By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY
Forming Intentional Disciples: The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus by Sherry Weddell, Our Sunday Visitor, 224 pages; paperback, $16.95 plus shipping. See: https://www.osvcatholicbook
store.com.
The subtitle of Forming Intentional Disciples is, “The Path to Knowing and Following Jesus,” and that sums up what the book is about since we will not be able to follow Jesus very well — to become true disciples — unless we know and love Him.
This book has come out of Sherry Weddell’s experiences of the process of evangelization, and in particular her discovery that “there is a chasm…between the Church’s sophisticated theology of the lay apostolate and the lived spiritual experience of the majority of our people.”
Indeed, she argues that most Catholics are “still at an early, essentially passive stage of spiritual development,” and that it is necessary for things to change at the level of the parish if this situation is to improve.
Weddell sees the task of the Church as, firstly, stemming Catholic losses to secularism and other churches, and then, secondly, to meet more fully the spiritual needs of those who are searching for faith — and surveys suggest that there are many such people out there.
The situation is certainly serious, since the Pew U.S. Religious Landscape Survey of 2008 shows, for example, that at that point, only 30 percent of Americans who were raised Catholic were still “practicing” — which for the purposes of the survey equated to attending Mass once a month.
It seems that what worked in the past, such as attending a Catholic high school, no longer has the same influence on people staying in the Church. Nor is there any guarantee that participation in sacramental “rites of passage” will bring them back. Weddell concludes that the “cultural” Catholicism of the 20th century is inadequate for the times we are now living in and argues that we should foster what she calls “intentional” Catholicism instead.
This involves believers having a definite personal relationship with God, that is, not seeing Him as a remote figure — and she sees the need to change a situation where the “majority of Catholics in the United States are sacramentalized but not evangelized.”
Without a personal relationship with Christ, the faith, as a living thing, cannot be passed on. With this relationship, intentional disciples can be formed to pass on the faith. It is sobering to realize that when Weddell asked numerous diocesan and parish leaders, from 60 dioceses throughout the English-speaking world, to estimate the percentage of their parishioners who could be described as “intentional disciples,” the consistent response was five percent, that is, only one in twenty.
The author gives a practical example of how a focus on intentional discipleship can change parishes by looking at a parish in Michigan. She shows how this relatively small parish has an outstanding vibrancy and evangelizing focus, one where “discipleship is absolutely central,” and there are also numerous programs and ministries present there.
Weddell argues that once a “critical mass” of parishioners in a given parish becomes intentional disciples, then the spiritual tone of the whole parish is raised significantly — so this is not about creating a “spiritual elite,” but rather helping everyone. Part of this spiritual uplift is provided by correctly discerning the particular charisms of parishioners, so they can best serve the community.
Weddell also points to the importance of people being properly disposed to receive the sacraments fruitfully, and not just in a routine manner — this is particularly the case with the Eucharist, where we need to be consciously trying to draw closer to Christ through communion with His Body and Blood. And if people are not attending Mass regularly, then that is obviously not going to be the case — indeed sacrilege then becomes a real problem.
The author argues that given the state of things in the Church now, as regards making genuine disciples of the majority of Catholics, who have not received a sound spiritual formation, it is best not to start with catechesis as such, since this is “designed to foster the maturation of disciples, and not the initial conversion of those who aren’t yet disciples.”
She points to pre-evangelization and the initial proclamation of the basic kerygma or preaching about Christ — which she describes as proclaiming the “Great Story of Jesus Christ” — as necessary precursors to catechesis if it is to be truly fruitful.
Weddell sees “Five Thresholds of Conversion,” moving from initial trust in Christ, through spiritual curiosity, then through passive spiritual openness, to active spiritual seeking, which finally leads on to intentional discipleship, in the sense of the person making a conscious commitment to follow Christ and to order his life accordingly.
The author develops these ideas at length in successive chapters, and gives examples such as this response from a “very effective RCIA director,” who, when she was asked about her attitude to her mission, said: “My job in the inquiry period is to help people to fall in love with Jesus. My job in the catechumenate is to help people to fall in love with the Church.”
This is exactly what happened to a parish secretary who hadn’t attended Mass frequently — she said she had attended “St. Mattress” — whose heart and mind were opened to Christ through an RCIA program she joined. Weddell also says that “when the topic of discipleship and personal relationship with God is talked about openly in the parish, [then] . . . hidden seekers start to emerge out of the shadows.”
She also mentions eucharistic adoration as an excellent way of encouraging people to open up to Christ, and says that when the person reaches the point of “active seeking” they should be encouraged to focus on the person of Christ as much as possible, and leave secondary doctrinal issues until later. Weddell likewise mentions the importance of really listening to people when they are undergoing this process.
Regarding the idea of proclaiming the “Great Story of Jesus Christ” mentioned above, the author argues that evangelization is essentially about bringing people to an encounter with the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The personal witness of the evangelizer cannot take the place of this; the aim should rather be to bring people to the point where they are prepared, like the first apostles, to acknowledge their sinfulness, seek forgiveness, and follow Christ.
Although there are sections early in the book which are a bit technical, in that they look at various statistics about the Church, overall, the text is enlivened by numerous anecdotes, personal reminiscences, and case studies of people at various stages of the process of discipleship — and it is written with a lively tone — so it is certainly not a dry statistical work, or a boring read.
Any individual or parish which puts the ideas in Forming Intentional Disciples into practice will be sure to reap rich spiritual rewards.
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(Donal Anthony Foley is the author of a number of books on Marian Apparitions, and maintains a related website at www.theotokos.org.uk. He has also a written two time-travel/adventure books for young people — details can be found at: http://glaston-chronicles.co.uk/.)
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