On Thursday, October 11, in his motu
proprio Porta Fidei (“The Door of Faith”)[*],
Pope Benedict XVI officially opened the Year of Faith. Thursday was chosen because it marked the
fiftieth anniversary of the opening of Vatican II, and because “[it] also marks
the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the Catechism of the
Catholic Church, a text promulgated by my Predecessor, Blessed John Paul II
[Fidei
Depositum, 1992], with a view to illustrating
for all the faithful the power and beauty of the faith” (Porta Fidei 4).
The Catechism of the
Catholic Church is itself a remarkable achievement. Originally promulgated in French in 1992,
when the English version hit the bookstands a couple of years later, it quickly
rocketed to the top of the New York Times
bestseller list and remained there for some weeks. Revised once since then, it has become, as
JP2 intended, the “sure norm for teaching the faith” (FD IV), the first reference of choice (outside of the Bible) for many
Catholic writers.
It’s also virtually become the ultimate “argument ender”,
which is something of a misuse of its function.
Certainly, the Catechism
is an admirably comprehensive synthesis of two thousand years’ teaching and
thought; it’s almost (but not quite) safe to say that “If’n it ain’t in the Catechism, the Church don’t teach it!”[†] At the same time, though, Michael J. Wrenn
and Kenneth D. Whitehead rightfully point out that the Catechism doesn’t distinguish between doctrines that are de fide (formally defined as part of the
revelation) and those that are merely sententia
communis (not formally defined but generally accepted).[1] Indeed, for all its comprehensiveness and
depth, the Catechism is by its nature
only the beginning of one’s education in the faith, and constantly points
outside itself to Scripture, patristics, conciliar documents and writings of
the saints.
Why, then, is the Catechism
used like a club in internal squabbles, like the “Lies
and Lila Rose” flap last year? Pretty
much because October 11 also marked the beginning of fifty years of struggle
over the soul of the Church in the West, in which period the very meaning of the
words “Catholic” and “Christian” have been in danger of being lost. For much if not most of this period, the
bishops of the Church in America all but surrendered apostolic authority,
preferring rather to keep the peace through negotiation and “crisis management”
than to set their collective foot down as the primary teachers and conservators
of the Faith.
To this point — 1962, I mean — the Baltimore
Catechism had been the standard textbook for children receiving
instruction in the Faith. Say what you
will about the Baltimore Catechism, it
was a very effective tool for teaching what
we believe, if not necessarily why we
believe those things; when combined with the socializing effects of attending
parochial schools run by first- and second-order religious, a young Catholic
might have fallen away by the time he graduated high school, but he knew
precisely what he’d stopped believing.
By the time I entered parochial school in 1970, the Baltimore Catechism had been swept away,
along with much else of value, by a flock of reformers who claimed to be inspired
by Vatican II even while throwing out much that the bishops of the Council
specifically named to be kept. In its
place, the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine substituted materials that had
neither staying power nor real relevance to catechesis, much of it seemingly
devoted to putting Catholicism’s beliefs amidst those of other religions (so
that they would learn to play nice with others, I suppose). By the time the English edition of the Catechism came out, functional ignorance
of the tenets of the Faith was the rule rather than the exception for the
majority of Catholics … many of whom would eventually become “ex-Catholics”.
The intrusion into this merry state of affairs of a virtual
encyclopedia of authentic Catholic beliefs, in the midst of the “reformers’”
attempts to water Catholicism down to something more palatable to liberal
Protestants, came as an unpleasant surprise, and the reformers lost no time in
dissing and dismissing the Catechism.
As then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the prefect for the Interdicasterial
Commission for the Catechism and for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, ruefully
remarked, “What has been written so far about the catechism [has been] for
the most part rather one-sided. Thus it
could seem that it was really a list of sins and that the church wanted most of
all to tell people what they could not do.”
Of course, the Catechism
was and is far more than “a list of sins”; it’s not too hard to imagine its
critics mailing in their objections without once cracking the covers of the
book, just as many of them would later criticize the new English translation of
the Mass without having seen so much as a preface. But for those laymen, priests and bishops who
were looking for a crowbar with which they could pry the reformers out of the
classroom and reintroduce orthodoxy into catechesis, the Catechism was no less than a Godsend.
October 11, 1992, then, could be marked as the date when the
“reform of the reform” truly began.
The Catechism of the
Catholic Church is not a casual
read, something to pick up when Dancing
with the Stars has signed off (and you’re just not all that into Castle — sorry, Crescat). First, it’s primarily a reference point for
the construction of more workaday catechetical materials, such as the United
States Catholic Catechism for Adults or The
Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Catholic Catechism by Mary DeTurris Poust
and David I. Fulton.[‡] Second, since it’s meant to be instructive,
the style is very impersonal. If
anything, it’s meant to be read with a study guide and a notebook, not with a bag
of Fritos and a can of Diet Pepsi (though who am I to keep you from noshing?). If you read it for pleasure, you’ll never
finish it — no, I won’t tell you how
it ends.
However, if you’re at all interested in exploring the Faith
of the Church, then this is where you start.
If you intend to hold yourself out as Catholic, then the best thing you
can do is study the Catechism to
learn what the Church really teaches,
and avoid the kind of cherry-picking done by quasi-Catholic organizations like
Catholics For Choice and New Ways Ministries.
Above all, don’t try to cram it all down in a week or
two. FlockNote.com currently is running
an email campaign: just give them
your email address and they’ll send you a little bit of the Catechism to reflect on each day. You can add that to the services that send
you Bible and saints’ quotes … ain’t the Internet wonderful?
So welcome to the Year of Faith. Here’s praying that the next year finds us
drawing closer together in belief and practice as we rediscover the true
meaning of John 3:16:
For God so loved the world that
he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have
eternal life.
[*]
As with most papal documents, the apostolic
letter is titled after its opening words; the “door of faith” is a reference to
Acts 14:27: “And when [Paul
and Barnabas] arrived [in Antioch], they gathered the church together and
declared all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith
to the Gentiles.”
[†]
The only omission of any significance I’ve found
so far is that “admonishing the sinner”, once considered one of the seven
spiritual works of mercy, is not mentioned as such in CCC 2447.
[‡] By the way, Ignatius Press publishes a Companion
to the Catechism of the Catholic Church that quotes, sometimes at
length, documents and texts that the Catechism
only footnotes, which makes it a handy resource. And no, I don’t get anything for linking you
to Amazon … more fool me.
[1] Wrenn, M. J.; Whitehead, K. D. (1996). Flawed
Expectations: The Reception of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Ignatius
Press, p. 208.
