Religious Educators: Who’s On The Team?

Ten minutes. That’s today’s petition.

If you are involved in any way with the task of catechesis (formerly known as CCD) in your parish’s religious education programs, take ten minutes to read and reflect on the two articles linked in this blog post. (Hint: if you are a catechist, DRE, youth minister, pastoral associate or pastor: that definitely means you. If you are on parish council, are a parent, know a family at your parish, or if you have been baptized: that means you too!)

Article 1, Mistakes Made:  Msgr. Pope, a daily blogger for the Archdiocese of Washington, offered an insightful overview of the mistakes we’ve made with catechesis. I am curious to hear your agreement or disagreement with his analysis in the comments section below.

Article 2, Solutions Suggested: A week later, he then offered his thoughts and experiences as suggestions for what we can do to fix these mistakes. This is by no means an exhaustive or authoritative list of solutions — simply the fixes they’ve applied in that particular parish.

Those of you involved in the Divine Renovation track at the MAC may hear echoes of Fr. Mallon. Hopefully some of you can identify your own struggles and successes as you read.

Now that the March Madness tournament is over and we have some time freed up from checking our brackets, let’s take ten minutes and read through these articles and ask ourselves a few questions. What in these articles applies to our parish’s reality? What “fixes” might be needed in our ministry of passing on the Faith and evangelizing?

Take ten. The future generations of the Church in Baltimore are counting on our effective evangelization and catechesis. Let’s make sure we’re involving the right people in the job. Looking forward to ensuing discussions…

If you missed the links in the text above, here they are again:

• Article 1: 4 Big Mistakes We’ve Made With Catechesis
• Article 2: Here’s How to Help Fix the 4 Big Mistakes We’ve Made With Catechesis

Please share your thoughts on the articles in the comments section below.