UPDATE: One of our contributors, closely involved with the Tradivox project, wished to add a public comment to this article:

This should come as no surprise. The same bishop [Kevin C. Rhoades] who chairs the OSV board behind Real + True still refuses to endorse our project [Tradivox], claiming that traditional catechisms foster a “hermeneutic of rupture.” Could there be a more glaring indictment of what is generally taught in catechesis today? Furthermore, we reached out in 2019. One wonders if Real + True was conceived as a response.

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Many of our readers know about Tradivox, the traditional catechism project under Bishop Athanasius Schneider, which looks to still be going strong, Deo Gratias.

But now, it looks like there’s some competition from the Novus Ordo side of the aisle, with the new release of … how does one put it… a rather different kind of catechism project.

When we heard about OSV’s “new global initiative” to “unlock” the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC), we just had to take a look. It’s called Real+True, part of “The Catechism Project” sponsored by Our Sunday Visitor.

Now, the very fact of Real+True being loved by Aleteia and produced by OSV should be enough to guess the kind of content one will likely find there: hip, trendy visuals with content ranging from the cringey to the heretical.

But again, we had to take a look.

We didn’t get very far.

No need to analyze subliminal color messaging, the false dichotomy between our Lord’s “Person” and “Doctrine,” or the appropriateness of ugly video in communicating the sacred…

…Instead, let’s focus on a claim.

The R+T mainpage video claims that the CCC is “a faithful echo of a God who desires to reveal Himself to us,” which is perhaps the funniest thing one could possibly say about the CCC, given that it has fundamentally changed its doctrine over the last few decades – a fact we had a bit of fun pointing out here.

To be fair, just like the CCC itself, it’s likely that much–perhaps even most–of R+T’s video content will be conformable to Catholic doctrine (even if potentially hazardous for epileptics). But even so, as far as we can figure, there are only three ways in which R+T’s above claim could be entirely true:

• God changed His mind on a few doctrines over the last 50 years.
• The CCC is a “faithful echo” like McCarrick is a faithful celibate.
• The “god” whose voice is echoed in the CCC is, in fact, a demon.

R+T plans to base itself on the CCC in order to show “What the Catholic Church actually teaches, about everything.” All we can say is: good luck! It’s nice that they have a savvy editing team – because who knows what “Church teaching” the CCC will redact next!

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Solidly Catholic Catechism Links

• Article on traditional catechesis here, and a linked list to some old catechisms here.
• Series analyzing the dismal 2020 Vatican document on catechesis: Part I, Part II, Part III
• Tradivox Catholic Catechism Index book series here.