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Méthode pour enseigner aux catéchumènes les éléments du Christianisme

CHAPITRE VIII.

MÉTHODE POUR INSTRUIRE LES PERSONNES ÉCLAIRÉES.

12. Voici un point essentiel Quand une personne d’un esprit cultivé se présente à toi pour se faire instruire, si elle est déterminée à embrasser le christianisme et prêle à recevoir le baptême, elle a déjà, selon toute vraisemblance, acquis une connaissance assez étendue de nos saintes lettres, et elle n’a d’autre intention que de participer aux sacrements de I’Eglise. Ces personnes, en effet, n’attendent pas le moment d’embrasser la foi pour s’instruire; elles pèsent auparavant leurs motifs, et, chaque fois qu’elles trouvent un confident, elles lui découvrent leurs pensées et leurs sentiments. Dans cette circonstance, il faut être court; et, loin de s’appesantir sur les vérités qu’elles connaissent, on doit les effleurer avec tact, en leur disant que nos dogmes sont telle et telle vérité qui leur est sans doute familière. On expose ainsi, dans une énumération rapide, tous les principes qu’il faudrait inculquer aux simples et aux ignorants. Grâce à celle méthode, un homme éclairé ne se voit point enseigner, comme à l’école d’un maître, ce qu’il sait déjà; et, en revanche, s’il ignore quelque chose, il l’apprend par la revue même que nous avons l’air de faire de ses connaissances. Il ne sera point inutile de lui demander quels motifs l’ont déterminé à se faire chrétien; si tu t’aperçois qu’il a puisé ses convictions dans la lecture de livres canoniques ou d’excellents traités, débute par l’éloge de ces ouvrages , en admirant, à des degrés divers, l’autorité infaillible de l’Ecriture, et l’exactitude jointe à l’élégance de ses interprètes; attache-toi à faire ressortir dans l’Ecriture l’expression féconde, par sa simplicité même, des vérités les plus sublimes, et dans les traités qu’elle inspire, selon le mérite de chaque auteur, une éloquence d’un tour plus pompeux et plus orné, appropriée à l’orgueil et par là même à la faiblesse des esprits. Il est important de lui faire dire quels ont été ses auteurs favoris, les ouvrages qu’il a médités de préférence et qui l’ont déterminé à embrasser le christianisme. Cet aveu obtenu , si nous avons lu ces ouvrages ou que nous ayons appris, par la renommée dont ils jouissent dans l’Eglise, qu’ils ont pour auteur un représentant illustre de la foi catholique, empressons-nous de les approuver. Au contraire, est-il tombé sur les ouvrages d’un hérétique, et, dans son ignorance des erreurs opposées à la religion, s’y est-il arrêté comme à l’expression de la foi catholique, il faut lui démontrer avec force la prééminence que mérite l’autorité de l’Eglise universelle unie à celle des génies supérieurs qui, dans le domaine des vérités qu’elle enseigne, ont brillé par leurs controverses et leurs écrits.

Reconnaissons cependant que les auteurs mêmes qui sont morts dans la foi catholique, après avoir légué à la postérité des ouvrages écrits sous l’inspiration chrétienne, soit qu’ils aient été mal compris, soit qu’ils n’aient pas eu la vigueur d’esprit nécessaire pour remonter aux principes les plus élevés, et pour s’attacher à la vérité sans être dupes de la vraisemblance, ont laissé dans certains passages des germes d’hérésie que des esprits aventureux et téméraires ont développés. Il n’y a pas lieu de s’en étonner; l’Ecriture [67] même, l’expression la plus pure de la vérité n’est pas à l’abri de ce péril. Que de gens, non contents de mal interpréter la pensée de l’écrivain sacré ou d’offenser le dogme, fautes qu’on pardonne aisément à la faiblesse humaine quand on la voit disposée à les reconnaître, s’acharnent, s’acharnent avec une opiniâtreté et un orgueil invincibles à justifier leurs méprises et leurs erreurs, et, en rompant avec l’unité catholique, donnent naissance aux opinion les plus dangereuses ! —Voilà les principes qu’il faut développer, dans une conférence sans prétention, aux esprits qui s’élèvent au-dessus du vulgaire par leur érudition et leurs lumières, quand ils aspirent à entrer dans la société chrétienne ; on doit prendre le ton dogmatique, pour les préserver des erreurs où entraîne la présomption, mais il ne faut le prendre que dans la mesure même de l’humilité dont ils sont capables. Quant aux vérités qui constituent la saine et pure doctrine, soit qu’on raconte, soit qu’on raisonne, il faut toucher brièvement les points relatifs à la foi, à la morale, aux tentations, en observant la méthode supérieure dont je viens de tracer les règles.

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On the Catechising of the Uninstructed

Chapter 8.--Of the Method to Be Pursued in Catechising Those Who Have Had a Liberal Education.

12. But there is another case which evidently must not be overlooked. I mean the case of one coming to you to receive catchetical instruction who has cultivated the field of liberal studies, who has already made up his mind to be a Christian, and who has betaken himself to you for the express purpose of becoming one. It can scarcely fail to be the fact that a person of this character has already acquired a considerable knowledge of our Scriptures and literature; and, furnished with this, he may have come now simply with the view of being made a partaker in the sacraments. For it is customary with men of this class to inquire carefully into all things, not at the very time when they are made Christians, but previous to that, and thus early also to communicate and reason, with any whom they can reach, on the subject of the feelings of their own minds. Consequently a brief method of procedure should be adopted with these, so as not to inculcate on them, in an odious fashion ¹ things which they know already, but to pass over these with a light and modest touch. Thus we should say how we believe that they are already familiar with this and the other subject, and that we therefore simply reckon up in a cursory manner all those facts which require to be formally urged upon the attention of the uninstructed and unlearned. And we should endeavor so to proceed, that, supposing this man of culture to have been previously acquainted with any one of our themes, he may not hear it now as from a teacher; and that, in the event of his being still ignorant of any of them, he may yet learn the same while we are going over the things with which we understand him to be already familiar. Moreover, it is certainly not without advantage to interrogate the man himself as to the means by which he was induced to desire to be a Christian; so that, if you discover him to have been moved to that decision by books, whether they be the canonical writings or the compositions of literary men worth the studying, ² you may say something about these at the outset, expressing your approbation of them in a manner which may suit the distinct merits which they severally possess, in respect of canonical authority and of skillfully applied diligence on the part of these expounders; ³ and, in the case of the canonical Scriptures, commending above all the most salutary modesty (of language) displayed alongside their wonderful loftiness (of subject); while, in those other productions you notice, in accordance with the characteristic faculty of each several writer, a style of a more sonorous and, as it were more rounded eloquence adapted to minds that are prouder, and, by reason thereof weaker. We should certainly also elicit from him some account of himself, so that he may give us to understand what writer he chiefly perused, and with what books he was more familiarly conversant, as these were the means of moving him to wish to be associated with the church. And when he has given us this information, then if the said books are known to us, or if we have at least ecclesiastical report as our warrant for taking them to have been written by some catholic man of note, we should joyfully express our approbation. But if, on the other hand, he has fallen upon the productions of some heretic and in ignorance, it may be, has retained in his mind anything which ⁴ the true faith condemns, and yet supposes it to be catholic doctrine, then we must set ourselves sedulously to teach him, bringing before him (in its rightful superiority) the authority of the Church universal, and of other most learned men reputed both for their disputations and for their writings in (the cause of) its truth. ⁵ At the same time, it is to be admitted that even those who have departed this life as genuine catholics, and have left to posterity some Christian writings, in certain passages of their small works, either in consequence of their failing to be understood, or (as the way is with human infirmity) because they lack ability to pierce into the deeper mysteries with the eye of the mind, and in (pursuing) the semblance of what is true, wander from the truth itself, have proved an occasion to the presumptuous and audacious for constructing and generating some heresy. This, however, is not to be wondered at, when, even in the instance of the canonical writings themselves, where all things have been expressed in the soundest manner, we see how it has happened,--not indeed through merely taking certain passages in a sense different from that which the writer had in view or which is consistent with the truth itself, (for if this were all, who would not gladly pardon human infirmity, when it exhibits a readiness to accept correction?), but by persistently defending, with the bitterest vehemence and in impudent arrogance, opinions which they have taken up in perversity and error,--many have given birth to many pernicious dogmas at the cost of rending the unity of the (Christian) communion. All these subjects we should discuss in modest conference with the individual who makes his approach to the society of the Christian people, not in the character of an uneducated man, ⁶ as they say, but in that of one who has passed through a finished culture and training in the books of the learned. And in enjoining him to guard against the errors of presumption, we should assume only so much authority as that humility of his, which induced him to come to us, is now felt to admit of. As to other things, moreover, in accordance with the rules of saving doctrine, which require to be narrated or discussed, whether they be matters relating to the faith, or questions bearing on the moral life, or others dealing with temptations, all these should be gone through in the manner which I have indicated, and ought therein to be referred to the more excellent way (already noticed). ⁷