Church teaching can sometimes feel overwhelming, but Father Dave welcomes Father Daniel Mahan to help make the Catechism more accessible. Father Daniel is the first director of the USCCB’s Institute on the Catechism and the author of “A Journey through the Catechism: Unveiling the Truth, Beauty, and Goodness of the Catholic Faith.”
Father Daniel explains that the Institute on the Catechism seeks to make Church teaching more personal. “It’s not just about the facts, but rather, it is a matter of the heart,” he says. “It’s a matter of falling deeper in love with the Lord and a matter of the hands as well, putting faith into practice.”
LISTEN: What Is the Catechism?
Father Daniel describes how he started educating others on the Catechism when the English translation was first released in 1994. “I noticed that many people came up to me very proudly carrying their Catechism, and they really wanted to read it,” he recalls. “They said, ‘Father, can you help us with this?’ Because they found it very difficult to read. A number of people found it to be almost impenetrable, especially with the very dense thesis paragraph that is at the very beginning of each section.” This request turned into lectures and later videos to help explain Church teaching.
He intends for his new book to be a companion to the Catechism. “I point out the most important features in each of [the Catechism’s] sections,” Father Daniel says. “I try to do so with a pastoral tone, not just saying ‘this is what the Church teaches,’ but why and how do the particular teachings of the Church help us to grow closer to the Lord? Each and every one of those teachings is an entry point into a deeper relationship with Jesus.”
Father Dave notes, “There are some folks, even if they’re practicing Catholics, that might look at the Catechism like a big thick book and say, ‘Well, that’s the big book of rules.’ Some people might see the rules as a barrier. In the third section of your book, though, you actually talk about how following rules and keeping commandments increase our freedom.”
LISTEN: Homily – Why Live the Rules
Father Daniel responds, “Freedom doesn’t mean just doing whatever we want, but doing what is good and what we’re meant to do. Freedom is the product of discipline, like someone who can just sit down at a piano and play so beautifully. That’s not an innate gift; that is developed over the course of lots and lots of piano lessons, even when a person doesn’t want to be sitting behind the piano taking a lesson. It builds that person up in the virtue of being able to play so beautifully, and so it is with the teachings of our faith.”
“[Church teaching is] meant to form us into the people that we are truly meant to be,” he continues. “People who think not primarily of themselves, but of others. People who are thinking not just about the treasures of the earth, but the treasures that we store up in heaven. True freedom means being a follower of the Lord who is the way, the truth and the life.”