High School Religious Education Curriculum

The Archdiocesan Office of Youth Ministry is encouraging parishes in the Archdiocese to explore covering the content of the following curriculum as a portion of their faith formation programming for adolescents in high school. This curriculum was created to implement the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) adaptation of the High School Curriculum. Parishes are not to be limited to only engaging teens in the content of the curriculum. More engagement is always better. 

The Curriculum is divided into six themes that come from the six courses of the framework. Each theme is further divided into ten objectives. These objectives do not require any specific method for accomplishment, so parishes are not limited in their approach. For example, the objectives could be accomplished in a classroom, on a retreat, in a small faith sharing group, or a pilgrimage.

Each theme of the curriculum is to be covered in a specifically assigned time-frame so that all parishes/clusters/deaneries would be exploring the same objectives at the same time. This will allow from greater collaboration and also provide direction for shared programming. For example, all archdiocesan programs for high school students will focus on the assigned theme of the time. This also means that 9th graders will be exploring the same objectives as 12th graders, so parishes may need to adjust the models used for formation.

The determined time-frame for covering these objectives are as follows:
Theme #1: Revelation of Jesus Christ in Scripture  |  Fall 2023
Theme #2: Who is Jesus Christ  |  Spring 2024
Theme #3: Jesus Christ’s Mission Continues in the Church  |  Fall 2024
Theme #4: The Mission of Jesus Christ (Paschal Mystery)  |  Spring 2025
Theme #5: Sacraments as Privileged Encounters with Jesus  |  Fall 2025
Theme #6: Life in Christ  |  Spring 2026