The Catechism of the Catholic
Church on Faith and Life

by Douglas Bushman, STL

Everyone involved in the Church's catechetical activity confronts the challenge: How can instruction in the faith be given so as to penetrate the hearts of those we teach and transform their lives?

Of course, catechetical instruction cannot accomplish this of itself because it is only one of many activities and expressions of the Church's life.1 Faith is communicated through the Church; life begets life, the Church gives birth to her children. The proper context of catechetical instruction is the living faith of the Church, experienced especially in the family and in liturgical celebrations. Much of the challenge of the catechetical ministry is rooted in the fact that the content of instruction too often is not complemented by a corresponding family and liturgical life. When experience is far removed from a genuine Christian community and the sacraments, catechesis is asked to carry more weight than was intended.

The internalization of the good news and transformation of life can only be the work of God's grace. The attitude of catechists must be that of the boy who offered Jesus his few fish and little bread. From a merely human point of view, his offering did not make sense, for it was hopelessly inadequate for the great need. But the boy did not limit his vision in this way. In faith he gave what he had, knowing that Jesus has a way of blessing such offerings made in faith, and of multiplying them. This same attitude of faith must characterize the spirit of catechetical instruction: We offer what we know cannot of itself accomplish the purpose we have in mind, and ask God to bless our humble efforts so that they result in something greater than themselves. An increase in faith is the work of grace.

The new Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) does not escape this limitation. For it is not the Church's teaching on the sacraments which makes the redemptive mysteries of Christ present in the Church, but their actual celebration. Yet, as the CCC itself points out, this celebration presupposes evangelization and catechesis, that is, living faith, and the graces received through the sacraments are meant to be lived out beyond the sacramental celebration. Similarly, it is not the teaching on prayer which opens the heart, but prayer itself, though prayer in its own way presupposes faith and enriches faith.
This should not be construed as an attempt to disparage the Church's teaching on sacraments and prayer. Because the sacraments' fruits hinge on the disposition of the recipient (CCC 1128), and because the ability to pray properly is rooted in a correct understanding of the nature of prayer, catechetical instruction cannot be dispensed.

So, while the CCC cannot of itself bring about the synthesis of faith and life, it is none-the-less at the service of this synthesis by what it teaches. It reaffirms the Church's understanding of the inseparability of faith and life, teaching that faith by its very nature calls for the transformation of one's entire life. And it provides the principles that must guide catechesis so that it can achieve the integration of faith and life.

The theme of faith and life is one of those more subtle themes in the CCC. While some explicit statements can be found, the theme is also communicated through the very structure of the Catechism. Also, it is developed in passages separated by scores if not hundreds of pages in the Catechism. These passages might be separated by weeks or months between readings,  making it difficult if not impossible to see their connections. This article proposes to bring together some of these passages so that side-by-side they might present the theme with more volume than if they remained discrete voices.

I. Pope John Paul II on the Rift Between Faith and Life

The CCC's emphasis on the fact that authentic faith transforms one's entire life is not new. It is simply the most recent magisterial response to a discernment of one of the "signs of our times," namely, the drama of the separation of faith and life. Also called religious formalism, it is the phenomenon of a people possessing a certain level of religious instruction and a certain "exterior" conformity to and practice of religion, while lacking a fully personal ratification and internalization of faith which is manifested by faith penetrating every aspect of one's life.
For Pope John Paul II, the witness of the laity calls for showing "how the Christian faith constitutes the only fully valid response to the problems and hopes that life poses to every person and society." Such a witness requires a maturity of faith which permeates all of one's life. The witness of the laity:

will be possible if the lay faithful will know how to overcome in themselves the separation of the Gospel from life, to again take up in their daily activities in family, work and society, an integrated approach to life that is fully brought about by the inspiration and strength of the Gospel (Christifideles laici, 34).

A consequence of this integration of faith and life is that culture, which embraces all aspects of life, is transformed by faith. When the entire life of the faithful conforms to the Gospel, they cannot help but shape the culture in which they live. "A faith that does not affect a person's culture is a faith not fully embraced, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived" (Christifideles laici, 59).
Pope John Paul II inherited the concern about the split between faith and life from Vatican II and Pope Paul VI.

The Council exhorts Christians, as citizens of one city and the other, to strive to perform their earthly duties faithfully in response to the spirit of the Gospel. They are mistaken who, knowing that we have here no abiding city but seek one which is to come, think that they may therefore shirk their earthly responsibilities; for they are forgetting that by faith itself they are more than every obliged to measure up to these duties, each according to one's vocation ... This split between the faith which many profess and their daily lives deserves to be counted among the more serious errors of our age (Gaudium et spes, 43, quoted in Christifideles laici, 59).

The Church evangelizes when she seeks to convert, solely through the divine power of the message she proclaims (cf. Rom 1:16; 1 Cor 1:18; 2:4), both the personal and collective consciences of people, the activities in which they engage, and the lives and concrete milieu which are theirs. Strata of humanity are transformed: for the Church it is a question not only of preaching the Gospel in ever-wider geographic areas or to ever-greater numbers of people, but also of affecting and as it were challenging, through the power of the Gospel, mankind's criteria of judgment, determining values, points of interest, lines of thought, sources of inspiration and models of life, which are in contrast with the Word of God and the plan of salvation. All this could be expressed in the following words: What matters is to evangelize humanity's culture and the cultures of the human family ... the split between the Gospel and culture is without a doubt the drama of our time, just as it was of other times. Therefore, every effort must be made to ensure a full evangelization of culture, or more correctly of cultures (Evangelii nuntiandi, 18-20, quoted in Christifideles laici, 44).

In Christifideles laici, 59, the Pope takes up the theme again:

There cannot be two parallel lives in their existence: on the one hand, the so-called Ôspiritual' life, with its values and demands; and on the other, the so-called Ôsecular' life, that is, life in a family, at work, in social relationships, in the responsibilities of public life and culture.

These texts make the Church's pastoral solicitude clear: Faith must inform every aspect of a person's life. This is because it is the whole person who surrenders himself to God in faith. This means that faith is not just a part of life but is life itself.
There are three primary ways in which a person's entire life is affected by faith. First, culture is made more fully human by the moral values of the Gospel based on the dignity of the human person. Second, all acts are done with supernatural perspectives and motives. Finally, faith places life in an eschatological perspective; 1 Cor 7:29-31 and other texts speak of being in this world but not of it. Faith allows us to see suffering, and every experience of life, for what it really is, in the light of eternity.

For Pope John Paul II, the entire purpose of the Second Vatican Council is precisely the maturation of faith, and such maturation is characterized by the invasion of life by faith.

The Council outlined the type of faith which corresponds to the life of the modern Christian, and the implementation of the Council consists first and foremost in enriching that faith. What is needed is Ôthe witness of a living and mature faith, one so well formed that it can see difficulties clearly and overcome them ... This faith should show its fruitfulness by penetrating the whole life, even the worldly activities, of those who believe' (Gaudium et spes, no. 21) (Sources of Renewal, pp. 420-21).

The enrichment of faith which we regard as the fundamental pre-requisite for the realization of Vatican II is to be understood . . . as an enrichment of the whole existence of the believing member of the Church (Sources of Renewal, pp. 15-18).

II. The CCC on the Faith and Catechesis

One of the most remarkable elements of the faith-and-life theme is that the CCC has adopted Vatican II's "question-answer" approach to faith. This is found first in article 68: By revealing Himself and His love, God "has thus provided the definitive, superabundant answer to the questions that man asks himself about the meaning and purpose of his life."

This text comes in the second In Brief section of the CCC, summarizing the first part of Chapter Two: God Comes to Meet Man. This is intended to correspond to Chapter One: Man's Capacity for God. Man is a religious being (CCC 28) because his search for happiness leads him to God, in whose image he is made. For the CCC, God's revelation is His response to this seeking and the questions it raises for man. This understanding of revelation makes coming to faith the discovery that in Jesus Christ God has given us the answer to all the inescapable questions about life and its meaning.

This questioning by man revolves around and is occasioned by suffering. To the problem of evil "no quick answer will suffice. Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question." In fact, "There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil" (CCC 309). In slightly different words the same point is conveyed in article 385: "the 'mystery of lawlessness' is clarified only in the light of the 'mystery of religion.'"

To be endowed with intelligence means that we seek to understand, to find an order in things. But the world marked by sin is disordered and gives rise to much questioning. Since the questioning is about life, the answer must be also. Thus faith and life are inseparable.

We see here the dynamic and dialogical understanding of faith in the Catechism. If faith is the discovery of God's answer in Christ to our most fundamental questions, especially those provoked by the experience of evil Ñ sin, suffering and death Ñ then catechesis cannot be detached from this questioning process. In fact, for Pope John Paul II catechesis is "the meeting between man's questions and God's answers."

With the preceding as background it is clear why the CCC teaches that "there is an organic connection between our spiritual life and the dogmas" of faith (CCC 89). This connection goes in two directions. On the one hand, dogmas light the path of our life in faith. On the other hand, a certain disposition is required in order for a person to accept the truth expressed in dogmas. One must be "upright" or, as our Lord put it, "on the side of truth" in order to perceive the voice of Christ in dogmas (see John 18:37). Conversely, not living uprightly is the cause of not being able to accept the truth (see Romans 1:18-32; John 8:37-41).

The truth that Christ proclaims is truth which calls for conversion (CCC 1427). Thus, a disposition of life by which one recognizes that truth is greater than we are, that it has a claim on us and that we are made for the truth (CCC 2467) is an essential condition for accepting dogmas as the light for our living. This shows how the life we lead is related to the acceptance of revelation by faith.

The connection between faith and life is established early in the CCC. According to article 23, the CCC's first goal is to provide an exposition of doctrine. However, this is at the service of deepening faith, which is understood by the CCC as "putting down roots in personal life and its shining forth in personal conduct."2

Readers should consult Catechesi tradendae 22-23 and 25 which are given in footnote 17 accompanying this critically important article 23. These passages can be found, along with all the references in the CCC, in the enormously useful Companion to the Catechism of the Catholic Church published by Ignatius Press. There we find, concerning our theme of faith and life, the following:

* Catechesis aims therefore at developing understanding of the mystery of Christ in the light of God's word, so that the whole of a person's humanity is impregnated by that word.

* Nor is any opposition to be set up between a catechesis taking life as its point of departure and a traditional doctrinal and systematic catechesis. ... This revelation is not however isolated from life or artificially juxtaposed to it. It is concerned with the ultimate meaning of life and it illumines the whole of life with the light of the Gospel, to inspire it or to question it.

* The truths studied in catechesis are the same truths that touched the person's heart when he heard them for the first time. Far from blunting or exhausting them, the fact of knowing them better should make them even more challenging and decisive for one's life.

III. The Role of Saints

The importance of the theme of faith and life for the CCC is also seen in the fact that the Catechism makes great use of the writings of those whose very existence is a living commentary on the mystery of faith.

The numerous citations of the Fathers, of the Church's doctrinal tradition or of the saints are displayed in small print. The object of these citations is to enrich the reading of the Catechism and to illustrate points of doctrine from the fullness of Christian life experience. The words of the saints enjoy a special authority in this catechism. They are usually placed at the end of a more substantial portion of text as the final and thus, in a certain regard, the weightiest word. Their testimony will manifest in a perceptible, experiential way that the doctrine expounded just before is far more than an abstract theory. The witness of the saints demonstrates that faith is a matter of life, of new life in Christ.3

In addition, the CCC aims at the renewal of the Church according to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. One of the characteristics of Vatican II being its insistence on the universal call to holiness (see Lumen gentium, Chapter V.), it is not surprising to find the CCC take up John Paul II's insight that saints have always been the source and origin of renewal in the most difficult moments in the Church's history (CCC 828).

When it comes to the challenge of renewal, the Church places its hope and confidence in the holy lives of those whose faith penetrates every aspect of their existence. If the Church is to fulfill its call to be a sign or witness to the world, it is in constant need of holy men and women whose very lives are a kind of "wordless witness" (Paul VI) to Christ.

IV. Faith and Life in the Exposition of the Creed

One of the clearest examples of how the CCC is a paradigm of catechesis attempting to bridge faith and life is the section in articles 222-227. The Catechism is not content to end its presentation on what it means to believe in one God without pointing out some of the ways in which this affects our lives. It means "living in thanksgiving" based on a profound awareness of grace (CCC 224), "knowing the unity and true dignity of all men" (CCC 225), "making good use of created things" (CCC 226), and "trusting God in every circumstance" (CCC 227).

Negatively, the dispositions, attitudes and values set forth in these articles have no foundation without faith in the one God. Respect for human dignity (CCC 356) and the proper use of created goods cannot long remain pure as human values without an explicit reference to God. In a word, God must be first in all things if man is to retain the freedom which God has given him (CCC 450). More generally, "Without the Creator the creature vanishes" (CCC 49). The full truth about man and the world can only be known when they are referred to God (CCC 199).

One aspect of the full truth about man made known in light of his relation to God is sin. Article 407 asserts that what we believe about original sin "provides lucid discernment of man's situation and activity in the world" and that "ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action, and morals." This sober article provides fundamental and realistic criteria for evaluating areas of activity such as those mentioned which presuppose a certain understanding of the human person (anthropology).

The realism of what revelation makes known about the human condition is a truth which sets educational, political, social and moral activities and theories free from naive speculations and hopelessly ineffective systems and practices based on such speculations. Besides these, one might add that parenting will be set on a right course if the faith-vision of the human person wounded by sin is taken seriously.

The teaching on hell illustrates the CCC's effort to point out the existential (that is, having to do with life) implications of doctrines held by faith. The revealed truth about hell appeals to our responsibility to make good use of the freedom which is God's gift; it constitutes "an urgent call to conversion" (CCC 1036). This connection with conversion is also made explicit in the CCC's teaching on the Last Judgment (CCC 1041), which "will reveal to its furthest consequences the good each person has done or failed to do during his earthly life" (CCC 1039). Thus, what is revealed about our possible future, eternal state is intended to affect our lives today:  it is in the present that we encounter him, not yesterday or tomorrow, but today: 'O, that today you would hearken to his voice! Harden not your hearts' (CCC 2659).

The section on the Creed ends with a statement about faith and life:

"The Christian's everyday life will then be the 'Amen' to the 'I believe" of our baptismal profession of faith' (CCC 1064). By faith the Creed becomes a mirror for us to look into, to see if our lives reflect and correspond to what we believe.

V. Faith and Life in the Celebration of the Christian Mystery

The liturgy enables us to live the mystery it reveals and communicates (CCC 1095). This should be read in light of CCC 519-21 on our communion with the mysteries of Christ's life, especially the paschal mystery, which are made present and operative in liturgical celebrations (CCC 1067-68, 1104, 1363-65, 1985).

In the liturgy the Holy Spirit gives life to the Word of God "which is proclaimed so that it may be received and lived" (CCC 1100). The Spirit puts both faithful and ministers "into a living relationship with Christ ... so that they can live out the meaning of what they hear, contemplate, and do in the celebration" (CCC 1101).

The central liturgical act of the Church, the Mass, ends with a commission to fulfill God's will in our daily lives (CCC 1332). Eucharistic graces empower us to offer to God our sacrifice of obedience by doing His will in our lives. This is the spiritual sacrifice which, united with Christ's sacrifice, is pleasing to God (CCC 1368). The spiritual sacrifice which we are called to make of our entire life is fulfilled in the Eucharist (CCC 902, 1369) where it is united with the sacrifice of Christ.
To celebrate the liturgy is not to step outside of life; rather, it is to enter into the deepest meaning of life by relating all actions and events to the Event which gives them meaning:

For well-disposed members of the faithful, the liturgy of the sacraments and sacramentals sanctifies almost every event of their lives with divine grace with flows form the Paschal mystery of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ. ... There is scarcely any proper use of material things which cannot be thus directed toward the sanctification of men and the praise of God (CCC 1670).

VI. Faith and Life in the Moral Section

The section on Life in Christ begins by showing the connection between the profession of faith, the sacraments, and prayer, and a life conformed to Christ in the Holy Spirit. A life worthy of the Gospel is made possible by the grace of the sacraments and the graces of prayer (CCC 1692).

This entire pillar of the Catechism develops our theme. It teaches that we are called to employ our reason in governing our passions (CCC 1767), resulting in a vocation to chastity (CCC 2337-2359). God has revealed and the Church teaches principles that shed the full light of truth on all the relationships that fill our lives, whether those relationships involve authority and order in society (fourth commandment), materials goods (seventh commandment), the truth (eighth commandment), etc.
What is interesting about this third part, though, is the clear emphasis that moral teaching cannot be separated from doctrine. The truth about God and the truth about the human person made in God's image and graced with a new dignity in Christ are the foundation of Catholic moral teaching. Clearly, then, faith, which is too often taken narrowly as an intellectual virtue which assents to doctrine, is also the principle of our moral life.

This third part begins with a quotation from Pope St. Leo the Great, linking the moral life to an awareness of our dignity in Christ. St. Paul argues in the same manner. He constantly reminds his readers of who they are in Christ by baptism, that is, children of God and siblings of Christ, and then proceeds to spell out how sons and daughters of God should act. Operatio sequitur esse: Action follows upon what a thing is. This principle of philosophy is really a principle of common sense derived from ordinary experience: Dogs bark, cats meow, humans think. Applied to our life in Christ, once we become aware of what God has revealed we have become in Christ, we need to act accordingly.

A second consideration on our subject is the CCC's treatment of the Ten Commandments. There is an unmistakable emphasis on the Person behind the commandments (CCC 2053). All these texts can be explained by saying that our ability to keep the commandments depends chiefly upon how we view God. The revealed truth about God that we know by faith is foundational to the moral life.

VII. Faith and Life in the Section on Christian Prayer

It is difficult to find more direct and explicit statements than the following: "Prayer and Christian life are inseparable" (CCC 2645); "We pray as we live, because we live as we pray" (CCC 2725) This echoes St. Teresa of Avila, who emphasized that progress in virtue is tied to and reflected in progress in prayer, and vice versa. Communion with God is expressed both through prayer and through our lives, and each influences the other.

Prayer concerns not only the conformity of our lives to the model of Christ, but also the sanctification of God's name. "The sanctification of his name among the nations depends inseparably on our life and our prayer" (CCC 2814). The petition, Hallowed be Your Name, is understood by the CCC to be a petition by which we ask God for the graces by which our lives are transformed so as to reflect the greatness of God. If our lives should fail to conform to the truth we profess in faith, that is, to Christ, then "the name of God is blasphemed" among the nations because of us. Or, as a modern author put it: "If Christianity cannot show in practice this change in the human condition, it confesses its failure."4

Prayer and Conversion

If faith and life were not inseparable, it would be possible to believe without undertaking the process of conversion. The CCC employs the word, conversion, nearly eighty times. The goal of conversion is "to live more and more wholly according to the Gospel" and to conform one's life to Christ (CCC 821, 1589).

The section on prayer contains a stunning expression to describe part of the process of conversion. We are to "make our own in faith" what God has revealed "by confronting it with the reality of our own life" (CCC 2723; see 2706). The purpose of meditative prayer is not to study the content of our faith, as though it were an object distinct and distant from ourselves. Rather, its purpose is to forge a personal union, since the content of our faith is in reality a person, Jesus Christ.

Prayer is truly existential when we confront the subject of our meditation (a particular point of revelation) with our lives. "It is precisely in prayer that faith becomes life."5 Prayer is a personal fiat to God's will (CCC 2865) based on the model of Mary who offered her whole being in response to Gabriel's announcement. In its essence, Christian prayer is this fiat which means that we are God's in all things and in every action of our lives "because he is wholly ours" (CCC 2617).

Douglas Bushman holds a Licentiate in Sacred Theology (STL) from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. He is the Director of the Institute for Religious and Pastoral Studies at the University of Dallas.

End Notes
1. Just as the CCC recognizes that the liturgy "does not exhaust the entire activity of the Church" (1072), so catechesis as instruction, or knowledge of the mystery of Christ, must be complemented by liturgical initiation and celebration, life in the Spirit, and prayer. See CCC 2558.
2. The original French from which our English translation is made reads: "... and its shining forth in witness." In the English the verb, "shining forth," carries the entirety of the original's clear emphasis that faith has social or horizontal dimension.
3. Schšnborn, Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press), p. 62.
4. Rene Latourelle, Christ and the Church, Signs of Salvation (Staten Island, New York: Alba House, 1972), p. 59.
5. Schšnborn, op. cit., p. 95.