How Faith Touches Our Hearts:: Wisdom, Ways, and Works of Sacramental Catechesis

In Memoriam: Stephan Haering, O.S.B. (1959–2020)

During the first months of 2020, the Holy See issued, in proximity in time and content, two important documents. On March 3, 2020, the International Theological Commission published the document entitled, The Reciprocity between Faith and Sacraments in the Sacramental Economy. In the same month, on March 23, 2020, the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization received the approval to issue the new Directory for Catechesis. Both texts highlight the need for theological clarity where social-cultural and institutional support for the transmission of faith is diminishing gradually. The late Stephan Haering, O.S.B., the highly respected professor of canon law at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, who passed away prematurely at age 62, has said, "supernatural faith and natural justice form the basis and source for the legal order of the Catholic Church, and this is especially true with regard to a reverent administration of the sacraments."¹ His statement implies a special attention to the reciprocity between faith and sacraments, when in concrete life situations the sacraments are requested and a pastorally responsible distinction between external occasions and internal motives is required. These situations also present a unique challenge for sacramental catechesis. When external support to the faith is disappearing more and more, as the recent coronavirus pandemic demonstrated, the clarification between internal faith, the reception of the sacraments, and a proper catechesis becomes indispensable.

Ten years ago in his work on sacramentality, Karl-Heinz Menke had already indicated the problem in these words, "The less church attendance, the less faith in Christ; the less reception of the sacraments, the less hearing of the Gospel; the less church commitment, the weaker the faith."² Related to this statement but from a different point of view, Rudolf Voderholzer has said, "Sacramentality as a form of thinking presupposes … that reality, material reality itself can be and is the bearer of a sense pointing beyond it. Sacramental thinking means perceiving: The world in which we live is not our environment, but God's creation. Every living being points by itself to the Creator. […] Sacramental thinking recognizes that reality as such has an inherent inner reference beyond itself. It could also be called `symbolic' thinking."³

Karl-Heinz Menke's diagnosis and Rudolf Voderholzer's definition can help us analyze catechetical deficits in the transmission of the faith. The theological approach of the new Directory for Catechesis, expressed in chapter one, states that faith or believing in Jesus Christ is fundamentally rooted in the Trinitarian event of revelation. Accordingly, all catechesis can only be a relational faith event, in which the Creator addresses his creature. In this way, everything in the world acquires value before God; the everyday life of human beings and their experiential relationships, open up inductive approaches to the spread of faith, but presuppose in all things a faith that, in view of Jesus Christ, transcends the absoluteness of the human ego or self. According to the new Directory, evangelization, as a fundamental vocation of the Church, is the transmission of revelation; it is the transmission of the Church's faith itself.⁴ A faith with a sacramental character, as this new document by the theologians of the International Theological Commission have rightly indicated.⁵ With these emphases, one can see how both documents are synchronized in their response to the crisis of the proclamation of the Gospel and the faith response which in practice seems to proceed less and less within this horizon.

Crisis and Criticism of a Mystagogical Introduction to Faith

In words that might have been found, just as easily in the new Directory for Catechesis, paragraph eight of The Reciprocity between Faith and Sacraments in the Sacramental Economy analyses recent aspects of the catechetical mission of the church by stating:

In the post-Vatican II period, there have also been some widespread attitudes among the faithful and pastors that have actually weakened the healthy reciprocation between faith and sacraments. Thus, the pastoral approach of evangelization has...