Parents, the primary religious educators of their children, became confused by the unexplained changes. Teachers and priests, who themselves were not always well trained, found themselves under attack by conservatives opposed to change. Vatican officials worried about the unity of the faith. Bishops were caught in the middle between opposing groups. In the United States, the changes in religious education have been accepted by the vast majority of the Catholic people.
Improvements continue to be made as teachers become better trained.
But concern about the content of religious education continued at the highest levels of the church. At the 1985 synod of bishops, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston called for the writing of a catechism for the universal church. This suggestion was adopted by the synod, and the pope appointed a papal commission to draft the catechism that the bishops have now received. In order to answer these and other questions, I recruited 15 scholars in Scripture, catechetics, and systematic, moral, and sacramental theology. Each studied the catechism and wrote papers analyzing it from the perspective of their particular specialties.