Cover
story Publishers afraid to risk infidelity to new catechism
By ROBERT McCLORY
Special Report Writer
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, proposed by Pope John
Paul II as "a special gift" and "a sure norm for teaching the faith," may turn
out to be one of the least quoted documents in the history of U.S. Catholic
publishing.
Publishers are shying away from using substantial quotes from the
book to avoid an official U.S. bishops' review process that has resulted in
publication delays and has required some publishers to make significant
additions to or deletions from their projects.
The result is that readers will be "looking less and less at the
primary source [the catechism itself] and ending up with secondary sources or
commentaries," said Redemptorist Fr. Robert Pagliari, editorial director of
Ligouri Publications. "So the whole review thing seems to me to be
self-defeating."
"We'll use the '499 rule' in all our books," said another
publisher, who requested anonymity. "We will just make sure quotations from the
catechism never amount to 500 or more words" -- at which point manuscripts must
be submitted for review to the U.S. Bishops' Ad Hoc Committee to Oversee the
Use of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Under general provisions of copyright law, said the publishers,
the owner of a copyright must be notified if a book uses a total of 500 or more
words from another work. Applying conditions to the use of copyright material
is generally left to the owner of the copyright. Very often permission is given
with little bother.
The Vatican owns the copyright to the catechism and has insisted
that books using more than 500 words from the catechism be submitted for
permission to use the text. The committee established to oversee the copyright
approval has determined that any works submitted must also undergo a detailed
review process to determine if they "conform" to the catechism.
"There is a considerable amount of concern about the present
review process," said John Thomas, president of the Catholic Book Publishers
Association and marketing director for Paulist Press, "a feeling that
publishers are being driven to unnecessary limits. And there is certainly a
level of anxiety."
The 499 rule solves only one of the problems that have surfaced
since the ad hoc committee for the catechism was created by the National
Conference of Catholic Bishops in August 1995. Those most intimately affected
by the committee's supervision are publishers of catechetical materials, since
their works are subjected to a particularly rigorous review.
"I think all the logistical issues spawned since the committee's
creation may not have been appropriately anticipated or thought through," said
Neil Parent, executive director of the National Conference of Catechetical
Leadership. "We may be confronting a significant quagmire in the publishing
community." Nevertheless, he added, "we are extremely hopeful all these matters
can be worked through."
Little known committee
The little known and less understood ad hoc committee has several
major functions: "to supervise the use of the copyright for the catechism on
behalf of the Holy See, ... to review catechetical materials voluntarily
submitted as to their conformity with the catechism ... and to study the
feasibility of a national catechetical series based on the catechism."
The six members of the committee include Archbishop Daniel
Buechlein of Indianapolis, the chairman; Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston;
Archbishop William Levada of San Francisco; Archbishop Francis George of
Portland, Ore.; Bishop Donald Wuerl of Pittsburgh; and Bishop Alfred Hughes of
Baton Rouge, La. Another 12 bishops were recently appointed to assist the
committee in its work, but their names have not yet been announced.
An Office for the Catechism has been set up at the bishops'
conference headquarters in Washington to handle communications between the
committee and Catholic publishers. The staff consists of Fr. John Pollard, the
director; Fr. Thomas De Vries, coordinator of assessment and research; and two
administrative aides.
A catechetical work or series submitted for conformity review is
sent by the office to one of the bishops, who is assisted by several
catechetical and liturgical experts from a pool of 40 to 50 such persons
appointed by the committee. Names of members of the pool and their status as
clerical or lay have not been made public.
The principal review instrument is a 49-page "protocol" that lists
some 400 statements taken from the "In Brief" summaries at the conclusion of
each section of the catechism.
The bishop and his team determine whether the work is "in
conformity" or "nonconformity" on each of the statements by checking the
appropriate boxes in the protocol.
The entire process is confidential, so that publisher and author
have neither contact nor dialogue with the review team.
The results are sent to the full six-member committee, which
reviews the review. From there, it goes to the Office for the Catechism, which
relays the findings to the publisher.
Since the beginning of formal operations last March, said Pollard,
former head of the catechetical office in the Chicago archdiocese, 12 series or
partial series have been submitted. Three have been found to be in
conformity.
In some of these cases, substantive changes or additions were
required. Other submissions are still under study. The names of approved (or
rejected) series are not released by the committee. Pollard said the
committee's mandate is to study publications exclusively for their doctrinal
content. It is barred from taking into consideration such matters as pedagogic,
cultural or age-appropriate aspects of the work.
Serious questions
From the beginning major publishers of catechetical series,
including Silver Burdett Ginn, Brown-Roa and Sadlier, have had serious
questions about the details of the procedure. Such is the nature of their
apprehension that none of these major publishers was willing to speak to
NCR on the record about their concerns or experiences with the
committee.
However, from a variety of other publishers and catechetical
experts (many of whom also exhibited great apprehension about being quoted), as
well as off-the-record conversations, a picture of the troubling issues
emerges.
The publishers' first concern is the secretive nature of the
review, with no possibility of dialogue during the process. "It's frustrating
to have absolutely no input in the review," said a publisher. "We don't even
know who's looking at the material."
Pollard said the committee might reconsider this policy in the
future, "but at this point it feels comfortable in allowing the review team to
work independently."
A second concern is the potential conflict of authority between
the committee and local bishops who are authorized to grant imprimaturs to
catechetical works. What happens if the committee rejects a series and the
bishop gives it an imprimatur -- or vice versa? Who has the final word?
"I question whether the committee has the right to do what they're
doing," said Pagliari of Ligouri Publications. "The committee could be in
trouble for usurping canonical authority it doesn't have."
According to Pollard, there should be no conflict, since the
committee's concern is only "conformity" with the catechism, while an
imprimatur relates to "freedom from doctrinal and moral error." Nevertheless,
the two appear inextricably intertwined.
A third knotty issue involves the protocol, which is the basis for
determining conformity. "We are hoping the committee will look at the protocol
seriously," said Parent of the catechetical leadership conference. "It seems to
have shortcomings. It doesn't seem to lend itself very well to wide
application."
The protocol collapses the entire content of the catechism into
hundreds of discrete little boxes against which the publication is judged.
Dominican Sr. Catherine Dooley, a professor specializing in
catechetics and liturgy at Catholic University of America, noted that the
prologue of the catechism describes the book as an "organic presentation" to be
"viewed as a unified whole." The protocol, she said, "seems to destroy that
organic unity by using isolated summaries that do not do justice to the
book."
For example, in the section on scripture the catechism states, "In
order to discover the sacred authors' intentions, the reader must take into
account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at
that time and the modes of feeling, speaking and narrating then current."
The protocol presents only three short statements from the In
Brief summary at the end of this entire section, none of which mention a need
to consider culture, time or genre in interpreting scripture.
Equally problematic, said Dooley, is confusion about whether a
catechetical document is to be measured against everything in the protocol or
only against what is relevant to that particular work. In other words, must a
second-grade book explain the Trinity in all its myriad aspects as laid out in
the protocol, or may it concern itself only with what the publishers determine
is comprehensible at that grade level?
That sort of question is "a concern," acknowledged Pollard, since
the committee's mandate precludes it from considering the complexities of
methodology and pedagogy. But he speculated that the bishops would be inclined
to show sensitivity regarding age-specific texts.
More precise answers to such questions, said Pollard, could only
be given by Archbishop Buechlein, chairman of the committee. However, Buechlein
declined to speak with NCR, stating through an archdiocesan spokesman
that Pollard's explanations would be sufficient and he would have "nothing more
to add."
Carol Eipers, president of the National Conference of Catechetical
Leadership, said publishers and catechists realize that the bishops have every
right to direct catechetical education. "We want them, the chief catechists, to
be involved at every level," she said. But she too feared the process in its
present format views material in one narrow dimension.
"Doctrinal conformity is good," she said, "but there are other
considerations necessary in any review -- like teaching methodology,
developmental appropriateness and issues of inculturation."
In addition, Pope John Paul calls for the catechism to be
integrated with the documentary tradition of the church, she noted, citing the
various general and national catechetical directories that have guided
publishers in the past. How the new process relates to these documents is far
from clear.
Exclusive concentration on doctrinal conformity was especially
troubling to Gabe Huck, director of Liturgy Training Publications. The protocol
process, he said, "is acceptable to no one. The committee seems to be treating
the catechetical establishment as a child or adolescent to be watched over. To
think that the beauty and breadth of the faith can be somehow filtered through
a protocol of little boxes is to go nowhere. This sort of thing can only
strangle and confine the living faith."
Although submission of catechetical materials to the committee is
described as voluntary, publishers are fully aware that their business will be
in real jeopardy without committee approval.
Asked one publisher, "How likely do you think it would be that a
bishop will accept a series in his diocese if the committee has rejected the
series or if the publisher has declined to submit it?" Silver Burdett Ginn's
revised series, This is Our Faith, which recently received conformity
approval from the committee, already "has a leg up" on competing companies
still anxiously waiting for word, publishers agreed.
Silver Burdett is making certain that customers are made aware of
its favored status in advertising blurbs. Pollard said the committee's review
can take up to six months. Delays can throw off printing schedules, even
preventing a company from having its series advertised and available for
purchase at the start of a given school year.
"Catechetical publishing is a multimillion-dollar industry, the
competition is keen and timing is everything," said one publisher who requested
anonymity despite the relatively innocuous nature of his comment. Another said,
"What you have to realize is the interplay between publishers and bishops is
very, very delicate, and we do not wish to jeopardize it in any way."
Copyright permission
The committee's mandate to supervise the copyright on the
catechism has caused alarm in the broader Catholic publishing world, since
compliance here is mandatory, not voluntary. All publications (other than
strictly scholarly works) that quote 500 or more words from the catechism are
to be submitted to the U.S. Catholic Conference Office for Publishing and
Promotion to insure the excerpted works are used accurately. Then the
publication goes to the ad hoc committee to establish whether or not the entire
work -- including sections that do not quote or even refer to the catechism --
is consistent with the catechism.
Pollard said it is important to distinguish between "conformity
with the catechism," which applies to catechetical materials only, and
"consistency with the catechism," applying to any document quoting 500 words or
more from the catechism.
Materials in this latter category do not have to pass the protocol
test, Pollard said. They are scrutinized by the committee only to make sure
that "nothing contradictory" to the catechism is in them. But publishers are
concerned that the process of determining consistency is taking inordinate
amounts of time, creating scheduling snafus similar to those reported by
catechetical publishing houses.
Peter Dwyer, marketing manager at the Liturgical Press and
immediate past president of the Catholic Book Publishers Association, said his
company has not encountered problems yet, but he has heard comments that the
evaluation process is long and cumbersome.
Even more aggravating, he said, are reports of cases in which
publishers are forced to make changes or additions that do not appear to be
within the scope of the work (see accompanying story).
Yet complaints are muted, said Dwyer, because "if you're publicly
identified as a complainer you may be remembered in ways that are not helpful
to your organization." The more common reaction from publishers of works
dealing with the catechism is an invocation of the 499 rule.
Thomas of the Catholic Book Publishers Association said it would
be "most unfortunate" if a trend is established to quote the catechism
minimally or not at all. But publishers, he noted, are loath to submit to what
they perceive to be a kind of "reverse censorship" that takes away the voice of
the author and vitiates the purpose of the publication.
Bishop Robert Banks of Green Bay, Wis., chair of the bishops'
Committee on Education, said it "comes as a surprise" to him that documents
quoting from the catechism are subjected to such scrupulous scrutiny.
"I'm far removed from that [the committee on the catechism]," he
said.
"That's just the problem," commented a catechetical leader. "The
great majority of the bishops don't have the slightest idea what's going
on."
All the concerns have been made known to the committee during the
past year, and Pollard said all questions are taken seriously.
Last May the National Conference of Catechetical Leadership
submitted to the bishops' Office of Doctrine a list of 38 questions, many of
which related to the secrecy of the review, the meaning of conformity, the time
required for review, the credentials of the reviewing experts and the
peculiarities of the protocol.
Last June the committee members met with a group of Catholic
publishers. The dialogue was reported to be polite and extremely low-key.
Pollard said the publishers got full answers and did not appear to
be uneasy or threatened.
But the concerns remained, and the Catholic Book Publishers
Association at its meeting in California in February authorized the drafting of
a letter urging the committee to clarify procedures and calling for alterations
in the review process.
Also in February the catechetical conference arranged an ongoing
"linkage" with the bishops' committee, whereby Pollard will sit on the
conference representative council to keep the leaders informed and to solicit
feedback. The ad hoc committee itself recently sent letters to the major
catechetical publishers urging them to evaluate the process and to present
their own recommendations.
"We're applauding that move," Thomas, of the publishers'
association, said. "It's an indication of good will on both sides." The
bishops' conference is scheduled to review the committee's activities and
determine its future at its meeting next fall.
Regarding the proposed development of the U.S. bishops' own
catechetical program, there has been no progress and no apparent enthusiasm on
any side. "That's not going anywhere," Thomas said. "It would be completely
insane."
"I would have a concern from an ethical standpoint if the bishops
were to publish their own texts," Parent said. "It would put them in the
position of having their own series while they're reviewing for conformity or
nonconformity texts from publishers competing with them for business. It
wouldn't work."
National Catholic Reporter, March 21,
1997
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