HOLY ROSARY CHURCH
Washington, DC

Serving Italians and all Catholics on the move in the Greater Washington DC Area since 1913

Adult Faith Formation Class

The Last Sunday of Each Month
9:45 to 10:45 in the Lower Church Hall

At Holy Rosary Church we have begun an Adult Faith Formation Class. It will be held on the last Sunday of the month in the Lower Church Hall from 9:45 to 10:45.  Rev. Francis V. Tiso, Ph.D., Associate Director, Secretariat for Ecumenical and Inter-religious Affairs, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, will conduct the classes. The topic presently analyzed is the Encyclical Letter “Spe Salvi” (on Christian Hope) of Pope Benedict XVI.

If adult faith formation is broken, stated writer Tom Zanzig, let us fix it. We have begun this class in response to a felt need of the community. It aims to discovering what God is already and uniquely doing in our community and then equips parishioners with the resources to respond. The 1999 bishops’ document, “Our Hearts Were Burning Within Us” is in many respects a beautiful document with a holistic understanding of adult faith formation. But we are often told that the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults is the model of how we should be doing all catechesis. We have such a narrow idea of what adult formation looks like that even when we try to approach it in a new way we consistently fall back into the adult education course model. We keep getting stuck.

We have to change our paradigm. We think the key to nurturing Catholic identity is to teach people more content. But research suggests knowledge is secondary, not primary, to why people connect to a community and embrace its mission. We don’t form adults by just telling them what they should believe or do. We have to nurture their spiritual lives.

Instead of focusing on what’s wrong within our parish, we shift the focus to what’s life-giving, to things in the parish that work well and build on those.

For further information, interested adults can contact the Class coordinator, Mrs. Ann Marie Leali at 703.971.7599 or amleali2000@hotmail.com.
 

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