[lbo-talk] M. Parenti joins the New Atheists?

[C. G. Estabrook]

Doug, the catechism you remember spending your childhood memorizing (could it 
have been the 1885 Baltimore Catechism?) is not the text Chris is referring to, 
a quite different (and much larger) document produced a decade ago.

The catechism form became popular for obvious reasons among the competing creeds 
of the Reformation - so popular in fact that Engels' original draft of the 
Communist Manifesto was in catechetical (Q & A) form (and he referred to it as 
such). In the 20th c. Joyce and Ted Hughes used the form literarily.

The 20th century saw a spate of Catholic catechisms, the best probably the 
so-called Dutch Catechism of 1967. --CGE

Doug Henwood wrote:
> 
> On Mar 24, 2010, at 2:07 PM, Chris Doss wrote:
> 
>> He's probably completely unaware that the Catechism of the Catholic 
>> Church says, in black and white, that Genesis is allegorical and even 
>> spells out in what sense. That would require intellectual honesty and 
>> research (oh no!).
> 
> As someone who spent his childhood memorizing the catechism of the 
> Catholic church, I can tell you that intellectual honesty and research 
> have little to do with that preposterous document. It's about drilling 
> doctrine unquestioningly into the heads of the young and gullible.
> ...