Well that's good to know ;-). But I wonder what how will you react if John Paul II is "instantly" canonized? Will you defend it? We shall see.
The biggest problem with the CCC is that the doctrine is buried within a lot of unnecessary verbiage that leads to confusion. It states a doctrinal truth, then it diminishes the original statement with a whole lot of imprecise, wishy washy, "on the other hand" stuff. It may have been written for the laity, but the majority wouldn't bother to wade through it. Besides, if it is so clear, why has a whole industry of lay apologists, affectionately known as "the lay magisterium" sprung up to help the laity understand it? It is also my understanding that it was not originally written in Latin, but French, a far more nuanced and imprecise language which has lead to translation and interpretation problems.
This is actually my favorite catechism:
Although you may find it too simplistic, for I believe it was geared toward high school students, it is an awesome teaching tool and I find the illustrations especially delightful. I use it for my own child's instruction. I wish I had known about it when I was still teaching CCD.
I don't really find that ("doctrine is buried...") true of the CCC in general. But, there is nothing wrong with using an older catechism...even Card. Ratzinger himself has said it's perfectly fine to use the St. Pius X Catechism (I think this was in DICI?).
As for writing it in French, that is also unfortunate (Ecclesiastical documents should be in Latin!). My understanding is that new translations are supposed to be from the Latin, though (Interestingly, the Roman Catechism was itself translated from Italian! Apparently even in the 1500s they couldn't manage to produce a Latin original).
Thanks, murph, I put it in my "stuff to buy" folder