Review article

Parish Catechesis as a Form of Pastoral Care of Students in Lower Grades in Primary School in the Parish Community

Josip Šimunović orcid.org/0000-0003-0253-1393 ; Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

The author in this article treats parish Catechesis as a form of pastoral care of students in lower grades of primary school that the parish community offers or should offer this category. Junior students in lower grades are faced with a phase in their lives that we refer to as childhood. Childhood imprints features in a man's personality that he will carry for the remainder of his life. Childhood is a period for the child to adjust to society. After kindergarten the child arrives at school and various institutions offering extra-curriculum activities and the parish community. Childhood should be comprehended as a decisive moment for their faith in the future. It is precisely at this decisive time that the parish community wishes to and can offer its contribution to students on the path of their bodily, emotional, psychological and religious maturity. The parish community's duty is to monitor the young person on the path to developing into a complete person. That person can offer the answer in certain life's moments: what it means to be a Christian believer; what it means to be responsible in your own parish community as it grows.
The first part of the article refers to junior students as the recipients of parish Catechesis and pastoral care in the parish community. In order to better organise and implement parish Catechesis for junior students, it is necessary to be familiar with the social and psycho-physical state of the students themselves. Being familiar with these aspects offers a real chance for parish pastoral care, based on Catechesis, to be successful and of a better quality.
The second part of the article tosses the possibility of parish Catechesis for junior students to be held in the parish community. When children enrol into the education system they are faced with a new period in their lives of adjusting to society and at the same time are open to various forms of socialising. Students who enrol in Religious Instructions are offered an opportunity for more active participation in the life of the parish community through their attendance to Catechesis classes and Catechist groups and their sheer participation at Holy Mass, therefore the experience and practise that they were perhaps not exposed to before entering school. In their documents and messages, Croatian Bishops are constantly emphasising the mutual relationship between Religious Instructions in school and parish Catechesis. Catechesis for junior students and parish pastoral care as such, can be organised in the parish community by grades, separately for each school grade. Because of the small number of children in first and second grade, these can be put together for Catechesis groups. Students in third grade would form a separate group in preparation of their First Communion and their Catechesis is featured with a one-year programme in preparation for the sacrament of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. We consider it reasonable for students in fourth grade to form an independent Catechesis group because as students they are in a specific phase in the religious-life-parish context: they have received the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist and are entering a phase of pre-adolescence but are still in junior primary school. This differentiates them from children preparing for their First Communion, but also from students in senior primary school - grade 5.
The third part of the article presents some elements of realising parish Catechesis for junior students in the form of life-long learning and growing in faith in the sense of their active involvement in the life of the actual parish community. In order to make aspects of faith more liveable, it is necessary for parish Catechesis to be more prevalent in life and religious biography and as such form a complete Catechist process. That is why parish Catechesis is important for the experience not just the methodology. By the same token junior students and participants of parish Catechesis are not merely recipients of religious content but are partners in the development of parish Catechesis.

Keywords

parish community; junior primary school students; Catechesis of junior students; pastoral care

Hrčak ID:

30912

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/30912

Publication date:

13.11.2008.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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