The Nature of Doctrine in the Directory for Catechesis

This article notes the disappearance from the 2020 Directory for Catechesis of a chapter entitled « Christian Message » in the 1971 General Catechetical Directory and « This is Our Faith, this is the Faith of the Church » in the 1997 General Directory for Catechesis, a chapter that showed the need to add a kind of mini-catechism to a catechetical directory. This go hand in hand with a hypothesis : the change in the understanding of the nature of doctrine for the catechetical responsibility of the Church. To support this hypothesis, a diachronic reading starting from the Second Vatican Council and the first two directories and the analysis of the way the Catechism of the Catholic Church is presented in the new Directory, no 189, is necessary. The article argues that with this Directory we are witnessing an evolution in the conception of Catholic doctrine in its relation to Christian initiation : the end of a way of presenting the doctrine extrinsically to the catechetical process or, more positively, a way of conceiving catechetical processes as a form of the doctrine.