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October 12, 2008

Teaching the teachers

So you want to be a catechist in the Archdiocese of Chicago?

You’ll be joining more than 10,000 volunteers — yes, all of them are unpaid — who live their faith by sharing it with up-andcoming generations.

Parishes throughout the archdiocese have gotten their religious education classes under way for the year and have more than 100,000 children enrolled, according to the Office for Catechesis and Youth Ministry. Exact numbers for this year are still being compiled.

While the catechists are educating and forming children in the faith, many of them are being formed themselves.

Archdiocesan policy calls for all catechists to be certified, having completed 50 hours of coursework in the “Fostering Faith” program on the ministry of catechesis and the four pillars of the church: Revelation through Scripture and Tradition, Profession of Faith-Creed, the Liturgy of the Church: Sacraments and Prayer and Life in Christ- Catholic Morality. The courses are offered at 20 sites throughout the archdiocese in English, Spanish and Polish.

Catechists are permitted to teach while they work towards certification, said Sister of,,,,,, St. Louis Judith Dieterle, the assistant director of the Office for Catechesis and Youth Ministry.

The curriculum is an update of the former Fostering Faith program to bring it in line with the National Directory for Catechesis, Dieterle said.

“Catechists need a basic understanding of the faith,” she said.

“This allows them to review what they may have learned. To be a catechist takes a commitment to your own formation as a Catholic Christian. They are offered this so they understand better what’s going on.”

Ideally, Dieterle said, catechists would receive their formation before starting to teach, but the need for catechists is great, and volunteers generally start teaching before they finish formation. For most catechists, it takes about two years to achieve certification.

The formation can also help catechists focus on the message they are teaching, correcting any mistakes in their understanding of Catholic teaching or tempering a tendency to overemphasize one kind of devotion.

“For example, if I am totally devoted to Our Lady, I might be teaching everything from a standpoint of Marian-centered theology,” Dieterle said. “We can’t just go off on a tangent.”

Mary Jo Landuyk, the director of religious education at Our Lady of the Ridge Parish in Chicago Ridge, said attending formation classes has been invaluable for her catechists.

“The word that comes to mind is confidence,” said Landuyk, who has about 35 catechists and 250 students. “You have to have the confidence that you know what you need to know. You have to have a heartfelt desire to share your faith, but you need some head knowledge too. You are a faith instructor and you are speaking on behalf of the church.”

The catechists who go to formation classes come back enthusiastic and fired up, and they get the rest of the catechists excited again, she said.

Our Lady of the Ridge is part of the 24-parish Southwest Suburban Cluster. The parishes work together to provide all the Fostering Faith classes with options on weeknight evenings and on Saturdays. The first class, the ministry of catechesis, will be offered every fall for new catechists, with the other four classes offered on a two-year rotation.

Colleen Walery, the director of religious education at Our Lady of the Woods in Orland Park, said the system allows each parish to offer its catechists a better opportunity for formation than it could on its own. Catechists generally pay only a $15 supply fee for each 10-hour class, and leave with new books for their catechetical libraries.

“The catechists that come to the classes are pretty willing and enthusiastic,” she said. “Some come to get certified and never come again, but some come all the time.