TradiVox: A Major Catechetical Enterprise with Liturgical Resonances

New Liturgical Movement ^ | 3/7/20 | Peter Kwasniewski

[marshmallow]

As many already know, an inspiring restoration project is currently underway with the endorsement of Bishop Athanasius Schneider, to restore the traditional Catholic catechisms of the past millennium. For those unfamiliar with Tradivox, here’s a glimpse:

Catechism Restoration Project from Tradivox, Inc. on Vimeo.

This is a monumental work, comprising archival manuscript recovery, text and graphics restoration, reformatting and republication of dozens of classical texts as an entirely new catechism series – all demonstrating the continuity of Catholic faith, moral practice, and liturgical life across time and space. The catechisms will not only be published in book form, but also organized into a massive online database that will be able instantly to show the consistency of teaching across centuries on any subject treated.

NLM readers in particular should note one fascinating aspect of many traditional catechisms: their witness to the Roman liturgical tradition (both before and after the Council of Trent), and how significantly this shaped the formation of the Catholic faithful over the centuries. Reading these texts is like climbing into a time machine to watch the old adage, lex orandi, lex credendi play out before one’s very eyes; one is made aware that the signs and symbols of the traditional Roman Rite had the effect of deeply inculcating Catholic dogma, which in turn could be explicated to the faithful of every age and station of life, and at several levels of depth.

To take just a few examples, from the simple, 1614 “eye catechism” of St. Robert Bellarmine (forthcoming in Tradivox’s Volume 2):

Notice how the figure depicted here on the Altar is the resurrected Christ – indicating his presently glorified state by which He communicates Himself to us sacramentally. Note also the visual match between the standing Christ and the stooping priest, through.......