By Alex Fogleman
It’s become clear to me that the renewal of catechesis requires careful attention to the question of ends or purposes. What is its aim or telos? It’s one thing to think rather generically about ends and goals—the beatific vision or salvation, etc. But I am especially interested in what it looks like for the specific forms of catechetical practice to be guided by such ends.
It was with this set of questions in mind that I read with great interest my friend Matthew Lee Anderson’s newsletter a few months back entitled “Questioning and Contemplation” (it requires a membership to read, but he makes that easy for you). Anderson wrote a whole book on questions and questioning nearly a decade ago, with a slightly different set of interests. But this recent post has, I think, really useful provocations for thinking about the role of questions in catechesis—a mainstay of catechetical practice for many centuries.
Questions, he writes, make implicit and explicit judgements about ourselves as well as about the kind of answers we will get. Questions imply an unknown, and thus a quest, an exploration into a larger realm of knowing.
But Anderson also wants to reflect on the concept of “rest” in the intellectual life—not one in which we’ve obtained an answer but one that is characterized by the more classical, leisurely, notion of contemplation:
Yet we should speak about rest within the intellectual life, as well—and by ‘rest’ I do not mean having obtained an answer. The vision of contemplation is a much more leisurely depiction of what we do when we think. In contemplating, we hold the object before our minds and turn it over without any pre-set determination of what we are searching for. The person who contemplates cultivates an openness to the unbidden: in contemplation, we consider something without needing a question about it—a thing that must hold some considerable value to be worth it.
The person who contemplates has, in one way, no personal need at stake: it is not our own impulse that sets the agenda for the intellectual activity. Rather, the act of contemplating luxuriates over the object itself, without regard to the sorts of intellectual needs or drives that we might feel at any given moment. Contemplating precedes and generates questions, rather than responding to them.
We might speak of contemplating in terms of marination—which is not so elegant or beautiful an image as exploration, but which also serves the purpose. The paradox of marinating meat is that the meat is originally placed into a sauce that encompasses it—with the aim of the sauce permeating the meat. In contemplating, something similar holds: we surround ourselves with the object of contemplation, and in doing so, enfold it into our own hearts and lives in a peculiar way.
The act of reading is, at its best, a form of contemplation; in marinating ourselves in a text, we make ourselves porous to it. We might have concrete questions that motivate us at points. But eventually, we shall run out of thoughts—and out of questions, too. At that point, we can either return to those questions that we know, or open ourselves again to the text by contemplating its various components without any agenda whatsoever. I am convinced that it is only when we reach that point with a text that we are ready to learn something from it.
Anderson is interested, it is clear, in questions and rest in the context of the intellectual life more broadly, and particularly reading and writing. But his comments here seem especially helpful for understanding the purposes of catechesis. How do questions and answers function within a catechism-based instruction? Are they a set of ready-made answers that simply require absorption and assent? Do they close off inquiry rather than open it? In what ways are the forms we use in catechesis aimed toward inspiring certain forms of thinking?
In a recent IRCC lecture, Fr. Greg Peters raised pointed criticisms about the scholastic underpinnings of post-Reformation catechisms, including the ACNA catechism, To Be a Christian. (You can listen to the audio here.) He specifically had in view a kind of intellectualist tendency implied in most uses of the catechism, which often neglect the more affective and aesthetic dimensions of theological reflection. He looked to the triumph of scholastic over monastic theology in the Middle Ages as a source for a kind of catechetical questioning that aims toward mastery, towards finding answers and being done with it, rather than contemplating God in loving union, such as the monastic theologians would have us do it.
Both Anderson and Peters (what is it with these Torrey guys?) help us, I think, re-orient catechesis towards the aim of contemplation. Whether one uses a catechism or not, we should be attentive to how our use of questions frames the practice and aims of catechesis. Do these questions allow us to “marinate” in Scriptures? Do they inspire contemplation over mastery? Do they facilitate wonder, awe—holiness?
Put differently: Is there the possibility of a “Marian” approach to catechesis? In Luke 1, both Zechariah and Mary ask questions of the angel. Zechariah asks, “How can I know this?” while Mary asks, “How can this be?” I’m not doubt reading too much into this, but where Zechariah’s question (about knowledge?) generates muteness—call this the vice of curiositas—Mary’s question (about being?) generates stillness, contemplation—“Let it be unto me according to your Word.” She poses a question, to be sure, but it’s a question couched in prayer, wonder, and praise. It births contemplation—the indwelling of the Word. We live in a restless age, beset by an uneasy pragmatism that demands answers. But perhaps Mary’s kind of questioning offers a restful way forward for catechesis in a restless age.