Religious Education Supplement

Your year is a Year of Faith

This is your year. You are personally invited to participate in the Year of Faith.

Without your personal involvement, this year won’t achieve its most important goal for you—your faith being refreshed so your joy can be complete and you can have life in its fullness!

You’re invited to join a united archdiocesan effort from the convenience of your own home.

Here’s how:

Help us write a pastoral resource called “10 Things We Want You to Know about the Catholic Faith.”

1. That’s right. Help us produce a resource you can use to share with friends and neighbors.

How do you help produce this resource? Please see Step 2.

2. Treat yourself to a healthy helping of Sacred Tradition!

Both sacred Scripture and sacred tradition are important in listening to God. Because the Year of Faith celebrates 50 years since an important chapter in sacred tradition—the Second Vatican Council—we invite each Catholic in the archdiocese to read, prayerfully reflect on and discuss a key document from the Council regarding our Church.

The document is called “Lumen Gentium” (“Light of the Nations”) and is available online as well as in low-cost booklets. For starters, log on to www.vatican.va/archive and click on II Vatican Council.

3. Enjoy your parish town-hall meeting.

Each parish is asked to have a kind of town hall meeting some time before Advent or shortly after the Christmas season.

The goal of this meeting is to facilitate a great discussion that will surface—you guessed it—10 things we want you to know about the Catholic faith. The 10 facets of our beautiful faith that your fellow parishioners find most important to share with friends and neighbors will be one fruit of this engaging parish gathering. Additional parish activities will mark the Year of Faith in various ways.

Our Year of Faith runs from Oct. 11, 2012, through Nov. 24, 2013. Details about our archdiocesan process will be announced by your parish leaders and on the archdiocese’s website.

Clearly, your Year of Faith will energize you to engage in sharing your Catholic faith with friends and neighbors. This activity has in recent years been referred to as the new evangelization.

Throughout the Year of Faith, you will notice references to evangelization, and certainly this year will better prepare us to share the Good News of salvation in Jesus Christ.

The Year of Faith also celebrates 20 years since the Catechism of the Catholic Church was published, and began to clarify what we believe and specifically who we must know to be saved from sin and death.

The United States Catholic Catechism for Adults, which flows from and refers back to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, is being well-used this year by teachers, catechists, principals and additional Catholic education leaders in a recently launched certification effort by the archdiocesan Office of Catholic Education.

Please enjoy this supplement’s great information on catechetical certification and a host of other efforts meant to share the faith in the Year of Faith and beyond.
 

(Ken Ogorek is archdiocesan director of catechesis.) †