As shown in Part I, a dispassionate review of the Catholic manuscript tradition reveals that the “catechism crisis” of our time is not rooted in a simple failure to teach effectively. Rather, it stems from a highly effective effort to teach error, largely by way of bad catechisms.

Public results are seldom lacking. As we continue the Christmas cycle, one recalls a Texas bishop lighting the menorah at a Hanukkah ritual he helped organize—an act maintained in all catechisms as intrinsically evil (if not grounds for excommunication^[1]) before 1962, but permitted or encouraged in nearly every one published since.

Days prior, a motu proprio required that sacred theology “not be limited to abstractly re-proposing formulas and schemas of the past.”[2] While one searches in vain to discover what “formulas and schemas” are here intended (the Apostles’ Creed, perhaps?), there appears no end to the doctrinal dumpster fire in Rome, with the Vatican now issuing a “real development” to allow for the conferral of priestly blessings on sodomitical couples. (Gender nonconforming throuples and polyamorous quartets seem to have been discriminatorily overlooked in the document; an oversight that will perhaps be addressed in a future development of the development.) The Politically Incorr... Williamson, Kevin D. Best Price: $3.43 Buy New $9.77 (as of 05:26 UTC - Details)

In place of a catechesis bound to communicate beliefs and behaviors “marked by universality, antiquity, and harmony,”^[3] we are now exhorted “to a turning point, to a paradigm shift, to a courageous cultural revolution.”^[4] As previously shown, this shift is already sixty years underway.

For this reason, we must carefully examine the newest catechism to issue from the Catholic episcopate: Credo: Compendium of the Catholic Faith (2023). The author claims it is “a guide to the changeless teaching of the Church,”^[5] but compared against the prior manuscript tradition, do such claims hold water?

Credo is authored by Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Kazakhstan, with its first edition appearing under the imprimatur of the English-language publisher’s local bishop—typical for works of religious instruction. It is therefore the first such canonically-approved work to be issued by an individual bishop in over fifty years.

However, it must be observed that Credo is not an official catechism in the restricted sense, as it has not been formally imposed as normative within a given territory (at least, not as of this writing). However, Credo could be adopted in such manner in the future, as it expresses the doctrine of a Catholic bishop in good standing, authorized to preach and teach in virtue of his episcopal office. Furthermore, it has been officially approved as free from error in faith or morals, and subsequently endorsed by several other bishops as an effective and reliable instrument for learning and teaching the Faith.

As such, Credo may be held as an expression of the Church’s ordinary teaching office, exercised by her living bishops. Like every catechism before, it is not infallible in itself, but contains infallible propositions and expresses the authentic magisterium, purportedly “entire and incorrupt.”[6] In virtue of this authorship and canonical status, Catholics should be able to hold up Credo and say: “This is the teaching of the Church.”

Nevertheless, given our decades of positively disastrous “officially approved” catechisms, we must inquire further.

Scope & Sequence

For being “a comprehensive summary of Christian doctrine,”^[7] Credo’s manageable size—under 350 pages of body text—is fairly remarkable. It employs the concise and readable Question-and-Answer form common to most Catholic catechisms, and does not obfuscate or mince words; its propositions are direct and clear. Its overarching threefold structure is familiar and straightforward: Faith, Morals, and Worship, expounding on the creed, commandments, and means of grace, respectively.

The linguistic form is generally excellent, displaying the Romanitas characteristic of so many prior works: noble diction, paired with a tight logical flow concerned primarily with categorical truths and principles. However, the sequence of ideas in Credo can be awkward in places, as some Questions are explained across multiple pages or chapters—a challenge inherent to all systematic works. Fortunately, the book’s formatting admirably meets the difficulty with a detailed Table of Contents and exhaustive Index. Given its primary audience—lay Catholics eager for clear doctrine[8]—such apparatus would seem critical.

Now, the rub: amid the catechism crisis of recent decades, does Credo’s doctrinal content harmonize with the prior catechetical manuscript tradition of the Church?

Content & Continuity

The predominant fault of most postconciliar catechisms is a marked shift in terminology and semantic range: innovations that suggest (if not openly declare^[9]) to the reader that something has changed; that Catholicism today differs in some significant way from what came before.

By contrast, Credo makes a careful study of honoring the catechetical legacy of the past: not descending into lexical innovation, minute theological attenuation, or pastoral experimentation, while repeatedly affirming “fidelity to Sacred Tradition [as] essential for right faith”^[10]—a decidedly Catholic principle, if there ever was one.

On the four propositions raised in Part I, Credo reads like most any catechism before the postconciliar “transmission failure:”^[11] The inspiration, inerrancy, and historicity of Scripture are clearly articulated;^[12] the nature of the Church and its necessity for salvation is thoroughly explained;^[13] all “disordered use of the sexual faculties”^[14] is condemned; and (as in every preconciliar text on the subject) active participation in non-Catholic worship is maintained as sinful.^[15]

Survive the Unthinkabl... Larkin, Tim Best Price: $2.25 Buy New $8.00 (as of 05:26 UTC - Details) Other treatments in Credo include such bracing echoes of prior teaching as to possibly surprise someone grown numb within a vaunted “shifting paradigm of church.”[16] Unattenuated religious freedom is held as “a grave error”^[17]—a constant teaching of the Church whose wisdom is made clearer with every passing December in the United States, as public displays of Satanism continue under state and federal statute. Amid today’s rampant (often clinical) violations of the fifth commandment, one is edified to find Credo following other classic manuals by including scandal and mortal sin in its treatment here, since such forms of “spiritual murder”^[18] are “a more dreadful calamity than the death of all mankind.”^[19]

The nature and proper gravity of sin (conspicuously absent in many postconciliar texts) is apparent throughout Credo.^[20] Its insightful treatment of conscience leaves no room for relativism or self-will, while a sensitive appraisal of scrupulosity is offered for those tempted to undue rigorism, leaving readers “trusting in [God’s] superabundant love and mercy.”^[21] The Catholic creation doctrine,^[22] the folly of atheism,^[23] the absolute need for a Redeemer,^[24] and dozens of other explanations read as if lifted from the best works in the catechetical tradition of the Church.

In addition, the Church’s perennial moral precepts are brought to bear on many contemporary issues, each in its logical place: “Gender ideology” appears in the chapter on Christian anthropology; various forms of “environmental idolatry” and “transhumanism” are addressed in the chapter on Creation; synodalism, schism, and sedevacantism are explained in the chapter on the Church, etc.

As a result, what emerges from the pages of Credo is a Catholic self-understanding that is both internally coherent and historically consistent with itself: as if what was believed and practiced in the Church of yesterday maintains a real bearing—indeed, a moral binding force—upon Catholics today. For this reason, as one scholar has succinctly stated, Credo must now compel a comparison: “Either Credo articulates the authentic Catholic doctrine—that is, it is true—or it is not. … [But] to condemn Credo would thus be to affirm, in a public manner, that Church teaching has changed.”

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