How easily we neglect the very centre of the Faith, the Blessed Trinity. We neglect, because of this, not only the heart of revelation, but a full understanding of our own source and destiny, the foundation of our lives and the spring from which our joy flows. The very roots of our catechetical work are mutilated or ignored so that the whole is gradually left to wither.

It is heartening to see the Bishops of the United States drawing attention to this catastrophe. The annual meeting between publishers and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee to Oversee the Use of the Catechism took place in September 2006. The bishops emphasised, as usual, the need for catechesis in conformity with Church teaching and produced a list of catechetical texts found to be in conformity with the Catechism of the Catholic Church. They also mentioned key areas where catechetical materials have been found to be deficient. Central to the list was the Trinity. The Bishops advised publishers ‘to have their writers and editors rely on using the revealed names for the Persons of the Trinity.’

God and Trinity

What has been happening? Rather than write of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, catechetical materials have tended to refer simply to ‘God’. There are times, of course, where it is important and accurate to refer to ‘God’, especially when we are catechising about the unity and oneness of God, about God as the Creator, as Almighty, and so on. Catechesis on God must cover God as both One and as Trinity.

Part of this neglect of the Trinity, of course, is the worry about referring to God in a gendered way, and so in order to avoid any reference to ‘He’ sentences awkwardly repeat the subject – ‘God revealed God’s Self to us’, and so on. But if we are concerned about the use of ‘He’, by implication we must also want to avoid reference to God as ‘Father’ or as ‘Son’, as well as traditional associated terms which imply a masculine subject – ‘Bridegroom’, ‘filial’, ‘master’, ‘Lord’; all come under a hermeneutic of suspicion and are quietly dropped. And so we are left with ‘God’, who has a unique relationship with ‘Jesus’.

The divinity of Jesus is also underplayed because if we were to acknowledge the full divinity of Christ, then we are dangerously uniting a divine Person with masculinity once again.

Documents in the English catechetical world at national level are still reluctant to emerge from this neglect of the revealed Names. The Report of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales Working Party on Sacramental Initiation, On the Threshold, for example, manages to compile a 66 page report of recommendations about RCIA without once referring to the Trinity, to the Father, to the Son or to the Holy Spirit. Yet the word ‘God’ is on every page.

Compare this to the document of Vatican II, Dei Verbum, where Father, Son and Holy Spirit are named 42 times, alongside 71 references to ‘God’. We can be grateful for the central catechetical reference points that unashamedly use the divine Names – the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Compendium, the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults, and so on, and we can hope that these will gradually have an impact upon the catechetical landscape.

Too difficult

In addition to this displacement of the names of the Trinity as a result of the suspicion of God’s Fatherhood and Sonship, there is also a neglect of a catechesis on the Trinity on the grounds that it is simply too difficult to explain and such catechesis would confuse people. I am sympathetic to the problem. When my son, Nicholas, was a tender four year old I attempted to catechise him about the One and the Three through the time-honoured means of the Sign of the Cross: ‘Did you notice, Nicholas, that we speak of the Name—singular—of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit? One Name; but three Persons’. My child raised a wary eyebrow, and asked to see a photograph.

The danger is to think that catechesis on the Trinity is an attempt to unravel a puzzle, whereas it is really to enter a mystery. You solve a puzzle by standing back from it and getting it clearly in your sights. But you discover a mystery by plunging into its depths.

We are called primarily to proclaim the Trinity, not to explain it. We are to speak simply and naturally about the Father and His love for the Son; of the desire of the Son of God to fulfil the will of His Father; of the mutual knowledge, love and union between Them, and so on. Only an understanding of God as personal and relational can make sense of the doctrine that God is Love. And of course we understand ourselves and our destiny only within this Divine relationship of infinite delight: we are adopted children of the Father, living in the Son through the power and joy of the Holy Spirit.

The Catechism urges us to make the Holy Trinity the centre of our catechesis, since the Trinity is ‘the source of all the other mysteries of faith, the light that enlightens them’ (CCC 234). It is as though we were entering a darkened room, cautiously feeling around us to try to identify the objects in the room, to make out the obscure shapes. Then the light is turned on and we can see where things are; outlines are filled in; shadows gain substance; variegated colours and rich hues appear. The Trinity is the light enlightening our catechesis. Let us not plunge the room into darkness.

This article is originally on page 4 of the printed edition.