83 pp. Columba press, 2005. To purchase this book online, go to www.columba.ie .

CONTENTS

Introduction

Section one: Holy Family Pilot Project

1. What is catechesis?
2. What is whole parish catechesis?
3. Why use whole parish catechesis as a model?
4. Holy Family Parish - a snapshot
5. Whole parish catechesis in Holy Family Parish
6. Aims of the pilot
7. Main components of the pilot
8. Summary of the stages of the pilot
9. Resources produced: booklet, sample homily notes, ideas from parish liturgy committees
10. Summary of evaluation
11. Conclusion

Section two: a process for your parish

1. Information to distribute in advance of the initial meeting
2. Initial meeting - detailed suggestions for format and content
3. Suggestions for materials to distribute to prompt thinking
4. Advent/Lent core croup meeting
a. Suggested outline of meeting
b. Guidelines for developing questions and activities
c. Discussion/sharing guide for St Bognet's Parish
5. Advent/Lent core group meeting II
6. Advent/Lent core group meeting III
7. Follow-up meeting with parish groups
a. Draft letter of invitation
b. Outline of evening
8. A parish retreat session: linking liturgy and life
Detailed notes on suggested structure and content
9. Further Communication with Parishioners
a. Individual contact with Parish group representatives - draft letter
b. Notes for short talk during Sunday liturgy
c. Suggested bulletin insert
d. Sample of article for Holy Family Parish magazine
10. Advent/Lent core group meeting IV - final preparations
11. Evaluation
a. Suggestions for gathering feedback
b. Sample evaluation questionnaire
c. Advent/Lent core group evaluation meeting - suggested outline

Appendices

I. Called and gifted - gathering the leaders: knowing the gifts or talents this project will require
II Guidance for group leaders
III Additional resources

SECTION ONE: HOLY FAMILY PILOT PROJECT                          

What is catechesis?
This may seem to be a very basic question. However, given that the Oxford English Dictionary defines catechesis, quite narrowly, as 'teaching a series of questions and answers', it might be a helpful starting point to clarify the Catholic Church's much broader understanding and use of the word.

The early Church used the word 'catechesis' to describe the process which instruction in the faith was to assume: learning to imitate the faith and lifestyle of the believing community. Those being catechised were to live the teaching of the catechist in word and deed.

Over the centuries, and, notably, as a result of the Council of Trent (1545-63), faith was identified with belief in stated doctrines. The associated catechesis focused on summarising those beliefs and ensuring that they were taught as clearly as possible, usually to children and primarily in the form of question and answer catechisms.

Vatican II has heralded a significant shift in thinking which is reflected in subsequent church documents. There is a new and sustained emphasis on our call to ' ... union with Christ, who is the light of the world, from whom we go forth, and towards whom our whole life is directed.' (Catechesi Tradendae: Catechesis in our Time, John Paul II 1979 #5). The union mentioned here is not some sublime, esoteric state but an accessible, intimate relationship with the person of Jesus Christ. The call to union is a call to have faith not in something (doctrine) but in someone (Jesus).

If the role of catechesis is to help us to imitate the faith, it must serve to help us to grow in intimate relationship with Christ. Deepening intimacy requires more than the exercise of the intellect elicited by the question and answer catechisms. It involves an engagement of the entire being - body, mind, heart, soul. The purpose of catechesis is thus to enable us to be increasingly open and responsive to the Lord's loving embrace in a way that allows the Lord to permeate and transform every aspect of our being.

Catechesis needs, therefore, to embrace all aspects of life experience - family life, formal education, work, social action, recreation - in order to provide contexts for growth in intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.

Furthermore, catechesis is not a solo activity; it requires the formation of an individual in the context of a deep and intimate association with a faith community. It is not enough to say that a parish has a catechetical process; every parish community needs to recognise that it is called to be a catechetical process.

What is whole parish catechesis?
'Whole Parish Catechesis' is a paradigm for catechesis which is currently gaining support in the United States. Centred on the Sunday liturgy, its aim is to unite the formal instruction provided by the parish (homilies, schools, children's liturgy, sacramental preparation, parish programmes) with the informal sharing and living of faith in everyday family and parish life. The ultimate aim is always to create a community wherein the faith is shared through lived experience. Bill Huebsch suggests a simple formula for implementing a strategy for whole parish catechesis (Whole Community Catechesis in Plain English, p 32).

• During Sunday Mass, the homilist leads everyone, including himself, to ask a single well-focused, real-life question, prompted by the scriptural text of the day.
• The purpose of the question is to draw the believer more deeply into the gospel and to explore a personal response e.g. Beatitudes - which one stood out for you? How will you allow it to affect your life?
• During the following week the question of the week is used throughout the parish for faith-sharing at the beginning of each gathering, e.g. when the choir gathers to rehearse; when volunteers meet on Monday morning to count the collection; in classrooms and at assemblies in school; when families are driving home, having supper or finding a few moments to talk

Huebsch's experience of this process is encouraging:

…the most amazing thing begins to happen. Solidarity begins emerging as everyone in the parish shares the same gospel story all week. It begins to feel as though the gospel, once the business only of the homilist, is now everyone's business. People naturally begin to see the hand of God in their lives. And most importantly, individually and communally, folks echo the faith in their own lives and hear the echo of it in the lives of their mates.

Catechesis happens in this process because parishioners are helping each other to recognise the gentle presence of a God who is intimately connected with every breath of existence, every glorious and mundane detail of daily life. They assist each other in attending to an experience of God: an experience, however subtle or elusive, which will draw them into a deeper relationship with God and with each other.

Why use whole parish catechesis as a model?
The traditional approach to catechesis has been to bring people out of their homes to attend programmes. The weakness of this approach is that it tends to encourage separation between taught catechesis and lived catechesis, the latter referring to catechesis experienced in the ordinary events of family life.

It is an unhelpful separation; the family is the first faith community within which we experience and respond to the call to intimate relationship with Christ. The challenge is to help families to know and love Christ, alive and active in the joys and brokenness of family life. The challenge is also to encourage families and the wider parish family to experience itself as the body of Christ - to be a catechising community - intimately associated with the living, risen Lord and possessing the power to proclaim the good news.

Whole Parish Catechesis supports home-based, family-centred catechetical discussion and activities. It provides opportunities to bring the good news to life, to bring the good news into life. The relevance of the good news, the presence of the living Lord and the transformative power of that presence can be attended to and experienced amidst the pots and pans of family life.

Holy Family Parish - a snapshot
Holy Family Parish in North Belfast, is one of the largest parishes in the Diocese of Down and Connor. With over 10,000 parishioners, the parish encompasses three churches, seven schools, a youth club, a day centre, a pastoral centre and a community centre.

It has an active pastoral council, over thirty parish groups and a youth faith development group which employs two secondary and two primary school teachers for a number of hours each week to work on youth faith and relationship issues.

The parish functions as one unit but parishioners still tend to identify with their own church and its particular congregation. The areas around each of the three churches are quite different in character. One church is situated in what for many years was the domain of Protestant business people and which contains many examples of large Victorian residences. Another church, bombed before its opening in 1980, now finds itself in a mixed residential area. The third church, Holy Family Parish Church, has a congregation which still experiences the painful effects of sectarian tension, although parish and community relationship building have greatly reduced the manifestations of such tensions.

Holy Family Parish was chosen for this pilot because:

• The pilot would be responding to an expressed need: a recent parish survey highlighted parishioners' desire for help with prayer and relationship with God.
• With three church congregations of essentially different character, the results of this pilot would apply to a wide range of parish situations.
• The talent and goodwill in the parish, and the continuing openness of the parish team to encouraging greater lay involvement, would mean that the pilot had a good chance of success. In addition, even if the pilot failed, there would be a willingness to engage with the reasons why. Either way, the pilot would be a useful learning experience.

Whole Parish Catechesis in Holy Family Parish
A parish survey undertaken in 1999 highlighted Holy Family parishioners' desire for support with faith/prayer. When the Family Ministry Office approached the parish team with a proposal for piloting Whole Parish Catechesis (hereafter referred to as WPC), the strategy was viewed as one way of addressing this desire.

Holy Family Parish and the Family Ministry Office agreed to collaborate on a short-term pilot. The intention was to provide a flavour of WPC without committing huge amounts of parish and Family Ministry Office resources to a plan which might not translate well into an Irish context. Advent was chosen as an appropriate time to run the pilot because it had a particular focus and a specific time frame. It was also hoped that an Advent pilot might offer parishioners an antidote to the materialism of the pre-Christmas frenzy.

Adapting the American model for a Belfast parish
In planning the pilot, we took account of the following:

• For many Irish people, faith is a very personal, private affair and the prospect of sharing any aspect of that faith, or of personal details relating to family life, might prove threatening.
• Twenty-first century life moves at a fast pace. Finding time to talk with family members - about anything - is increasingly difficult. It is therefore unrealistic to expect any family to share explicitly about its faith if family members are not in the habit of talking about their thoughts and/or feelings to each other.
• Some parishioners might be more comfortable with action rather than discussion as a first step. Asking parishioners to undertake a small practical activity might, quite naturally, lead to discussion and perhaps faith sharing.

The initial task of this form of catechesis was therefore to find a way of prompting discussion/sharing in families/ parish that:

• Proved non-threatening
• Inspired action, discussion, and reflection
• Laid the foundations of an understanding of faith based on relationship with Christ and with each other as the Body of Christ

Three associated tasks were identified, all linked by a common purpose: spending time together - building relationships.

• To get to know each other
• To become more aware of God's presence in the family
• To draw closer in relationship with God

Aims of the Pilot

1. To identify one topic for parishioners to think or talk about and a related simple activity emerging from the Sunday scripture and relevant to day-to-day experience of family life.
2. To enhance, in a small way, the experience of our parish as a community of prayer and Christian action.
3. To support/assist families in their activity and prayer through Sunday liturgy, school and other parish groups.
4. To encourage chat/prayer/activity in a way that enhances family/parish relationship and, ultimately, relationship with God.

In beginning the pilot we were painfully aware that, whilst we were aiming for whole parish catechesis we were concentrating on the Mass-going population. This is not the whole parish and ways need to be found to include those people on the margins or outside of parish life. For this pilot, therefore, attention is given not to the 'lost sheep' but to the sheep who remain patiently in the paddock, sheep also in need of food.

Main Components of the Pilot

1. SUNDAY LITURGY: Lay person introduces theme before Mass begins. Prayer used in Advent wreath liturgy and after communion during Lent.
2. SUNDAY GOSPEL: Homily introduces theme for week.
3. CHILDREN'S LITURGY: Activity / worksheet picks up on theme. Encourages parental involvement at home.
4. BULLETIN: Highlights theme: one thing to talk/ pray about; one thing to do.
5. SCHOOL: Assemblies. Worksheet for home / school use. Booklets for individual reflection (teenagers).
6. ELDERLY/HOUSEBOUND: Asked to pray each week for and with the families of the
    parish.
7. PARISH GROUPS Begin meeting bypraying / talking about theme.  Leading on to:
8. FAMILY: Talk about theme. Pray about it. Do something about it.