Seán Ó Conaill: Is YouCat Unwittingly Heretical?

YouCat Q98

Q. Did God will the death of his only Son?

A. The violent death of Jesus did not come about through tragic external circumstances. Jesus was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). So that we children of sin and death might have life, the Father in heaven “made him to be sin who knew no sin” (2 Cor 5:21). The magnitude of the sacrifice that God the Father asked of his Son, corresponded to the magnitude of Christ’s obedience: “And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, for this purpose I have come to this hour” (Jn 12:27). On both sides, God’s love for men proved itself to the very end on the Cross. 

[YouCat – The Youth Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2011 – Article 98]

[The following text is the complete unaltered final processing of a dialogue between Sean O’Conaill and the Microsoft chatbot ‘Copilot’ – Jan 28, 29 2026] 

Is YouCat Unwittingly Heretical?

1. The Core Problem: A Catechetical Vacuum

YouCat presents the Catholic faith in a simplified, youth-friendly format. But in doing so, it omits several foundational elements of the Christian theological tradition:

• Satan as a personal agent of deception and rebellion
• The angelic sin (superbia) as the root of violence
• The genealogy of human violence in Scripture
• The distinction between God’s positive will and permissive will

These omissions are not minor. They create a conceptual vacuum in which violence has no intelligible origin outside of God. When the roots of violence are not explained, the only remaining explanation for violent events in salvation history becomes God’s will.

This is precisely what happens in YouCat Q98, which attributes the crucifixion solely to the will of God, without reference to human or demonic agency.

2. The Risk: A Heretical Implication

Catholic doctrine is clear:

• God cannot will moral evil.
• God cannot be the author of sin.
• God does not directly will violence.

Yet YouCat’s formulation risks implying that God willed the violent actions of the crucifiers. This is not formal heresy, but it is a catechetical deficiency with heretical implications.

Teenagers reading YouCat could reasonably conclude that God directly willed the injustice, cruelty, and murder of Jesus. If a catechetical text can lead to such a conclusion, it requires revision.

3. The Missing Category: Superbia (the Sin of Satan)

The tradition has always explained violence through the lens of superbia—the angelic sin. Superbia is not “pride” in the modern sense of dignity or self-respect. It is:

• the refusal of truth
• the refusal of limitation
• the refusal of humiliation
• the militant defence of status
• the will to dominate

This is the sin of Lucifer, the sin that gives rise to all violence in Scripture: Cain, David, Herod, the Pharisees, and ultimately the crucifixion.

But YouCat never names superbia. It never names Satan. It never names the refusal of truth. It never names the militant self-protection that drives human violence.

Without these categories, the crucifixion becomes unintelligible except as an act of divine will.

4. The Linguistic Collision: The Church’s Problem with “Pride”

The Church traditionally translated superbia as “pride.” But modern English has developed a new, positive meaning of “pride”:

• dignity
• self-respect
• refusal of unjust shame
• reclamation of identity

This is morally good and entirely unrelated to superbia. Yet the Church continues to use the same English word for two opposite realities.

This creates confusion:

• “Pride” as dignity is good.
• “Pride” as superbia is the root of all sin.

To avoid confusion, some Christians now use the phrase “sinful pride,” but even this does not appear in YouCat. In fact, YouCat avoids superbia altogether—just as it avoids Satan.

The result is a catechesis that cannot explain violence through the tradition’s own categories.

5. The Consequence: God Becomes the Only Agent

When YouCat omits:

• Satan
• superbia
• the genealogy of violence
• the refusal of truth
• the militant defence of status

then the crucifixion has no perpetrators except God.

This is why YouCat ends up attributing the crucifixion solely to God’s will. Not because the Church teaches this, but because YouCat has removed the categories needed to say anything else.

6. The Constantinian Shadow

This catechetical vacuum echoes a much older problem: Constantine’s claim that God sanctioned Christian violence.

The New Testament never makes this claim. The pre-Constantinian Fathers rejected Christian violence. But once the Church aligned with imperial power, it struggled to articulate a coherent theology of violence.

YouCat inherits this unresolved tension. By failing to explain violence through superbia, it leaves open the Constantinian logic that God can will or sanctify violence.

7. The Path Forward: Restoring the Tradition’s Clarity

The solution is not to abandon the tradition but to restore it:

• Reintroduce superbia as the root of violence.
• Distinguish clearly between God’s positive and permissive will.
• Recover the biblical genealogy of violence.
• Clarify the difference between dignity (“pride”) and the angelic sin.
• Name Satan as Scripture and tradition do.

If these elements are restored, the crucifixion becomes intelligible again:

• Human beings, driven by fear and militant self-protection, commit violence.
• Satan instigates the refusal of truth.
• God wills Christ’s non-violent obedience, not the violence inflicted upon Him.

This is the Gospel’s own structure.

8. Conclusion

YouCat is not formally heretical. But its omissions create a catechetical environment in which a heretical conclusion becomes thinkable: that God directly wills violence.

This is avoidable. And it can be corrected.

The tradition already contains the tools—superbia, the angelic sin, the genealogy of violence, and the distinction between God’s wills. Restoring these to catechesis is not optional. It is necessary for the integrity of the faith.

[Copilot ends]