Catechism texts unpalatable (Canada).

Victoria, B.C.--Owen Toop, who teaches Grade 8 in a parish catechism programme in Victoria, B.C., for students not attending Catholic schools, complains about a change in texts. For years he and others have been using the American Christ Our Life series, supplemented by the Faith and Life series, if the teacher wanted to use it. Now they are being required to use the CCCB's Born of the Spirit books. Toop's comments on the Grade 8 text in that series are most amusing.

The series seems to mirror the issues you would find in a CCCB press release, he says, rather than covering the teaching of the Magisterium. It is skimpy--only 8 chapters for a course covering 26 weeks--and has little depth. Toop says that it reads like his first-year Sociology text at university (being bored, he dropped the course). It downplays the really significant issues within the Church, such as abortion and euthanasia, and does nothing to inspire a sense of awe and respect. The Blessed Virgin is downgraded to "First Citizen of the Church". Holy Orders are "Orders", sacramentality is downplayed. There is no mention of evangelization.

The text seems to him to represent a kind of ironic triumphalism, "We are Catholics, isn't that wonderful?" His concluding judgment is very severe: "If we can maintain Catholicism with this text, it will be in spite of, not because of it." He adds: "It is also among the most out-of-date of any of the texts we have used--1988."