Catechism of the Catholic Church
June 14, 2007 — Rev. Fr. Jessie Somosierra, Jr.
The New Catechism of the Catholic Church
In 1985, our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, summoned an extraordinary session of the International Synod of Bishops. This was to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the closing of the Second Vatican Council, which concluded in 1965. The purpose of this extraordinary assembly was to see what effect the Council had on the Universal Church in the twenty years that had passed since its closing. In the course of that extraordinary assembly of the International Synod of bishops, a proposal was made by Bernard Cardinal Law, the Archbishop of Boston, to issue a universal catechism, a compendium of the Catholic Faith.
In his remarks, His Eminence, Cardinal Law, pointed out that young people in Boston, St. Petersburg (at that time called Lenigrad) and Santiago in Chile, all enjoyed the same culture. They wore blue jeans and listened to the same kind of music. There was no reason then, the Cardinal pointed out, why they could not also have a certain uniformity in their appreciation and acceptance of Catholic doctrine.
The Cardinal was picking up on a very strong suggestion made in several learned papers delivered in Paris and Lyon in France by Josef Cardinal Ratzinger in 1983, in which His Eminence focused attention on the breakdown of organic catechetics which has taken place since the late 1960’s. Cardinal Ratzinger said, “One no longer has the courage to present the Faith as an organic whole in itself, but only as selected reflections of partial anthropological experiences founded in a certain distrust of the totality. It is to be explained by a crisis of the Faith, or more exactly, of the common Faith of the Church of all times.”
On June 22, 1994, the English-speaking world began to enjoy the fruit of the intervention of Cardinal Law in 1985, and of the far-sighted and fore-sighted speeches of Cardinal Ratzinger in 1983.
Pope John Paul II, in issuing the Catechism stated:
A catechism must present faithfully and organically the teaching of Sacred Scripture, the living Tradition of the Church, and the authentic Magisterium, as well as the spiritual heritage of the Fathers and saints of the Church, in order to allow the Christian mystery to be known and to revive the faith of God’s people. It must take into account the presentations of doctrine which the Holy Spirit has entrusted to the Church over the centuries. It must also help to illumine with the light of faith the new situations and problems which have not been posed in the past. The Catechism, therefore, contains both the new and the old, for the Faith is always the same and the source of ever new lights (Apostolic Constitution, Fidei Depositum, no. 2).
The text of the Catechism itself says:
This Catechism stresses the presentation of doctrine. Its aim is to aid in deepening the knowledge of the Faith. By doing so, it is meant to increase the maturity of the Faith, to root Faith in life, and to make it evident through personal witness.
Catechisms and the Catechism
The Catechism with which we are, perhaps, most familiar in pre-Vatican Council days, is known as the Baltimore Catechism. This catechism was collaborated on by the Bishops of the United States in the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, which took place in 1884. It was put together and finally issued in 1885 by Cardinal Gibbons who, at the time, was the head of the American hierarchy. It took the American Bishops from 1829 to 1885 to put together the Baltimore Catechism, which in turn, derived from what was called the Roman Catechism or the Catechism of the Council of Trent. This document, similar to the Catechism of the Catholic Church which came out on June 22, 1994, was issued in 1565 by Pope Saint Pius V, and was to be the basis of various national catechisms and textbooks.
The Baltimore Catechism was set out in a question-and-answer format, and while its focus and emphasis was not necessarily that which contemporary pedagogues would appreciate, or for that matter, some theologians, liturgists, Scripture scholars and others, it did have the great advantage of being a more or less complete skeletal outline of the Catholic Faith. Although it was often presented in books that lacked illustrations and were dry – both in the graphic presentation of the material and in the way it was presented – the Baltimore Catechism should not be faulted since it also had many advantages, and it certainly formed and trained many generations of Catholics in our country in a correct knowledge of our holy religion.
The Baltimore Catechism, which was issued in 1885, was revised by a committee of American Bishops in 1941, and it was set out in a formula that geared it to various educational levels. It also was, at that time, permitted to be a basis for other catechetical presentations in the United States, and, consequently, enjoyed a more vigorous revival in the decades immediately preceding the Second Vatican Council.
Catechesis in Church History
The history of catechisms in the Catholic Church goes back to the very earliest days of the Church. There is a document called the Didache, which sets out in a rather systematic way the beliefs, practices, and moral imperatives of the early Christians. The Didache dates from the end of the first century, and so, it is an extraordinarily ancient type of catechetical document.
The earliest Fathers of the Church frequently set out a series of catechetical instructions to be used mainly in pre-baptismal preparation; that is to say, in the first centuries of the Church, most people who became Catholics were already adults, and, as a result, they had to undergo a catechumenate or a preparation for Baptism which included instruction in belief, in practice, in prayer and in Christian life, before they were accepted into the Church. It was generally presumed that the children of such converts, who were themselves baptized in infancy, would be instructed by the families who had received a thorough catechetical preparation for Baptism.
Among the Fathers of the Church, the most significant in the development of catechetics and catechisms was St. Augustine, who wrote a classic work called, De Catechizandis Rudibus, or “How to Catechize the Ignorant,” linking salvation history to faith, to hope, and ultimately to charity. It was presumed in St. Augustine’s work that ignorant people who were instructed in the Faith would themselves provide home instruction to their children, and that this instruction would be supplemented by liturgical homilies in church.
St. Gregory the Great, the first Pope who bore that name, also was an important figure in catechetical development. He wrote a series of “Books of Dialogue” which expressed to pastors, parents, and teachers the proper way of handing down the Faith, as well as giving to these people the content of the Faith. He also wrote a book of pastoral regulations for Bishops and for priests, and a long series of pastoral homilies which contain catechetical material of great significance.
It must be remembered that the art of printing with movable type was invented by John Gutenberg in approximately 1450, and until that time books were extremely rare, and frequently were only in manuscript form, and extremely expensive. As a result, illiteracy was far more widespread than even today in the Third World. This meant that for many people their catechetical instruction came, not so much from books, but the living word passed on in families, and also, passed on in the liturgy. The readings from Scripture in liturgy and the sermons of great length were, in the pre-television, pre-entertainment, pre-radio age, a source of fascination and enjoyment for large numbers of people, as well as a source of instruction.
The great cathedrals of the Middle Ages were in themselves a living catechism. The statuary and the magnificent stained glass windows were books of the Bible as well as books of catechism for the people who regularly attended Mass in these beautiful and splendid buildings. By simply going about buildings such as the Cathedral of Cologne, or the Cathedral of Milan, or the Cathedral of Bruges, or the Cathedral of Brussels, or the Cathedral of Rouen, one could find an entire compendium of the Catholic Faith and of the story of salvation history centered on Jesus Christ. As printing came into vogue and paper was more widely and readily available, books of catechetical material became widely diffused throughout the Church.
Great missionary saints, such as St. Bede, St. Alquin, and St. Boniface, were extraordinary catechists. Even great geniuses who worked in the theological sciences, such as St. Thomas Aquinas, also popularized the content of our faith and were known for writing and diffusing catechetical instructions. The Mendicant Orders, that is, the Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites and similar groups that arose in the high Middle Ages, were particularly effective in spreading the Faith, and in assisting those who already believed, to have a better grasp of their faith through catechetical knowledge.
It was in the Middle Ages where the distinction became blurred between what we might call “evangelization” and “catechetics.” In Scripture, one can see a very clear line between what is called kerygma and didache, kerygma being the proclamation or announcement of faith to those who do not yet believe. This proclamation must be done, of course, in a fascinating, interesting, and coherent way, so that logic and beauty coincide and help bring one to belief. Didache, on the other hand, is something that succeeds kerygma. Once one believes and accepts the Faith, then examination of that Faith in its entirety – its implications and its history, and so on – must be set forward in a systematic and regular way.
These two concepts of kerygma and didache correspond, more or less, to the concepts of evangelization and catechetics, evangelization being the initial approach to people with the Gospel of Christ, and catechesis being the completion and crowning of the work of evangelization. These distinctions, even in our day, are not always well-maintained, and perhaps, they should not be, since obviously, evangelization must contain catechesis and catechesis must be deeply involved in the structure of evangelization.
One of the deplorable developments in the history of the Church was the decline in religious knowledge in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. Clergy were frequently unworthy of their calling and were often selected, at least in the lower ranks, from ignorant classes, education of the clergy being sometimes of a minimal sort, and occasionally being more worldly, secular, and profane than theological and doctrinally complete. Lay people themselves oftentimes walked in ignorance and superstition. This matrix or soil was very fertile for the Protestant Revolution, and when attacks against the Faith were made by the so-called “Reformers,” large numbers of bishops, clergy and lay people were led astray for many reasons, not in the least because of their failure to grasp in a systematic, organic and complete way, the realities of our Catholic Faith.
The need for catechisis became very acute at the time of the Protestant Revolution. This was particularly the case because Martin Luther was a very skilled propagandist, as well as an excellent user of the newly-invented art of printing. He was also a good pedagogue and a master of the German language. This enabled him to propagate his ideas by means of catechetical instruction. The Catholic answer in catechetics came from such people as St. Peter Canisius. He was the paramount Catholic catechist of the 16th century, and he formulated what later became the standard procedure for catechetical activity: he issued under his studious care a large catechism, also called “a major catechism,” which was a rather exhaustive compendium of the teaching of the Catholic Church. Then he issued, deriving from the large catechism, a smaller catechism which was put in question-and-answer form, and which was meant to be a popular textbook, intended to be widely diffused among the laity for their instruction. The major catechism was intended mainly for teachers, catechists and the clergy; the smaller catechism was meant as a summary or precis of the larger catechism and intended for wider diffusion.
The Council of Trent, which was summoned to confront the crisis that the Protestant revolt brought about in Christianity, intended to draft two catechisms – one for the learned, and one to be for the unlettered and children. Only the first was completed in 1566. The purpose of this catechism was to communicate the realization “that all Christian knowledge and eternal life is to know Jesus Christ, that to know Christ is to keep His commandments, and to know that charity is the end of the commandments and the fulfillment of the law.”
This catechism of the Council of Trent was the basis for the Roman Catechism issued by Saint Pius V in 1565, and later revised and issued again in 1583 by Pope Gregory XIII. The Catechism of the Council of Trent particularly, because of its completeness and its doctrinal orthodoxy and integrity, was strongly recommended by Pope Leo XIII, Pope St. Pius X and Pope Pius XI.