Continuing Adult Education-in-Faith
Pope John Paul II sought to encourage lay ministries in his turn-of-the-millennium encyclical, Novo Millennio Ineunte. In The Church of the Third Millennium, he wrote, will need to encourage all the baptised and confirmed to be aware of their active responsibility in the Church's life. He continued: Together with the ordained ministry, other ministries, whether formally instituted or simply recognised, can flourish for the good of the whole community, sustaining it in all its many needs: from catechesis to liturgy, from the education of the young to the widest array of charitable works (Novo Millennio Ineunte 46].
Responding to this call to service requires a new and renewed emphasis on formation, education and evangelisation.To prepare for mission, the hearts and minds of all the baptised are invited to be open to the call of God through lifelong continuous conversion to Christ through the gift of the Holy Spirit. To this end, effective adult religious education and faith formation programmes are required to be provided by the Diocese for the continuous formation of all adults.
The 1998 General Directory for Catechesis outlines six key tasks of catechesis:
- Knowledge of the faith
- Liturgical education
- Moral formation
- Teaching to pray
- Education for community life
- Missionary initiation
More detail on the continuing adult education-in-faith programmes available in the Diocese of Christchurchmaybe found in the following sections.