The Reform of Christian Doctrine in the Catechisms of Peter Canisius

The catechisms of Peter Canisius reveal the contours of an internal debate within the Catholic Church over the reframing of Christian identity in response to the Protestant Reformation. Canisius (1521-1597), a member of the Society of Jesus, published his first catechism in 1555 under the patronage of Ferdinand I of Habsburg, then King of the Romans, but soon to be Holy Roman Emperor. Although this and Canisius’s other catechisms achieved phenomenal publishing success, they received neither endorsement nor approbation from Rome, and would prove incongruous with the new style of official Roman catechesis inaugurated by the 1566 publication of the Roman Catechism. By situating Canisius’s catechisms within the tradition of catechesis up to 1555 and contrasting them with the Roman catechetical approach that became normative after the Council of Trent, their unique approach becomes apparent. Canisius’s catechesis proposed a confident vision of Christian identity grounded in the practice of Catholic piety, taking its inspiration from the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. The Roman approach that became normative after 1566, on the other hand, conceived of catechesis as a defensive bulwark for Catholic orthodoxy against the Protestant assault. These contrasting catechetical approaches reflect the diversity of opinion among the Catholic clerical leadership in regard to the renewal of Catholic identity in a post-Reformation church. Although Canisius’s catechisms often appear in scholarship as representatives of a combative, post-Reformation style of defending Catholic orthodoxy, the combat in which they actually engaged was internal to the Catholic Church, over how to reframe Catholic identity in the wake of the Protestant Reformation.