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How Do We Continue to Learn as Adult Catholics?
" ...the future is not inevitable. It is only inevitable if the institutional Catholic Church does not change its way of being church in this country and this culture. Someone once said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” It is my firm belief that we need to change our focus and priorities to place more of our resources and efforts into forming adults. Numerous catechetical documents published since the 1970s have articulated a vision of catechesis with adult faith formation at its center. Yet, in practice this appears more a hope and dream rather than an operational imperative. We are still doing what we did for the last one hundred years and expecting different results. If the current trends in the Catholic Church are to be reversed or stemmed, the Church must increasingly direct its efforts to invigorating its adults, and move them from membership to discipleship (National Directory of Catchesis, 47, A3). We will need a different culture in the Catholic Church, one that takes seriously the importance of lifelong learning, and puts more emphasis on and resources into creating a Church of adult disciples. The creation of this culture must be purposeful and intentional. Dr. Thomas Walters of St. Meinrad Seminary says that all discussions of catechesis—and in fact, education—focus on four areas: the learner, the teacher, the content, and the methods. This article will use these categories as a guide for reflecting on the topic of teaching adults, and the role this plays in creating a new church culture. "
~ Edmund F. Gordon is the Secretary for Catholic Education and the Director of Religious Education of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware. He has been the president of the National Conference for Catechetical Leadership (NCCL) and served as the project manager and executive producer of the videobased catechist formation program called Echoes of Faith (RCL-Benziger)
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