Domestic Seminary: A Spiral Catechetical Curriculum for the 21st Century Catholic Family

Formation from Baptism to Mission

Version 0.1 - A Living Document

📖 Source Repository: This curriculum is developed and maintained at github.com/cyharyanto/domsem. For the latest updates, contributions, and discussions, please visit the repository.

License and Declaration

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Authorial Declaration

This document is a public, non-commercial act of faith by Catholic parents in obedience to the teaching of the Church:

“Parents have the first responsibility for the education of their children in the faith, prayer, and all the virtues.” — Catechism of the Catholic Church §2252

It is not intended as a substitute for parish, diocesan, or magisterial formation programs, but as a living expression of the domestic Church in full communion with the teachings of the Catholic faith.

Development Statement

This first public release, Version 0.1, is an unreviewed draft. While every effort has been made to ensure doctrinal fidelity and accurate citation from magisterial sources, it should be considered a work in progress. Readers may find referential errors, underdeveloped narratives, or areas requiring deeper theological nuance. These imperfections are part of its nature as a ‘living document.’ Readers and communities who use this text are invited not as passive consumers, but as collaborators in its refinement.

In this spirit, this catechetical curriculum is not a final word, but a living path. Like the faith it transmits, it is:

In this spirit, it is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC license, inviting collaboration but forbidding commercialization, to protect its vocation as a gift freely given.

A Note on Generation and Methodology

This curriculum was developed in a dialectical partnership with a Large Language Model (LLM). The methodology was designed to leverage the generative power of AI while ensuring strict doctrinal alignment through a human-led, source-first process:

  1. Human Direction: The entire structure, pedagogical approach, and thematic content were architected by the authors.
  2. Source-Grounded Generation: The LLM was instructed to generate content only when it could be directly cited from or grounded in primary sources: the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Sacred Scripture, and official Church documents.
  3. Doctrinal Scrutiny: All generated text, especially doctrinal explanations, was reviewed and refined by the authors to ensure it accurately reflects the mind of the Church.
  4. Pedagogical Adaptation: The Scholastic and narrative style was a deliberate human choice, with the LLM acting as a tool to format and articulate these structures.

This process treats the LLM not as an authority, but as a powerful catechetical assistant, always subordinate to the Magisterium and the guiding hand of a human catechist. Any errors that remain are human errors in this process, for which we take full responsibility.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Part I — Pre-School Formation (Birth to Age 5)

Part II — Primary Years (Years 1-6): Building the Grammar of Catholic Life

Part III — Secondary Years (Years 7-12): Maturity in Christ

Part IV — Post-Year 12: Adulthood in the Faith

Appendices