I once told a Director of Religious Education at our Parish that my homeschooled children were using catechism books that were structured in a similar fashion (question/answer) to the Baltimore Catechism. You would have thought I committed a mortal sin. His reaction was stunningly cruel and ultimately made us seek another parish. So many DREs ridicule the Baltimore catechism to the point that the mere mention of the name can cause your children to be punished by being refused the Sacraments. What they wanted me to use was very poor catechetical materials with poor art work and even poorer theology. The great dumbing down of catechism is what is harming the Church in this country. Feeding the flock (from 1st grade on ) euphemistic pap is a mortal sin in my opinion!
???? refused the Sacraments for using the Baltimore Catechism? Unbelievable.
Look up "catechism" in the dictionary. It is commonly recognized that what makes a catechism different from other books is that it is in a question-and-answer format.
Years ago when I decided to read Pascendi Dominici Gregis by Pope St. Pius X, 1907 ("On Modernism" is the English title usually used), the material was just too hard to understand. Then one day I found a book written by one Fr. Lemius, named "The Catechism on Modernism." A quick glance at the contents told me I had to get this one. And boy, was I glad I did! The fact that it asks a question first made all the difference. By asking the question, I was able to think about what my answer would be. In this book, the questions were very difficult to answer unless you had studied and understood Pascendi. Therefore, the questions being asked went directly to my weaknesses by not having assimilated the material.
It is like programming a computer or running a filing system. The first thing you do is create mail boxes in which you can store data. The catechism asks questions and thereby creates mailboxes so you can keep the information at hand and useable.