Nobody can compare with Joseph Ratzinger, both as cardinal and pope, for his hawk-like surveillance of and attention towards formation of the laity in our time. Even many involved in the world of catechesis do not know the extent of his writings on the subject, nor of how pertinent they always were to the current situation. He held a conference in 1983 on the “Crisis of Catechesis”, after which followed the extraordinary Synod of 1985 which called for a new catechism.
For Pope Benedict XVI the great endeavour was for unity of the faith and, as he said to his priests in 2012, “unity cannot develop without knowledge”. Part of the crisis in catechesis for him was religious illiteracy: “With such illiteracy we cannot grow … Therefore, we must re-appropriate the contents of the faith, not as a packet of dogmas and commandments, but as a unique reality revealed in all its profoundness and beauty. We must do everything possible for catechetical renewal in order for the faith to be known, God to be known, Christ to be known, the truth to be known, and for unity in the truth to grow.”
His catechetical endeavour was for people to encounter Christ through growing in the “certainty of faith”, a certainty that acts as a sure “foundation” for exploration of the depths of the mysteries of Jesus Christ, not as a barrier. “As science is not hindered by the certainties reached over time,” he argued, “but rather these certainties provide the conditions for its progress, so also the certainties which faith grants to us open up ever new horizons, while the constant circling around itself of experimental reflection ends in boredom.”
For Pope Benedict the foundation of faith was the certainty of what has been “given”, what he called “the certainty of the larger memory in touch with the very depth of things”. The new Directory for Catechesis (2020) follows his thought by speaking of the identity of a catechist as needing to be “A witness of faith and keeper of the memory of God”.
Pope Benedict saw clearly what happens when catechesis ignores or abandons the certainty of the “given” of Divine Revelation: “one would descend to another kind of faith: faith as mere opinion, more or less well-founded … one theory alongside others. It would cease to be the learning and receiving of life itself, that is, of eternal life.” He wrote these last words as Cardinal Ratzinger, on the presentation of the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church at the Venerable English College, Rome, in 1994. As chair of the commission set up by John Paul II for drafting the text, the Catechism of the Catholic Church is one of his greatest achievements. It is also an unusual one of its kind revealing again Pope Benedict’s idea of the “larger memory” of the people of God down through the centuries, by which the same faith is professed whether in the words of saints, popes, councils, the liturgy or the Scriptures.
Cardinal Ratzinger directed the Catechism’s literary form to be “more than anything else the testimony, the proclamation that comes from the internal certainty of the faith”. He called this proclamation “a symphony of many voices” echoing down through the centuries to the people of today. Pope Benedict oversaw two further universal catechisms: the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 2005 and the first Youcat (Youth Catechism) in 2011.
At the opening of the Year of Faith in 2012, and because it was the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Benedict distributed “messages” similar to those that Pope Paul VI gave out at the end of the Council to doctors, nurses, politicians, artists and others. These were presented as scripts. Pope Benedict also wanted to give a message to catechists, but instead of a script he handed me the Catechism of the Catholic Church instead. He was aware of my work with catechists at the Maryvale Institute in Birmingham, and receiving from his own hands his “Message for Catechists” – in this case the Catechism of the Catholic Church – I saw the alert keenness in his eyes, and knew the gratitude that priests, parents and catechists owed to him for his persistent guidance and support for all that we try to do to pass on the same salvific faith in Jesus Christ for the sake of that “unity in the truth” that is found in the Catholic Church.
The “Message for Catechists”, then, was the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the message continued by Pope Francis through the new Directory of Catechesis. The current synodal process aims also to be a gathering of many voices in the Church of our day; it would be well to compare these to the harmonious symphony of voices from 2,000 years of the life of the mystical body of Christ, gathered in the unique gift of Benedict XVI’s Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Dr Caroline Farey has been involved in catechesis since 1996 and was an expert at the Synod of 2012 on “Evangelisation for the Transmission of the Faith” under Pope Benedict XVI. She served on the working party for updating the Directory of Catechesis, 2017-18, and on the second Pontifical Commission on the female diaconate, 2021-22. She jointly runs an online catechist-formation course at www.theannunciation.org.uk
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