Need a good resource to instruct on Church history for RCIA

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I am an RCIA instructor and am about to teach on the the history of the church, from the beginning. Since it covers over 2000 years, I am VERY overwhelmed with the task of trying to be brief, yet thorough in covering all the major events.

Can anyone suggest a good lesson plan or point me to a good outline that I could use?

Many thanks and Blessings…

lakrenek
 
I’ve been interested in an overview of the history of the Catholic Church and after looking at several overwhelming books, I decided to try The Story of the Church by Alfred McBride O. Praem. I just began reading it this weekend – have read through chapter 9. It is not exactly what I was looking for but it is a start. Here’s a review: catalog.americancatholic.org/product.aspx?prodid=B16876&pcat=112

Maybe you can make an outline based on the chapters in the book??

I’ll be interested to hear what others suggest.
Good Luck!
Annie
 
annie678 said:
I’ve been interested in an overview of the history of the Catholic Church and after looking at several overwhelming books, I decided to try The Story of the Church by Alfred McBride O. Praem. I just began reading it this weekend – have read through chapter 9. It is not exactly what I was looking for but it is a start. Here’s a review: catalog.americancatholic.org/product.aspx?prodid=B16876&pcat=112

Maybe you can make an outline based on the chapters in the book??

I’ll be interested to hear what others suggest.
Good Luck!
Annie
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NOOOOOO!!!

American Catholic is a very unorthodox publication, McBride is an author that we will not shelve in our Catholic library.

The OP would do well to contact the Associal of Catechetical Ministry or ACM and have purchase their RCIA program. It has everything you need!

acmrcia.org/index2.html

Steve Ray’s “Footprints of God” video on the Early Church is great.

Steve Ray’s website has some good free materials as well. www.catholic-convert.com

Some good timelines here:

catholic-convert.com/resources/writings/steve-rays/
 
lakrenek said:
I am an RCIA instructor and am about to teach on the the history of the church, from the beginning. Since it covers over 2000 years, I am VERY overwhelmed with the task of trying to be brief, yet thorough in covering all the major events.

Can anyone suggest a good lesson plan or point me to a good outline that I could use?

Many thanks and Blessings…

lakrenek
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I had the same task for a Confirmation class, and the quick way to get a good outline going, to which you can fill in detail as you go, is to create a time-line / Gnatt Chart / Spreadsheet etc, whatever form you prefer and list only the major events or persons, eg
  1. Creation to Bable
  2. Noah to Abram (critical to use his given name)
  3. Abram to Abraham (why - critical to correlate to Moses and Peter)
    4.Abraham to “The Kings” i.e. Saul - David- Solomon - all the remaining worthless kings in which man put their hope and trust.
  4. Kings to Prophets
  5. Prophets to Pharrisees/Saducees
  6. JESUS
  7. Jesus to Simon ( changed name to Peter “after” called by God, as was Abram)
  8. Holy Spirit first pentecost
  9. Give the class the list of ALL popes in succession at this point so they can see that from the first visit by the Holy Spirit, in which the remaining 11 PLUS the apostle selected by the 11 ALL received the flames above their head, validating God’s approval of succession of the popes through election.
  10. The bad popes leading to Father Martin Luther’s posting of the 99 articles, - which you can get on line and give a copy to your class.
  11. The Plague which decimated the ranks of the educated priests -
Using highlights, and letting the class dig deeper as they choose, is the best approach. Start with the Abraham, because it is still the same faith that was given to Abraham, only transferred to the gentiles, with the advent of the Pharisees rejecting Jesus.

Anyway, not perfect but a very rough suggested outline.
 
There is a series of textbooks that is often used for high school religion classes and RCIA classes called the Didache series. One of the books is on Church history. They are expensive but if you go to the Ignatius Press website there is an opportunity for a parish to review the books and then purchase them at a 50% discount. Each parish is allowed to review only once, so your pastor may want to buy all the books at once.
 
kage_ar said:
NOOOOOO!!!

American Catholic is a very unorthodox publication, McBride is an author that we will not shelve in our Catholic library.
Click to expand...
Help me understand - the book, The Story of the Church, has permission to publish (which, according to the copyright page, states that it is free of doctinal or moral error) and was published by St Anthony Press. What do you mean by unorthodox? Are we talking about the same book/author? If we are, I would really like to know your point of view - I try to be very careful about choosing reading materials. Please send me a PM with more of your thoughts.

thanks -
Annie
 
lakrenek said:
I am an RCIA instructor and am about to teach on the the history of the church, from the beginning. Since it covers over 2000 years, I am VERY overwhelmed with the task of trying to be brief, yet thorough in covering all the major events.

Can anyone suggest a good lesson plan or point me to a good outline that I could use?

Many thanks and Blessings…

lakrenek
Click to expand...
Lak,

I personally don’t bother teaching the history of the Catholic Church as a “class”, since becoming Catholic doesn’t necessitate knowing such things and I prefer to focus on the sacraments and the creed. In other words, stick to the Catechism for your syllabus (note, nothing in there on the history of the Church…)

However, if you intend to teach this, anyways, I would suggest a small book called “The Compact History of the Catholic Church”, by Alan Schreck. It is less than 200 pages long and is pretty good.

As to Alfred McBride, the previous poster is confusing Father Alfred McBride with someone else, perhaps Father McCormick or McBrien. I wouldn’t read anything these guys wrote as a background to teach the faith…

Father Alfred McBride writes very orthodox teachings, and I highly recommend his “Essentials of the Faith” as a supplement to the Catechism. It has 3 page chapters that are very good at explaining the faith. We’ve been using it for over 5 years and I have read it and it is far from unorthodox. He also writes stuff for teens and college level students. All quite orthodox, I assure you. Highly recommended.

Regards
 
annie678 said:
Help me understand - the book, The Story of the Church, has permission to publish (which, according to the copyright page, states that it is free of doctinal or moral error) and was published by St Anthony Press. What do you mean by unorthodox? Are we talking about the same book/author? If we are, I would really like to know your point of view - I try to be very careful about choosing reading materials. Please send me a PM with more of your thoughts.

thanks -
Annie
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Annie,

**Don’t put to much faith in the “Imprimatur” or the “Nil Obstat.” **

Any bishop can put that down, including one bordering on the verge of being a heretic. Unfortunately, you’ll have to get suggestions from people you trust or read it yourself and take your chances. These markings mean very little in whether a book is “orthodox”.

Sadly, it is “caveat emptor” on whether something is orthodox or not. I ended up buying 4 or 5 textobooks before I settled with Father McBride’s “Essentials of the Faith”. The rest fell short.

Regards
 
kage_ar said:
NOOOOOO!!!

American Catholic is a very unorthodox publication, McBride is an author that we will not shelve in our Catholic library.

rays/
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you are a bit out of date, Fr McBride is an excellent and reliable author. the americancatholic website is that of St. Anthony Messenger and it is true some if not a lot of what they publish, and what they sell is by problematical authors such as Fr. Richard Rohlheiser, but they also handle some books by excellent orthdox writers such as Fr. McBride (whose work is also distributed through Our Sunday Visitor and other catalogs) and Fr. Groeschel, in fact of late I have been thrilled to see more titles by good authors and the balance of their catalog is changing. Same with their Catholic Update pamphlet series, you have to look for the good authors, but they are there. They also handle the Servant Books imprint with authors like Alan Schreck (whose short church history is also very good) and Scott Hahn. You can’t condemn one of their authors based on the general drift of the other titles they carry.

yes I second the Steve Ray recommendation

for RCIA they need an overview, not a college course.
 
We deal with Church history in RCIA in conjunction with other lessons. I find that a session just on Church history is inadequte at best. There is no way one could cover all of Church history in one session and as another poster noted, there are far more important things that have to be covered in RCIA. I would say most cradle Catholics know very little about Church history or are grossly misinformed about it. Knowing Church history is not really necessary in order to be baptized or received into the Church. If you have to teach it, just go over the major events…Acts of the Apostles (which covers the beginnings of the CHurch), Council of Nicea when the Creed was formed, the Middle Ages and the Holy Roman Empire (Charlemange and company), the Reformation, evangelization of the New World, and Vatican II. That is more than enough to cover in one session.
 
There is a book published by Ignatius Press called **‘The Catholic Church The First 2000 Years’ **by Martha Rasmussen. It is a book written for non-scholarly readers. I found it very readable and informative.
 
Joannm said:
We deal with Church history in RCIA in conjunction with other lessons. I find that a session just on Church history is inadequte at best. There is no way one could cover all of Church history in one session and as another poster noted, there are far more important things that have to be covered in RCIA. I would say most cradle Catholics know very little about Church history or are grossly misinformed about it. Knowing Church history is not really necessary in order to be baptized or received into the Church. If you have to teach it, just go over the major events…Acts of the Apostles (which covers the beginnings of the CHurch), Council of Nicea when the Creed was formed, the Middle Ages and the Holy Roman Empire (Charlemange and company), the Reformation, evangelization of the New World, and Vatican II. That is more than enough to cover in one session.
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I don’t think candidates need to hear the history of the Church in an RCIA class, they can get that in a book, if they are so inclined. The RCIA should concentrate on making our faith alive, teaching our doctrines and showing how they apply to everyday life. Given all the possible subjects you could teach on in such a short time, I would rank “Church history” as very low on things to cover. Consider adding another class on the sacraments or morality - or the Old Testament, rather than Church History…

And I happen to like history… It is just not applicable to what the candidates need to know.

Regards
 
lakrenek said:
I am an RCIA instructor and am about to teach on the the history of the church, from the beginning. Since it covers over 2000 years, I am VERY overwhelmed with the task of trying to be brief, yet thorough in covering all the major events.

Can anyone suggest a good lesson plan or point me to a good outline that I could use?

Many thanks and Blessings…

lakrenek
Click to expand...
Are you looking for something for one evening or something to use over several weeks or longer? What time period are you interested in?

It makes a difference if you want to cover everything from Jesus to post-Vatican II in one evening or if you want one evening covering the Early Church, one evening on the Reformation, etc.

I tried including a couple of evenings on Church history a couple of years ago but have dropped it since then. There’s something of a balance to reach. On the one hand I want them to understand that the Church does, in fact, have a history, that it didn’t start in the last hundred or two hundred years. But like any history, I think it needs to be in some kind of context or it’s simply names and dates and that’s boring.

I enjoy dropping in information that relates to the Church in earlier times so they can see the continuity. I remember the looks on some of their faces when I mentioned the monastery where I’m an Oblate and how it could trace its history back to the 700s – it’s the daughter house of one monastery which is the daughter house of another monastery, etc. Talking about being part of this long line of people who have been seeking to live according to the same Rule for over a millennium brings history to life.
 
annie678 said:
Help me understand - the book, The Story of the Church, has permission to publish (which, according to the copyright page, states that it is free of doctinal or moral error) and was published by St Anthony Press. What do you mean by unorthodox? Are we talking about the same book/author? If we are, I would really like to know your point of view - I try to be very careful about choosing reading materials. Please send me a PM with more of your thoughts.

thanks -
Annie
Click to expand...
I am away from my office, and do not have all my notes with me. The Teen Catechism is the book that I recall with some problems - but, will have to do the research. Until I can dig that out, I will say that may have been an old age mistake.

American Catholic, however, is rated RED by Catholic Culture.

You can link to examples of the problems here


·
Articles undermining the Real Presence (Fidelity)
·
Richard Rohr was a regular columnist in the Every Day Catholic section, and is still featured in the archives. (Fidelity)
·
Books by Richard Rohr, William H. Shannon, Anthony T. Padovano, Raymond Brown, and Arthur Baranowski (Fidelity)
·
Tapes by Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton, Edwina Gateley, Richard Rohr, Donald Senior, C.P., Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland, Bishop Kenneth E. Untener, and Bill Huebsch (Fidelity)
·
Special section featuring the writings of Raymond Brown (Fidelity)
·
Promoted the TV series Nothing Sacred (Fidelity)
·
Features well-known dissidents (Fidelity)
 
lakrenek said:
I am an RCIA instructor and am about to teach on the the history of the church, from the beginning. Since it covers over 2000 years, I am VERY overwhelmed with the task of trying to be brief, yet thorough in covering all the major events.

Can anyone suggest a good lesson plan or point me to a good outline that I could use?

Many thanks and Blessings…

lakrenek
Click to expand...
Here is a indepth site for the History of the CC


As for an outline go to www.NewAdvent.org

In there Encyclopedia look under “E” for the 21 Ecumenical Church Councils, with highlights and key issues.

This is excellent as it covers the entire 2000 year history in a concise and imformative manner. You might even select a delcariation or two for further discussion.

This good as Councils are normally called to address issues and heresies of the period.

Also look under “P” and PRINT for passout the entire list of consecutitive Popes.

God Bless you,

Pat
 
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