By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
The Vatican has temporarily suspended publication of YouCat, a new youth catechism, due to a mistranslation in the Italian edition which gives couples permission to use contraceptives.
The Catholic News Service is reporting that a spokeswoman for the Citta Nuova, the publishing arm of the Focolare lay movement, has said that the Italian edition of the youth catechism has been temporarily suspended to allow the publishers to “examine the text.”
At question is a section of the 300-page Q&A catechism which reads: “Can a Christian couple turn to contraceptive methods?” In the Italian edition, the answer reads: “Yes, a Christian couple can and must be responsible about their capacity of being able to give life.”
The answer goes on to correctly state Church teaching, that the use of artificial means of contraception is forbidden, but couples can use natural means to regulate births.
This error was not found in the original German text of YouCat, nor in the English edition which was published by Ignatius Press.
The German text of question 420 “asks whether a Christian married couple may regulate the number of children they have. It does not ask whether the couple may use methods of contraception,” wrote Mark Brumley, president of Ignatius Press, on the Ignatius Press blog, Insight Scoop.
“I don’t know why the Italian translation reads as it does, nor do I know how it came about that it reads as it does, but it should be fixed to reflect, without ambiguity, the church’s teaching that contraception is evil.”
The Italian edition, which was released on March 30, sold 14,000 copies in five days, according to a Citta Nuova press release. At that time, the company said it had printed 46,000 copies with 17,000 more on order, making it the third best-selling religious book in Italian, behind the Pope’s Jesus of Nazareth and a biography of Pope John Paul II.
YouCat will be translated into at least 13 different languages and about 700,000 copies will be distributed to young people taking part in World Youth Day 2011 in Madrid.
Pope Benedict wrote the book’s foreword and said he wanted to supplement the Catechism of the Catholic Church by translating it “into the language of young people.”
Vatican officials are expected to address these developments at a press conference to be held today.
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