Rome (Agenzia Fides) - Tradition "is to guard the fire, not to worship the ashes". This attests the evocative aphorism coined by Austrian composer Gustav Mahler. A formula often repeated in recent times by Pope Francis. This is also how he tells, in his own way, the story of the Congregation of the Fathers of Christian Doctrine (Doctrinaires), summarized in the video made for Fides by Emiliano Sinopoli.
To "guard the fire" of Christian life and transmit it from generation to generation, the Catholic Church has also used catechism as a simple tool, the ordinary practice of clearly expounding the contents of the apostolic faith.
For centuries, through the usual tool of the catechism, the Church has helped young and old, saints and sinners alike to call the things of the life of grace by their name. Grace and sin. Salvation and perdition. Charity and corporal and spiritual mercy.
In the face of the current reality, repeating the elementary things of the Christian faith once again becomes an act of supreme charity, for the good of souls. Now that, as Pope Francis repeated, "I am saddened to see so many children who, to this day, do not even know how to make the sign of the cross".
On the other hand, the speeches of those who continue to repeat that "the catechism is not necessary and is not adapted to our time" seem more and more obsolete, outdated and irrelevant. It is precisely now - and after all, it has always been and always will be like this - one begins and continues to walk in faith while always remaining a beginner, as myriads of male and female saints testify with their lives.
"Catechism", repeated in an interview Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna (who also participated for years in the team responsible for compiling the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the great synthesis of Catholic doctrine published in its first version in 1992), "has more to do with the image of the child when he learns to speak from his mother. He learns words, and the words are the names of the things he discovers, and it is all a surprise, a novelty".
The great French philosopher Étienne Gilson said that everything he needed for his life of faith he had found in his catechism. And the poet Charles Péguy also repeated that his faith was all in the catechism of the diocese of Orléans, "the catechism of his native parish, that of small children".
Catechism can never become a pretext for presumption and pride. On the contrary, it suggests that we are always beginners in the Christian life. Compared to catechism, the child and the teacher always remain on the same level. All small, before the mysteries of faith.
The catechism itself teaches that doctrine, by itself, does not save. It is not the doctrine in itself that saves souls. In those who teach the catechism with a Christian heart, there can never be the claim that the formulas of doctrine can contain and exhaust the realities they indicate. Saint Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologiae, clarified that "Fides non terminatur ad enuntiabile, sed ad rem". The act of believing does not end with the enunciation of what is believed, but in the very experience of the object of belief. Simply, even the newness of Christianity is communicated through the ordinary processes of life, with the normal mechanism with which news is communicated, which is that of the questions children ask and the answers they receive. Every catechist is called to explain the truth as clearly as possible. And at the same time, he recognizes and attests that the possibility that those truths are accepted in the hearts and minds of those who listen to him does not depend on him. In the Acts of the Apostles, it is always the Holy Spirit who opens the doors of hearts to the words preached and heard.
The missionary adventure of the catechetical apostolate permeates the entire history of the Congregation of the Fathers of Christian Doctrine. An ecclesial adventure that flourished in Provence, on the threshold of the modern era, starting from the experience of Cèsar De Bus. In the second half of the sixteenth century, after having returned to the life of faith thanks to the example of a seamstress and a sacristan (uneducated people, socially distant from the upper-class circles his family frequented), Cèsar felt the urge to promote an accessible catechism, aimed at the people, using simple concepts, parables, similitudes and illustrations to communicate to all and according to the different possibilities of reception the contents of the catechism "ad parochos", the doctrinal synthesis prepared for priests, fruit of the Council of Trent.
The story of César de Bus and of the priestly Congregation initiated by him is marked by misunderstandings, hardships and experiences of persecution. After the French Revolution, four doctrinaires refused to adhere to the civil constitution of the Clergy and were martyred. Irrigated also by the blood of martyrs, the spiritual experience of the Doctrinaires continues to walk in history. Struck by the originality of his catechetical style, Paul VI proclaimed Father Cèsar blessed on April 27 in the 1975 Holy Year, pointing him out to the Church as a model for catechists. Pope Francis proclaimed him a saint on May 15, 2022.
Today, the Doctrinaires are present in France, Italy, Brazil, India and Burundi, asking every day "that everything in us be catechized", as one of their slogans reads.
Even today, working in such distant and diverse countries, the Congregation of the Fathers of Christian Doctrine everywhere share the desire to make catechism accessible to all, so that everyone can encounter the Lord in the simplest way possible. Their horizon continues to be defined by the proposition stated in their motto: "In doctrinis glorificate Dominum". (Agenzia Fides, 17/2/2023)
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