Tuesday, June 28
COMPENDIUM!
Today, Pope Benedict released the compendium of the Catholic Church. It is in question and answer format, and includes the following:
- 200 pages
- 598 Individual Questions
- 15 "works of art" (To call it "illustrated" is a stretch)
- Section on Doctrine
- Section on Liturgy
- Section on Morality
- Section on Prayer
- An appendix of "Catholic Numbers": 3 theological virtues, 7 deadly sins
- An appendix of the Latin texts of many traditional prayers, including the Sign of the Cross, the Gloria, the Hail Mary and Come, Holy Spirit, etc.
The Pope specifically requested that the faithful learn these prayers in Latin.
One cardinal mentioned that the Q&A's might "even be memorized." Here is a sample question:
Question 1: What is God's design for Man?
"God, infinitely perfect and blessed, in a design of pure goodness freely created man to have him participate in his blessed life. In the fullness of time, God the Father sent his Son as the redeemer and savior of men, who had fallen into sin, gathering them in his church and making them adopted sons by the work of the Holy Spirit and heirs of his eternal beatitude."
I am not sure how easily memorized that is. However:
Question 472: Why should society protect embryos?
"The inalienable right of every human individual, from the point of conception, is a constitutive element of civil society and its legislation."
A memorizable length, if not a memorizable vocabulary.
Biggest Dissapointment: Only the Italian edition was released. National bishops' conferences will be responsible for translating and publishing the text into other languages. Aside from not-exactly trusting the USCCB translating crew, this means that the Compendium will be held up in Bureacracy for quite some time.
Rumor has it that the Compendium's text will be released tomorrow.
In vaguely related news, when I did an GOOGLE search for a picture of the Catechism of the Catholic Church (which I love, and agree with completely), I found THIS image, which suggests that, maybe, just maybe, the SSPX does have a sense of humor, afterall:
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
