The catechesis of adults

(⁵⁰)

Adults to whom catechesis is directed

 (⁵¹)

172. The discourse of faith with adults must take serious account of their experience, of their conditioning and of the challenges which they have encountered in life. Their questions of faith as well as their needs are many and varied.(⁵²) Consequently, the following categories may be distinguished:

– adult Christians who consistently live their faith option and sincerely desire to deepen it;

– adults who have been baptized but who have not been sufficiently catechized, or have not brought to fulfilment the journey begun at Christian initiation, or who have fallen away from the faith, to such a degree that they may be called 'quasi catechumens'; (⁵³)

– non-baptized adults, to whom the catechumenate truly and properly corresponds.(⁵⁴)

Mention must also be made of those adults who come from Christian confessions which are not in full communion with the Catholic Church.