A Unitive Catechesis

A catechesis … that sets up an opposition between the content and the experience of faith would show itself to be worthless.

(DC 80)

In her universal catechetical documents, the Church constantly promotes a unitive catechesis which includes handing on the factual, universal truths (content) of the Christian faith and also provides opportunities for an 'experience of faith.' Together, these help orient someone towards freely-willed conversion to Christ and the personal expression of this new and on-going relationship in liturgical celebration and new ways of living. This article attempts to draw out this same, vital, unitive approach from the new Directory.

Anyone aware of the Catholic catechetical world will know that during the last 100 years catechesis has followed some very different trends drawing on a range of educational, theological and philosophical theories.¹ The two previous catechetical directories from Rome,² which have strongly influenced this new Directory, show an explicit concern over two polarizations³ often set up in opposition to each other, hence the quotation from the new Directory quoted at the beginning of this article.

The unitive approach of this article can be summed up by the phrase, "fidelity to God, fidelity to man."⁴ In brief, this means fidelity to God in passing on all that God has done and fully revealed in Jesus Christ, for every person equally in every age (the content of catechesis). Fidelity to "man," that is, to the listener/receiver, means passing on this revelation in a way (the catechetical method) that takes account, not only of the common features for human learning but also of each unique individual in his or her personal journey and culture. Through the content and method of the catechesis, the aim is always that someone may encounter Christ in a genuine "experience of faith." The Directory proposes a catechetical formation that teaches, nourishes and communicates this 'twofold fidelity—to God and to humanity.'⁵

The catechetical world, however, has continued to be strongly influenced by secular educational and philosophical trends and it has not always kept the balance of such a unitive catechesis indicated by the Church. To read and benefit from the new Directory one needs to understand the catechetical world into which it speaks, together with some of the current philosophical or theological presumptions that can distort one's reading and lead one into a form of catechesis that, as the Directory says, might even be considered "worthless."⁶

The arguments in this article are led by the philosophical language of Aristotelian/Thomist metaphysics, particularly that of the two primary principles of Being: 'essence' and 'existence,' hence 'essential' and 'existential' and 'essentialist' and 'existentialist' approaches in catechesis. This language is considered by some to be outdated⁷ in today's relativist, post-modern intellectual culture but, once explained, it is not only useful but can even be considered indispensable. Pope Saint John Paul II stated in the encyclical Fides et Ratio, that a "metaphysics range" is one of the "indispensable requirements for the word of God."⁸ By this the human mind can transcend empirical data "in order to attain something absolute, ultimate and foundational in its search for truth."⁹ The paragraph of Fides et Ratio continues,

Wherever men and women discover a call to the absolute and transcendent, the metaphysical dimension of reality opens up before them: in truth, in beauty, in moral values, in other persons, in being itself, in God. We face a great challenge at the end of this millennium to move from phenomenon to foundation, a step as necessary as it is urgent. We cannot stop short at experience alone; even if experience does reveal the human being's interiority and spirituality … a philosophy which shuns metaphysics would be radically unsuited to the task of mediation in the understanding of Revelation.

This philosophical language is important for catechesis for three reasons: experience has shown that catechists can benefit hugely from understanding these metaphysical distinctions and their accompanying characteristics for the sake of far-reaching implications for the transmission of the Word of God in the craft of catechesis. Secondly, these terms from the...