What is the point of YOUCAT?

ZENIT reports on the presentation of the Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church, which took place two days ago at the Vatican. It then looks at the purpose of YOUCAT, as well as its approach and style:

What's the point?

The archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, brought his experience in preparing the adult Catechism of the Catholic Church to this project.

He spoke at a press conference about the motives for a youth catechism.

"The urgency stems from the fact that the young protagonists of this text belong to a generation for whom being Christian is a conscious choice," the cardinal stated.

Youth who have decided to be Christian, he said, "have a very different approach to the faith from our generations, for whom it was normal to participate in Sunday Mass."

"This generation knows that it needs to respond to the questions of its contemporaries," he said, promoting Benedict XVI's affirmation that the faith is reasonable, that is, that it makes sense to clear-thinking people.

Memory skills

Youcat has 527 questions and answers. At the end of each answer, there are references to the deeper explanations that can be found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization, Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella, said such a structure was a smart choice.

"It makes it possible to do the necessary synthesis," he said, "to keep the contents brief and synthetic."

"For years we have heard about the need to find 'brief formulas' of faith that can be easily memorized," he reflected. "The history of professions of faith shows clearly that this happened at the dawn of Christianity, and these formulas remain unaltered in the sacred texts."

Read the entire piece.

A longtime reader of this blog, whose comments have always been thoughtful and fair, recently expressed his concerns about YOUCAT (which he had not yet seen or read), writing: "Gut reaction? All ambiguities aside, all conspiracies aside, although I have not read this 'Youcat' my instincts are shouting at me that this is simply another one of those 'dumb-down' kind of projects that feels like condescension to the young."

I wrote, in response:

I can understand you initial reaction as Catechisms are often a dicey matter. But, having now read through large sections of the YOUCAT, I can say without reservation that it is not a "dumb-down" kind of project. Not at all, in fact. It is obviously shorter than the CCC; it is somewhat like the "Compendium" (Q&A format, for example), but with key words defined in the margins, along with citations from Scripture and quotes from Church documents, Popes, saints, etc. in the margins that pertain to the paragraphs on that page. (And each answer lists reference #'s for the CCC for further reading.) In fact, the YOUCAT (527 questions/300 pages) and the "Compendium" (598 questions/200 [larger] pages) are very similar in length and size (compared to 2865 paragraphs/900 pages in the CCC). I think it is attractive without being overly graphics-oriented. I'm not a fan of the little stick figures throughout, but they aren't distracting.

I would add, as the ZENIT article pointed out, that Cardinal Schönborn was one of the co-editors of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, along with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Not surprisingly, then, there is a very clear sense of continuity between YOUCAT and the CCC. For more about the Youth Catechism, visit www.YouCat.us.