Review by Francisca Ireland-Verwoerd<\/p>\n
INTRODUCTION TO THE AUTHOR In Groome\u2019s own words: \u201cin many ways, my core commitment as a Catholic catechist over the years has been to bridge this gap and to help myself and others to integrate the two \u2013 life and Faith\u2014into lived, living, and life-giving Christian faith.\u201d3<\/strong> This method echoes the practical theological model of moving from practice to theory to practice. With the attention to lived practice, Groome places his theology firmly within the Catholic theology of the sacramentality of life: \u201cThis commitment of mine and of contemporary catechesis to engage people\u2019s praxis\u2014reflection on life\u2014in the pedagogy of Christian faith education reflects the Catholic principle of sacramentality.\u201d4<\/strong> God\u2019s presence and grace in the ordinary things of life justify the every day life experiences as a source of reflection and conation. Likewise, newly gained wisdom needs to be put into action, for the participants to be true \u2018agents\u2019 of their own faith.<\/p>\n DESCRIPTION OF PURPOSE, THESIS AND MAJOR THEMES In Part II Groome addresses the approach of shared Christian praxis. The phrase is based on the words praxis, because of his conviction that effective pedagogy takes place through people\u2019s reflection on their own life experiences; Christian, expressing his main intended audience to be those who are \u201cparticipants in the Story\/Vision of the Christian community over time;\u201d5<\/strong> and shared, indicating partnership\/dialogue between teachers and learners, as well as a \u201cdialectical hermeneutics\u201d between the reflections out of people\u2019s own lives and the Story\/Vision of the Christian community, i.e. Scripture and tradition.6<\/strong> Groome lays out the approach of shared Christian praxis as a process of five movements in logical sequence but with overlaps and recurrences; they are more a dance than a step-by-step manual. These movements, corresponding to Avery Dulles\u2019 five categories of revelation, are: Naming\/Expressing \u201cPresent Action\u201d (movement 1); Critical Reflection on Present Action (movement 2); Making Accessible Christian Story and Vision (movement 3); Dialectical Hermeneutics to Appropriate Story\/Vision to Participants\u2019 Stories and Visions (movement 4); and Decision\/Response for Lived Christian Faith (movement 5).7<\/strong> Groome moves intentionally in a circular pattern: helping learners become critically aware of the places where they find themselves, moving into the bigger world of Christianity where Scripture and tradition speak to and are spoken to by the learners\u2019 stories, onto new insight and action. As an apologetic, Groome discusses the nature, rationale and procedures for each of these movements. Every chapter also includes practical suggestions of how to appropriate the movement in one\u2019s teaching, combined with example practices in that chapter\u2019s appendix. <\/p>\n Part III expands the use of the shared Christian praxis approach to Christian ministry by considering all the ministries of the Church through the eyes of education. Groome understands ministry as \u201cinitiat[ing] a personal \u2018presence with\u2019 people, empower[ing] them as agent-subjects of their faith, and call[ing] them into partnership and community.\u201d8<\/strong> In that sense, \u201c[t]he whole life of a Christian community functions as its primary curriculum because of the formative power of the symbolic world it constitutes for its people.\u201d9<\/strong> After an overview of the nature and historical developments of \u201cministry,\u201d Groome devotes a chapter each to liturgy and preaching, justice and peace ministries, and pastoral counseling. In every case, he defines what the particular ministry is, and reflects on the \u2018style\u2019 of shared praxis as an effective way of doing that particular kind of faith-in-action. <\/p>\n In Part IV Groome reiterates and welds together the theological foundations and spiritual requirements inherent in the approach of shared Christian praxis. He does this by way of a personal \u201cPedagogical Creed.\u201d Although these \u201carticles of faith\u201d are, in a sense, the prolegomena of the book, for Groome they are a \u201cpostscript in that [he] could write it only after the work was completed.\u201d10<\/strong> <\/p>\n METHODS, DISCOVERIES AND KEY ARGUMENTS The interesting discovery in Sharing Faith is the extension of the approach of shared Christian praxis from religious education into all practices of the church. Groome takes the renewal of the Catholic Church after Vatican II seriously: his ministry as an educator and an educator\u2019s educator stems from and is dedicated to the idea of the Church as the People of God.11 <\/strong> As he describes it himself, <\/p>\n The Second Vatican Council lamented intensely the separation that Catholics make between their faith and their life. \u2018This split between the faith which many profess and their daily lives deserves to be counted among the more serious errors of our age\u2019 (Constitution on Church in Modern World, #43, Abbott 243 [1965]). I vividly remember reading this as a college student and taking it very much to heart [\u2026]12<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The applicability of shared praxis in more areas than religious education comes from Groome\u2019s experiences of \u201cusing shared praxis in a variety of other settings: for adult education and theological reflection, in community renewal and planning programs, in social justice work, in preaching, counseling, retreats, in teaching theology to undergraduate students at Boston College and in teaching fifth-grade CCD.\u201d This in itself is a practical theological method, applied in Groome\u2019s own practice-theory-practice.<\/p>\n \tThe key argument in Sharing Faith is the necessity for a Christian to live reflectively, in community with other people and God, and in dialogue with the Christian Story and Vision. Out of this argument follow Groome\u2019s historical and theological apologetics for his shared Christian praxis, his movements within the praxis, and his application of the praxis to both education and the other ministries of the church.<\/p>\n CRITICAL ANALYSIS \tGroome\u2019s practical theological approach is effective, first, in its ability to be apologetic, overcoming people\u2019s hesitancy to this new approach by showing its historical and theological foundations, and second, by proving to be applicable to people\u2019s lives, speaking from and to people\u2019s own experiences. His pedagogical \u201cspiral\u201d enables educators\/ministers to identify their own learning as \u201contic epistemology\u201d and empathize that this approach could be effective for others too. The effectiveness of Groome\u2019s approach is proven by the use of his material, curricula as well as religious education instruction, inside and outside the Catholic Church. He has been able to root his shared praxis deeply and critically in Scripture and tradition as they speak to today\u2019s Church through his use of three hermeneutics: of retrieval, suspicion and creative commitment.15<\/strong> In addition, Groome recognizes three sources in tradition: the official church magisterium (of any denomination), the research of scholars, and the sense of its faithful.16<\/strong> In the context of the US, the faithful of all denominations share the contemporary culture, albeit in great diversity. The sensus fidelium could therefore possibly have more in common with other denominations than the respective official church teachings \u2013 for instance, in the case of the position of women. It is no wonder then, that theory-laden practice and practice-laden theory which take the contemporary context seriously, would be able to speak to educators across denominational lines.<\/p>\n \tAs a practical theological text, Sharing Faith does not practice its own method. Where Browning uses three congregational studies as the basis for his theory, Groome speaks in general, without giving readers the \u201clife practice\u201d he sees as lacking. This could be because his book is ultimately on religious education, not on practical theology. In addition, the need for this text is based on the widespread perception that there is a gap between life and faith.17 <\/strong> Groome could, however, have started the book with a case study of religious education that fails to address that gap.<\/p>\n \tMost importantly, Groome\u2019s ecclesiology is too vague. He describes the church in article 11 as a \u201ccommunity [that] will be an effective symbol of God\u2019s reign\u2026\u201d18<\/strong> This reign of God is the metapurpose of religious education,19<\/strong> but he never comes to a description of what that would look like. Especially when seeking comprehensive renewal in religious education and ultimately in the Church, a clear vision of the reign of God as symbol of the church is necessary in order to give direction to renewal. Particularly lacking is the diversity element of the local expression of the reign of God. Worshiping God together with unalike people used to be an eschatological concept; now it is a reality for many congregations. What does diversity do to a \u201cshared\u201d praxis? What kind of dialectic takes place in a multifaceted situation where we need to consider our own story, the Christian Story and Vision and a multiplicity of interpretations, hermeneutics and normative practices? Almost twenty-five years after publication of Sharing Faith, the shared praxis approach needs to be expanded with a thorough discussion of the \u201creign of God\u201d because we are in the throes of understanding what the global version of God\u2019s reign, layered with multiple diversities, means in our churches and society.<\/p>\n BIBLIOGRAPHY NOTES Review by Francisca Ireland-Verwoerd INTRODUCTION TO THE AUTHOR Dr. Thomas Groome is Professor of Theology and Religious Education at Boston College. His main research and teaching interests are religious education (history, theory and practice), pastoral ministry and practical theology. Groome has written numerous books on religious education, some of which are widely used in Catholic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1742,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2105],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cpt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cpt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cpt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cpt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1742"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cpt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2699"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cpt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2705,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cpt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699\/revisions\/2705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cpt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cpt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/cpt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nDr. Thomas Groome is Professor of Theology and Religious Education at Boston College. His main research and teaching interests are religious education (history, theory and practice), pastoral ministry and practical theology. Groome has written numerous books on religious education, some of which are widely used in Catholic and Protestant seminaries, as well as several curricula for the Catholic Church, from K-8 through adult studies.1<\/strong> The heart of Groome\u2019s philosophy of religious education is his belief that people should be enculturated into the faith, that is to say, the faith should be taught through the practices of the faithful. This principle of \u201cshared praxis\u201d firmly situates the believer in a community of faith, informed by Scripture and tradition, and in conversation with the contemporary world. The conviction that the Church speaks \u2013 and needs to speak \u2013 to the present situation of human beings, has led Groome to rethink some traditional Roman Catholic teachings, such as the male-only priesthood, the infallibility of the Pope, and the inerrancy of the Bible and Church doctrine, and male-only gender pronouns for God.2<\/strong> <\/p>\n
\nIn Sharing Faith: A Comprehensive Approach to Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991) Groome argues that Christian religious education as a shared Christian praxis is an overarching approach not only to religious education, but also to pastoral ministry. This book was published eleven years after he first proposed a shared praxis as the \u201chow\u201d of religious education in Christian Religious Education: Sharing Our Story and Vision (1980). Since then, Groome has deepened and expanded his understanding of what \u201cshared praxis\u201d means and does. In Sharing Faith, he gives his readers the revised, \u201ccomprehensive\u201d version of his original approach.
\nGroome divides Sharing Faith into four sections. Part I is centered around the notion of \u201cconation,\u201d by which Groome means the type of knowledge that is grounded in a holistic, epistemic ontology and that encounters the learner as an active agent-in-relationship. In this book, wisdom is synonymous with conation. Groome starts off by revisiting the nature of Christian Religious education throughout Western history and its purpose of promoting the reign of God, lived Christian faith, and fullness of life for all. This threefold purpose and its ontological quality, require a fundamentally different approach to education, namely that Christian religious education is about a person\u2019s re-membered being [reflective and in relationship] in faith, in faith community and in their social and cultural context. Hence Groome\u2019s insistence on conation instead of cognition.<\/p>\n
\nSharing Faith is a well-ordered book on religious pedagogy, in which Groome combines the historical and theological development of the issues he addresses, with people\u2019s spiritual\/ontological needs and the outcomes desired by educators. Although his method is not based on case studies, he follows the hermeneutical spiral where practice and theory are in constant dialogue with each other. Throughout the book this spiral moves chronologically upward, from the issues\u2019 historical rationale and function to their contemporary application. For Groome, the only \u201cplace\u201d to bring life and faith together in a Lived Faith is the here-and-now. Concepts such as epistemology, ministry, [the effectiveness of] liturgy and preaching, [the need for] justice and peace ministries, all require an \u201coverhaul\u201d in order to have the power and authority to speak to people in the church today.<\/p>\n
\n\tFrom a practical theological point of view, Groome\u2019s movements of shared Christian practice have much in common with Don Browning\u2019s four movements in his critical correlational approach to fundamental practical theology.13 <\/strong> Browning\u2019s first movement, descriptive theology, names the practices that are under consideration, similar to the \u2018naming\u2019 of Groome\u2019s first movement. Browning second movement, historical theology, shifts the focus from theory-laden practices to \u201cthe central texts and monuments of the Christian faith,\u201d14 <\/strong> similar to Groome\u2019s second movement when people reflect critically on their own \u201chistory.\u201d The third movement of Browning, systematic theology, corresponds in a way to the third movement of Groome, where the Christian Story and Vision are considered as a whole for an appropriate generative theme or symbol in dialogue with the learner\u2019s experience. Browning\u2019s fourth movement of strategic practical theology asks the questions What is happening?, What should be happening?, Why should it happen?, and How will it happen?. This could be seen in conjunction with Groome\u2019s movements 4 and 5 where the dialectical hermeneutic and response to lived faith transform Browning\u2019s strategic questions into action. The similarity between Browning\u2019s and Groome\u2019s approach underscores the practical theological nature of the shared praxis process.<\/p>\n
\nBrowning, Don. A Fundamental Practical Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991.
\nFlannery, Austin, ed. The Basic Sixteen Documents Vatican Council II. New York: Costello Publishing, 1996.
\nGroome, Thomas H. Sharing Faith: A Comprehensive Approach to Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991.
\n______. Boston College, School of Theology and Ministry, Faculty Profile, \u201cThomas Groome,\u201d Truth Betrayed: Eamonn Keane\u2019s Calumny Against Thomas Groome, http:\/\/www.bc.edu\/ content\/dam\/files\/schools\/stm\/pdf\/Truth_Betrayed_Keane.pdf (accessed September 12, 2013)
\nKeane, Eamonn. \u201cThomas Groome: His Influence on Religious Education Continues,\u201d CatholicCulture.Org, http:\/\/www.catholicculture.org\/culture\/library\/ view.cfm?id=6515&CFID=9409265&CFTOKEN=97098098 , (accessed September 12, 2013).
\nVoice of the Faithful, \u201cBiography of Thomas Groome,\u201d http:\/\/www.votf.org\/2012Conference\/ ThomasGroomeVOTFWebBio.pdf (accessed September 12, 2013)<\/p>\n
\n1. Voice of the Faithful, \u201cBiography of Thomas Groome,\u201d http:\/\/www.votf.org\/2012Conference\/ThomasGroomeVOTFWebBio.pdf (accessed September 12, 2013)
\n2. See for instance, \u201cThomas Groome: His Influence on Religious Education Continues\u201d by Eamonn Keane http:\/\/www.catholicculture.org\/culture\/library\/view.cfm?id=6515&CFID=9409265&CFTOKEN=97098098 (accessed September 12, 2013) .
\n Boston College, School of Theology and Ministry, Faculty Profile, \u201cThomas Groome,\u201d Truth Betrayed: Eamonn Keane\u2019s Calumny Against Thomas Groome, 21, http:\/\/www.bc.edu\/content\/dam\/files\/schools\/stm\/pdf\/Truth_Betrayed_Keane.pdf (accessed September 12, 2013)
\n Ibid., 22.
\n3. Voice of the Faithful, \u201cBiography of Thomas Groome,\u201d http:\/\/www.votf.org\/2012Conference\/ThomasGroomeVOTFWebBio.pdf (accessed September 12, 2013)
\n4. See for instance, \u201cThomas Groome: His Influence on Religious Education Continues\u201d by Eamonn Keane http:\/\/www.catholicculture.org\/culture\/library\/view.cfm?id=6515&CFID=9409265&CFTOKEN=97098098 (accessed September 12, 2013) .
\n Boston College, School of Theology and Ministry, Faculty Profile, \u201cThomas Groome,\u201d Truth Betrayed: Eamonn Keane\u2019s Calumny Against Thomas Groome, 21, http:\/\/www.bc.edu\/content\/dam\/files\/schools\/stm\/pdf\/Truth_Betrayed_Keane.pdf (accessed September 12, 2013)
\n Ibid., 22.
\n5. Sharing Faith, 133.
\n6. See page 145 on \u201cdialectical hermeneutics.\u201d
\n7. See Sharing Faith, 490 for an overview of Dulles\u2019 five modes of revelation.
\n8. Ibid., 332.
\n9. Ibid., 296 (italics original).
\n10. Ibid., 426 (italics original).
\n11. Ibid., 322-331.
\n12. Truth Betrayed, 21.
\n13. A Fundamental Practical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 47-57.
\n14. Ibid., 49.
\n15. Sharing Faith, 230-231.
\n16. Ibid., 231 (italics original).
\n17. See \u201cGaudium et Spes, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,\u201d #43. Austin Flannery ed., The Basic Sixteen Documents Vatican Council II (New York: Costello Publishing, 1996), 211.
\n18. Shared Faith, 444.
\n19. Ibid., 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"