God's revelation (obedience) in that context. Amette looks at the idea of our response to God in revelation: knowledge and freedom (Adam and Eve's fall), effort is needed (Noah has to undertake the task of building the Ark), renunciation (Abram must undergo a journey), courage (Moses confrontation with Pharaoh), abandonment of our own plans (David does not build a house for the Ark, instead accepting God's promise of a household/dynasty of his own) ... all leading up to Christ as the example par excellence of response to the mission received from the Father (obedience even unto death).

There are then similar stages that we go through - or need to go through - in our own development of a response to God's call to us: the transition from going to Mass without protest, to realising that we will have to make some effort to get there, to taking a full responsibility of our own for going to Mass. The same applies to other areas of Christian living.

What Amette points out, though, and this is where there is an echo to the article at Young Fogeys, is that this is something about which we need to talk to our children and young people. We need to be explicit about it, and not just assume that it will happen by accident. If they do not know and understand the process of growth in faith that is represented here - and is exemplified in the way in which God has dealt with his people down the ages - they are not going to live it. They will simply rebel through lack of knowledge.

Or, in teacher-speak, it is about assessment for learning: the student needs to know where they are at now, and then what they have to do to improve and progress to the next stage in their learning.

And the connection to vocations awareness is pretty clear.

Liturgy of the Word for Children

Many parishes have a practice by which, at the "family Mass" (or the Mass at which most families attend, even if it is not officially designated a "family Mass"), the youngest children leave the Church for their own Liturgy of the Word, returning to the Church in time for the offertory. The current issue of The Sower has an interesting article on the subject of these "Liturgy of the Word for Children" arrangements.

The article asks the question: what is the purpose of a separate Liturgy of the Word for Children at Sunday Mass? Not childminding and not, primarily, catechesis (though there is a catechetical element to a Liturgy of the Word for Children). It is:

• to have an adapted liturgical celebration, centred on the Mass readings, but which is more accessible for the children (so they can participate better than if they remained with adults in the Church, often served by adapting the language of the readings used)


• to lead the children into the Liturgy of the Eucharist that follows it


• to gradually lead the children into full participation in the Liturgy of the Word as it is celebrated in the Church with the (mainly adult) congregation.

The Liturgy of the Word for Children is not therefore an end in itself; it is directed towards a purpose that might be summarised by the word "participation". This gives rise to some of the practical indications given in the article, and in the example of practice to which it referred:

• the need for children to respond to the readings they have heard should not be reduced to questions based simply on recall of the story of the readings or to a worksheet based activity - time for reflection, perhaps in silence, or singing might provide better ways to respond


• in the example described in the article, a decision was made to hold a Children's Liturgy of the Word once a month, and not every Sunday - thus meeting the need for those children at the older end of the age range to grow in their participation in the main Liturgy, and alleviating issues relating to the question of the adults involved also losing their participation in the main Liturgical celebration


• are completed worksheets brought in to the Church and presented to the priest at the offertory giving a wrong impression of the Children's celebration as a kind of Sunday school rather than a Liturgy - the article suggests they would be better taken home, either for completion at home or as a reminder of the readings


• adult leaders of such Children's Liturgy of the Word need suitable knowledge of the Scriptures, since they cannot present to children what they do not themselves possess - so access to suitable orthodox Scriptural commentaries and, perhaps, a course about interpreting Scripture according to the mind of the Church are needed.

The whole article is worth reading, offering a very clear pastoral reflection on something that in many parishes is simply taken for granted as being what is done, without discernment as to its effectiveness or purpose.

Personally, I have always wondered about taking children out from that part of the Mass which can be celebrated most visually - incense, candles and a (beautiful) book of the Gospels carried in procession, for example. It is also a part of the Mass with several different postures and actions - standing/sitting, striking of chest/signs of the cross/turning towards the ambo as the Gospel is read - which are accessible to children as a way of participating even before they "get all the words".

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The Holy Trinity in Catechesis

The October-December 2008 issue of The Sower came through my letter box today. This is the magazine published by Maryvale Institute, in collaboration with Franciscan University, Steubenville.

One article is entitled "Loss and Retrieval of the Holy Trinity in Catechesis". It is an adaptation of an article that appeared in the September-October 2008 issue of FAITH Magazine, that can be found here.

The General Directory for Catechesis speaks of the necessary internal structure of catechesis as follows:
"every mode of presentation must always be Christocentric-trinitarian: Through Christ to the Father in the Holy Spirit" (cf Ephesians 2:18). If catechesis lacks these three elements or neglects their proper relationship, the Christian message can certainly lose its proper character".

The last parts of the article are an analysis of the reasons for a loss of the sense of the Trinity in our catechesis, and suggestions for correcting those reasons. A couple of the corrections suggested:

... a solution here is for every priest, parent and catechist to be attentive to the books and conference speakers in this regard: to check resources for the occurrence of the terms "Blessed Trinity", "God the Father", Jesus, Son of God" and to take seriously any indication of avoidance of such terms.

Responding to resources and programmes that explicitly decline to refer to God as Father or Son, on the grounds of promoting inclusiveness in language, the article suggests:

The answer, of course, is not to throw out the greatest mystery and revelation of all time, but the method that is designed explicitly to hinder its transmission. One initial way to check a programme is to look for explicit references to Jesus as God, Son of God, Son of the Father, God made man. Priests responsible for catechesis and key catechists who assist them, need to grow in an appreciation of the 'pedagogy of God', a pedagogy by which catechetical methods can be judged as to whether they are a "guarentee of fidelity to content" or not.

These criteria of judgement provide a positive way of evaluating the official resources prepared for celebrating Youth Sunday.

I think you will find that the materials on the website fail these criteria of judgement - almost totally. [We can perhaps see the suggested materials for the Penitential rite affirming the divinity of Christ by referring to "Lord Jesus", but I could find no Trinitarian reference anywhere.] The following prayer is quite typical, and totally lacking in any Christological or Trinitarian expression. The contrast with the Liturgical formulation of addressing prayers to the Father, through the Son in the Holy Spirit could not be clearer.

Brilliant God,we celebrate your wonderful world and we thank you for the gift of your creation.On this National Youth Sunday inspire us, we pray, to Reclaim the Future!Help us to see how our actions today will make a difference tomorrow. And bring us together in faith to make that difference a positive thing. Amen.

How many of our parish priests will apply the catechetical discernment suggested in the Sower article to the Youth Sunday resources? And how many catechists will realise that there is even a discernment to be undertaken?

Trying to get started for the Year of St Paul

I am beginning to think about getting my head round the Year of St Paul. When I start the "new season" of first Friday Eucharistic Adoration's in September, the intention is that the themes each month will draw on St Paul.

So, in a spare moment today, I looked at the leaflet that had been inserted in our parish newsletter to mark the beginning of the Year of St Paul. It has been produced by the Liturgy Office of the Bishop's Conference of England and Wales, and is made up of extracts from the document The Gift of Scripture. I did not find it much help, experiencing again the two difficulties that I found I had when The Gift of Scripture was first published.

Let's take a sentence like this one:

The genuine letters of St Paul were written long before the first written Gospel and are consequently the earliest writings of the New Testament.

It sounds as if it is academically rigorous - the reference to "genuine letters" and "written long before". But it is actually rather vague - you do really need to add a bit of explanation about letters that are attributed to St Paul but which are not thought by scholars to be written by him, instead of just leaving it hanging, and the phrase "long before" really needs to have a figure put to it because "long" and "long" in this context could imply something quite different to a reader who has not the academic background to recognise what it is referring to.

And it could be rather more helpful pastorally, too. How can I use, in a pastoral context, this observation about the letters of St Paul being the earliest New Testament writings? Does it provide me with a theme for a first Friday Adoration?

[And that is before I comment on the 4.5 column inches commenting on St Paul's teaching on women - and the suggestion that Pauline texts referring to women need to be understood as arising from particular social and religious settings and need to be read in the wider context of the whole of Scripture etc ... why devote so much to this in the first place? And if you are going to, please give me enough information to actually be able to do what you suggest!]

It's not that I want to criticise The Gift of Scripture in the sense of attacking it - it's just that I find I can't actually make use of it, either academically or pastorally.

Rather more useful turn out to be two articles in recent issues of The Sower. These are by Sr M Johanna Paruch, and treat of St Paul as a "catechetical saint". The first article appeared in the April-June 2008 issue - and I can see in it the references to Acts 9 and Acts 22, and to Galatians, that will allow me to put together a kind of biography of St Paul. And in the second article, published in the July-September 2008 issue, I can spot the theme of the absolute cohesion of Christ and the Church - again, I can actually use this. Another article in this July-September issue also identifies themes under the headings "The Person of Paul" and "Paul's methods in establishing others in the Faith" that will also be useful.

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