The catechism is a sum-up or even exposition of doctrine, traditionally used inside Christian religious teaching. Catechisms come doctrinal manuals typically within the form of questions followed by answers to exist as memorized, the format that has occasionally been utilized in non-religious or even secular contexts as well. [http://www.ourroots.ca/e/viewpage.asp?ID=282489&size=2]

Catechesis is an simple form of religious instruction, often vivthe, & traditionally under a counsel of a parent, pastor or priest, religious teacher, or more people inside church roles (including the deacon, religious brother or sister, or nun) who poses placed questions & prompts students (or even disciples) toward understanding the answers given. Catechetics is a practice of this rather instruction, or even the survey of it, including expert training around such instruction. [http://www.dict.org/bin/Dict?Form=Dict2&Database=*&Query=catechetics] The catechist is 1 world health organization engages within such religious instruction.

Traditional Format

Catechisms keep around, historically, generally followed the dialogue or even wonder-&-guide format. This format calls upon ii parties to participate, an expert & the student (traditionally termed the "scholar"), the parent & the toddler. A illustrious 19th century Roman Catholic Baltimore Catechism is an example:

I. Q. World health organization processed the world?
   The. God mass produced the world. 

Deuce. Q. World health organization is God?
   The. God is the Author of 
      heaven & globe, & of tons items. 

Deuce-ace. Q. What is human?
   The. Human occurs as animal composed of 
      immune system & soul, & processed to the 
      image & likeness of God.

Early Christian history

Borrowed from either a , a term catechesis originally intended just a unwritten transmission from either teacher to student, instruction by dialogue. a word comes from either a Greek word associated by owning the theater or even agora; it means "to make resound, as with an echo." When using numerous items around Christian custom, the practice of catechizing was altered from either the similar style of instruction in the Jewish tabernacle & rabbinic schools. A rabbis experienced a dialogue method, & a Greeks experienced a Socratic method, both of which informed Christian catechesis. Unlike two one precursor even influences, a Christian emphasis from either a beginning was to pass in articles of faith, or definitions of belief. These are beginning sustaining faith that Christians required obedience to watch.

Christian tradition holds that Catechetic schools were established virtually immediately per apostles themselves. One of a first one schools is held by tradition to stand been established by Mark the Evangelist, in Alexandria, Egypt. Around his Ecclesiastic History, Eusebius recounts a legend that Mark come to Egypt in the period of the 1st or even third month of the Roman Emperor Claudius, & he returned to preach and evangelize within Alexandria, between 61 and 68 A.D. This is the school of theology in which Clement of Alexandria and Origen were teachers. A select few modern scholarship favors a theory that a quartet written Gospels of the New Testament were products of Catechetical schools founded per apostles or even adherent of the apostles.

Across schools like this, sum-up of school of thought were produced sustaining the learn from to carefully & methodically hand down the teaching of the Church. As a sum-up of what must exist as believed, a Nicene creed was taught in a Greek churches, and the Apostles Creed was dominant in the Latin churches; the Lord's Prayer was taught as the model of how to pray; and, the Ten Commandments were the summary of how to live. At various days & pages, favorite chapters were added to a manuals, for instruction on a sacraments, the Athanasian Creed, the Te Deum, & more elements of the Liturgy. Lists of sins & virtues also became a most common section of catechesis, in the monastaries and the churches. In a out break of fully grown converts, this instruction preceded baptism; in the out break of baptised babe, it followed baptism, & in the West culminated in their confirmation & the number one communion. Baptized baby in a East were besides chrismated (confirmed) well-nigh immediately fallowing baptism, & shortly when began getting communion; catechism come late, typically when you took the teen years.

Cyril of Jerusalem left sixteen books of instructional sermons, explaining a Creed to families looking for baptism, which became standard in the Greek speaking churches. A equivalent Cyril besides has 5 books of instruction attributed to him, on a sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation in the Christian Faith, and Eucharist, for the benefit of people world health organization stand recently received one of these sacraments. In the Latin churches, St Augustine's treatise on catechizing (De catechizandis rudibus), written for teachers, came to dominate, together with his work on the basics of doctrine and prayer (Enchiridion). A good idea of what a tradition of instruction got been, may be from either comparing these comparatively early works.

When a Edict of Milan, catechesis became an increasingly greater challenge which another time fell into forget about, especially in the frontiers of the Empire. Around 829, a council within Paris records a bishops' alarm all over a forget about of catechetical instruction. Super elementary instructional manuals subsist, from either a St Gall monks Kero (720) and Notker (912), and Otfrid of Weissenburg (870). Gerson's tract, De Parvulis ad Christum trahendis, gives an additional picture of what late mediaeval instruction was such as. Inside 1281, the English Council of Lambeth made it a canonical rule of Church practice, for parish priests to instruct their humans fourfold a year in the chief area of Christian philosophy.

A better known modern catechisms of the Orthodox & Catholic traditions are non intended to exist as memorized. Like, it is massive compendia of elaborated explanations of school of thought. A Jerusalem Catechism of Orthodoxy occurs as function primarily designed for refutation of error—in the tradition of Irenaeus's Against Heresies. There are several Orthodox catechisms while forgoing visible official authority, a few of which pop up to become designed for the instruction of converts especially from either Protestantism. A Orthodox Faith occurs as quaternity volume series that sets forth a fundamentals of Orthodoxy. These are written by Father Thomas Hopko, dean of St. Vladimir's Seminary (Orthodox Church in America); the to the full text is besides available [http://www.oca.org/pages/orth_chri/Orthodox-Faith/index.htm online].

Catholic catechisms
A Catechism of the Catholic Church (see beneath) is the catechism is virtually all far flung have among Catholics now.

A term catechist is virtually all ofttimes utilized around Catholicism, often to describe the lay catechist or even secular sustaining catechetic how to training world health organization engages within such teaching & evangelization. This may be around two parish church & mission contexts.

Roman Catechism

A Roman Catechism was 1st published around 1566 under the authority of the Council of Trent. These are unusual in this it was written as a alternative for priests rather than for even instruction of children or neophytes.

Watch a separate article: Roman Catechism.

Baltimore Catechism

Various editions of the Baltimore Catechism were a de facto standard Catholic textbook around America from 1885 to the 1960s.

Watch a separate article: Baltimore Catechism.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

The Catechism of the Catholic Church is a work of remarkable organization and breadth, containing articles of elegant reasoning and historical insight, arranged on the classical topics, but it is not a work adapted to the capacity of the untaught, and it is not in a question and answer format.

Protestant catechisms

The catechism's question-and-answer format, with a view toward the instruction of children, was a form adopted by Protestant Christians almost from the beginning of the Reformation.

Among the first projects of the Protestant Reformation, was the production of catechisms self-consciously modelled after the older traditions of Cyril and Augustine. These catechisms showed special admiration for Chrysostom's view of the family as a "little church", and placed strong responsibility on every father to teach his children, in order to prevent them from coming to Baptism or the Lord's Table ignorant of the doctrine under which they are expected to live as Christians.

Luther

Luther's Large Catechism (1530) typifies the emphasis which the Protestants placed on the importance of knowledge and understanding of definitions, or articles of faith. Primarily intended as instruction to teachers, especially to parents, the Catechism consists of a series of exhortations on the importance of each topic of the Catechism. It is meant for those who have the capacity to understand, and is not meant to be memorized but to be repeatedly reviewed so that the Small Catechism could be taught with understanding. For example, the author stipulates in the preface: A catechism, Luther wrote, should consist of instruction in the rule of conduct (Ten Commandments), the rule of faith (Apostles Creed), the rule of prayer (Lord's Prayer), and the sacraments (Baptism and Communion). Luther adds: Luther's Small Catechism, in contrast, is written to accommodate the understanding of a small child or an uneducated person. It begins:

A. The First Commandment

   You must not have other gods.

   Q. What does this mean?

   A. We must fear, love, and trust God more than anything.

Reformed

Calvin's 1545 preface to the Genevan catechism begins with an acknowledgement that the several traditions and cultures which were joined in the Reformed movement, would produce their own form of instruction in each place. While no effort should be expended on preventing this, Calvin argues, he adds:

The scandal of diverse instruction, is that it produces diverse baptisms and diverse communions, and diverse faith. However, forms may vary without introducing substantial differences, according to the Reformed view of doctrine.

Genevan Catechism

John Calvin produced a catechism while at Geneva (1541), which underwent two major revisions (1545 and 1560). Calvin's aim in writing the Catechism of 1545, was to set a basic pattern of doctrine, meant to be imitated by other catechists, which would not affirm local distinctions or dwell on controversial issues, but would serve as a pattern for what was expected to be taught by Christian fathers and other teachers of children in the Church. The catechism is organized on the topics of Faith, Law, Prayer and Sacraments.

1. Master.  What is the chief end of human life?

   Scholar.  To know God by whom men were created.

2. M. What reason have you for saying so?

   S. Because he created us
   and placed us in this world
   to be glorified in us. And
   it is indeed right that our life,
   of which himself is the beginning,
   should be devoted to his glory.

3. M. What is the highest good of man?

   S. The very same thing.

Heidelberg Catechism

After Protestantism entered into the Palatinate, in 1546 the controversy between Lutherans and Calvinists broke out, and especially while the region was under the elector Otto Heinrich (1556-59), this conflict in Saxony, particularly in Heidelberg, became increasingly bitter and turned violent.

When Frederick III, came into power in 1559, he put his authority behind the Calvinistic view on the Lord's Supper, which denied the local presence of the body of Jesus Christ in the elements of the sacrament. He turned Sapienz College into a school of divinity, and in 1562 he placed over it a pupil and friend of Luther's colleague, Philipp Melanchthon, named Zacharias Ursinus. In an attempt to resolve the religious disputes in his domain, Frederick called upon Ursinus and his colleague Caspar Olevianus (preacher to Frederick's court) to produce a Catechism. The two collaborators referred to existing catechetical literature, and especially relied on the catechisms of Calvin and of John Lasco. To prepare the Catechism, they adopted the method of sketching drafts independently, and then bringing together the work to combine their efforts. "The final preparation was the work of both theologians, with the constant co-operation of Frederick III. Ursinus has always been regarded as the principal author, as he was afterwards the chief defender and interpreter of the Catechism; still, it would appear that the nervous German style, the division into three parts (as distinguished from the five parts in the Catechism of Calvin and the previous draft of Ursinus), and the genial warmth and unction of the whole work, are chiefly due to Olevianus." (Schaff, in. Am. Presb. Rev. July 1863, p. 379). The structure of the Heidelberg Catechism is spelled out in the second question, and the three-part structure seen there is based on the belief that the single work of salvation brings forward the three persons of the Trinity in turn, to make God fully and intimately known by his work of salvation, referring back to the Apostles Creed as an epitome of Christian faith. Assurance of salvation is the unifying theme throughout this catechism: assurance obtained by the work of Christ, applied through the sacraments, and resulting in grateful obedience to the commandments and persistence in prayer.

Lord's Day 1.

1.	Q. What is thy only comfort in life and death?

	A. That I with body and soul,
	both in life and death,
	am not my own, but
	belong unto my faithful Saviour Jesus Christ;
	who, with his precious blood,
	has fully satisfied for all my sins,
	and delivered me
	from all the power of the devil;
	and so preserves me that
	without the will of my heavenly Father,
	not a hair can fall from my head;
	yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation,
	and therefore, by his Holy Spirit,
	He also assures me of eternal life,
	and makes me sincerely willing and ready,
	henceforth, to live unto him.

2.  Q. How many things are necessary for thee to know,
	that thou, enjoying this comfort,
	mayest live and die happily?

	A. Three;
	the first, how great my sins and miseries are;
	the second, how I may be delivered from
		all my sins and miseries;
	the third, how I shall express
		my gratitude to God for such deliverance.

Westminster Catechisms

Together with the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), the Westminster Assembly also produced two catechisms, a Larger and a Shorter, which were intended for use in Christian families and in churches. These documents have served as the doctrinal standards, subordinate to the Bible, for Presbyterians and other Reformed churches around the world. The Shorter Catechism shows the Assembly's reliance upon the previous work of Calvin, Lasco, and the theologians of Heidelberg. It is organized in two main sections summarizing what the Scriptures principally teach: the doctrine of God, and the duty required of men. Questions and answers cover the usual elements: Faith, the Ten Commandments, the Sacraments, and Prayer.

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?

	A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God,
	and to enjoy him forever.

Q. 2. What rule hath God given
	to direct us how we may glorify
	and enjoy him?

	A. 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.

Q. 3. What do the scriptures principally teach?

       A. The scriptures principally teach, what
       man is to believe concerning God, and
       what duty God requires of man.

Other Reformed catechisms

Oecolampadius composed the Basel Catechism in 1526, Leo Juda (1534) followed by Bullinger (1555) published catechisms in Zurich. The French Reformed used Calvin's Genevan Catechism, as well as works published by Louis Capell (1619), and Charles Drelincourt (1642).

Anglican Catechism

The Anglican Book of Common Prayer includes a brief catechism for the instruction of all persons preparing to be brought before the bishop for Confirmation. The baptized first professes his baptism, and then rehearses the principal elements of the faith into which he has been baptized: Apostles Creed, Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and the Sacraments.

Catechist:  What is your Name?

    Answer: N. or M.

C.  Who gave you this Name?

    Answer: My Godfathers and Godmothers
    in my Baptism;
    wherein I was made a member of Christ,
    the child of God,
    and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.

Socinian and other sectarian catechisms

Besides the manuals of instruction that were published by the Protestants for use in their families and churches, there were other works produced by sectarian groups intended as a compact refutation of "orthodoxy".

For example, Socinians in Poland published the Rakow Catechism in 1605, using the question and answer format of a catechism for the orderly presentation of their arguments against the Trinity and the doctrine of Hell, as these were understood by the Reformed churches from which they were forced to separate. This work spread rapidly, despite efforts to censor it, and has inspired many imitators even to the present time.

Q. You said a little before that 
   the Lord Jesus is a man by nature, 
   hath he not also a divine Nature?

A. At no hand; for that is repugnant 
   not only to sound Reason, but also 
   to the holy Scriptures.

Q. Shew me how it is repugnant to sound 
   Reason.

A. First, because two substances indued 
   with opposite properties, cannot combine 
   into one Person, and such properties are 
   mortality and immortality; 
   to have beginning, and 
   to be without beginning; 
   to be mutable, and immutable. 
   Again, two Natures, each whereof 
   is apt to constitute a severall 
   person cannot be huddled into one Person. 
   For instead of one, there must of necessity 
   arise two persons, and consequently become 
   two Christs, 
   whom all men without controversie 
   acknowledge to be one, 
   and his Person one.

Baptist affiliations of congregations have at times adopted the Reformed catechisms, modified to reflect Baptist convictions, especially concerning the nature of the church and the ordinances of baptism and communion. The Anabaptists have also produced catechisms of their own, to explain and defend their distinctives. [http://mennonitechurch.ca/about/cof/]

Non-Christian catechisms

Catechisms represent an obvious, practical method of passing on instruction, and as such examples can be found in many traditions. For example, Asiatic schools of esoteric learning also used a catechetical style of instruction, as this Zodiac catechism shows:

Q. "Where is the animal, O Lanoo?
	and where the Man?

A. Fused into one, O Master of my Life.
	The two are one.
	But both have disappeared
	and naught remains
	but the deep fire of my desire.

Judaism does not have a formal catechism as such, but there are a set of Jewish principles of faith that religious Jews believe that all Jews should hold.