In hope of reaching young adults who have left the Catholic church, the U.S. bishops have written and approved the first official national catechism for adults.
"It was a labor of love," said Bishop Donald Wuerl of Pittsburgh who, as chairman of the editorial oversight board, shepherded the text through four years, three drafts and more than 10,000 suggested amendments from fellow bishops.
"We are trying to reach so many of those young people, young adults, who have drifted away from practice of the faith, and to invite these seekers, as they are sometimes called, back to an understanding and practice of the faith."
Each of the 36 chapters opens with a story about a faithful Catholic, most of them Americans. An explanation of church teaching is followed by examples of how the teaching applies to daily life, questions for reflection, and a meditation on the topic.
The bishops voted 218-10 for the text at the end of their meeting in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. Before it can be published, it must receive approval in Rome, which Wuerl hopes will take no more than a year. The earliest likely publication date would be spring 2006.
A much longer, more academic Catechism of the Catholic Church was published in 1992. The bishops hope this simplified, Americanized version will sell well.
One of the most contentious issues surrounding the English version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church was that Rome insisted on using exclusively male terms for references to all humanity. Many bishops, including Wuerl, thought that would alienate younger women. The United States Catechism for Adults uses gender-inclusive language for human beings while retaining male pronouns for God.
The bishops who drafted it had long discussions about how to present complex theological concepts to people who get their ideas of church from television.
The official theological definition of a sacrament -- "an outward sign instituted by Christ to give us grace" -- may perplex the average college student. The United States Catechism for Young Adults explains it in familiar terms:
"Sacraments have a visible and invisible reality, a reality open to all the human senses but grasped in its God-given depths with the eyes of faith. When parents hug their children, for example, the visible reality we see is the hug. The invisible reality the hug conveys is love."
The faith stories include those of well-known figures such as St. Katherine Drexel and Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. But they also feature lesser-known ones such as Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, daughter of the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, who dedicated her life to caring for people who were dying of cancer.
Conservative Catholic groups criticized some choices, especially Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago and Cesar Chavez, who struggled to unionize migrant farmworkers in California.
Wuerl -- who considered Bernardin a friend and role model -- makes no apologies, although some critics thought Bernardin favored too much change in the church.
Chavez, he said, was chosen "because his life speaks to something that is very American, the struggle to improve the economic status of a group of working people. ... But he infused into all of this the gospel spirit. So he seems the perfect example."
However, the final draft removed the Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton, who was originally the opening story. Every bishop on the committee had read Merton's bestselling 1949 autobiography about his journey from atheism to faith and thought he was an excellent example of a young American searching for God. But Merton, who died in 1968, is rejected by conservative Catholics who believe his later interest in Buddhist forms of prayer compromised his faith.
The main reason Merton was removed was because "the generation we were speaking to had no idea who he was," Wuerl said. "Only secondarily did we take into consideration that we don't know all the details of the searching at the end of his life."
Wuerl expects the new catechism to replace The Teaching of Christ, an adult catechism he co-authored in 1976 and that has been published in at least 12 languages.