Doctrinal Catechism;

A DOCTRINAL CATECHISM; WHEREIN DIVERS POINTS OF CATHOLIC FAITH AND PRACTICE ASSAILED BY MODERN HERETICS ARE SUSTAINED BY AN APPEAL TO THE HOLY SCRIPTURES, THE TESTIMONY OF THE ANCIENT FATHERS, AND THE DICTATES OF REASON ON THE BASIS OF SCHEFFMACHER'S CATECHISM. BY THE R E V. S T E P H E N K E E N A N. THIRD AMERICAN EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED, CONFORM ABLY TO THE DECREES OF THE COUNCIL OF THE VATICAN. "Try all things, and hold fast that which is good."—THESS. V. 21 IMPRIMATUR: + JOHN CARDINAL McCLOSKEY ARCHBISHOP OF NEW YORK P. J. KENEDY AND SONS PUBLISHERS TO THE HOLY APOSTOLIC SEE 3 AND 5 BARCLAY STREET NEW YORK APPROBATIONS OF THE ORIGINAL EDINBURGH EDITION. A Concise Summary of Arguments, Authorities, and Proofs, in support of the Doctrines, Institutions, and Practices of the Catholic Church, is here presented in a very convenient form, as an additional antidote against the unceasing effusions of antagonist Ignorance and Misrepresentation. The Believer will be hereby instructed and confirmed in his Faith, and the sincere Searcher after Truth will here find a lucid path opened to conduct him to its sanctuary. There is much important matter condensed in these unpretending pages. The work, I trust, will meet with the notice it deserves, and the good be thus effected which the zealous and talented author has had in view in its publication. + ANDREW, BISHOP OF CERAMIS, Vicar Apostolic of Eastern Scotland. EDINBURGH, 10th April, 1846. I have read, with much pleasure, a Catechism by the Rev. Stephen Keenan. As it contains a well-reasoned defence of the Catholic faith, and clear and satisfactory solutions of the usual objections adduced by separatists, I deem that the study of it will be most useful to all Catholics; and, therefore, I earnestly recommend it to the Faithful in the Northern District of Scotland. + Jas. Kyle, V A N.D.S. PRESHOME, 15th April, 1846. IMPRIMATUR. + JOHN, CARDINAL McCLOSKEY, Archbishop of New York. Copyright, T. W. STRONG, 1876. PREFACE Discussions of the various questions of religion have ever been, and still are, matters of inevitable necessity, because Christianity and its dogmas have ever been, and still are, impugned by those victims of passion, prejudice, and error—the schismatic, heretic, and infidel. The true minister of Jesus Christ is thus compelled to make religious controversy an important part of his studies, as it is only by this mean he can, and with the help of God's grace, bring back these unfortunate wanderers to the fold of Christ. If angry feelings are sometimes engendered by these discussions, the fault lies with those who first raised the standard of rebellion against the authoritative teaching of the lawful pastors, whom Christ commissioned to feed his lambs and his sheep, with the bread of life and the Word of God. To elucidate truth, is the the object of free discussion; and to all who are properly qualified for the task, ample scope should be given. Catholics as regards their doctrines, court publicity; because they are fully aware, the more these are tried and examined, the stronger will be the conviction of their truth in the mind of the sincere inquirer. Of this, ample proof will be found in the multitude of late conversions,— conversions, be it observed, not of the vulgar and illiterate, but of the brightest ornaments of the age,—not of the interested and worldly, but of men who proved themselves ready to [pg. 4] sacrifice every worldly advantage for the sake of conscience and truth,—conversions, not of the victim of passion, as is the case when a stray Catholic becomes Protestant, but of men whose minds are pure and their hearts chaste, whose high and spotless morality is beyond all suspicion. Such are the men, who, bursting the fetters in which they had been hitherto bound, and tearing to pieces the thick veil of early prejudice by which the Protestant world is blindfolded, have boldly dared to act upon the Protestant principle of examining for themselves, and having made that examination, not without hearty commendations of themselves to heaven, have, of late, added to the glory of the Redeemer by their piety and learning, and, by their numbers, extended the pale of his true Church. With many Protestants it is vain to argue; their preconceived notions of Catholic doctrine are such, as to prevent the infusion of the smallest portion of Catholic truth. Their teachers have been for three hundred years employed, not in refuting the true Catholic doctrine, but in inventing calumnies against, and publishing misrepresentations of Catholicism, and then amusing their audiences with a refutation, not of the Catholic religion, but of these absurd Protestant forgeries, and "ingenious devices," which they themselves have fraudulently palmed upon the public as the genuine doctrines of the Church of Rome. Even with those who do not know the rules of discussion, and whose minds are imbued with something like honest fairness, controversy will be endless, if the Scripture alone be appealed to. That Divine Book does not and cannot explain itself, and, accordingly, each disputant will interpret to suit his own views; hence the bitter discussions, and interminable contradictions, observable [pg. 5] among all those sects who have separated themselves from the Catholic Church. Tertullian, in his Book of Prescriptions, points out the proper method of refuting all heresies. He tells them to give proofs of their mission,—opposes to their novelties, the traditional doctrines of the Apostolic Churches,—and points to their jarring and contradictory systems, as invincible proofs that they are teachers of error. Thus, without any appeal to Scripture, had the first reformers been asked, Whence come ye? from whence have ye derived your mission? they would have looked very foolish, for to this question they could give no reply. They were not sent by any lawful pastor;— they had no mission from any Christian Church;—they and their novelties came fifteen hundred years too late to have any connection with the Apostles. In thus setting up as preachers, without any mission, they outraged the common sense of men. Christ himself, Moses, and the Apostles, preached new doctrines, but they treated men as rational beings,—they proved they were sent by God by the most evident and astonishing miracles; but the reforming ministers never wrought even one miracle to prove to their unfortunate followers that they were sent by God, or to stamp upon their new system the seal of heaven. These self-commissioned men railed against tradition, because it condemned their novelties; but had they been asked to prove, without the aid of tradition, that even the very Bible, of which they boasted so much, was the Word of God, they would have been much embarrassed; for without the traditional argument, no man can prove the Bible to be God's Word. Hence, the very first principle of the Protestant Creed—rests solely on the authority of tradition; and, consequently, if, as they maintain, tradi- [pg. 6] tional be only human doctrines, their whole creed is merely human, for it first principle, upon which all their other doctrines are grounded, rests solely, even according to themselves, upon the authority of men. Those who talk of the Bible as the only rule of faith, would do well to make this matter a subject of serious meditation; if they do, they will ask themselves, How can this be, since even the authenticity, integrity, and divinity of the Bible, can be proved only by a reference to tradition? The heresies of modern times are as productive of sects and divisions as those which appeared in the days of Tertullian; they are daily spawning new religions, as perplexing and pestiferous as the parents from which they spring; and thus they will continue, shooting off in every direction, no matter how preposterous or absurd, until their very absurdity will force the pious and reasoning portion back into the bosom of the Catholic Church and drive the thoughtless and vainly-wise section of them into the broad, but dark and hopeless, path of infidelity. On the subject of religious controversy, numerous works of deep research and intrinsic merit have of late issued from the press. Most of these, however, are so diffuse and expensive as to render them useless to many Catholics and Protestants, who, though anxious in their search after truth, have neither time nor education to enable them to read, nor money to procure, elaborate and expensive publications; others, again, are so compendious, and the arguments so abridged, that, when put into the hands of the superficial Protestant, they fail to produce conviction. Some others, in fine, there are, the scope of which is rather to instruct Catholics in the faith and practices of their religion, than to disabuse the Protestant mind of its prejudices and its errors. Among these works of real talent and merit, something seemed to the writer [pg. 7] of the following pages to be still wanting—viz.: an epitome of controversy in a concise and cheap form, comprising the principle arguments on the various questions most commonly controverted, combining perspicuity with brevity and cheapness, that it might be within the reach of all Catholics who are called to give a reason for the faith that is in them, and of all sincere inquiring Protestants, whose occupations and circumstances preclude the possibility of their having recourse to more learned, more voluminous, and expensive works. Whether this desideratum be supplied by the following little work, the public will soon determine. The plan and a portion of the groundwork are taken from a small controversial treatise by Father Scheffmacher, a German Jesuit, who held the chair of controversy at Strasburg about a century ago.

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