Fr McCabe's new catechism bridges 250-year gap

by Kasia Giedroyc THE FIRST completely new English catechism to be published since 1737 will be launched today by the Catholic Truth Society. The new catechism, entitled The Teaching of the Cat holiA Church, has been written by Fr Herbert McCabe, onetime editor of New Blackfriars and currently Novice Master at Blackfriars, Oxford, and bears the Imprimatur of Archbishop Maurice Couve de Murville of Birmingham.
Speaking at the launch this week, the Archbishop expressed his delight that it was his "old friend" Herbert McCabe who had prepared the much-needed catechism for the Birmingham diocese.
"One of the most important tasks of a diocese is to catechise," he said. "We cannot only refer young Catholics to the Bible; there must be a leaching process."
Fr McCabe, a splendid whitehaired figure in the black and white habit of the Order of Preachers, also spoke at the launch. He explained how he had come to write the catechism. "I was sitting in the garden of a presbytery in Bayswater, with nothing to read except the Penny Catechism. As I read it, I was filled with an increasing outrage. The love of God played no central part in the teaching."
From that moment, Fr McCabe was determined to write a catechism "which began at the centre": which took as its starting point the fact that God loves us.
A further important difference between the new catechism and the older
Catechism of Christian Doctrine is that it sees the moral life as a cultivation of the virtues rather than simply an effort to keep within the commandments.
"This catechism aims to undermine the old "How Far Can You Go?" attitude to sin," explained Fr McCabe. "Instead, it asks how far we can go in the cultivation of virtue.
"The point about virtue is that it's something you grow in; it's an education, not a command. As Thomas Aquinas pointed out, virtues are not just virtues of the will. We also have virtues of emotion, passion, sexual desire. These have to be educated, not beaten like children."
The new catechism makes only one reference to the priest as "he". Fr McCabe explained that this was a mistake, to be corrected in any subsequent editions. "It is not part of the Church's teaching that priests have to be male," he said.
Nor is there any reference to the soul, the persons of the Trinity, or to conscience. These words, said Fr McCabe, are no longer an adequate expression of the truths they are intended to convey.
Both author and Archbishop maintained that there had been no disagreements over the content of the first draft.
See review, page six
• Next week, the Catholic Herald will publish a review of this month's special issue of New Blackfriars, by Michael Walsh. The issue contains the response of four Catholic theologians to Cardinal Ratzinger's comments in his famous Jesus interview.