Why YOUCAT Should Be Recalled and Amended

All Catholics can rejoice over efforts to properly catechize Catholic youth, for they are the future of the Church and they deserve to be taught full, historical Catholic doctrine. Unfortunately, the recently published YOUCAT (Youth Catechism) for World Youth Day (August 16-21, 2011) contains several defects & ambiguities that depart from sound Catholic doctrine and that even contradict the Catechism of the Catholic Church — the very document that YOUCAT supposedly summarizes. Consequently, YOUCAT will introduce much confusion and uncertainty, and could cause young Catholics to lose their zeal or even to abandon their faith completely.

This summary critique has been written to help pastors, parents and young people identify YOUCAT’s doctrinal errors and other defects, so that they can inform those who have obtained YOUCAT of its problems. ⁽¹⁾ This document also provides readers with a link to a petition that respectfully asks the Holy Father to recall YOUCAT so that the defects can be corrected and an addendum issued for copies already distributed or, as an alternative, so that YOUCAT can be replaced with the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church or with a comparable document that does not contain defects. Large companies are often forced to recall products when dangerous defects are discovered; given that YOUCAT contains several dangerous defects that make it unacceptable for use by any Catholic, we similarly ask for its recall. ⁽²⁾

Six objections to YOUCAT are described below.