Telling the Catholic Story Today: the GDC and its Augustinian Narrational Imperative Augustine’s cor Issue: cor inquietum to cor requietum

Abstract

General Directory for Catechesis (GDC) number 39 requires catechists to narrate the events of salvation history, in order “to make clear the profound mysteries that they contain.” A positive response to this commendation of the Augustinian catechetical form by the universal Church and the imperative it carries with it, requires that we understand the narratio described in his work De Catechizandis Rudibus. In that work Augustine makes use of the famous theme from his Confessions, the cor inquietum, a fundamental element of his anthropology and a methodological principle for his evangelization and catechesis. That anthropological and catechetical principle of the restless heart serves as the foundation for an intensely personal form of catechesis, one attuned to the particular needs of the heart of each inquirer, as well as a universal norm for presenting the Gospel to all men and women, as the GDC makes clear.