Integrity of Content
30.
With regard to the content of catechesis, three important points deserve
special attention today.
The
first point concerns the integrity of the content. In order that the sacrificial
offering of his or her faith(75) should be perfect, the person who
becomes a disciple of Christ has the right to receive "the word of
faith"(76) not in mutilated, falsified or diminished form but
whole and entire, in all its rigor and vigor. Unfaithfulness on some point to
the integrity of the message means a dangerous weakening of catechesis and
putting at risk the results that Christ and the ecclesial community have a
right to expect from it. It is certainly not by chance that the final command
of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel bears the mark of a certain entireness: "All
authority...has been given to me...make disciples of all nations...teaching
them to observe all...I am with you always." This is why, when a person
first becomes aware of "the surpassing worth of knowing Christ
Jesus,"(77) whom he has encountered by faith, and has the perhaps
unconscious desire to know Him more extensively and better," hearing about
Him and being taught in Him, as the truth is in Jesus,(78) there is no
valid pretext for refusing Him any part whatever of that knowledge. What kind
of catechesis would it be that failed to give their full place to man's
creation and sin; to God's plan of redemption and its long, loving preparation
and realization; to the incarnation of the Son of God; to Mary, the Immaculate
One, the Mother of God, ever Virgin, raised body and soul to the glory oœ
heaven, and to her role in the mystery of salvation; to the mystery of
lawlessness at work in our lives(79) and the power of God freeing us
from it; to the need for penance and asceticism; to the sacramental and
liturgical actions; to the reality of the Eucharistic Presence; to
participation in divine life here and hereafter, and so on? Thus, no true catechist
can lawfully, on his own initiative, make a selection of what he considers
important in the deposit of faith as opposed to what he considers unimportant,
so as to teach the one and reject the other.
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