Prior to the First Synod of Baltimore of 1791, the Catholic Church in this country had no preaching legislation of its own. Priests who ministered here before the Revolution and up to 1791 were therefore held to the common law of the Church; that meant the homiletic legislation of the reformist Council of Trent (1545-1563). This nineteenth ecumenical council also issued another document of great importance in the history of Catholic preaching: the Catechism of the Council of Trent.

If concrete proof is needed that our pioneer clergy were acquainted with the Tridentine decrees, we need only to turn to the Synod of 1791, where Bishop John Carroll cites them twice. How many copies of the Catechism of the Council of Trent there were in America in the eighteenth century or earlier it is impossible to say. Certainly Father Joseph Mosley, S.J., had a copy of it in his small lending library at St. Joseph’s, Tuckahoe, Talbot County, Maryland. This was in the 1760’s.

But a host of concrete proofs are not all that necessary. We need merely recall that the majority of the priests ministering in the American colonies after 1634 were members of the Society of Jesus, educated in European schools of that very pro-Tridentine religious order. The whole mood of their apostolate to both settlers and Indians was counter-reformational.

The Council of Trent refers to Sunday preaching and catechetics in three passages.

The first reference is in Chapter II of the Fifth Session’s Decree Concerning Reform, "Preachers of the Word of God and Questors of Alms" (1546). Chapter II speaks of the pastoral obligation of preaching on Sunday as one personal to the pastor; it outlines the core of such preaching; and it warns of the necessity of adapting the Gospel message to the wits and patience of the listeners.

Archpriests, priests and all who in any manner have charge of parochial and other churches to which is attached the cura animarum [care of souls], shall at least on Sundays and solemn festivals, either personally or, if they are lawfully impeded, through others who are competent, feed the people committed to them with wholesome [salutaribus] words, in proportion to their own and the people’s mental capacity, by teaching them those things that are necessary for all to know in order to be saved, and by impressing upon them with briefness and plainness of speech the vices that they must avoid and the virtues that they must cultivate, in order that they may escape eternal punishment and obtain the glory of heaven.⁴

In the Twenty-Fourth Session (1563) the Fathers returned to the same subject. Chapter IV of that Session’s Decree Concerning Reform emphasizes the primary responsibility of the bishop to preach and catechize, particularly on Sundays and solemnities, whether in person or through delegates.

Desiring that the office of preaching, which belongs chiefly to bishops, be exercised as often as possible for the welfare of the faithful, the holy council ... decrees that they themselves shall personally, each in his own church, announce the Sacred Scriptures and the divine law, or, if lawfully hindered, have it done by those whom they shall appoint to the office of preaching; but in other churches by the parish priests, or, if they are hindered, by others to be appointed by the bishop in the city or in any part of the diocese as they shall judge it expedient, at the expense of those who are bound or accustomed to defray it, and this they shall do at least on all Sundays and solemn feast days, but during the seasons of fasts, of Lent and of the Advent of the Lord, daily, or at least on three days of the week if they shall deem it necessary; otherwise as often as they shall judge that it can be done conveniently. ... The bishops shall also see to it that at least on Sundays and other festival days, the children in every parish be carefully taught the rudiments of the faith and obedience toward God and their parents by those whose duty it is. . .

Chapter VII of the same reform decree deals with the content of Sunday instruction both within and outside the Mass.

That the faithful may approach the sacraments with greater reverence and devotion of mind, the holy council commands all bishops that not only when they are themselves about to administer them to the people, they shall first, in a manner adapted to the mental ability of those who receive them, explain their efficacy and use, but also see to it that the same is done piously and prudently by every parish priest, and in the vernacular tongue, if need be and if it can be done conveniently, in accordance with the form which will be prescribed for each of the sacraments by the holy council in a catechism, which the bishops shall have faithfully translated into the language of the people and explained to the people by all parish priests. In like manner shall they explain on all festivals or solemnities during the solemnization of the Mass or the celebration of the Divine Offices, in the vernacular tongue, the divine commands and the maxims of salvation, and leaving aside useless questions, let them strive to engraft these things on the hearts of all and instruct them in the law of the Lord.⁶

This third decree leads us to the Catechism authorized by the Council. Paulus Manutius first published it at Rome in 1566. Its official title is Catechismus ex decreto SS. Concilii Tridentini ad Parochos Pu V Pont. Max. jussu editus. It is known more briefly in Latin as the Catechismus ad Parochos, or Catechismus Concilii Tridentini or Catechismus Romanus. In English it is usually referred to as the Catechism of the Council of Trent, or as the Roman Catechism.. In general, we shall use the latter English term.

The Roman Catechism was a remarkable book. It was not a catechism of the question-answer type but a more discursive doctrinal summary. While it did not have the dogmatic authority of the Council Trent’s doctrinal decrees and canons, it nevertheless presented to tIi¹ pastor and preacher a clear and systematic statement of the teachin they had the duty of communicating to the faithful.

The Catechism divided its material into four segments: The

Apostles’ Creed, the Sacraments, the Commandments and Church Precepts, and prayer. Sources were abundantly cited: Scripture, the Fathers, the late ecumenical council.

The authors of this doctrinal summary were a committee of highly talented theologians of both diocesan and religious clergy, men from several nations.⁷ What is especially interesting about their compendium is that it succeeds in maintaining an irenic mood and a genuinely kerygmatic approach, despite the fact that it was written in an age of increasing Protestant-Catholic polemics.⁸ It has won merited praise ever since its first appearance. Pius IX called it a "golden book." Cardinal Newman in his Apologia, wrote of it, "I rarely preach a sermon but I go to this beautiful and complete Catechism to get both my matter and my doctrine."⁹ A modern historian of preaching has called it "a masterpiece of homiletic literature."¹⁰ As we shall see, the Roman Catechism exercised an increased rather than a diminished influence on American Catholic preaching during the present century — at least before Vatican II.

To summarize, then, our assumptions about American Catholic Sunday preaching in colonial and the earliest federal years: Colonial preaching was governed by the common law of the Church; that is, it followed the general norms expressed by the Council of Trent. In its doctrinal aspects, it was probably influenced, directly or indirectly, by the catechetical example of the Roman Catechism. There is no reason to believe that a European-trained clergy, most of them Jesuits or ex-Jesuits who would have departed in these matters from the practices current in Europe. As in its art and music, so even in its homiletics, America has always followed European leadership.

With the election of John Carroll as first bishop of Baltimore on November 6, 1789, Catholicism in the United States received a full-fledged hierarchical structure. On November 7-10, 1791, Carroll convoked his clergy in the first diocesan synod of Baltimore. After deliberating with the 22 priests in attendance, the bishop, as legislator, promulgated 24 decrees designed to regulate pastoral practice.¹¹ Since there was only one diocese in the whole country, the laws of this synod had nationwide application.

Two decrees bear directly on Sunday preaching. No. 17 deals with churches having more than one priest; No. 18 with churches having only one. As in most of the synods we shall subsequently examine, the reference to the sermon is laconic, for it presupposes a long-standing tradition. What is particularly interesting is that it reflects and canonizes the practice of separating the reading of Scripture from the sermon by a host of announcements. The relevant portion of No. 17 reads as follows:

When the [Latin] Gospel is finished, the prescribed prayers are to be read for all orders and for the prosperity of the Republic; next comes the Gospel of the day, in the vernacular; then, announcements are to be made of banns of marriage, forthcoming holydays of obligation, fast days, and whatever else must to be communicated to the people. Then comes the sermon, which should aim at both educating and correcting the listeners, and encouraging them in the quest for Christian perfection [Deinde sermo habeatur, qui talis sit ex quo et erudiri auditores et emendari, et ad vitae Christianae perfectionem animari possint}.

In 1810, ten more decrees were added to those of the Synod of 1791.¹³ The diocese of Baltimore was divided by Pius VII on April 8, 1808. Baltimore was named a metropolitan see, and suffragan sees were established at Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Bardstown. After their consecration in 1810, the new bishops of Boston (John Cheverus), Philadelphia (Michael Egan, O.F.M.) and Bardstown (Benedict Flaget, S.S.) met with Archbishop Carroll and his coadjutor bishop, Leonard Neale. They agreed to hold a provincial council to legislate for the whole new ecclesiastical province, but to defer its convocation until 1812. Meanwhile the bishops consented to accept the Synod of 1791 as the law of their separate dioceses, adding thereto ten additional "articles of ecclesiastical discipline." The new articles dealt with preaching only peripherally. No. 3 prescribed the Douay-Rheims version o the Bible; and priests were told to admonish the faithful: a) to hold their weddings in church (No. 8); b) to avoid excessive play-going and novel-reading (No. 9); and c) to abstain from joining the Freemasons (No. 10). Actually, the projected provincial council was not held until 1829 because of the War of 1812 and other reasons; hence the Synod of 1791, with its appendix of pro-synodal articles, remained the corpus of American canon law (and preaching law) up to 1829. If this corpus said little about sermons and nothing about the Roman Catechism, at least it did not venture to depart from the Tridentine tradition.

The First Provincial Council of Baltimore, held in 1829, was the earliest of seven such councils of nationwide application. Six more were held thereafter, in 1833, 1837, 1840, 1843, 1846 and 1849. By right, the council of 1849 should have been not a provincial council but a plenary council, since the Province of Oregon City had been instituted in 1846 and that of St Louis in 1847 Indeed, the Oregon Province had held its own first provincial council on February 28, 1848. But by the time the Fathers assembled at Baltimore in May 1849, the Archbishop of St. Louis had not yet received the pallium, the symbol of his metropolitan status; and the Oregon prelates were too far away to attend. So the 1849 council remained a provincial council. Since the six earlier councils were held when there was still only one province across the land, their legislation was national in scope. And when the first plenary council was convoked in 1852, it declared the decrees of all seven of these Baltimore councils binding upon the Church throughout the nation.

The significance of all this is, of course, that whatever decrees these seven councils issued on Sunday sermons were applicable to the whole United States. What, now, do the Baltimore provincial councils have to say about preaching?

Two of the councils, the first (1829) and the fifth (1843), address themselves to the subject. Both base their remarks specifically on the Tridentine homiletic legislation: the 1829 council briefly, the 1843 council more fully.

The 29th decree of 1829 reads:

We admonish all priests who have pastoral assignments of their duty to teach the people entrusted to them; therefore, according to the holy regulations of the Council of Trent, on Sundays and holydays, they are to instruct them, in a manner that is brief, clear, and in keeping with their understanding, in the mysteries of the faith; and exhort them to practice virtue and flee vice.¹⁴

The 11th decree of the Fifth Provincial Council has a closer verbal correspondence with the text of Trent. . . .

Let him [the pastor of souls] also be assiduous in preaching the divine word, according to the method which the Council of Trent prescribes (Sess. V, Cap. 2 de Ref.), that is, at least on Sundays and solemn feasts, to feed the people entrusted to them with wholesome [salutaribus] words, in proportion to their own and the people’s mental capacity, teaching, not useless and intricate things, but what must be known in order to be saved; not what may excite admiration for the speaker, but what may promote the edification and the growth in piety of the listeners: for instance, the motives behind, and the frequent practice of acts of faith, hope and contrition; the dispositions necessary for the fruitful reception of the sacraments; the vices they must avoid and the virtues they must cultivate. Let him give spiritual milk to infants, but the food of solid piety to adults. Let him become all things to all men, in word and deed, so that he may guide souls properly along the road of salvation, and all may be able to escape eternal punishment and merit heavenly glory.¹⁵

Let us glance now at some of the diocesan synods held during the same period as these seven provincial councils, to see how their legislation reflected that of Baltimore. (This is perhaps the best place to state that the First Provincial Council of Oregon City, held in 1848, said nothing about preaching beyond urging priests to con well their Scripture and doctrine so as to be armed with the "filii tenebrarum.""16)

After examining several score of synods in preparation for this paper, I have found that synod differs greatly from other synods, in canonical quality, originality and latinity. In the matter of preaching legislation, the synods studied do not tell us as much as I had hoped they would. Sometimes the only way they reflect higher legislation is by "rubber-stamping": simply declaring its decrees binding in diocesan law as well. Nevertheless, some do cite more fully the terminology of superior councils; and on occasion, a bishop will add interesting homiletic thoughts and mandates of his own.

We have located five diocesan synods of the period 1831-1844. All of them declare the acceptance as diocesan law of the decrees of those provincial councils of Baltimore thus far convened. In doing so, they implicitly accept the articles of the Baltimore councils on preaching. These synods are: Synod II of Baltimore (1831), Synod I of Mobile (1834), Synod I of St. Louis (1839), Synod I of Vincennes (1844), and Synod II of New Orleans (1844). New Orleans did not belong to the Province of Baltimore, but associated itself with the provincial legislation according to the directive of the Council of Trent for non-provincial sees.¹⁷

The mention of "catechetical style" prompts the question, what evidence is there of the availability and use of the Roman Catechism during the years 1829-1852? The Baltimore provincial councils do not allude to it, nor do three of the aforementioned synods on which we have the full data at hand. It is certain, however, that the Trent Catechism was available on American Catholic bookstands in the second quarter of the century, not only in Latin and French but in new English versions. At least three American publishers offered for sale the translation recently made by an Irish priest, Jeremy Donovan of Maynooth, first published in 1829. How many copies were run off in each printing we do not know; but the fact that it was a staple "best seller" over many years thereafter suggests that it enjoyed a rather extensive circulation.¹⁸

On petition of the hierarchy of the now six American ecclesiastical provinces, Pope Pius IX, in 1851, gave permission for the convocation of a national plenary council, designating as its president and apostolic delegate the archbishop-elect of Baltimore, Francis Patrick Kenrick. Our first plenary council was held at Baltimore the following May. Peter Guilday says of it, in summary, "The twenty-five decrees of the Council of 1852 may be viewed as the consolidation of the legislation which had been passed in all the national assemblies up to that year, and as the most important step so far made by the hierarchy for the complete uniformity of Church life in the United States."¹⁹

In its second decree the First Plenary Council extended the legislation of all the previous councils of Baltimore to the Church throughout the country. This implied the canons on preaching of provincial councils one and five. However, Plenary I made no explicit mention of preaching and set forth no new decree on the subject.

If the council of 1852 made no express mention of homiletic practice, some of the provincial councils and diocesan synods held between I Plenary and II Plenary (1866) did offer some significant items.

There were twelve provincial councils held between 1852 and 1866 in the five ecclesiastical provinces east of the Rocky Mountains.²⁰ These assemblies normally declared their formal acceptance of the laws of the First Plenary Council. Only two of the provincial councils, I New Orleans (1856) and III Cincinnati (1861), made particular allusions to preaching.

I New Orleans merely re-stated, in Decree XIX, the obligation of pastors to teach the faithful, Sunday preaching being one of the means to this end. On the other hand, the Third Provincial Council of Cincinnati gave an important warning against rigorism in moral doctrine.

XII.Let priests beware, as they inveigh with apostolic liberty against abuses and scandals, both while preaching the divine word and administering the sacrament of penance, lest they lay down arbitrary laws, labeling as lethal and mortal sins those actions which, in the judgment of canonists and moralists, are only venial sins or not sins at all: as, for example, certain adornments of women, dinner parties, and the like.²¹

The acta of this provincial council cast a little more light on the background of Decree XII. Council minutes say that the provincial Fathers, before composing it, had a discussion in their fourth public congregation "concerning the restraint of pastors who in their sermons set up rules of behavior that are too rigid and not approved by creditable authors or the holy Fathers."

The decree implies, therefore, that some priests were presenting a moral teaching that veered toward the Jansenistic. This opens a fascinating new line for speculation and investigation. The only case of alleged Jansenistic preaching in America that has received extensive notice is that which sparked the contretemps between the pioneer Dominican Fathers in Kentucky and two austere diocesan priests, French-born Stephen Badin (1768-1853) and Belgian-born Charles Nerinckx (1761~1825).22 When Cincinnati was made a metropolitan see in 1850, the Kentucky diocese of Louisville (formerly Bardstown) was included in the Cincinnati province. But the Dominican-Badin-Nerinckx affray peaked in the earlier years of the century. Who were the provincial rigorists of 1861 that the Fathers of Cincinnati took to task? And why, as we shall see, did the Fathers of the 1866 plenary council see fit to incorporate the essence of Cincinnati’s Decree XII into its own Decrees 141 and 471? Was it not because they considered rigorism in some sense a contemporary national danger? By 1866, austere FrancoBelgian missionaries born under the Old Regime had disappeared from the American scene. Did the Cincinnati Fathers of 1861 and the Baltimore Fathers of 1866 perhaps have in mind some austere Irish-American missionaries?

We have consulted the synodal and pro-synodal legislation of fourteen dioceses for the years 1852-1866. They represent all the American provinces but Oregon City.²³ Six of them explicitly promulgate, on a diocesan level, the decrees of the First Plenary Council. Most of the fourteen say nothing explicit about preaching. In its seventh decree, the Sixth Synod of Baltimore (1865) does order that at least once a year, and during the Easter season, pastors address their flocks on the impediments to marriage. (In their synodal laws American bishops have often mandated this and other canonical sermons, as well as panegyrics on certain feast days.) Bishop John Quinlan of Mobile, in his 1865 synod, sets a minimum time for the Sunday sermon: "Pastors are to preach for at least fifteen minutes to their congregations on Sundays and holydays, we commit this burden to their consciences." Worldwide and national church legislation always said sermons should be "brief." What "brief’ meant, however, was subject to the interpretation (and the taste) of the individual bishop.

Fullest and most interesting in its homiletic prescriptions are the 1856 pro-synodal statutes of the diocese [sic] of Sainte-Marie (now Marquette). The legislator reminds his priests that the subject matter of their discourses is to be the necessary truths and precepts, set forth in a prepared address, brief and easy to understand, by preachers who themselves give good example. The homilist must speak mildly and with prudence, attacking sins, not persons. If he has a polyglot flock, he should learn as many as possible of the tongues they speak, and not hesitate to deliver a brief sermon in two or even three languages.

18

These regulations reflect well the pastoral zeal and devout homiletic ideals of the Bishop of Sainte-Marie, the saintly Frederic Baraga (1797-1868). They also demonstrate how a bishop is in a position to make more precise application of general preaching laws to his own territory. The languages spoken in his own diocese included not only those of western and central Europe but the Algonquin dialects of the Chippewa and the Ottawa Indians.

The Roman Catechism is mentioned neither in the decrees of the First Plenary Council, nor in those of the twelve provincial councils, nor in our fourteen collections of synodal and prosynodal statutes promulgated between 1852 and 1866. But the Second Plenary Council, as we shall see, made up for that slight.

5. The Preachers’ Vademecum of Plenary Council II (1866-1884)

The seventh archbishop of Baltimore, Martin John Spalding (18 10-1872), was the principal architect of the brilliant and literate Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, over which he presided as apostolic delegate in 1866. It was his aim at this convocation to provide the American Church with an official handbook containing "a succinct exposition of doctrine, together with the condemnation of current heresies and errors, as well as suitable rules for the regulation of moral conduct and discipline."²⁴

Among the regulatory decrees of Plenary II was Chapter V of TitulusIII on "Ecclesiastical Persons." The Chapter is called "De Verbi Dei Praedicatoribus," and its nineteen meditative paragraphs constitute the most ample body of homiletic legislation ever given to the Catholic Church in this country.²⁵

Chapter V is a remarkable composition, as original as it is elegant. Taking its departure from the Tridentine preaching rules, it applies them to the American scene. It outlines not only the ideal approach to sermonic delivery but the faults to be avoided: longwindedness, irrelevance, crudity, insensitivity to non-Catholic listeners, unpreparedness, billingsgate, making a poor mouth, and violating professional confidences. The briefer canons on homiletics issued by the Third Plenary Council in 1884 were to eclipse in part the preaching norms of 1866. But the 1866 rules continued to be cited as a canonical source, and certain of their phrases, especially the saepe saepius (far too often) in the veto of excessive "money-talk," became a part of American Catholic canonical language.

Since the Council’s treatment is extensive and ranges wide, we shall merely present an ordered summary.

The subject matter of sermons, it says, following the Fifth Provincial Council of Baltimore, is what the faithful are obliged to believe and do. "Obligatory beliefs" by no means embrace the mere opinions of the I preacher. "Salutary deeds" does not at all imply the speaker’s right to follow stricter authors, and label as mortal sins what are venial sins or no sins at all. Homilists should also emphasize in particular those teachings of the Church that are under current attack by heretics and unbelievers.

In discussing the Christian’s duties towards God and neighbor, the speaker should follow a certain order, so that in the course of a year or two of sermons on Sunday and at other times all the basic material can be covered. The ablest guide for this is the Roman Catechism. The use of its outline does not mean, however, that preachers cannot interrupt their courses of sermons from time to time to speak on topical subjects like the passion of Christ, devotion to Mary and the saints, current; Church feasts, or the Gospel of the day.

No sermon should be given, apart from an emergency, without careful preparation. Preparation means not only previous composition, but meditative reading of the Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church, and, above all, prayer. [Good counsel to preachers in every age!]

Pulpit discourses in general should not aim to present new things, but old things in a new way. Style is important, but it should focus on the message rather than the preacher himself. A sermon is not the same thing as a lecture. It may have to involve controversy, but too much emphasis on polemics can confuse. If the necessity arises to refute error, this should be done mildly and gently. Thus the Catholics in the audience will be furnished with data with which to defend their faith, and at the same time non-Catholics in attendance will not be hurt.

Sermons should be easy. That is, they should be as clear as possible. If, for instance, a mystery of the Faith is being explained, the speaker should begin with a definition as given in Creed or Council, and then seek to clarify it as well as possible by word and illustration. But in avoiding the abstruse, the preacher should not confuse simplicity with crudity or facetiousness. Since men are moved more readily by examples than by words, let a homilist cite frequent illustrations from the Scriptures and the lives of saints. (In the latter case, however, he should mention only those miracles and wonders that have received the stamp of approval from Church authorities.)

Sermons should also be brief. People judge a homily not by its length but by its earnestness and appealing qualities. He who preaches too long can have an effect contrary to what he intends.

There are other faults, as well, that can render preaching ineffective. Even if he must at times use stern words, the preacher should never denounce a member of his audience by name, or even hint at his identity in a way that everybody can understand. Nor should he use the pulpit to avenge a private grievance. Since his mandate is to feed the faithful with "saving words," he should not deal with temporal matters or current events, discuss civic or political affairs, or ventilate his personal views on the correctness or incorrectness of the actions of public authorities.

Finally, the preacher should live according to his own preaching. "Your deeds," said St. Jerome, "are more credible than your words."

The caveats regarding "money-talk" and breach of professional confidence are in decrees 158 and 290.

Sermons on finances are referred to in the same Titulus, but in Chapter VI, "De Vita et Honestate Clericorum," (No. 158).

In order that the honor and dignity essential to the clerical state maybe preserved, we forbid priests to speak to the people too often [saepe saepius] about their incomes, honoraria, stipends, Sunday collections and the like, and to complain that these are inadequate or less than they should be; whether they make these remarks in connection with a sermon or on any other pretext, and whether they do so from the pulpit or from the altar. Such conduct ill befits either the minister or the sacred place; it weakens the impact and effectiveness of preaching; and it betrays a rüindset that is greedy, anxious, and too concerned with all these things that the heathens seek. What is more, those who are present — and there are frequently non-Catholics among them — find this sort of grumbling embarrassing, unpalatable and scandalous.

The reference to confidences is in Titulus V, "De Sacramentis," Chapter V, "De Paenitentia," (No. 290). It is a caution to preachers, perhaps routine but never out of palce, that they sedulously avoid giving the impression, whether in or out of the pulpit, of basing their indictments of vice on concrete evidence obtained in the confessional.

Some points in these decrees reflect the concerns of the mid-nineteenth century. Public religious controversies between Catholic and non-Catholic clergymen had largely abated by 1866, but doctrinal sermons could easily assume a polemical tone. The admonition to speak mildly was, to say the least, practical, for especially in the earlier decades of American Catholicism, a good many Protestants attended Catholic Sunday services to hear the sermon. It was doubtless also with non-Catholic presence in mind that the Fathers counseled preachers not to cite less credible episodes of hagiography.

There is considerable historical evidence to show that contemporary pastors did, at times, denounce transgressors from the pulpit by name or by implication. Voicing personal grievances to a captive audience must also have been to some preachers a strong temptation. The Council’s warning not to speak on current events sprang perhaps out of the fresh memory of the Civil War. In our day such a caution would have to be more nuanced. There will, of course, always be danger of excessive "money-talk" as long as pastors have to fret about parish support.

What is especially interesting about the Second Plenary Council is its statement on doctrinal sermons. Decree No. 132 says that the "of-~~ fices of a Christian man" are to be covered in the pulpit over a period of~ one or two years. In praising the Roman Catechism — the "golden book," to quote Pius IX — as the best guide for such a series of sermons, Decree No. 133 implies that dogma is to be treated as well as the com- mandments. There is no statement about when these sermons are to be given. One occasion would be the formal concio or set sermon at the parochial or principal Mass on Sunday. Sunday afternoon vespers, still common in those days, would offer another opportunity, as would devotional services in Advent and Lent and throughout the year. Perhaps the custom of giving brief "instructions" at the Sunday low Masses was already becoming widespread by 1866. This would present still another occasion for catechesis.

In setting down their homiletic regulations, the Baltimore Fathers seem to relegate Holy Scripture to a place subsidiary to formal Christian doctrine. Allowing the doctrinal series to be broken from time to time to comment on the Gospel or the current feast is just one more evidence of the contemporary belief that the homily had no intrinsic connection with the Mass but was a detachable element. According to this concept, the Mass became simply a very apt time for scheduling a methodical course of catechetical sermons, and the liturgy thereby suffered a de-emphasis.

For the better implementation of its provision, the Second Plenary Council instructed the American metropolitans to communicate the Council’s decrees in their own provinces through provincial councils, and the bishops to communicate them in their dioceses through diocesan synods.²⁶ Let us see how this instruction was complied with. The metropolitans of Baltimore, New Orleans, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Oregon City, Cincinnati and New York, all convoked provincial councils as prescribed, but they took their own time in doing so.

Four of the provincial councils simply declared the decrees of the Second Plenary Council binding within their jurisdictions. These were: the

Tenth Provincial Council of Baltimore (1869), the Third Provincial

Council of New Orleans (1873), the First Provincial Council of San

Francisco (1874), and the First Provincial Council of Philadelphia

(1889).27

In publishing the Plenary Council’s legislation, the provincial councils of Oregon City, Cincinnati and New York added some significant legislation of their own.

The Second Provincial Council of Oregon City(1881) ordered that the subject of the concio or sermon at the main Mass should be drawn from the Sunday or holy day Gospel.²⁸ While this had precedents, it was not specified in the decrees of the Second Plenary Council, and it may have been at variance with their implication.

The Fourth Provincial Council of Cincinnati (1882) adhered loyally to the Baltimore decrees, even repeating the phrase "saepe saepius" in forbidding excessive preaching on finances. But it also made some rulings of its own. In the first place, it forbade priests to use such pretexts as summer heat (aestivos calores) to get out of preaching. In the second place, it urged that whenever a church had more than the main "parish" Mass at which the traditional concio or set sermon was to be delivered, a brief instruction should be given at these other Masses.²⁹ The fathers of the Fourth Provincial Council of New York (1883) issued a similar decree, explaining their reasoning more fully. Surely those who attended other than the high Mass should not be deprived of the "salutary word." They should therefore be provided with "brief catechetical or homiletic instructions" on each Sunday and holyday, at Mass and other services. Even a brief instruction, the prelates added, if it is well prepared and delivered, can be effective. Nor should these conciones or ins tructiones be omitted in summer. Were they not given, the faithful might easily draw the conclusion that the divine service itself could be skipped for a slight reason during one or another portion of the year.³°

The wording of both the Cincinnati and New York decrees on "homiletic instructions" at Sunday and holyday Masses seems to imply that the practice was still something of a novelty. Perhaps it was newer than the Second Plenary Council, which is less than explicit on this matter. At all events, it was an important trend and proved irreversible. The phrase "brief catechetical or homiletic instructions" is perhaps also significant. If "homiletic" means "based in Scripture," IV New York, like Provincial II of Oregon City, would seem to have placed more emphasis on scriptural preaching than the Second Plenary Council did.

We have studied fifteen diocesan synods held between 1866 and 1884. They represent all the provinces of that time except St. Louis, and San Francisco.³¹ Fourteen explicitly promulgate the acta of Plenary II; the fifteenth does so implicitly.

In several cases, the legislating bishops are at pains to re-state the Council’s cautions against pulpit abuses. Perhaps they do so because they have detected the abuses in their own dioceses. Thus Erie III, Providence I, and Hartford II forbid denunciation from the pulpit, by name or by implication, and the use of data that may appear to be drawn from confessional confidences. In speaking against denunciation, the bishop of Ogdensburg adds his own modification: rebuke none publicly without the previous permission of the bishop! As might be expected, the ordinaries reiterate the Council’s warning against excessive (saepe saepius) money-preaching. The First Synod of Wilmington adds a bit of picturesque phraseology to its decree. Pastors, it say in No. XVII, are of course allowed to present to the congregation the financial necessities of the parish. But the presentation must be done; with brevity and clarity, for it is not within the competence of a parishr priest "to suck out, so to speak, the marrow of his parishioners" (medullam velut exsugat).

On the positive side, the bishops indicate a growing consensus that regular preaching should by no means be abandoned during the, summer months. Only the archbishop of New Orleans, thinking, no doubt, of the chaleurs of a Louisiana August, permits, in Synod IV, the cancellation of a Sunday sermon now and then; but never on two Sun-days in succession. The bishop of Hartford, in the Second Synod (1878) allows on occasion an interesting substitute for the sermon: the slow ~ and clear reading of a list of the "rudiments of faith", plus certain prayers, as given in a formulary provided by the bishop himself. With some modifications, this practice of "reading the rudiments" continued to be followed in Connecticut until the Second Vatican Council.³²

And how did the synods react to Plenary II’s statements on catechetical cycles and the use of the Roman Catechism? Seven of them restate, and at times interpret, the plenary articles on this subject: Baltimore VII, Wilmington I, Hartford II, Buffalo, Rochester I, Cleveland VI, and Newark III. (Newark III ecstatically directs that all preachers re-read every year at Advent and Lent, Plenary II’s "beautiful chapter," De Verbi Dci Praedicatori bus.) It is quite clear that when they speak of a course of catechetical instructions the legislating bishops are referring to instructions delivered even during the sermon-time at Mass. Thus Baltimore VII says, "In comparison with other types of instruction, the preferable method is the catechetical, even within the context of the Mass. [Emphasis added.] To make this easier, let them [pastors] have a copy of the Catechism of the Council of Trent and read it frequently." Buffalo XVII urges much the same practice. "Pastors are not only to take pains with a solid concio, but to apply themselves diligently to catechetical instruction. We strongly exhort that an explanation of the Catechism be given often, even from the pulpit, so that everybody, especially the less-well-educated, may be properly taught the doctrine of the Gospel. [Emphasis added.]"

The legislating bishops continued to spell out the duration of sermons. According to the First Synod of Rochester, the concio at the high Mass should run about a half-hour, but the "brief instructions" at the low Masses should not exceed fifteen minutes. With minor variations, synodal laws, even after the Third Plenary Council of 1884, pretty much agree on that proportion until the period in the present century when the High Mass homily became passé.

The Second Plenary Council had allowed a year or two for covering the doctrinal content of the Roman Catechism. II Newark found this interval acceptable. I Wilmington thought that one year sufficed. VI Cleveland wisely imposed no limit. Time was to prove that one or two years was not enough to permit a thorough re-catechesis.