...from the Introduction to the Catechism of the Catholic Church by then Cardinal Ratzinger:
How can the objective truth of the Church's doctrines and the intensely personal character of the believer's possession of them be combined? "For many years...anglophone catechists and faith-educators have been obliged to work out of a cluster of theoretical attitudes that plumbed heavily for the personal, subjective aspect, to the serious detriment of their students' confident recognition of the Church's doctrines as objective truths." [Eric d'Arcy, "The New Catechism and Cardinal Newman"]. So, we are badly in need of an up-to-date account of doctrine's place in a complete education in faith. This would require overcoming a still very strong emotional antipathy to doctrinal catechesis.
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...The propositions of faith form a body of doctrines called, in Christian language, the depositum fidei. "Guard the deposit" (1 Tim 6:20), "guard the noble deposit" (2 Tim 1:14), St. Paul says to his disciple. "Guarding the deposit of faith is the mission which the Lord entrusted to his Church and which she fulfills in every age." These are the first words of John Paul II's apostolic constitution for the publication of the CCC.What is "the deposit"? [Newman asks]. That which hath been intrusted to you, not which thou hast discovered; what thou has received, not what thou hast thought out; a matter, not of cleverness, but of teaching; not of private handling, but of public tradition.
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