CASSOCK. The under dress of all orders of the clergy; it resembles a long coat, with a single upright collar. In the Church of Rome it varies in colour with the dignity of the wearer. Priests wear black; bishops, purple; cardinals, scarlet; and popes, white. In the Church of England, black is worn by all the three orders of the clergy, but bishops, upon state occasions, often wear purple coats. The 74th English canon enjoins that beneficed clergymen, &c. shall not go in public in their doublet and hose, without coats or cassocks.—Jebb.
CASUIST. One who studies cases of conscience.
CASUISTRY. The doctrine and science of conscience and its cases, with the rules and principles of resolving the same; drawn partly from natural reason or equity, and partly from the authority of Scripture, the canon law, councils, fathers, &c. To casuistry belongs the decision of all difficulties arising about what a man may lawfully do or not do; what is sin or not sin; what things a man is obliged to do in order to discharge his duty, and what he may let alone without breach of it. The most celebrated writers on this subject, of the Church of England, are Bishop Jeremy Taylor, in his “Ductor Dubitantium;” and Bishop Sanderson, in his “Cases of Conscience.” There was a professor of casuistry in the university of Cambridge, but the title of the professorship has lately been altered to Moral Philosophy.
CASULA. (See Chasible.)
CATACOMBS. Burying-places near Rome; not for Christians only, but for all sorts of people. There is a large vault about three miles from Rome, used for this purpose; there is another near Naples. That at Naples consists of long galleries cut out of the rock, of three stories, one above another. These galleries are generally about twenty feet broad, and fifteen high. Those at Rome are not above three or four feet broad, and five or six feet high. They are very long, full of niches, shaped according to the sizes of bodies, wherein the bodies were put, not in coffins, but only in burial clothes. Many inscriptions are still extant in them; and the same stone sometimes bears on one side an inscription to heathen deities and marks of Christianity on the other. But see a large account of these in Bishop Burnet’s Travels, in his fourth letter; also “The Church in the Catacombs,” by Dr. C. Maitland; and Macfarlane’s “Catacombs of Rome.”
The name “Catacombs” is now generally applied to the stone vaults for the dead constructed in the public cemeteries of England.
CATAPHRYGES. Christian heretics, who made their appearance in the second century; they had this name given to them because the chief promoters of this heresy came out of Phrygia. They followed Montanus’s errors. (See Montanists.)
CATECHISM, is derived from a Greek term, (κατηχέω,) and signifies instruction in the first rudiments of any art or science, communicated by asking questions and hearing and correcting the answers. From the earliest ages of the Church the word has been employed by ecclesiastical writers in a more restrained sense, to denote instruction in the principals of the Christian religion by means of questions and answers.—Dean Comber. Shepherd.
By canon 59, “Every parson, vicar, or curate, upon every Sunday and holy day, before evening prayer, shall, for half an hour or more, examine and instruct the youth and ignorant persons of his parish, in the ten commandments, the articles of the belief, and in the Lord’s Prayer; and shall diligently hear, instruct, and teach them the catechism set forth in the Book of Common Prayer. And all fathers, mothers, masters, and mistresses shall cause their children, servants, and apprentices, which have not learned the catechism, to come to the church at the time appointed, obediently to hear, and to be ordered by the minister, until they have learned the same. And if any minister neglect his duty herein, let him be sharply reproved upon the first complaint, and true notice thereof given to the bishop or ordinary of the place. If after submitting himself he shall willingly offend therein again, let him be suspended. If so the third time, there being little hope that he will be therein reformed, then excommunicated, and so remain until he be reformed. And likewise, if any of the said fathers, mothers, masters, or mistresses, children, servants, or apprentices, shall neglect their duties, as the one sort in not causing them to come, and the other in refusing to learn, as aforesaid, let them be suspended by their ordinaries, (if they be not children,) and if they so persist by the space of a month, then let them be excommunicated.”
And by the rubric, “The curate of every parish shall diligently upon Sundays and holy days, after the second lesson at evening prayer, openly in the church instruct and examine so many children of his parish sent unto him, as he shall think convenient, in some part of the catechism. And all fathers and mothers, masters and dames, shall cause their children, servants, and apprentices (who have not learned their catechism) to come to the church at the time appointed, and obediently to hear, and be ordered by the curate, until such time as they have learned all that therein is appointed for them to learn.”