Catechesis between the parish and the family

In the canton of Zurich, in Switzerland, there is an interesting ongoing debate about teaching the Bible in schools. Teaching the Bible has always been an integral part of programmes in state education. Lessons are organised by the schools and taught by regular teachers and are non-confessional and compulsory. To save money, the government wishes to eliminate them, but it clashed not only with opposition from local educational authorities but also with protests from teachers and parents, especially in rural areas and from the Protestants, reminding authorities that social order in our country is based on the values of the Bible and the Christian religion.

Faced with this resistance the government presented two solutions:

- The first proposal envisaged that schools should remain free to offer Bible lessons at their own expense, a procedure already adopted in some Communes.

- The alternative proposed that Bible lessons should be replaced with a new subject, “history of religions”. In fact, since children increasingly live in a multicultural and multi-religious environment, knowledge and appreciation of their school companions’ religions would encourage peaceful co-existence. The government specifically emphasises that the teaching of this subject must remain “a-confessional” and objective.

This development will inevitably have repercussions on Catholic religious teaching that, in some places, although still part of school programmes and although managed by the Church, has now effectively been relegated to so-called “marginal hours”. Lessons to not involve marks and are not formally compulsory. It will become increasingly difficult for priests to motivate parents and children to add an extra hour for their own religion to the compulsory classes on “History of the religions”.

In some places, scholastic religious lessons, managed by the Church, are going through a certain crisis, due both to an increased and generalised distancing of society from religion, and to the lessons’ unfavourable organisational aspects. For this reason, many have matured the persuasion that religious education should become far more the parents’ responsibility that they think. There are many parents who are convinced that it is sufficient to delegate their children’s religious education to the parish, because they believe, parish staff is far more capable and qualified to provide it. And yet, for a child to become rooted in the faith, a couple of lessons a week or (at best) Sunday Mass, is not enough.

The priest certainly has a particular duty and responsibility in the children’s and the young’s catechetic instruction and Catholic education (CIC can. 528- §1). However, ultimately the religious education of children is the responsibilities of the parents (see Familiaris consortio nos. 36, 39, 49-64). This issue is still not sufficiently clear to the majority of parents. Within the framework of the discussion on pastoral priorities we are facing in our country, also due to increasing financial problems, the hypothesis is appearing regards to redirecting the funds used for catechesis in schools, at least part of them, to a catechesis of the family, with the objective of involving parents in passing on the faith to the next generations.

This is not a totally new concept; in some places children in First and Second Grade in state primary schools can participate in the so-called “domestic group lessons”, a model that, I believe, comes from France. This model foresees that the children meet in small groups in one of the mothers’ homes and she teaches them the basic principles of religion, having in turn been trained by real catechists. After Grade Three the children attend scholastic confessional catechesis.

If one addresses the history of the Church, one becomes aware that these are not new solutions: at the word “domestic catechesis”, in the second edition of the “Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche” (Lexicon of Theology and of the Church, v. 5 1960, 36) there is some very interesting information. In fact, before the advent of state schools, catechesis took place mainly within the family. The 1917 CIC starts from the assumption that it is parents who prepare their children for their first confession and first communion. Public and ecclesiastic catechesis was mainly addressed at adults, who in turn (or at least the godfather did) have the duty and the right to educate their children in the faith. Still today, one comes across people of a certain age, who remember how, when they were small, after Sunday Mass, they were questioned by their fathers about the contents of the homily. Domestic catechesis started to disappear in the 18^th century also due to the spreading of education and secularisation. Most families today are no longer capable, or ready to do this.

The Second Vatican Council, in an appeal to families as domestic churches, has encouraged the restitution to families of the responsibility for the catechesis of children. In the Apostolic Exhortation “Familiaris consortio”, His Holiness once again repeated and strengthened this impulse. Considering the significant obstacles increasingly affecting state religious education, family catechesis assumes increasing importance.

The great project “Glaube und Leben” (Faith and Life) in 8 volumes, dedicated to children between the ages of 6 and 14, therefore follows new paths in passing on the faith, because it is above all addressed to parents and provides them with adequate instruments for integrating the often insufficient hour of religion at school. It is a collection of eight volumes with two supplements for children and their parents/catechists and is published by the Office for Matrimony and the Family in the Salzburg Archdiocese, in cooperation with the Hauskirche movement (Domestic Church). The first four volumes are already on sale and are also distributed to commercial bookstores. The fifth will be published this summer.

Catechesis between the parish and the family: here too, the family must be rediscovered as a subject of pastoral care. It is the parish’s duty to accompany and support the family in its fulfilment of its mission in transmitting the Catholic faith.