You don't get it. When John Paul became pope there WAS no catechism in use. Someone mentioned Father Martin. In the early '80s he wrote that the US Church was fractured, that those following Rome were decidedly in the minority. Noticed how so many priests resisted teaching it. It wasn't because they were traditionalists.
You're both right, it seems to me. I too was distressed by the fact that JPII often seemed to want replace everything (ranging from the Catechism to the Rosary) with his own version of it. But it's also true that tradition and the traditional sources had fallen into such disuse and were even regarded as quasi-forbidden that perhaps introducing a modicum of truth through his Catechism, which would be accepted simply because it was new and post- VatII, was better than nothing at all. And even so many radicals did not accept it.
That said, I wish he had reached back past VatII and simply insisted that people teach with the clarity and precision of the earlier Catechisms, and that these catechisms should have be used as the foundation for any new religious education materials and strategies.