The biggest challenge facing the Catholic Church, at least in the UK, is catechesis, without question. “Catechesis” means “echoing the teaching”. This implies that when someone gets to know about the faith, there should be a deep resonance at every level of his or her being – mind, heart, body – with the teachings of the Church. Fundamentally, we are talking about an echo of the most basic teaching of all: that Jesus Christ died and rose again, reconciling us with the Father and with one another in the power of the Holy Spirit, offering us the possibility of inheriting eternal life.
It is important to stress this “echo” for two reasons. First, because the echo, by its nature, echoes something the message of the Gospel. In fact we do more than announce a message. There is a person, Jesus Christ, “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (John 14,6) that we are called to proclaim to others. In practice, this means that catechesis needs to be rooted firmly in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, and follow a method that encourages people to find the truth in Christ and His Church. It is important for people to re-learn the importance of the basic truths of the faith. Too much emphasis has been put, in recent years, on how we “feel” God is working. This leads to a very subjective and overly-personalised caricature of the deposit of faith.
Yet merely learning things by rote is not the answer. Secondly then, to be faithful to the tradition, we need a kind of “creative orthodoxy” that allows a sound formation of the mind and heart to take place. We have to try and understand, according to our own capacities, why they Church teaches what she does. We have to personalise the message, or, as Pope Benedict often reminds us, develop a friendship with Christ. This has an effect on our lives that will be deep and lasting if it is taken seriously.
The task of catechesis is most necessary in the family and schools. Children and adults need to get to know and love Christ. Of course it goes without saying that they should learn (by rote!) the Creed, what happens at Mass, key prayers, the ten commandments, what sacraments are, the precepts of the Church, the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit, how to make a good Confession, and so on. But the teaching of basic elements of the faith needs to be a true catechesis. That is, it needs to affect the whole person, transforming his or her life right to the core. If this task is successful, the passing-on and reception of the faith will be the “joyful” process which Saint Paul, for example, envisaged (cfr Phil. 4, 4-7). Adults and children in general need to be offered ways of re-engaging with the faith too so that this joy is passed on.
In short, the biggest challenge is to help people truly get to know Christ working in his Church.
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