{"id":2016,"date":"2011-06-14T14:08:23","date_gmt":"2011-06-14T20:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marccardaronella.com\/?p=2016"},"modified":"2011-07-29T10:44:14","modified_gmt":"2011-07-29T16:44:14","slug":"is-your-catechesis-like-a-jigsaw-puzzle-without-a-cover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marccardaronella.com\/blog\/2011\/06\/14\/is-your-catechesis-like-a-jigsaw-puzzle-without-a-cover\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Your Catechesis Like a Jigsaw Puzzle Without a Cover?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[This is a part of the\u00a0Fundamentals of Effective Catechesis<\/a> series.]<\/p>\n

Catholicism is made up of so many different doctrines, it can be difficult to\u00a0understand.<\/p>\n

If you don’t consider this problem, your students will view the Catholic Faith like a\u00a0jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the cover.<\/p>\n

They’ll have many of the “pieces” of Catholicism but they won’t know how they all fit together, and they won’t\u00a0understand it completely.<\/p>\n

The key to avoiding this problem is to clearly organize your catechesis\u00a0around a central idea, a “cover picture” if you will.<\/p>\n

This works incredibly well because…
\n<\/p>\n

We’re wired for connections<\/h2>\n

We’re made to want to fill in gaps, to understand the whole picture. That’s just how we’re wired.<\/p>\n

My grandmother loved large jigsaw puzzles.\u00a0You know, the kind with tons of pieces?<\/p>\n

The only way you could tell where they fit was to look at the picture on the box cover–and even then it was hard!<\/p>\n

She did them on a table in the living room. Of course, everyone would take a shot at finishing the puzzle.\u00a0No one could resist!<\/p>\n

And how is it that any one of us,\u00a0without any prior experience of the puzzle, could sit down and just start working? We had the picture on the cover as a guide. We knew how everything was supposed to fit together.<\/p>\n

The Catholic Faith is unified, connected and organized around a central idea.<\/strong><\/p>\n

However,\u00a0if you don’t know that idea, you’ll have a hard time seeing the connections.<\/strong> The Faith just seems like a pile of pieces that don’t fit together.<\/p>\n

The Informational Gap Theory<\/h2>\n

George Loewenstein<\/strong>, a behavioral economist at Carnegie Mellon University calls this the Informational\u00a0Gap Theory<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

We’re intrigued by gaps in our knowledge. This is basically the definition of curiosity.<\/p>\n

Gaps cause pain. We seek to fill them to stop that pain.<\/p>\n

I think there’s also another aspect to this. If we can’t make sense of the information and put it in a logical pattern, we give up on it.<\/strong> The frustration of gaps that can’t be filled becomes too much.<\/p>\n

Catechetical Takeaway<\/h2>\n

The Catholic Faith is far more than a list of truths to be memorized.<\/p>\n

Catholicism is beautifully complex.\u00a0It is a \u00a0rich network of interrelated ideas and concepts that mutually interpret each other. And, it has a central idea that ties everything together.<\/p>\n

Most of the doctrines that people reject were formulated within the context of this network. They can only be understood within this context as well.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most Catholics haven’t been taught to view the Faith this way. Catholicism just a pile of puzzle pieces that don’t fit together. This causes people to\u00a0turn their backs on\u00a0the Church\u00a0because it doesn’t make sense to them.<\/p>\n

However, when they learn how to put the pieces together, the lights come on and attitudes completely change.<\/p>\n

As a catechist, you must give your students a “cover picture,”\u00a0a central, organizing theme that helps them fit all the doctrinal puzzle pieces together. These connections will help them learn\u00a0because\u00a0people are wired to think this way.<\/p>\n

It’s your turn: <\/strong><\/p>\n