The people of the Netherlands have contributed a colorful vocabulary to our work-a-day English. W may have Dutch cheese enjoyed with a Dutch uncle while on a Dutch treat. A Dutch oven is useful. A Dutchman’s pipe is a beautiful vine. And the literary possibilities of a “Dutch door”- with lower half shut and the upper remaining open are limitless. One thinks of a politician, a theologian or a father giving a decision to junior about the use of the family car.

The Catholics of Holland have now added these post-conciliar terms: the Dutch Canon (an abbreviated Eucharistic prayer), the Dutch Pastoral Council in which representatives of the whole church took part) and the Dutch Cathechism (soon to be published in the United States). The catechism has been called “the revolutionary, fascinating presentation of our faith that speaks to us as we live, love, hope, doubt and believe in today’s world”. It will appear soon in the United States. It is for adults, not for children. That will come later. And it is in readable not question and answer style.

That Wonderful Generation

From the summaries and reviews I have read, the new Dutch catechism is an answer for the thinking but troubled American Catholic. While many of us have welcomed the new liturgy and ecumenism, the new involvement in social problems, there are also many good Catholics who are deeply disturbed by changes. I do not mean the rebellious traditionalists or those who want to turn the altar around.

I mean the loyal and devoted Catholics who grew up in Catholic homes and a Catholic atmosphere. They went to confession regularly and Mass every Sunday, Holy Communion was their spiritual food. Extreme Unction their last preparation. The Rosary was their prayer-link.

And when we think of our parents, of older priests, and nuns, the whole generations of those who followed the pre-Vatican ways, we know that no real Catholic could spurn them. The faith in American is what it is because they made healthy use of this great gift. Catholic home-life was basically good. They have been generous to schools and missions and the needy. Dearest of all to those of us in a consecrated priesthood or religious life are the memories of the parents and priests and sisters of the generation who guided us in a special manner to God.

We stand on their shoulders, just as the pioneers of Vatican II depended upon the spiritual insights of the bishops and theologians of the decades since Vatican I in 1869-70. Old breed or young breed, no Christian can forget the core of the Church—continuity, “I will be with you all days,” said Our Lord.

Thinking, Disturbed Catholic

Those who wonder about changes in the Church are often more mature than the “ready-for-anything” Catholics. In fact, they will probably, because of their concern for sound tradition, be the chief force in keeping the new liturgy from becoming a new rigidity, and ecumenism from turning into flat “togetherness.” Even the social community and community involvement so vital today must be kept from reducing priests and sisters to social workers. They must be in the world, speaking out, leading, understanding with compassion, demonstrating and picketing when it is wise. All this is true and urgent, but there is little gain to the world or the Church when priests and sisters forego their role as mediators, guides and workmen with grace, in the name of the Christ whom they have vowed to serve.

Big Question, Solid Answers

What the thinking Catholic wants to know today are answers in depth to the big questions: “You have made us for yourself”—what of other approaches to Christ (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and especially the way of the Jewish covenant. Who is Christ? What is the Church? The sacraments? The commandments out of this knowledge, he can carve the religious reality of his life. He can educate his children not to be a catalog of do’s and don’t but to a whole Christian life. He can judge his duties to his wife, his friends, his neighbors, his community. The imperatives of him living both as an American citizen and a human being in mankind can be merged.

The traditional-minded and the renewal-minded Catholics do not realize how close their needs are. And, conversely, those who have formed a resistance movement are of course as disobedient and disloyal as the free-lancers who do whatever they or their followers want.

But the great majority of our Catholic people, in my judgment, fall into neither class. And although I have spoken out for liturgy, academic freedom, civil rights and peace, I stand in the midst of all our people, loving them, trying to serve them, trying to bring them to a greater love for the Church.

A Dutch Treat

That is why I welcome the new adult catechism out of Holland, and why I hope that our best minds will give us many more books of this kind in English. Instructions, homilies, pamphlets, journals, pastoral letters and every other device of teaching must continue the Christian tradition, while at the same time they update its application. This is 1967 not 323, 1564 or 1869.

What Catholic could fall to become absorbed in the solid, interesting, modern interpretation of the old truths of the faith that the new Catechism offers? It opens with the very question that troubles every man: What happens when man ceases to take things for granted? This is what the Catechism asks in a section called “The Mystery of Existence.”

Then comes the various “Ways”—to Christ, Christ the Son of man, the Way of Christ, the way to the end.

Critics have pointed out that the section on the Church is probably the finest. Father Bernard Cooke, S.J. adds, “Were a person really to make his own the mentality that produced this volume, he would have a deeply Christian outlook on life”. There are weak points, the critics assert, but by and large, the book is for every Catholic in this year of 1967.

Thinking With The Church

There is a saying in theology: “sentire cum Ecclesia”. It means that the measure of our Catholic faith is to think with the Church.

But it means really to think with the Church today, in this home, in this city, in this world. The Dutch Catechism gives us an excellent guide. It will be on sale soon at the Notre Dame Book Store—and it can be ordered now.

Paul J. Hallinan

Archbishop Of Atlanta