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Bishop Athanasius Schneider speaks with LifeSiteNews on October 24, 2019.Claire Chretien / LifeSiteNews

March 6, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Athanasius Schneider has blessed a new project called Tradivox, which aims to republish the official catechetical works of Catholic bishops from past centuries that are treasure troves of faithfulness but have largely been forgotten.

For the first time in history, dozens of long forgotten official Catholic catechisms are coming back into print, freshly reformatted as multi-volume series. The texts span from the 1200s to the mid-1900s and were originally issued and endorsed by bishops throughout the world.

Begun as an archival research endeavor, Tradivox — a clever combination of two Latin roots, “tradere” and “vox,” which, when put together, succinctly give the mission of the organization: “Giving voice to tradition” — has rapidly grown into a kind of international movement to restore the catechism of the Church.

Catechisms have long served as an exercise of the Church’s teaching office and a helpful means for articulating sound doctrine in a concise and systematic manner, especially for the laity.

When cataloged and analyzed, as Tradivox has done, they bear striking witness to the unchanging and infallible nature of Catholic Tradition.

It is this witness to the timeless nature of Catholic Tradition and, ultimately, its cataloguing and preservation, that drew Bishop Schneider to endorse the Tradivox project.

Emphasizing the clarity of thought and doctrinal purity found in traditional catechisms, Bishop Schneider said: “[T]he traditional catechisms have enduring value in our own day and age, which is marked by an enormous doctrinal confusion, which reigns in the life of the Church in the past six decades, and which reaches its peak in our days.”

“[T]herefore, I welcome and bless the great project of ‘Tradivox’ in cataloging and preserving the hundreds of long-lost Catholic catechisms issued with episcopal approval over the last millennium. This project will convincingly show the essentially unchanging nature of the apostolic doctrine across time and space[.]”

Tradivox’s founder and president, Aaron Seng, got the early inspiration for compiling and preserving catechetical manuscripts during discernment of religious life, as a Benedictine, in 2005. Seng took his cue from centuries of monks who had preserved Catholic doctrine and culture in their monasteries during times of tremendous upheaval.

“I began personally compiling catechetical manuscripts early on in the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI, as he continually echoed an urgent need for authentically Catholic catechesis in the Church,” Seng told LifeSite. “I recall Pope Benedict even went so far as to state that in the period following the Second Vatican Council, ‘the concrete transmission of the contents of the Christian faith was not achieved.’ At that point, I knew that we needed to act quickly to preserve our catechetical heritage. In the years since, Tradivox has grown to an international project with the same vision.”

For many faithful who have been angered, bewildered, or scandalized by so much falsity and doctrinal confusion abroad in the Church today, Seng says, “Look, you can do something concrete about this. You can help us preserve and hand on the unchanging and infallible Catholic Tradition to the next generation.”

By offering an accessible, indexed collection of traditional catechisms, the beautiful continuity of doctrine found in such works can stand as a remedy for the confusion and error of our time.

“Giving voice to tradition” with Tradivox is one way you can help.

Please contact Tradivox for more information by clicking on this link.