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===== Rosie Bartel, Wisconsin =====


1. I serve a 16 county area in northeastern Wisconsin.  The largest communities are Green Bay, Appleton, Oshkosh and Manitowoc.  In the big picture of the country this are really rural communities.  There are 170 parishes in this 16 county diocese.  Mergers, leakages and clusters are the everyday large of our parishes.  The economy of our parishes range from good to poor depending alot on if they have a school to support or not.  Our strongest parishes economically are our some of our smallest parishes.  The educational level of the people run from white collar to blue collar to farmers.  We are beginning to get a large population of Hispanic families due to our mega farms. Leadership in our parishes has definitely gone from parish priest to lay leadership with most of our priest having several parishes.  They are more and more dependant on parish director and/or deacons to handle the day to day needs of the parishes.

2.  In this 16 county diocese we have varous models of catechesis.  Traditional  class models still exists in alot of areas but some areas have tried whole community catechesis (Generations of Faith).  The parishes that have gone to only using Generations of Faith are having some difficulties.  The whole community catechesis programs that seem to be working the best are a blended program of some traditional class time and some family or intergenerational time.  

3.  The challenges that we are facing in rural catechesis is a lack of qualified personnel for our programs.  Many of our programs are run by well meaning parishioners who have volunteered for sometime and so they are given the job as coordinator or facilitator without very much background.  Catechesis training is another challenge because often it is the blind leading the blind.  At the present time we are developing a three year strategic plan that addresses various ways to meet these challenges.  First, we are developing a standards-based curriculum; second, we are looking at a new format for doing religious certification, which is more of a professional development plan; and third, we are looking at an accreditation process for parish programs.

4.  I feel that the NCCB, NCCL and others could develop national standards for religion, which could be the foundation for our curriculums.  They also could develop a national accreditation process that parishes and dioceses could use to assess their program against national standards.  This type of process would give our programs creditability and help our programs become more viable.   \\

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