Compendium At End Of March

The USCCB has been released that the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church will be released in English on March 31st–just over seven weeks from now.

Sweet!

This is gonna be good!

According to Catholic News Agency,

The new Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a 200-page synthesis of the 1992 catechism, will be available starting March 31 from the publishing office of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The compendium consists of 598 questions and answers, a format similar to the very popular Baltimore Catechism, which was a standard text in many Catholic parishes and schools, from 1885 to the 1960s.

The compendium is structured in four parts, like the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The text has some direct quotes from the catechism used as sidebars, but the questions and answers are original text.

In addition to the questions and answers, the compendium also includes two appendices. The first is a list of Catholic prayers. The second appendix contains “Formulas of Catholic Doctrine,” including the Ten Commandments, Beatitudes, theological and cardinal virtues, and spiritual and corporal works of mercy. Fourteen masterpieces of Christian art are also reproduced in the text.

GET THE STORY.

For those who can’t wait till then, I’d note that the Compendium is already online . . . but in Italian.

HERE’S THE LINK.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

16 thoughts on “Compendium At End Of March”

  3. USCCB Publishing….. Great.
    I would wager that if Ignatius Press were handling this, it would have been out last month.

  4. More importantly, who is in charge of the translation? That it’s taken so long to go to press makes me worried it’s been “improved.”

  5. I’m 33 years old, but my mother taught me using the Baltimore Catechism. I think it has helped me to understand the Faith and to be an orthodox source of info for my friends and co-workers with questions about their Faith.
    I’m glad that there’s finally going to be a version available based on the CCC.

  6. This Compendium is already available from Amazon.com with shipping dates of March 3 – 17!
    Mine is ordered and paid for and I look forward to receiving it very soon. Guess the USCCB is somewhat slow in mailing through their offices…

  7. I like that they use masterpieces of art. I loathed the baltimore catechism as a child, partly because of the illustrations. I find that the masterpieces strike a chord where words alone won’t.

  8. Breier: I don’t have a link handy at the moment, but a while ago I read that some of the delay was in fact because the original English translation was getting a bit … uh … creative.
    Fortunately, it was apparently caught and smacked down by Those Upstream. I imagine the delay in the subsequent go-round owes a lot to a more careful review process.

  9. Babblefish will translate the entire page for you, with only minor translation flaws…Example:
    From the answer to Q 18:
    “The Christian faith, however, is not “a religion of the Book”, but of the Word of God, than is not “one written and dumb word, but the incarnated Verbo and living” (saint Bernardo di Chiaravalle).”
    Dumb? That’s a fair translation of “mute”, but I’m not sure the connotation is quite what was intended…

  10. I am really glad they’re putting together a basic book of Catholic prayer. It may seem normal for a Cradle Catholic to know the standard prayer for, say, the Blessing of the Meal (Bless us O Lord, etc). But as a catechumen, I’m having the toughest time finding a good collection of some of the most basic Catholic prayer. I’m also looking forward to learning a few things about the Catholic faith with this book.

  11. Another babelfish funny:
    “CREED THE RISURREZIONE OF THE MEAT”
    …uh…do you mean “we believe in the resurrection of the body”?

  14. Yes, but they haven’t been shipping it yet. I saw it in Oct of last year already at Amazon, and it was for sale in Italy when I was there in the fall, but we’ve been waiting for the translation into English.
    I hope it was smacked down and we get a decent translation. I don’t trust the USCCB frankly any farther than I can throw the whole lot of them.

  15. I followed your link, Georgette. That’s NOT the new compendium. That’s the companion volume of sources for the existing Catechism. Be careful….

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