| | Teens Can Evangelize the Family | | W. Patrick Cunningham | | |  Every priest and school administrator covets the
parental phone call of thanks for the great way in which their parishes and schools convey the faith. Everyone in Catholic leadership also puzzles over ways to spread the Gospel of Christ, especially to Catholics poorly trained in their faith. What I can share with the Church at large is the news that both are possible with a modest and inexpensive shift in catechetical technique.
The philosophical key to the success of the “teen evangelization method” is to take to heart the lessons of the 1931 encyclical of Pius Xl, Quadragesimo Anno (QA), and the apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio (FC), issued by John Paul II almost exactly fifty years later. Simply put, the Popes tell us that it is wrong to attempt to solve a problem further from the family than necessary (QA 79). The family, being the basic building block of any society, even the Church, should be the first resource enlisted in solving any problem. That is particularly true in Christian education, for the family is the primary educational venue for spreading the faith. Family life itself should be an “itinerary of faith” and a “school of following Christ” in which “all the members evangelize and are evangelized” (FC 39). John Paul is very specific, telling us that “the Christian family fulfils its prophetic role by welcoming and announcing the Word of God: it thus becomes more and more each day a believing and evangelizing community” (FC 51). This evangelical movement is not accomplished in only one direction: “all the members evangelize and are evangelized. The parents not only communicate the Gospel to their children, but from their children they can themselves receive the same Gospel as deeply lived by them. And such a family becomes the evangelizer of many other families, and of the neighbourhood of which it forms part” (FC 52, quoting Paul VI).
The problem of both catechetics and lay evangelization is that for the better part of the past half-century, two or three generations of Catholics have been raised without a firm grasp of the teachings of the Church. By “firm grasp”, I mean both an intellectual understanding of what the Church teaches and a commitment to living those principles and doctrines as the way to follow Christ in our day and time.
The reality, then, is that when we send many of our children in Catholic schools and religious education classes back into their families for religious instruction, we are performing the pedagogical equivalent of sending Mother Hubbard to her cupboard for a bone. The larder is often bare. |
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Turning the process on its head
We have learned in our school that it is rather easy to reverse the whole process of religious education and thus enrich all members of the family. This can be done without cost or irritation. It even, from time to time, generates thank-you notes from our parents.
The first requirement is that parents be made to understand that they are an integral part of the process of Christian education, and that this understanding implies that every week or so there will be an assigned discussion between parents and offspring about the Catholic faith. It is best to obtain this commitment in writing, for instance as part of the process of enrolling a student in school, or of accepting him/her into a first Communion or Confirmation class. It should be clear to all parties that a short periodic essay by the student will be a necessity for continuing in the programme of instruction.
The next step is to identify key elements of the faith that will be discussed inside the home. In our experiment, we jumped right into the potential hornet’s nest to give the process a thorough testing. The first subjects we chose were moral issues, because the Church is most counter-cultural in those areas. Self-professed Catholics are far more likely to disagree with the Church’s teaching on sexuality than on the moment of transubstantiation or the procession of persons in the Blessed Trinity.
So, for instance, I have assigned students and parents to read articles from HPR on contraception. They are instructed to read the article, share it with their parents, and have a twenty-minute discussion on the subject. They must then write a two-page paper on the discussion, and hand it in a few days later. The paper is fairly easy to write, because no real research is required – the sources are sitting right across the table from the student!
This method puts the teachings of the Church in the correct hands. If the parents have been correctly catechized, the writing affirms what they already know and gives them the opportunity to share their insights on what the Church teaches, with each other and with their child. The child gets the invaluable experience of communicating with his/her parents on the most important issues of life. It obviates the problem that many families place off-limits the discussion of politics and religion, which takes out of the family unit any mutual understanding of what one of my old teachers called the “two most important areas of life”. ...Contd. | | |
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