The Fathers of the Council of Trent showed at a very early date
that they were satisfied with none of the existing works, and that
they were fully alive to the need and necessity of preparing an
authoritative Catechism. The realisation of their desire, however,
was retarded for several years by events over which they had little
control; and when the work was finally taken in hand another idea
prevailed, resulting in the publication of a manual for the use of
the clergy, and not, as originally suggested, a Catechism for
children and uninstructed adults. Of the countless Catechisms that
continued to appear, two - those of Bellarmine and Canisius - have
steadily held their ground ever since, and to a large extent have
served as the models of nearly an subsequent compilations of the
kind. The influence of Canisius, however, has on the whole been
limited to Germany; whereas Bellarmine's Catechism, which was
written by command of Pope Clement VIII in 1597, has been copied in
almost every other country in the world. At an early date it was
translated into Arabic, Latin, Modern Greek, French, Spanish,
German, English, and Polish. It had the warm approbation of Clement
VIII, who prescribed it for use in the Papal States; of Urban VIII,
who directed it to be adopted in all the Eastern missions; of
Innocent XIII and Benedict XIV; particularly of the very important
Council of all Italy, held at Rome, in 1725, which made it
obligatory in all the dioceses of the peninsula; and finally of the
Vatican Council which indicated it as the model for a proposed
universal Catechism. Though Bellarmine's Catechism was largely
followed as a model all over the world, yet, owing to the
modifications introduced in diocesan editions, it came to pass in
the course of time that almost every diocese had its own Catechism,
differing in many respects from the Catechisms of other dioceses.
The obvious inconvenience of this bewildering multiplicity of
Catechisms occupied the attention of the Fathers of the Vatican
Council, the great majority of whom were agreed as to the
desirability of having a uniform small Catechism for the faithful
all over the world. Early during the sittings of the Council,
forty-one of the assembled Fathers devoted six sessions (February
10 to February 22) to an examination of the question; and the
report which they drew up occupied the attention of the whole
Council during the sittings of April 29 and 30. The question being
put to a vote on May 4, an immense majority was found to be in
favour of the compilation of a small uniform Catechism, to be
compiled in Latin, translated into every language, and made
obligatory in every diocese. But the approach of the Italian troops
towards the walls of Rome brought the Council to an untimely end
and there was no time to promulgate the constitution on the
proposed uniform Catechism, so that it has not the force of law.
The idea, however, has never been lost sight of. During the sitting
of the first Catechetical Congress in 1880, the then Bishop of
Mantua (later St. Pius X) proposed that the Holy Father be
petitioned to arrange for the compilation of a simple, plain,
brief, and popular Catechism for uniform use all over the world.
Shortly after his elevation to the Chair of Peter, Pius X at once
set about realising, within certain limits, his own proposal of
1880, by prescribing a uniform Catechism - the Compendium of
Christian Doctrine - for use in the dioceses of the ecclesiastical
province of Rome, at the same time indicating that it was his
earnest desire to have the same manual adopted all over Italy. The
text selected was, with slight modifications, that which had been
adopted for some years by the united hierarchy of Piedmont,
Liguria, Lombardy, Emilia, and Tuscany.
General
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