LES CATECHISMES CATHOLIQUES FRANÇAIS ENTRE 1950 ET 1960: LA PREOCCUPATION DE L'ENFANT
FRENCH CATHOLIC CATECHISMS BETWEEN 1950 AND 1960: CONCERN FOR THE CHILD

Summary/Abstract: A catechetical movement was born in France during the first part of the 20thcentury. A catechetical movement involves events, people, documents, works shaping a trend of thought that made the Church question on its catechetical policy and change it more or less significantly depending on the country and the time. Its appearance and existence were the fruit of all catechists, men and women, clergy and lay people who, facing the mutations in the educational approaches of this century, analyzed their catechetical practices, questioned on them and found new paths. These paths are followed by children who are no longer, as people used to think, those imperfect, incomplete beings that had to be perfected and completed according to the model provided for the adults.The perspective is totally different: children also have a life, they have their own life. And the right to live it, to live it happily. The care for the subject of the faith, the child, was the centre of this movement. Encouraged by the reflection and the catechetical work of Marie Fargues, Hélène Lubienska de Lenval and Françoise Derkenne, as well as of those who were close to her, such as Jean Vimort and Georges Duperray, Joseph Colomb – director of the National Centre for Religious Education at that time – publishes his Progressive Catechism in 1950, with all the anthropological, theological and pedagogical information that catechists need to use. Numerous catechists estimate that the contributions of child and adolescent psychology, even those of the New Education and active methods, would make their catecheticalactions more effective.

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