FROM THE DIOCESAN COORDINATOR TheVocationoftheCatechist

Greetings to all Catechists and Parish Catechist Coordinators across the Diocese I hope you enjoyed the winter break from school and are ready to roll into the second half of the school year What a privilege it is for us to be able to teach special religious education to Catholic students in our public school system It gives me great hope for the future to know that hundreds of thousands of NSW families are choosing to have their children taught in the faith of their families during school time

During the winter holidays, CCD rolled out our new ongoing curriculum training, which we will use for the next three years As you know every catechist is required to undertake ongoing training in the areas of Curriculum, Safeguarding and Classroom Management every three years This requirement equates to two of hours of training annually or six hours triennially. The theme for the new unit of training is Teaching for Discipleship in the 21st Century

One of the main types of feedback that we receive from catechists relates to the religious literacy of students Our new training pays attention to this theme, which can be a challenge for catechists. It will arm catechists with strategies to break-open religious language and concepts that many of us take for granted but which many of our students do not understand

At a recently held CCRESS Conference which included CCD leaders from every diocese in NSW, and which was hosted in the Diocese of Broken Bay, Bishop Anthony Randazzo celebrated Eucharist with the delegates The reading of the day (Acts 17:22-34) was the story of St Paul in Athens preaching to the “men of Athens” It was a pagan space where the people worshipped an unknown God which was represented in gold, silver, or stone. Bishop told of how Paul spoke into the space where the Athenians were, admiring how extremely scrupulous they were in all religious matters

He used their beliefs and their writings as an entry point to proclaim his own belief in the one true God, who is Lord of Heaven and Earth Paul called the Athenians to repentance – “the God whom I proclaim is in fact the one whom you already worship without knowing it”. Bishop then linked the message of the Acts reading to the work of catechists in public schools He said catechists should meet the students where they are and invite them to have faith in the God whom catechists proclaim in word and witness

This is consistent with what Bishop wrote in his Pastoral Letter 2020–21 Jesus Christ the Beginning and the End:

“For the Christian, to live life in the Spirit is both an invitation and a command. The invitation is to be open to receiving the Word of God The command is to allow the Word to come to birth in our every thought, word, and action

Each one of us in the community of Broken Bay is called to live this life in the SpiritIn the Spirit we are equipped to take up the work of discipleship, because the Holy Spirit reveals Jesus and His Good News of salvation”

(pg 15)

“In Broken Bay we are blessed to have hundreds of teachers and catechists who live their vocation educating our youth and accompanying them in the faith. Their work is primarily one of personal witness to the Gospel”

(pg. 27)

The Catholic Schools Broken Bay (CSBB) RE curriculum is underpinned by accompaniment, encounter, and transformation Indeed, this is what is captured in our CCD SRE curriculum Through the Teaching for Discipleship model of SRE, catechists accompany the students as they learn about the love of God, which was proclaimed by Jesus himself, and the fellowship of a Catholic community If we want to invite students into faith and help form them as disciples, we need to meet them where they are and accompany them in the SRE class towards an encounter with Jesus and a transformation in Christ The ultimate goal of our SRE curriculum is to elicit a discipleship response from the students by developing their awareness, understanding and appreciation of Catholic traditions as witnessed in Sacred Scripture and Church Teaching so they may participate as active members of the Church within the wider community

For children and young people, this will be expressed within the context of their lives and their ability to respond as a disciple based on their age and capacity to do so The work you do in forming them as disciples may bear fruit now or much later in their lives Your witness is key to this They will remember you and the Gospel message through the love that you bear and the hope that you share with them in the classroom

The vocation of the catechist is one of accompaniment where personal witness to the Gospel has the capacity to form children and young people in their faith journey both now and into the future May God bless you as you go about forming disciples of Christ in our schools and parish communities Thank you for all you do.

Congratulations on all the recruitment that has been happening and welcome to our new Catechists We have over 70 new Catechists this year already and I know many parishes are still planning recruitment this semester. Our CCDMI training filled up so quickly on the Wednesday nights in Aug/Sept that we’ve added a Monday CCDMI training as well

Know that our team is working hard to check on and assist schools in adding the SRE question to their student online enrolment system and we look forward to seeing if the trend of increased Kindy SRE numbers because of this, continues

In the middle of the year, I find myself checking the contents page of the manual to count the compulsory lessons that I still need to get through this year and counting the number of lessons left until the end of November-ish, when we finish SRE for the year This planning has organised my head and heart for the next semester and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting back into the classrooms this term where both myself and the students feel refreshed after a lovely mid-year break.

I’m looking forward to using the worksheet and craft on pg 10 & 11 of Connections in my classrooms Note: Kindy has a supplementary worksheet for every lesson at https://www bbcatholic org au/evangelisatio n/ccd/curriculum, then click into ‘Classroom/Family Resources’ (every other year group has a worksheet with Unit summary comments to parents)

May God bless each and every one of you! We keep you, your families and your students in our prayers