In the past, the religious education of youngsters was called “Sunday School,” or “Catechism Class,” or “CCD.” However in the Catholic Community Serving Bloomfield, Garfield and Lawrenceville, we have initiated  an innovative approach to religious education. The Family Centered Religious Education Program (FCREP) is a unique way of providing religious education to students. This program promotes the belief that parents are the first and best teachers of their children. This program is also a way to accommodate the busy schedules that families have to manage in today’s hectic world. We are hopeful and confident that this different delivery method will benefit students and their immediate and extended families and help to nurture the domestic Church.

The family is the “domestic Church,” that is, in every Christian family the different aspects and functions of the life of the entire Church may be reflected: mission, catechesis, witness, prayer, etc. Indeed in the same way as the Church, the family is a place in which the Gospel is transmitted and from which it extends.
 
Parents are the primary educators of their children in the faith. Together with them, all members of the family play an active part in the education of the younger members.
The family as a locus of catechesis has a unique privilege: to transmit the Gospel by rooting it in the context of profound human values. Rooted in the family experience, the child’s Christian initiation consists in: 

• the awakening of the sense of God;
• the first steps in prayer;
• education of the moral conscience;
• formation in the Christian sense of human love, understood as a reflection of the love of God the Father, the Creator.

It is, indeed, a Christian education more witnessed to than taught, more occasional than systematic, more ongoing and daily than structured into periods. In this family catechesis, the role of grandparents is of growing importance. Their wisdom and sense of the religious is often decisive in creating a true Christian climate. (General Directory for Catechesis 255)
 
What this change means is that parents and in some cases grandparents will become a more integral part of the faith formation of their children and grandchildren.  So, instead of the typical weekly class where students meet the catechists every Sunday, students will attend a formal class with their catechist only on the second  Sunday each month for a total of 10 onsite meetings, held September through May, and will be taught 1 lesson of 4 required lessons.  During the next 3 weeks of the month, for about 30 minutes of instruction per week, it will be the parents’ or grandparents’ responsibility to teach their children or grandchildren the remaining 3 lessons. We provide all user-friendly materials and resources in both paper copies and online so that instruction is practical and doable.
 
Classes meet after Holy Mass on Sunday at Our Lady of the Angels Parish, St. Augustine Church, for 90 minutes.  While the students are in their formal class with their catechists, parents attend a concurrent class with the Director of Faith Formation.  During that time, parents learn to use the Pflaum Publishing Company liturgy-based instructional materials that include: Catechism Handbook, Teaching Guide and Gospel Weeklies. Parents also have the opportunity to ask questions and to discuss teaching strategies and ideas for home instruction. 

Parents engage in conversation about the ideas and topics that are important at each of the grade levels. The Gospel Weeklies program also offers online supplementary support and assistance for the parents and their children available on the Pflaum Publishing Company website:   http://www.pflaumweeklies.com/

The Church has always taught that parents are the primary educators of their children and this is made explicit in the Rite of Baptism and the Baptismal promises. Consequently, parents who have children are in Grades Pre-K through 8 who are not enrolled in a Catholic School, must “accept the responsibility of training their children in the practice of the faith.”  The Family Centered Religious Education Program is a practical way to fulfill this obligation.​