Talk:Catechism

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Sanskrit etymology?[edit]

Is there any reason to keep this fanciful Sanskrit etymology, especially unsourced? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.250.93.152 (talk) 13:32, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Untitled[edit]

The "improved definition" says the same thing as the old definition, in denser language. It is not an improvement. I've merged the two versions, to stop the competing reverts. I should point out to the anonymous editor, however, that Catechetics is not actually the act of instruction itself, but the science of instruction. Mkmcconn — 16:27, 18 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Unverified claims about Catholic teaching[edit]

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (see below) is the catechism that is most widespread use among Catholics today. It is the official Catechism of the Church. (No sources, but it's true!)

For Catholics obedient to the Pope of Rome (are you a catholic otherwise?), all the canonical books of the Bible (including the six books which do not appear in the Hebrew canon), plus the current Catechism of the Catholic Church or an approved compendium, constitute the complete and best resource for fully attaining to God's revelation to mankind. (This is clearly NOT roman catholic teaching; when the CC only accepts three on each other depending sources for understanding of the revelation: The Holy Scripture, The Sacred Tradition and the Magisterum (which is defined in the catechism as: "Bishops, with priests as co-workers... are authentic teachers, of the apostolic faith, endowed with the authority of Christ." pagph. 888) (So this is not the same thing as a catechism!)

Catholics believe that Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition are expressed by the Catechism (Not the catechism! "The Magisterium": the communion of the bishops togheter with the people) of the Catholic Church are both necessary for attaining to the fullest understanding of all of God's revelation. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 213.67.174.43 (talk) 22:00, 23 December 2006 (UTC).[reply]

NPOV, unencyclopedic, where do I begin?[edit]

The section on the Catechism of the Catholic Church is overlong, filled with non-neutral POV and purple prose, and overall is unencyclopedic. Just a few excerpts that I find somewhere on the scale of "questionable" to "ridiculous":

  • "a work of remarkable organization and breadth, containing articles of elegant reasoning and historical insight"
  • "may construct any lesson needed for the time-tested Socratic Method of posing and answering questions, or for other methods, with complete confidence in the fidelity of the answers"
  • "It also functions admirably for individual study as well"
  • "avoiding any mistaken comparisons to simplified Q&A teaching aids"
  • "the serious catechist quickly realizes that this teaching tool accomplishes its ideal suitability to task through its definitive subject index, intelligent frontmatter tables, strict absence of redundancy, exhaustive footnoting"
  • "writing style that fulfills a seemingly impossible balance between concise definition and transparently readable clarity"
  • "Catechists find that it functions admirably both for individual or group reference and as an on-the-spot teaching aid"
  • "Such an excellently made map to its subject is it, that facility with its contents easily constitutes facility with definitive Catholic teaching"
  • "Its excellence of execution can stand as a best practices model for the 21st century scholar's art"
  • "its' excellent subject index elegantly provides the functionality of a Question and Answer format but with a far greater degree of flexibility"
  • "Because of the excellent index, teachers can easily reference The Catechism of the Catholic Church for answering questions 'on the fly' with the highest confidence in its fidelity to the subject matter"

Let's set aside the sheer frequency of the word "excellent" in a passage that praises "strict absence of redundancy" for now... I've got no problem if the author is a fan of the Catechism, but this does not fit "a best practices model for the 21st century scholar's art." --Kuronekoyama 04:14, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]


I agree with you whole-heartedly on this matter and made the appropriate edits along with adding a bit of content. When I have more time I will try to enrich this section. -- A.Augustinus


Seconded, and added {{POV-section}} before ever seeing the debate here. --Neurophyre(talk) 08:14, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I took a stab at cleaning up the section, but left the POV tag as a pointer to this discussion. --Neurophyre(talk) 08:27, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Catechism of the Catholic Church is addressed to the laity[edit]

Fidei depositum does not say that the Catechism is not for the laity. The Apostolic constitution is addressed to all the People of God. It says that the Catechism is presented to the whole Church. This Apostolic constitution appears at the front of the Catechism (Runwiththewind 22:19, 17 July 2007 (UTC))[reply]

The Evangelical Free Church Catechism[edit]

Can anyone expand/add information about this this entry? I believe this took place in 1898 and was the 'bringing' together of the non-conformist faiths with representations from the Congregationalists, Baptists, Wesleyan Methodists, Primitive Methodists, the Methodist New Connexion, United Methodist Free Church, Presbyterians, and Bible Christians. MBorrill (talk) 06:45, 6 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Doctrinal Catechism[edit]

I noticed an older 19th century catechism called the Doctrinal Catechism, which was commonly quoted in Catholic-Protestant polemics in times past, and which is still quoted by a few contemporary authors. It is perhaps notable and would maybe deserve to be included in this page or in a related stub article. [1] ADM (talk) 07:46, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Citation needed for revision of the Westminster Shorter Catechism[edit]

I don't have a problem with the use of the "revision of the Westminster Shorter Catechism" as an illustration of the catechetical format of question & answer, but I believe a citation is needed -- especially since the answer to Question #2 is in direct contradiction to the original answer, which is:

"The Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him."

Evan Donovan (talk) 19:39, 20 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

"Penny Catechism" typo?[edit]

Should issued through the century read the centuries?Autarch (talk) 20:42, 22 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Popular catechisms were Luther's idea[edit]

It doesn't come across in the article that the 1566 Roman Catholic catechism for everyone was one of the suggestions for church reform made by Luther in his early years, and was a part of the counter-reformation. Probably the one that affected the man in the street most, as he intended.86.42.215.188 (talk) 20:59, 14 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

i.e. to indoctrinate[edit]

much I agree with the statement, even an atheist heathen like myself might consider the leap from "sound down" to "indoctrinate" a little POV.

Also, looking back to see when it was added (i.e. whether is was a recent perhaps vandalistic addition) I saw it's been there since... http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Catechism&diff=prev&oldid=281047915

April 1. 2009. I think we've been had guys... 88.109.52.217 (talk) 23:06, 31 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Merger proposal[edit]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The result of this discussion was to merge. MartinZ02 (talk) 17:12, 10 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I propose that Ignorantia sacerdotum be merged into Catechism, under Catholic catechisms. I think that the content in the Ignorantia sacerdotum article can easily be explained in the context of catechisms, and the catechisms article is of a reasonable size in which the merging of Ignorantia sacerdotum will not cause any problems as far as article size or undue weight is concerned. JanetteDoe (talk) 20:42, 13 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree... that sounds like a reasonable idea. The alternative might be to merge the Ignorantia sacerdotum article into the John Peckham article, intead. I'll leave it for others, more expert than I, to decide :-) TheAMmollusc (talk) 13:15, 19 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Non-Christian catechisms[edit]

This entire section is bullcrap.

No citations, and the Zodiacal catechism quoted is from page 176 of Alice A. Bailey's book "A treatise on the seven rays: Esoteric astrology."

Bailey's work was dictated to her by her spirit guide D.K., a.k.a the Tibetan; she never claimed any physical-world material sources. Hence, utter bullcrap by encyclopedic standards.

I'm not deleting it yet because some of what is stated might be worthwhile info if sourced. Bustter (talk) 23:47, 6 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Get where you're coming from. Do you have a suggested replacement drafted or are you suggesting that whole bit goes? Stalwart111 03:40, 7 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Vedas[edit]

The Vedas have historically been taught to progeny and passed along generations through sound, much before they were written down. I guess I'm going for the literal interpretation of 'catechism' here, when I ask if they should be included in the non-christian catechisms, or, given the staggering history, even discussed in greater detail.

While one argument against considering them as catechisms could be the lack of question answer formats - (the Bhagvad Gita notwithstanding): wouldn't any spiritual corpus play advocatus deus AND advocatus diablo in pondering over and clarifying these matters? How does it matter if done in an active voice or a passive voice? Moreover, any text that deals with philosophically heavy topics surely can't be limited to short and snappy answers. Where do we draw the line between short answers and short questions that make for conversational back-and-forth, and between 'long' answers that may as well be sermons? 220.224.246.97 (talk) 09:18, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would guess the simple answer is that we draw the line at what we can verify with reliable sources. As in, it doesn't matter what our interpretation might be, only what is available in reliable sources. I think to be included we would probably need a source (or two) that refers to the texts as a "catechism", at least a "catechism of sorts" or something like that. Our interpretation of the texts wouldn't really matter if multiple reliable sources say something like, "these are considered a form of catechism by some" because we would simply include it on that basis - "some believe the Vedas texts to be a form of Catechism because...{{cite}}"
Beyond interpretation, on the matter of length or depth of coverage, the texts have already been given extensive coverage at their own article (which seems well sourced) so the need for an extensive section in this article probably isn't there, only because we can {{main}} template that article from this one anyway. If there is some context around whether or not it is a catechism and who interprets it that way and why, etc, then that would likely be what is covered here - the part that directly relates to the subject of the article. Does that make sense? Stalwart111 09:50, 12 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Catholic Catechism links[edit]

Several of the links leading from the Catholic catechisms to their online texts lead to a verifiably anti-Catholic (and personal) website. It would perhaps be ideal if alternative, neutral links to the texts of these catechisms be used instead, or at the very least if a page from a Catholic site were to be used. IMHO it's better than the current links we have now. 24.185.252.161 (talk) 20:53, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Specifically the links for the Douay Catechism and the Catechism of Christian Doctrine. 24.185.252.161 (talk) 20:57, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

 Done Inappropriate links have been removed. Stalwart111 23:29, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Eastern Orthodox Catechism[edit]

Consideration for an Eastern Orthodoxy section with at least citations referring to The Longer Catechism of the Orthodox, Catholic, Eastern Church (e.g. http://www.pravoslavieto.com/docs/eng/Orthodox_Catechism_of_Philaret.htm), would be helpful to improve the article. 


Dr.khatmando (talk) 01:50, 14 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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