By Jessica Marsala
mail@CatholicReview.org
In the year that Erin Phillips, 28, has taught religious education to fourth-graders, she has discovered that a catechist’s own education is never complete.
“I’m learning with them,” said Phillips, a parishioner of New All Saints in Liberty Heights. “The great part is while I’m getting it, they’re getting it.”
Phillips joined catechists and youth ministers from 17 other parishes and Catholic schools in Baltimore, New York and Washington, D.C, at St. Veronica in Cherry Hill Sept. 13 for the 24th “Keep on Teaching” symposium.
The annual workshop is sponsored by the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s Office of African American Catholic Ministries. Sister of Notre Dame de Namur Gwynette Proctor, the director of the office, said the event provides black catechists with Africentric resources, so that they don’t “have to reinvent the wheel,” as well as opportunities to network and be “nourished by the Word of God.”
Three takeaways from the symposium follow.
1. Black catechists need to find the “sweet spot” between the past and the present.

“All of us, especially catechists, have to be on that front part of the wave,” Monsignor East said of staying relevant and up-to-date with culture and technology, which he said catechists ignore “at their own peril.”
At the same time, he urged catechists to teach African-American youths about their roots, referencing Baltimore’s “strong and important black Catholic history.
2. An intellectual education is not effective by itself.

Favors, who has been a catechist for 44 years, assisted with the production of the volunteer-written resource manual given to all symposium participants.
3. Catechists have to be “positive” role models and show young people how to live out their faith, even outside of the classroom.

“I have to keep reminding myself,” Watkins added, “we are planting the seed. We’re planting it and we’re watering it.”
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