At first glance, Every Sacred Sunday’s new edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church may look like a typical coffee table book, but inside is more than 500 pages of church teaching carefully crafted to be both displayed and read.
Every Sacred Sunday is a small Catholic publishing company based in Houston. Founded by Kassie Manning and Christie Peters, its mission “is to invite each person into a deeper relationship with Christ by creating spiritual resources inspired by the beauty of the Catholic Church,” according to the company’s website.
The pair said that they had a desire to make the Church’s teachings more beautiful, accessible, and prayerful. They wanted to draw people in with beauty, with this version of catechism acting as a physical reminder to orient people’s lives around their faith — placing the teachings of the Church at the center of their home.
The team behind this new edition of the catechism features several Catholic artists and designers, including Katherine Ahmann, a parishioner of St. Rita Church in Alexandria.
Ahmann comes from a background in graphic design with an undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Early on, she worked doing package and graphic design for Mattel Toys and Shell Oil. She later went back to school to earn a master’s in theology from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America in Washington.
In 2007, she began her own graphic design studio, Design Q, for her work as a freelance graphic designer. For the past decade, she has worked regularly with the diocese on the annual report and in support of the Bishop’s Lenten Appeal, among other projects.
Ahmann became involved in the catechism project through a mutual friend, one of the photographers featured in the book. The creators reached out looking for a layout designer with Catholic design experience and who was Catholic themselves. She was eager to join the team.
“There have been a lot of new editions to the Bible, which have been very beautiful and valuable contributions to the Catholic Church, but I think the catechism has not been one of the priorities,” she said.
Originally asked to create 10 template pages, she came back with 30 after extensive discussions about font sizes, page dimensions and word counts.
“I’m a real stickler for margins,” she said. “I wanted a lot of breathing space on the page because the text is so heavy. We needed space for the words to come alive and for people to be able to rest in what the church was sharing and for the beautiful teachings and photography to stand on their own.”
The full production process took nearly five years. On Ahmann’s end, she worked on it for a few months before the birth of her now 5-year-old daughter.
“Once I sent the template pages off they kind of took it and did their part, so I didn’t get to see the pages as they were getting done,” she said. “I had to trust they kept the integrity of the design that I had given them, and they did. It’s really beautiful.”
Much of the process was understanding how the church laid out its teachings and finding the balance between traditional and modern themes. “I wanted to make something that was timeless and beautiful and not be distracting from the words,” she said.
Ahmann said that working with Catholic organizations has made her work more fulfilling. “This, in a way, is so much greater than me,” she said. “If I had some small part in them reading something and drawing them closer to God, that’s what I find most rewarding.”
Find out more
Every Sacred Sunday’s edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which was reviewed and approved for use by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is available at everysacredsunday.com. For more info on Katherine Ahmann and her work, go to designqstudio.com.
