If you haven’t heard, there’s been some wonderful news for Maryvale this week: Petroc, or “Professor Willey” as the Americans love to call him, has been selected as one of fifteen consulters to the new Pontifical Council for the New Evangelisation 🙂 More details here. If you’ve had anything to do with Maryvale, you will know that their catechetical work is second-to-none in this country – far surpassing the quality of any other formation in catechetics you could receive. The time is long overdue for dioceses and other centres of formation in this country to use Maryvale for formation of their lay people – something which we all know there is an enormous need for, and which Maryvale does so well. Recently I gave a lecture at St Patrick Evangelisation School in Soho, and the students commented that there was “something special” about the teachers they had who had studied at Maryvale.
Speaking of catechetical formation: The Maryvale Certificate in Catechesis, a two-year, distance-learning course, will begin in January in New Malden, a local centre for Maryvale. This course is an excellent formation for catechists in both content and methodology, and is approved by the Sacred Congregation for the Clergy in Rome. All parish catechists would benefit enormously from this course. A lady I know who began it last year in Ealing told me how impactive it has been on her growth in faith and her vocation as a catechist. I am trying to get a little group of our catechists together to begin this course. We already have three this year completing the certificate in RCIA catechesis. If you, or catechists you know, want formation that nourishes the mind and heart, and forms them thoroughly for the mission of catechesis, get in touch with Carol Harnett at Maryvale (mcc@maryvale.ac.uk) to find out about beginning the course in January.
