Last fall I wrote about the seemingly imminent release of the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. My hope was that it would be released “just in time for Christmas” to provide the book with a gift-giving-inspired sales boost. Unfortunately, that was not to be. A representative from the USCCB publications office explained that unspecified “translation problems” in Rome delayed its release, first to January, and then finally to the end of March.
Well, the wait is over, and by every indication the Compendium is going to be a smash hit. The bishops’ conference rang up over 40,000 pre-publication sales of the book, and on its March 31 “opening day” it nearly cracked the Amazon top 100. According to Patrick Markey, associate director for marketing, sales and inventory, “pre-publication sales usually amount to one-third of the first-year sales.” That translates to about 120,000 and 200,000 copies sold in its first year. Not bad for a book that Catholic author and blogger Amy Welborn jokingly referred to as “unnuanced black-and-white oversimplifications,” an obvious reference to the disdain with which “forward thinking” Catholics hold anything smacking of “fixed” doctrinal content.
Bishop Donald Wuerl, past chairman and current member of the American bishops' Committee on Catechesis, provides the uninitiated with a straightforward explanation of the Compendium‘s purpose:
[It] offers a concise yet complete presentation of the faith. It presents an overview of the whole Cathechis [of the Catholic Church] without going into all of the details that enrich the Catechism. Its primary focus is to provide ready access in a concise manner to the content of the faith.
How the book does that is part of the story. To the delight of seekers everywhere, the Compendium reintroduces new generations of Catholics to the reliable Q&A format. Twenty-five years ago, Silvio Cardinal Oddi, the Prefect for the Sacred Congregation of the Clergy, defended this time-tested format from the attacks of members of supposedly “progressive” catechetical schools. He wisely observed that “specialists in internal medicine, engineering, and chemistry arm themselves with question-and-answer manuals to check themselves on recent developments in their respective fields.” (Any company with a sales force also must recognize the benefits of this approach, as F.A.Q. documents are standard components of new product-release kits. Ditto for magazine publishers and their always-popular advice columns.) The good cardinal then addressed the progressive complaint directly:
Captious critics have objected that the Faith is not a series of answers to contrived questions but a way of life. The answer to this objection might well be another question: How can we live a Christian life until we first “know the truth” (Jn 8:32)?
To that end, the Q&A format enables readers to commit the truths of the faith to memory. Indeed, “memorization” is one of the reasons Pope Benedict cites for issuing the Compendium. And thanks to its beautiful, crisp language, doing so can be a labor of love. London’s Catholic Truth Society, “publishers to the Holy See,” posted sample pages on their website. Read the following excerpt from the section explaining the “Our Father”:
Q. 596. What does “Lead us not into temptation” mean?
A. We ask God our Father not to leave us alone and in the power of temptation. We ask the Holy Spirit to help us know how to discern, on the one hand, between a trial that makes us grow in goodness and a temptation that leads to sin and death and, on the other hand, between being tempted and consenting to temptation. This petition unites us to Jesus Who overcame temptation by His prayer. It requests the grace of vigilance and of final perseverance.
To date, there is no coordinated plan by the USCCB to distribute free copies of the Compendium to parish-based leaders like DREs and pastors. So as I mentioned last fall, interested lay Catholics might consider buying extra copies to distribute as gifts. For about the price of a movie ticket, and in a mere 200 pages, you and others can learn the path to salvation Christ entrusted to His Church. Bargains don't get any better.
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Rich Leonardi, publisher of the blog Ten Reasons, writes from Cincinnati, Ohio.
