ABSTRACT
The first four decades of the twentieth century witnessed the onset of at least three major innovative thrusts in the realm of cathechetics within Roman Catholicism in the US Church. Each of the movements is associated with a few pioneers whose vision and conviction charted new directions in the field itself. This chapter examines the contributions of five such pioneers: Edward A. Pace, Thomas E. Shields, Peter C. Yorke , Edwin V. O’Hara, and Virgil Michel. In a retrospective overview of the twentieth century’s first forty years of formal education within Roman Catholic circles in the US one can identify two stages. The first might be labeled “Attempts to improve methods;” the second, a reexamination of the doctrinal corpus. Yorke, Shields, Pace, Michel, and O’Hara played significant roles in emphasizing one or the other, and in heralding the catechetical renewal in America.
