From cradle to grave
Whole community catechesis brings all ages together
By Erick Rommel
Head Staff Writer
BELVIDERE — In traditional religious education programs, parents are often little more than chauffeurs. Instead of actively participating in their children’s faith formation, they drop them off at the parish center and complete chores while the kids learn.
In St. Patrick Parish, that is no longer possible. Its new catechesis process,
completing its first year, won the Mustard Seed Award from the National Association of Parish Catechetical Directors, a department within the National Catholic Education Association, for its approach to increasing parental involvement.
While the process goes by different names in different parishes — whole family, whole community and whole parish catechesis are the most common, and they are often used interchangeably — they all have the same goal, getting the entire parish family more actively involved in their own faith lives.
Because whole community catechesis is a process and not a program, those
involved are encouraged to participate as if it were an ongoing activity rather than a one time event.
“In the traditional religious education model, you sometimes had parents get
involved in homework situations,” said Marietta Spagnola, St. Patrick Parish catechetical leader. “Otherwise, they weren’t really involved in the religious education program.”
By bringing families together for religious education, adults are given a more active role. “The whole purpose for whole community catechesis is to place the parents in the role of primary educator for religious education,” Spagnola said. “It’s empowering the parents and giving them the resources to do that.”
Religious education
Each biweekly education gathering begins with a lead catechist addressing a specific topic with a presentation aimed at both the children and their parents. As a group, they break open the word by reading the Gospel from the previous Sunday and then reflect upon faith questions. The children and adults then divide into different groups based upon their age. “Everyone studies the same topic at different levels, depending on the age level,” Spagnola explained. In addition, both the adults and the children receive age-appropriate materials about the discussion topics.
Opening a dialog between all generations can be challenging. Younger children are often deferential to adults during discussions while older children are usually hesitant to participate with their parents listening. Creating a process that works for both large and small groups is an ongoing effort, with the education team carefully balancing when parents are in groups with their children and when they are separated.
At the end of each session, families are given a homework assignment to complete the following week when the community does not gather as a large group. The first assignment this past year was to build a home prayer corner. Families were given a picture to show what one looked like and had the opportunity to buy materials to expand it through the parish. Once each family completed its corner, they took a picture to be included in photo montage.
The next project built upon the first. Families were asked to create portable prayer corners for the homebound. Spagnola said everyone on the parish homebound list, approximately 30 to 40 people, received one as a gift.
In addition to educating families, the materials and assignments sent home provide also an opportunity for the parish to introduce sacramentals, such as holy water bottles, advent calendars and crucifixes into the home.
Members of the parish also come together once a month for evening prayer and a covered dish supper. Once their hunger is satisfied, they complete a service project. They once picked two tons of apples for Norwescap, an area food bank. At another gathering they decorated and wrapped gifts for clients of Life Choices.
Parish groups are also formed. Participants in one group, the Iraq Connection, collected items needed by a specific unit and shipped them monthly.
Always new
Because whole community catechesis brings together people of all ages, lessons each year need to be different. Over the past year, the whole parish catechesis process for St. Patrick Parish focused on the liturgical calendar. In the coming year, the parish theme will be the church. From the first lesson, “The Church: Community of the entire people of God,” to its Advent lesson, “The Church prepares for Christ,” each session will be designed to further the community’s understanding of their faith.
With one year under its belt, the parish calls the whole community initiative a success. “Parents are now really entrenched in what is happening in religious education at the parish level and that has to impact on what they’re doing at home,” Spagnola said. “As people learn, they change. Without taking risks in class, you’re not learning. As we continue to take those risks and glean that information, we become more confident in ourselves and our faith knowledge and more comfortable in passing it on to our children.”
Developing the whole community catechesis process
In May 2005 Father Richard M. Rusk, pastor, responded to the call of the U.S. bishops to have parishes offer more programs for people of all ages. He decided to end his parish’s traditional religious education program and convert to the whole community catechesis process. “Catechesis never stops. It continues until we reach heaven,” he said. “Our focus isn’t just the children; it’s everyone from cradle to grave.”
In addition to implementing the process in St. Patrick Parish, Father Rusk is also overseeing the implementation of the whole community process at St. Rose of Lima Parish, Oxford, where he is also pastor.
Because of the effort involved in creating a whole family catechesis process, St. Patrick Parish chose to spend the first year focusing on families with young children, although all members of the parish were invited to participate. “We didn’t do a lot with the adults. We need to phase that in,” Father Rusk said. “Then, there’s a whole need to reach out to the homebound who want to be connected to the church.”
Because the new process was a significant change, the parish asked families to reregister for religious education rather than rolling over registration as it had in the past. “We realized families would have to make a decision about whether they wanted to be involved,” said Marietta Spagnola, catechetical leader. “By the time preregistration was over, we had an 80 percent return of families.”
One difficulty in creating a whole catechesis process is that there is no blueprint to follow, not even from other parishes that have already made the switch. “Everyone who ventures into whole community catechesis does it in a different way,” Spagnola said. “I spoke to one director, not in the diocese, and their process was bringing people together three times a year for supper and Bible Jeopardy. Others just do breaking open the word (a guided reflection of the Bible).
“Every program is tailored to the personality and profile of that particular parish,” she added. “No two are alike.”
As St. Patrick Parish tried to find its own whole family profile, the process underwent several revisions in the first few months. The fine-tuning taught catechists how to best present what they are trying to teach. “It’s constantly morphing as we see a better way of doing things,” Spagnola said.
*The attached/referenced article was originally published in The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, and is protected under U.S. and international copyright law