What are we doing?

Whether we are a Director of Religious Education, a Coordinator of Youth Ministry or a Director of youth formation, what is our role? As ministers and not faculty, are we to educate our Catholic youth or is our mission to truly Catechize?
First, we must define catechesis like the USCCB does. Nothing about these documents treats catechesis as a purely academic exercise. Woven throughout all church teaching on the topic is the need to reach the heart, not just the head. From the above page, catechesis is the “…act of handing on the Word of God…” and “…forming people into witnesses to Christ and opening their hearts to the spiritual transformation given by the Holy Spirit.” While it is not purely academic, neither can we catechize solely with praise and worship, ice-breakers and team building games.
Catechesis in its purest form is a blending of education and evangelization. In most healthy parishes this trend has naturally come to be the norm. If a parish is overly committed to one aspect in lou of the other it seems obvious to me that it won’t be long until they look up and realize that their cheese has moved.
I believe that both extremes are in error, we are not just called to get youth to regurgitate facts, nor is it a purely social ministry. We are called to help youth fall in love with Christ and His Church; we are called to show that this Church, His Church, was born from that love for us. We need to provide ample opportunities for youth to encounter and fall in love with Christ while at the same time giving them the truth of The Church’s teaching that they long for and not in some watered down playschool version.
It seems to me that the heightened focus on the educational rather than the evangelical nature of Catechesis is in reaction to the post Vatican II vacuum of catechetical materials. During this time there really wasn’t much material for catechists to use, the end result is almost an entire generation of Catholics who don’t know even the basics of their faith. While it is natural to want to correct for that error we cannot commit yet another error and allow the pendulum to swing too far in the other direction. If we do we may find that we lose the heart while we our focus on the head.
In the end, it is the catholic both/and that wins out. We must BOTH educate AND evangelize if we are going to call ourselves catechists.
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