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1993-04-08
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THE WEEKSOCIETY, Page 22Telling Catholics What They Believe
The first worldwide catechism in four centuries boosts papal
conservatism
What lasting mark has Pope John Paul II made? The Pontiff is
renowned, among other things, for his vigorous effort to stem
dissent and clarify what Catholicism stands for. Thus the newly
issued Universal Catechism "will be the signature that the Pope
leaves behind him," says a ranking Vatican official. The
676-page summary of essential beliefs on doctrine and morals
applies to all the world's 850 million Catholics. Joseph
Cardinal Ratzinger, the Vatican's uncompromising doctrinal
monitor, led the six-year project. His staff went through nine
drafts and fielded 24,000 proposals from bishops. The French
edition, released last week, is already a brisk seller, and
debates will well up as the document appears in other languages.
John Paul's introduction says the big book adapts
infallible church teaching to illuminate "the new situations and
problems which had not yet emerged in the past." Writers of the
last such catechism 426 years ago could not have imagined some
sins condemned in 1992: test-tube conception, artificial
insemination, speeding, drunk driving and check bouncing. There
were closer medieval analogues for such evils as unjustly low
wages, pornography, tax evasion and drug trafficking.
Capital punishment provoked heavy internal debate. The
final text says that a punishment should be "proportional to the
gravity of the crime, without excluding in extreme cases the
death penalty." Henri Tincq of Le Monde found that
"incomprehensible" in light of opposition to state execution by
the hierarchies of France, Canada and the U.S.
Though Ratzinger has been tough on homosexuality, the
catechism says persons "do not choose their homosexual
condition; for most, it is a trying one. They must be greeted
with respect, compassion and tactfulness. Any sign of unfair
discrimination against them must be avoided." But homosexual
acts are deemed "intrinsically disorderly," and the church calls
on gays and lesbians, as well as unmarried heterosexuals, to
abstain from sex. Subtle flexibility is also seen on suicide,
with eternal salvation held out as a possibility.
Much of the catechism, of course, merely reasserts
traditional stands, including the church's hotly contested
opposition to women priests, birth control, divorce, mercy
killing and abortion. The catechism may not be especially
innovative but, asserts Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger of Paris,
it "will appear, with time, to be one of the major events of our
age."