Levada's defense of the Catechism

After the initial publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church then Archbishop William J. Levada published a defense of the new catechism: The New Catechism: An Overview . I say “defense,” because while Levada's presentation of the CCC is an overview, it is also and importantly a response to criticisms that had been leveled at it. That Levada should have presented this defense or overview is hardly surprising, since Levada had been a principal editor of the CCC. Indeed, It was commonly speculated that the reason Pope Benedict XVI appointed Levada as his own successor in the post of Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith may have included Levada's work on the CCC as well as the fact that the two of them had worked together at the CDF in the past (2000-2003). What I wish to draw attention to in Levada's defense of or presentation of the CCC is the strain of what can only be described as fideism which he displays, in common with his mentor, Joseph Ratzinger/B16. (We previously drew attention to that in our discussion of Ratzinger's lecture on Biblical interpretation: Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The 1988 Erasmus Lecture). In addition to this fideistic strain, the two men also share another tendency of the Nouvelle Théologie—a conviction that a return to a greater emphasis on the Patristic authors, the “Fathers” of the Church, is a key to renewal in the modern Church. Included in that is a devotion to Patristic modes of scriptural interpretation and a skeptical (if not downright hostile) attitude toward modern historical-critical interpretation—this despite Benedict's repeated but grudging acknowledgments that the historical-critical approach must, in fact, take precedence.