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Matthew K Michels, OblSB's avatar

I have long advocated for catechists to have a program of formation required for them to teach children/teens/etc. and so this was one thing I really hand to hand it to Pope Francis over. The state of catechesis and catechists in the US has, for decades, been worse than abysmal. Whatever you think qualifies as "really really really bad," it's even worse. The vast overwhelming majority of those instructing young people in the truth (given by the Revelation of the Eternal Triune God to whom we must worship and obey) are completely unqualified.

In the modern age, in our post-Christian and neo-pagan world where younger and younger kids have internet access to incredible swaths of anti-Catholic/anti-Christian/anti-Religious/anti-reality content and infinite objections to Catholicism, if a catechist doesn't have the theological/historical/ecclesiological/scientific/etc. expertise to anticipate or answer objections thoroughly... a catechist will seal the fate of a child apostasizing.

Yes, you *shouldn't* have to be an expert on theology, church history, philosophy, biology, and anthropology in order to teach middle school religious ed.... but sadly, you *need* to be if you're going to effectively catechize young people.

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benh's avatar

Catechists are and have been very important in the developing world and in missionary areas as you note above.

But ... this initiative sounds like something which rebrands directors of religious education for dioceses and parishes as "catechists." Or, worse, is the beginning of some sort of new expensive credentialing requirement.

Nothing in the summary with different "Phases" and so forth suggests anything other than a USCCB "program" that different bishops will "implement" by recategorizing people and things they already do to meet the "timeline".

And yet at the same time, (this is amazing to me): there are many successful evangelistic works carried out by lay people in the US - often (ie almost exclusively) by converts from Protestantism. These works are started from the bottom up with no funding and no help from the Bishops. They are Orthodox and bring people into the faith. ... and there is no interest on the part of the Bishops to 1. find out that such things exist; 2. figure out what they are doing right; 3. ask "how can we do that too." They react in a mechanical way to a document from the Vatican (which is intended for a different situation), plan a whole new bureaucracy so they can create evangelization from the top down and ignore successful models which actually bring people to Christ in American culture!

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