Don't tamper with new Catechism, bishops told

by our Rome correspondent BISHOPS worldwide have been urged not to "censor" the new Catechism of the Catholic Church in devising their own national texts.
The appeal came at a special conference on the new Catechism in the Vatican last week. The English version of the Catechism has been
delayed because of controversy over the translation, The conference gave an official voice to recent protests from various Vatican officials at the too liberal interpretations of Catholic doctrine in national texts.
The French language Catechism, for example, entitled Living Stones, has been the object of a special study by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith following complaints that it was not in keeping with doctrine on all points.
National episcopal
conferences, the convention heard, were often guilty or "reticence and omissions" in
compiling their own catechisms. There was the fear, said Bishop Crescenzio Sepe, Secretary of the Congregation for the Clergy, that local bishops discarded certain "truths considered awkward" for some currents of modern thinking.
He reminded bishops that the new Catechism, whose French version was published last Christmas and is already a bestseller, constituted an authoritative doctrinal norm".
It was not a mere "source" of content for editors of national catechisms "to pick and choose from".
Bishop Sepe was echoing John Paul II's aim in promulgating the new Catechism of the Catholic Church. which required about six years of work and several drafts. The Pope recommended it for use by episcopal conferences in particular in compiling local texts.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is known to have been battling against some national catechisms for years.
Prefect Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has repeatedly spoken out against liberal treatments of doctrine by local bishops and in his most recent criticism a few months ago he said: "The many national catechisms to be found are verbose. They are a sea of words that do not reach the core of the Christian faith."
The new text's English translation, carried out in the United States, was due out this spring.
But groups within the US Church complained to the Vatican about some of the terminology used and one has presented its own translation currently being examined.