Sharing the reasons of faith with the young” “

No to priests as mere “managers” of catechesis. Yes to priests who may “learn” from the young the “drive” and enthusiasm “to be able to restore the reasons of faith to man in our time”. That’s what Msgr. Cesare Nosiglia , CCEE delegate for catechesis in Europe, proposes for the “catechesis of the future”, which is called to enrich itself with the “richness” of the various ways of experiencing the faith in Eastern and Western Europe. It’s just this “exchange of experiences” between what the Pope has repeatedly called the “two lungs” of our continent that will be at the centre of the meeting promoted by the CCEE, the bishops and delegates for catechesis, to be held in Rome from 5 to 8 May, on the theme “priests and catechesis in Europe”.SirEurope interviewed Msgr. Nosiglia, among the speakers at the meeting in which the representatives of the 34 Episcopal Conferences of Europe will take part. Priests and catechesis: what’s the situation in our continent? “Even though it’s difficult to generalize, due to the variety of the situations in each country, it may be said that the role of the catechist priest has been progressively declining in recent years. Yet catechesis is one of the primary and irreplaceable roles of the priest. At the present time the priest is more a ‘manager’, an organizer of catechesis, than a person directly involved in the field, which is assigned instead to the laity. All this involves a loss of depth and impetus of the role of the priest in the field of catechesis, especially for the new generations. The laity perform an essential role in catechesis But the priest’s role as a ‘frontiersman’ still remains fundamental not only in the permanent catechesis of adults, but also to maintain contacts with children: especially in the delicate and problematic phase of adolescence, in which the young seek guidance to their own life; they seek a ‘master’ in the faith, a spiritual guide who may help them to live as the protagonists of their own vocation”. Secularization, agnosticism, indifference to values: how should we “react” to current challenges, and with what “model” of catechesis? “First of all, we need to gain an awareness that the changes taking place in Western society are irreversible and need to be ‘managed’, not just demonized. In Italy, for example, our point of departure is Christian initiation understood as foundation of all subsequent catechesis. We try to go beyond a pastoral ministry of ‘sacramentalization’. Of course, there’s still a long way to go, and the situation of catechesis is undoubtedly very different in Eastern Europe, where religious values, in spite of the difficulties of the past, are still very much alive in society, more so than in the West, where the challenges you mentioned are very strong and imply a ‘change of mentality’: in the first place of priests, often still too ‘locked into’ their pastoral schemes and unable to make room for the ‘creativity’ they need to propose the Christian message in society today”. So what should the starting point of catechesis be today? “I think that today primacy should be given to ‘first evangelization’, the initial communication of the Christian message conceived as the ability to have an impact also on culture, through itineraries and languages of evangelization proposed by a ‘quality catechesis’ in tune with people’s real life. In our secularised society there is not much difference between someone ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the Church: in this sense, ‘first evangelization’ is necessary for everyone, if understood as the incentive for a continuous deepening of our own faith, which can never be taken for granted. To achieve this objective, however, we need to start out from a permanent, organic and systematic formation of the clergy, not only in the seminaries but also during the whole of the subsequent career of priests, for example, through periodic refresher courses in the dioceses, a little bit like what happens today with spiritual exercises. Otherwise we risk limiting ourselves to the management of the ordinary, to a pastoral ministry ‘of conservation’ which loses the intrinsically ‘missionary’ nature of the communication of the faith”.