Augustine and the Catechumenate by William Harmless, S.J. (review)

For readers of the popular first edition (Collegeville, MN, 1995), this revision, completed shortly before the author’s untimely death, entirely supersedes its predecessor. As Harmless states, “nearly every page” has been changed to produce a new edition that is “up to date from top to bottom” (pp. xxi–xxii). Among other things, the numerous well-chosen references to St. Augustine’s texts have now incorporated new translations and new editions (including of newly discovered sermons). Some discussions have been excised, whereas others have been greatly expanded. What the author does not state is that he became a better scholar every year since the publication of what was then his revised dissertation. The new edition, thereby, benefits both from the hard-won expertise of a senior scholar and from the exponential growth in the last twenty years of two bodies of scholarly literature: specialized studies in Augustine’s works (particularly of his sermons) and ongoing research on early Christian liturgical practices. Admittedly, there are now—in the burgeoning field of Augustinian studies—other academic studies more technical than this one (such as J. Patout Burns and Robin Margaret Jensen’s Christianity in Roman Africa: The Development of Its Practices and Beliefs [Grand Rapids, MI, 2014]), but this one will continue to be of value because of its unmistakable virtues.

Harmless has once more produced a very readable descriptive history with broad appeal that is of value to experts but deliberately written in a style that is accessible to nonspecialists. After outlining the general shape acquired by the catechumenate in the fourth century in various locations (including what Augustine is thought to have experienced in Milan with Ambrose), Harmless turns to the catechumenate in Hippo for the bulk of his study. There he mines Augustine’s homilies that are directly related to catechism to recover a thick initiation process extending from the enrollment of catechumens, their Lenten preparation, and their eventual Easter baptism to their post-Easter mystagogy.

Worrying that contemporary rites of initiation, when compared to their ancient counterparts, can appear to be reductive and thin, Harmless attempts through these chapters to infuse contemporary practice with greater substance. In due course, he expands upon a whole range of activities, including biblical interpretation, preaching, and any number of sometimes forgotten ancient liturgical practices. He makes every effort to provide the necessary background for the non-expert reader by explaining terms and concepts along the way while supplying multiple charts and other scholarly aids. He takes the reader by the hand through Augustine’s catechetical works and sermons while strongly emphasizing their liturgical context and the evidence they provide for recovering the initiation rites and rituals involved in ancient catechesis. What emerges is the broader story of how the highly selective catechumenate of the church of the martyrs evolved into an instrument of mass assimilation of new converts in the wake of the conversion of Constantine.

Like its predecessor, this book will appeal to at least three audiences: those concerned with implementing the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA) and other contemporary catechetical forms; those interested in early Christian liturgies; and those attending to the still too often neglected ministerial context of Augustine that informed nearly everything else he thought and did. Harmless turned to ancient Christian sources, not to return Christians to an earlier time but to help them move forward with fuller and more intelligent resources (pp. xxv–xxvi, 20–24, 404–05). Although readers have been deprived of what this energetic and imaginative Jesuit would have written next, they will, no doubt, be better equipped than they would have been without his thoughtful and thorough revision of this well-regarded and useful book.