Vail parish ‘passes on the faith’ as a community
By LANI JOHNSON
Special to The New Vision
Since 2003, when leaders decided to approach religious education in a new way, families of St. Rita in the Desert Parish in Vail have studied their 
Catholic faith as a gathered community.
The St. Rita catechetical team dubbed the program “Passing On the Faith,” acknowledging the role of the entire community in the faith formation of each member.
The program is adapted from Generations of Faith (www.generationsoffaith.org), a service of the Center for Ministry Development (http://secure.cmdnet.org) the program director is Sister Rosalia Giba, OSF.
Parishioner Sue Lakosky said she is “proud that all ages gather as a Christian community to learn about their shared faith at age-appropriate levels – young, old, families, solo. The number of adults who participate is phenomenal.”
Each session, one on Friday evening and another on Sunday morning of a given weekend, comprises about 100 people.
As it is at the beginning of every session, the well-known “It Only Takes a Spark” was sung on April 4 and 6 as the community presented the 16th session, focusing on conscience and forgiveness.
The format of each meeting is prayer and a meal (part of the $5 registration fee). After eating, everyone walks to the John XXIII Center for opening activities, often including a scriptural re-enactment like the story of Jesus, the angry crowd and the sinful woman.
Later, participants separate into age groups for an hour’s instruction, then gather again en masse. Youngsters’ groups process to the front and report or enact what they have learned, everyone sings a closing song, and the meeting is finished, a total time of three to three and a half hours.
On this Friday night, after preschoolers and children aged four through eighth grade followed “Jesus” to rendezvous with their teachers, adults began their study session.
Scripture was the first stop: 1 John 3, “Children, our love must not be mere words or talk, but deeds and truth. [Now] this is how we shall know that we belong to the truth and reassure our hearts before him in whatever our hearts condemn, for God is greater than our hearts and knows everything. […And God’s] commandment is this: we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us. Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them, and the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit that he gave us.”
Nowhere in the Old Testament or Gospels, however, is the word “conscience” found. The closest word is “heart,” the Jewish center of activity, and it appears in both Old and New Testaments that deal with conscience. It does in appear in Paul’s writings.
Father Robert Wicht, S.D.S., or Father Bob, as parishioners call him, began by explaining what conscience is not: It’s not a feeling (good or bad); not the super-ego (one’s internal authority figure); not a sense of guilt.
Human conscience may be seen operating at three levels, he said.
The first, a general level, is a fundamental sense of value and of personal responsibility. Although people disagree about what is right and wrong, universally we are aware that actions demonstrate rightness and wrongness.
The second level at which conscience acts is by judging something to be morally good or bad. It is the process of searching out the truth and is informed by one’s experience, parents, friends, colleagues, scientific findings, sacred scripture, and the teachings of the church.
The third level, or conscience proper, is the decision itself, the final norm by which a person’s act must be guided. As St. Thomas Aquinas called conscience “the primacy of conscience over external act or external authority.”
While young people and adults dealt with the topics at some depth, grades six through eight used biblical stories such as the tale of Zaccheus and that of the curing of a crippled woman to derive aspects of conscience and Christian behavior.
They created a skit articulating concepts they had understood and urging all in the community to pursue good acts, such as St. Vincent de Paul Society efforts, helping promote peace throughout the world.
In the next classroom, Mrs. Iturralde guided a dozen children from grades three through five in examining custom’s and tradition’s roles in developing and exercising conscience in everyday situations. Their skit, complete with costumes (rope belts and bed linen drapings are frequent props), reenacted and interpreted the story of the Prodigal Son. Their narrator was especially self-possessed and had memorized a large amount of text in a short period of time.
A bumper crop of 21 people from age four through second grade munched animal crackers and worked on craft projects listing five aspects of conscience (a hand whose five fingers were labeled avoid evil, listen, love, do good, and freedom) and forgiveness (a star with points labeled Bible, church, prayer, openness, community).
Grandmother Barbara Roback, assisted by three young women in seventh and eighth grades, held the large, restless group together with admirable skill. Their skit was by far the most complicated, applying and enumerating all 10 study points within the story of Bartimeus.
Day care service saw to the safety and comfort of five youngsters whose time in “Passing On the Faith” classrooms has yet to come.