Florida Catholic | Lifelong Learning About Faith

Learning about faith can be a lifelong, family affair

Catechists gather in Orlando for national conference on intergenerational faith formation.

LAURA DODSON | FLORIDA CATHOLIC CORRESPONDENT

Published: 01.25.08

ORLANDO | Like any teenager, 15-year-old Amber Winters occasionally disagrees with older generations. One day, she and her grandmother had words that escalated to an argument and Amber stomped away. To her grandmother’s delight, Amber returned later and wordlessly bent down for her grandmother to bless her forehead with the sign of the cross — a moment of intimacy they had shared each time they parted the year before.

Melodie Winters related her daughter’s story at the second annual “Fashion Me a People” national gathering on lifelong catechesis at the Wyndham Orlando Resort Hotel Jan. 10-12.

The Center for Ministry Development in Naugatuck, Conn., created the annual gathering with support from Harcourt Religion, Twenty-Third Publications and Oregon Press. The center is a nonprofit organization that provides programs and support on catechesis to dioceses and parishes.

Winters was motivated to encourage the family sign of the cross gesture at the previous year’s gathering, which she attended as part of a team from St. Maximilian Kolbe Parish in the Avalon Park area of Orlando.

Center for Ministry Development program coordinator Leif Kehrwald said a whole-community faith-formation process has evolved over the past 30-plus years, emerging from church documents and now operating in more than 1,600 parishes in 80 dioceses. About 750 people attended the recent lifelong catechesis convention from as far away as Australia, the Bahamas, Canada and Alaska, and across the contiguous United States, including 65 from the Diocese of Orlando.

St. Maximilian Kolbe’s team has found acceptance, enthusiasm and success in implementing intergenerational catechesis on the parish level. Tonia Mann shared, “We’re on fire because it’s a way for the whole parish to learn, celebrate and deepen our faith together. You maintain your car, you maintain your house and we must nourish and maintain our faith.”

Father David Scotchie, parochial administrator of St. Maximilian Kolbe Parish, said, “Faith formation is for life — in Christ. It’s to bring conversion and renewal for the person and the parish. Intergenerational faith formation involves the whole parish — not just the children.

“It’s centered on the events in the life of the parish. I saw the success of the sacramental catechesis that Sister of Divine Providence Linda Gaupin, Diocese of Orlando senior director of religious education, began implementing seven years ago for parents with their children. Building on that made me confident that this could work,” Father Scotchie said.

Sister Gaupin elaborated, “This conference celebrates the keys of catechesis. It is lifelong and it is for the whole parish community. We need to shift into the vision of the church.”

Convention keynote speaker Dominican Sister Catherine Dooley, an educator and author, began her presentation with two anecdotes. The first was about a student she had disciplined who returned crying because, “you didn’t sign (bless) me,” and an e-mail from a student of 40 years prior who related that he had signed his own children who, in turn, recently blessed him as he recovered in cardiac intensive care.

Sister Dooley said, “We are marked with the sign of the cross. We are baptized into the faith of the church. No one can believe alone. We receive our belief. We receive our life in community, in relationship with others. We are called to a life for Christ. We are called to love God more fully and it is a lifelong process which echoes within us. We can be changed and reverberate to the next generations.”

Visit the Web site www.cmdnet.org for more information on lifelong catechesis.

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Learning about faith can be a lifelong, family affair

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