esquema versão 1 (2)

2. Background
The church in Portugal, since the beginning of the 90’s, has a catechetical project with a ten year duration (from 6 to 16 years old). The original goal of this catechetical project was to empower the children-teenagers with a proper formation to an adult and committed Christian identity. But the social and religious evolution in Portugal, and probably also the internal limitations of the project, led to the presence of signs indicating the possible failure of those processes: decline on the signs of ecclesial belonging, disarticulation between faith and life…
Meanwhile, there is a growing consensus among the experts that there is a longer adolescence and a delay on the decision and identity processes . In spite of some calls from the CEP (Bishops conference of Portugal), the portuguese churchs haven’t done anything significative proposal to deal with older than 16 years old adolescents.
The catechetical process has no evaluation mechanisms to measure the success of the proposed objectives.
So, we have, some very generic impressions about the success-failure of the catechetical programs leading to the confirmation celebration, a diffuse conscience that the adolescents needed a longer and better pastoral support, and, above all, a deep ignorance about the real faith experience of the new generation of Christians.
This ignorance about reality is about all aspects of Christian experience. Also about faith in God, the contents about God the adolescents learn and the relation they have with Him.
In the centre of the Christian experience and of the evangelizing effort of the church lies the faith in the Trinitarian God, revealed in the person, words and acts of Jesus of Nazareth. According to the DGC it is from that faith that can grow, with the proper processes of ecclesial insertion and education-initiation, a Christian identity, adult and autonomous. But, in fact, about the Portuguese adolescents that followed the catechetical programs, we know very little about their faith contents, quality and relevance. This need for a better knowledge is not only nor mainly academical: it is an important factor to understand the quality of the actual pastoral processes; it’s an important factor to think, project and implement alternatives.