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Part 2

The Challenge

Four Words

The Community of Faith

We have used these four words as a rich way to describe the Church. The Community of Faith implies a committed and dedicated body of people who are known for the faith they uphold and preserve. It is a diverse group of people who share the same beliefs, prayers, symbols, rituals, traditions, and morals.

Our Community of Faith is a Eucharistic one. At its best, the Community of Faith offers spiritual food for those who hunger, compassion for those in need, moral direction in a complex world, and spiritual wisdom for those who seek.

It has done so for 2,000 years.

faith of the community

Same four words, but a different reality. This represents the beliefs, morals, and spiritual guidelines of a larger group — many of whom may be full members of the Community of Faith but seem to resonate more with those in the larger public community.

Faith within these two different communities can often be very different, sometimes even opposed to each other.

What are the differences between the Community of Faith and faith of the community? And how are we to proceed?

Herein lays the biggest challenge in Teaching for Discipleship. The Vatican tells us:

One of the difficulties to be addressed and resolved is the question of “language” (mentality, sensibility, tastes, style, vocabulary) between young people and the Church (catechesis, catechists). A necessary “adaptation of catechesis to young people” is urged, in order to translate into their terms “the message of Jesus with patience and wisdom and without betrayal” (CT, 40). (GDC, 185)

Given that those who were young people in 1997 (the year the General Directory for Catechesis was published) are now in their thirties, this “necessary adaptation” applies to our ministry among adults as well. And this Vatican document describes language as far more than vocabulary. It says that word language also refers to “mentality, sensibility, tastes, style” as well.

How are we to “translate … ‘without betrayal’ ”?

Here are some of the differences in the “mentality, sensibility, tastes, style” that exist between the Community of Faith and faith of the community.