Death of Bishop Emmett Doyle.

Kelowna, BC--One of the few surviving Vatican II participants, retired Bishop W. Emmett Doyle of Nelson, B.C., died in Kelowna, September 14, 2003 at age 90.

Born in Calgary, Father Doyle became Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Edmonton before being made Bishop of Nelson in 1958. He became interested in religious education and was named Canada's first national English director of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) program, as it was then called. During the heady days of the Second Vatican council, Bishop Gerard-Marie Coderre spearheaded the introduction of the Viens vers le Pore catechism from France and Belgium into Quebec in 1964. Bishop Doyle then oversaw the translation of the English version, known as Come to the Father multiple volume series, replacing the Baltimore Question and Answer Catechism booklet.

The Come to the Father catechism proved to be just as disastrous as its more famous 1964 counterpart, The Dutch Catechism, because it was just as deficient. In 1968, a panel of Roman cardinals ruled that, in the Dutch Catechism, ten major areas of Catholic teaching had been omitted. Among them were the direct creation of the human soul, original sin, the virginal birth of Jesus, the perpetual virginity of Mary, the atonement of sins by Jesus, the sacrifice of the Cross continued in the Eucharist, the infallibility of the Church, the hierarchical priesthood, and another nine major points of dogmatic and four points of moral theology. The Canadian Catechism showed many of the same omissions.

The Canadian bishops approved the French and English texts in 1966. Despite a storm of protest from parents across Canada, they denied that revisions, let alone a rewriting, were necessary. In 1974, they decreed that this was their book, and that's the way it would remain. They then began piecemeal revisions which failed to undo the omissions. As a consequence, two generations of Catholic. youth never got to know their Catholic faith. (For further details see the book Salvation Redefined by Lorene Collins, reviewed in C.I., April 2003, and available from C.I.)