Catechists

This week I knew I was going to write about catechists because last week Pope Francis created such an “installed” ministry. I was not sure how I felt about it, frankly. Another crumb to the laity, mostly the women, who do this?

Then I saw the photograph of Joseph Ilboudo and his wife, Lucienne Kabré in La Croix International. They just graduated from the Catechetical Center of Doonsè in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso in West Africa. The four-year training program provides “spiritual, theological and intellectual training,” as well as “human training in electrical works, sewing, metalwork, woodwork and car mechanics,” according to Bérenger Bouda, center director. They also “learn the basics of literacy.” 

How varied is our church, I thought. What could be more different than the American catechetical model and this program that provides so much for the people involved? 

Of course, it’s not so simple. Catechist is a volunteer position. In Africa, the skills training provides a living for them and their children when it works out, but there’s no guarantee that it will, or of a related paid position in the church, or of contributions from the faithful.

Here, most Directors of Religious Education are paid, not much, I would guess, and most catechists are also volunteers. They take time from their families and generally provide their own formal education beyond training sessions. 

Yet, like the West Africans, American catechists are committed “to the Gospel,” as Joseph says. Lucianne adds, “We want to proclaim Jesus Christ, even without pay.” Holding hands in their long albs, worn for liturgical services, they inspire.  

What are the structural implications of this new document? Richard Gaillardetz of Boston College says in NCR that “many could be forgiven for viewing it with some skepticism as little more than a modest institutional concession within a larger ecclesiological framework that remains thoroughly clericalist and hierarchical.” My initial thought, much more elegantly expressed. 

Gaillardetz argues instead that this document is a very positive step away from the clergy-laity binary despite the language it continues to use. Rather, it actuates Francis’s goal that the baptized in the Christian community act in service to each other. The Pope’s understanding of ministry is based on the early church, in Latin Antiquum Ministerium, the title he chose. 1Corinthians begins his document. No gender requirement there, or in the newly revised Canon 230, opening acolyte and lector to all.

And to move away from that binary, Francis wants a ritual installation in this new ministry. Gaillardetz concludes, “The more our church is animated by a variety of baptismal charisms and ordered ministries, some formal and some less formal, some constituted by public installation, others by sacramental ordination, the more it can distance itself from the toxic sacralization of sacramentally ordained ministries, and the unnecessary restrictions that sacralization has encouraged.” Raising some lowers others, so this is good.  

Phyllis Zagano in NCR also reviews the history of orders and ministries, and winds up similarly positive about the impact this document might signal: “Lay ministry is real ministry, and the focus here is on the Gospel. It is about synodality. It is about evangelization. Without these, there will be no church.” She is especially sensitive to the way current solutions to parish problems are weakening the Church: “he put his finger on the failures of ‘twinned’ or ‘yoked’ parishes, where one pastor and his personal staff manage multiple communities, which in and of themselves are essentially leaderless.” Is this your experience of ministry today, or do you have vibrant lay leadership in your parish community? 

Lay leadership, male and female, is one focus of Joshua McElwee in NCR: “the pontiff said those who already serve as teachers of the faith in places across the world experience a spiritual calling to do so and are often leaders in their communities…’It is the task of pastors to support them.’” Does the catechist as leader define both missionary church communities and those in the West? Most of the commentators suggest that’s true in the missions. 

La Croix International’s reporters get responses from bishops and theologians in Europe, and come up with the proverbial elephant: the blind feel different parts and come up with very different animals. Clerical. Secular. Spiritual. Institutional. Vocational. 

Perhaps that is because Robert Mickens, the Editor-in-Chief, is so ornery. He sees the document perpetuating the clergy/laity binary: “But rather than make all the baptized faithful (the Christifideles) — of which even the ordained are members — co-sharers in the work of catechesis, he has effectively reinforced the segregation of clerical (sacred) ministry and lay ministry.” Mickens finds the Pope’s “quasi-obsession” with not clericalizing the laity an underlying problem, and calls for a total overhaul of church structures to embody the equality of all the baptized. Remember that elephant, above? The multiple responses suggest how difficult that will be. 

Christopher Lamb in The Tablet sees it more like Gaillardetz: “What the Pope is pursuing foremost is a renewed vision of ministry in the Church; seeking to build up lay roles and develop what he describes as a ‘distinctively lay’ culture of ministry, rooted in the priesthood of all the baptised.” Lamb examines more than any of the other writers the impact of the Amazon synod on Francis; he “pressed pause” in the face of polarization. Some of that was in evidence in the press conference, when the Vatican spokesperson answered, “I think not” to the question of whether women catechists could preach. Did no one ask if men catechists could?

I must confess that I read the document more as Mickens does. It is hard to overcome “Vaticanese.” Yet the grounding in 1Corinthians and the sense that the Spirit sends the call to which individuals must respond cheers me. 

I also take seriously that WOC “sincerely welcomes” the recognition of catechists. After all, we must celebrate every step along the way to the equality of “women and non-binary people who experience that same Spirit calling them to serve as deacons and priests.” And we must act on our genuine calls, as in 1Corinthians: “To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.” Like to Joseph and Lucienne.