Witness in Truth

Timothy P. O’Malley, Ph.D.Director of Education

McGrath Institute for Church Life

The Totality of the Christian Claim“Catechesis, in presenting the Christian message, not only shows who God is and what his saving plan is, but as Jesus himself did, it reveals man to man and makes him more aware of his sublime vocation. Revelation, in fact, … ‘is not...isolated from life or artificially juxtaposed to it. It is concerned with the ultimate meaning of life and it illumines the whole life with the light of the Gospel, to inspire it or to question it” (The General Directory for Catechesis, no. 116).

One Hypothesis Among the Many

Content Matters: “If Only They Knew”“Praestet fides supplementum/Sensuum defectui” (Faith supplies aids, for the deficit of the senses)

“If Only They Experienced”

Catechesis, Truth, and the Real Assent“It must be recollected especially that the Athanasian Creed...is not a mere collection of notions, however momentous. It is a psalm or hymn of praise, of confession, and of profound, self-prostrating homage...It appeals to the imagination quite as much as to the intellect” (John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent, 116-117).

Witnessing to Truth: The Task of Provocation

The Existential Question

Matter Matters: Beauty and the Communion of

Saints

Witnessing to Truth: The Task of the Hypothesis

Revelation as Irradiation of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness

The Tasks of Catechesis and the Pedagogy of Signs

Witnessing to Truth: The Task of Verification

Election and Verification:

“Only when we identify ourselves with our mission do we become persons in the deepest, theological sense of the word” (7).

Witnessing Truth: A Fundamental Catechetics1) Awakening Wonder2) Forming the Imagination

through a Personal Encounter

3) A New Evangelization: Charism and the Formation of Culture

“When Juan Diego reached the peak, he was astonished that so many Castilian roses had burst forth at a time when the frost was severe. He carried the roses in the folds of his tilma (mantle) to the Heavenly Lady. She said to him: “My son, this is the proof and the sign which you will bring to the Bishop so that he will see my will in it. You are my ambassador, very worthy of trust.”

Witness in Truth

Timothy P. O’Malley, Ph.D.Director of Education

McGrath Institute for Church Life