It is said that all translators are traitors. 

The new youth Catechism, YouCat, has just been released, and it has created quite a storm in the Catholic blogosphere. Early reports suggested that the book promoted contraception for married couples.  The original version was written in German, and it was overseen by Cardinal Christoph Schonborn.  Some Catholic bloggers assumed that it was deliberate. Well the Cardinal has been known to make the kind of comments that elicit a “huh, did he really say that?”

But I suspected that there was a less sinister and more mundane explanation, so I kept out of the frey. The US edition is published by Igantious Press, so I was confident that the book is faithful to the teachings of the Church.

Guess what! It was a translation error. In one language edition—Italian.

Catholic News Service reports:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Distribution of an Italian edition of a new youth catechism was temporarily suspended because of a translation error concerning the church’s teaching on contraception.

Thousands of copies of the Italian translation of “YouCat,” a recently released supplement to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, erroneously left the impression that Catholic couples could use “contraceptive methods.”

As a result, “the product is temporarily suspended, but not halted,” so that the Italian publisher can “examine the text,” Elena Cardinali, a spokeswoman for the Citta Nuova editorial group, told Catholic News Service April 12. Citta Nuova, the publishing arm of the Focolare lay movement, handled the Italian edition of the catechism. Continue reading here.

I have read sample pages of  youth Catechism, and I think that it  will be a great tool.