Doctrine of the Faith: Returning to kerygma amid crisis in passing on faith
The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith published *Venite ad Me*, a set of considerations on transmitting the faith amid epochal change. The document urges believers to renew the proclamation of the Gospel, placing the kerygma—the message of Christ’s love and salvation—at its center. It calls for pastoral attention to adults as well as children and adolescents, and highlights the family’s role in passing on faith alongside cooperation with the Church. The text says faith is transmitted through a lived form of ecclesial life and personal encounter with Christ, not primarily as doctrinal information. Bishops’ conferences contributed to the document, which includes testimonies from people who discovered or rediscovered Jesus.
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The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has issued Venite ad Me: Considerations on the Transmission of the Faith in an Epochal Change, calling for renewed proclamation of the Gospel centered on the kerygma—the message of Christ’s love and saving presence. The document says the Church must address weakened intergenerational transmission by evangelizing adults as well as catechizing children and adolescents, and by strengthening the communities that welcome and accompany believers.
Published on October 22, 2026, Venite ad Me contains an introduction, eight chapters, and a conclusion. Approved by Pope Leo XIV on August 21, it draws on papal teaching, the Second Vatican Council, contributions from bishops’ conferences, and testimonies from people who discovered or rediscovered Christ.
The text describes itself as a set of “Considerations,” not a Doctrinal Note: it presents perspectives without claiming to settle questions that remain open to further study. Its stated aim is to propose practical ways to proclaim the kerygma amid profound social and cultural change.
The document identifies the kerygma—the first proclamation of the Gospel—as the heart of Christian faith and calls believers to renew its announcement. It presents this proclamation as an invitation to encounter the living Christ personally and within the community, and notes that in some parts of the world the transmission of faith has nearly ceased.
Faith, it says, is transmitted not primarily as information or a set of doctrines, but through a form of ecclesial life into which people are gradually introduced. The proclamation should communicate God’s love and mercy in language that speaks directly to those receiving it, with an appeal “from the heart” and through personal relationships.
The document describes the family as the first and most essential setting for passing on faith, while acknowledging that family transmission has been interrupted in many places. It says that faith can no longer be assumed to pass automatically to new generations, and calls for pastoral work to extend beyond programs focused only on children and adolescents to include adult evangelization.
In countries with long Christian traditions, it points to weakened ties between baptism and lived faith, and to young people who become religiously indifferent as adults. The text also describes a crisis in intergenerational transmission, with fewer parents introducing their children to the Gospel and many young people entering adulthood without a substantial religious commitment.
It links these changes to a culture that elevates individual self-determination and tends to confine religion to private life. It also addresses digital technologies and artificial intelligence, citing Pope Leo XIV’s view that the challenge they pose is “not technological, but anthropological,” because they affect human relationships as well as information.
The document notes that conversions and returns to Church life are increasing in some highly secularized areas, but says many newly baptized people struggle to persevere and may return to practical indifference. It therefore emphasizes the need for communities to welcome and accompany new members.
The text highlights the role of Christian communities, Scripture, liturgy, and the witness of believers in transmitting faith. It urges ecclesial communities—particularly in countries with long histories of evangelization—to establish regular groups for listening to, reflecting on, sharing, and praying with the Word of God, alongside Sunday Eucharistic celebrations.
It describes the liturgy as a privileged place where Christ’s saving love is celebrated and communicated sacramentally. Christian witness, it says, includes holiness, closeness to others, and a preferential option for the poor; the document also points to art and beauty, especially music, as relevant to evangelization.
Other areas it addresses include inculturating faith within different cultures, drawing on the Church’s social doctrine, and the role of popular piety, pilgrimages, confraternities, homilies, and volunteer work. It also calls for expanding opportunities for women to participate in leading ecclesial processes.
The document concludes by urging the faithful to pass on the light of Christ to people today, presenting the kerygma as the central message that illuminates the Christian faith and invites people into an encounter with Christ.
The kerygma’s role in faith transmission and ecclesial life
The kerygma—the Church’s proclamation of Jesus Christ crucified and risen—is both the point of entry into Christian faith and the message that continues to animate the Church. It calls people to believe and be converted; catechesis deepens that response; and the worship, communion, witness, and mission of the Church give the proclamation a visible, communal form. It is therefore not merely an introductory lesson that Christians leave behind, but the enduring center of faith transmission and ecclesial life.
Kerygma means proclamation. At its heart is the announcement that Jesus Christ died and rose, and that through him God offers salvation. The proclamation is not simply information about Jesus: it invites a response of faith, conversion, and discipleship. As the Ukrainian Catholic catechism explains, the proclamation of Christ’s Paschal death and Resurrection is joined to the call to believe in him; faith leads to conversion, Baptism, and readiness to follow Christ.
The kerygma also reveals who God is. Pope Francis describes it as Trinitarian: the Holy Spirit leads people to believe in Jesus, whose death and Resurrection reveal and communicate the Father’s mercy. Its substance can be expressed personally: Christ loves you, gave his life to save you, and remains present to enlighten, strengthen, and free you.
This proclamation is meant to awaken a real encounter and response, not merely assent to a bare formula. John Paul II describes the urgent task of evangelization as proclaiming the risen Christ in a way that leads to personal encounter, conversion of heart, and the request for Baptism. The kerygma thus joins God’s saving action to a human answer: hearing, believing, turning toward Christ, and beginning to live as his disciple.
In the Christian account, faith is not passed on only as private insight or inherited custom. It is received through hearing the Word proclaimed and responding to it. The apostolic pattern joins proclamation and teaching: the early Church announced the risen Christ and instructed people in the faith. John Paul II likewise says that adherence to Christ comes through believing the word proclaimed by the Church, and emphasizes the Church’s mission of preaching.
This gives the Church a responsibility both to announce the Gospel and to transmit it faithfully. The proclamation is not the Church’s possession to alter at will: John Paul II stresses that the Church is entrusted with Christ’s message and is to communicate it in its fullness. That fidelity matters because the kerygma is not a passing enthusiasm detached from the truth of the faith. Benedict XVI presents it as the central proclamation of the crucified and risen Jesus, while also stressing that the Gospel received must be held fast and faithfully handed on.
Faith transmission, then, involves both a living encounter and continuity with the apostolic faith. The message must reach new people and generations in a way they can hear; it must also remain the Gospel the Church received.
The kerygma is “first” not simply because it comes first in time, but because it remains central throughout Christian formation. Francis puts the point sharply:
This first proclamation is called “first” not because it exists at the beginning and can then be forgotten or replaced by other more important things. It is first in a qualitative sense because it is the principal proclamation, the one which we must hear again and again in different ways, the one which we must announce one way or another throughout the process of catechesis, at every level and moment.
Catechesis, therefore, is not a substitute for the kerygma, nor is the kerygma a substitute for sustained formation. John Paul II describes catechesis as deepening the initial proclamation, drawing out its implications, explaining it in a way that appeals to reason, and guiding Christians toward practice in the Church and world. A person who has heard that Christ saves is invited to understand the faith more fully, grow in Christian maturity, and become more able to bear witness to hope.
This also corrects a false opposition between an “alive” first announcement and supposedly dry teaching. Catechesis need not extinguish the first encounter: understanding the faith more deeply can make its claims more challenging and decisive in a person’s life. Francis similarly insists that Christian formation consists in entering more deeply into the kerygma, which illuminates the subjects catechesis treats.
The proclamation gives rise to a community, and that community’s life makes the proclamation visible. John Paul II points to the first Jerusalem community’s devotion to apostolic teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer as the essence of ecclesial life and a fruit of the first evangelization. The Church is therefore not only an organization that communicates a message. Its worship, teaching, shared life, and witness belong to the way the Gospel is received and handed on.
This communal dimension has practical consequences. The kerygma calls people not only into a relationship with Christ but into life with others. A U.S. bishops’ pastoral framework, drawing on Evangelii Gaudium, says that the first proclamation has immediate moral implications centered on charity and that the Gospel’s social content includes community and engagement with others. Christian service is not an optional addition to the announcement of salvation; it is one way a community shows what the proclamation means.
The same is true of the Church’s continuing conversion. The Gospel’s message remains new for each generation, but believers are also called continually to change heart and mind so as to conform more closely to Christ. The kerygma is thus addressed to the person who has not yet believed and to the Christian community that must be renewed by the message it proclaims.
Faith transmission requires attention to the people and cultures who hear the Gospel. John Paul II calls for a proclamation that can engage differing religious traditions, philosophies, and secular settings, and says that faith should be presented rationally and joined to the witness of life. Francis adds that the manner of proclamation matters: it should express God’s saving love as prior to human obligation, appeal to freedom rather than impose truth, and be marked by joy, patience, dialogue, warmth, and welcome.
That pastoral sensitivity does not mean changing the substance of the faith to fit every audience. It means communicating the same Gospel in language and forms people can understand, while remaining faithful to what the Church has received. In short, the kerygma is the Church’s enduring center: it begets faith, gives direction to catechesis, gathers believers into communion, and sends them to witness through lives shaped by Christ.