promoted: all dispersed religious should be gathered, insisting that they live a common life and open up the activities of their respective Orders. The religious who live a contemplative life should extend their zeal to teaching catechism to the children, religious instruction to the adults and hearing their confession....”1317
The number of educational recommendations on this topic is considerable even though there are no particularly innovative elements. What prevails is the will to use what is easy and what is substantial both in catechesis and preaching which, after all, is particularly directed towards catechesis.
Sermons should be simple: we define what we want to deal with, we divide it into parts and
explain each of them... We should not lose ourselves in dissertations or in examples. We
should not pile up many texts or many stories, which are only there to prove a point. But
we should explain the text or the few texts well and have them standout. Instead of so many
stories, take one suitable story and tell it entirely, in all its more appropriate detail. The
limited mental ability of the child will not be able to appreciate and understand all that
proofs you might offer but he will hold on to the story and keep it in his memory. His
powerful memory will recall it even when many years have gone by.1318
“An easy and popular style”1319 is what Don Bosco requested of catechism textbooks. Generally he preferred that texts be written in dialogue form and have intuitive visual aids.
The historical structure Don Bosco gave to the teaching of Christian doctrine is remarkably interesting. This structure appears with greater evidence during the first fifteen years (1844-1858) of Don Bosco's involvement with youth and during his intense activity as a writer on biblical and ecclesiastical history and also as a writer of works of religious and apologetic nature.1320
Story is certainly taken in several contexts as a didactic aid to draw the attention, awaken the interest of
the listener and as a way to add to dogmatic truths and moral precepts to real experiences. But Bible
History and Church History have had an impact on the contents of catechesis and all its objectives.
Histories of the Bible and the Church help present human history as the history of salvation wrought by God through he mediation of Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah (Old Testament), the one who has
come to work and still works on earth (New Testament) and who lives on in the Catholic Church
which, in turn, guarantees the indissoluble b onding of all the faithful with their closest Shepherds, the
Priests, and with the Bishops, the Roman Pontiff, Jesus Christ and God.
Naturally, during the 1850s Don Bosco gives a markedly apologetic tone to such a theological vision,
dealing as he was with Protestantism, Jewish religion and the keener attention given to the 'history of
salvation'.
1321
From the 1860s on, it does not seem that these enthusiastic beginnings developed into a consistent and significant catechetical tradition of the same intensity, even though it was further clarified and looked at. Whatever elements of originality may have been developing along with Don Bosco's praxis should be attributed more to the general inspirations of the system than to innovative directions.
5. Forming the educators
Don Bosco did not create an institution to form his teachers and educators: clerics, priests, Coadjutors of the Salesian society, Sisters of the Institute of The Daughters of Mary Help of Christians; men and
1317 E III 561-562; see also MB XIV 467
1318 G. Barberis, Verbali del primo capitolo generale (1877), quad. III, XXVI session, pp. 55-56.
1319 MO (1991) 167; cf. Preface to Storia sacra (1847), p. 5 and 7, OE III 5 and 7.
1320 Cf. P. Braido,L'inedito «Breve catechismo pei fanciulli ad uso della diocesi di Torino» di don Bosco, pp. 7-8. 1321 Cf the monograph by N. Cerrato, La catechesi di Don Bosco nella sua «Storia sacra», Rome, LAS 1979. He points
out significant changes that occurred between the frist edition in 1847 and the second and third in 1853 and 1863.