Chapter I: Of Catechetical Instruction

It is the proper and most grave office, especially of pastors of souls, to take care of the catechetical instruction of the Christian people.

The pastor must:

1° At set times, by instruction continuing through several days, prepare children each year for rightly receiving the sacraments of penance and confirmation.

2° With entirely peculiar zeal, especially, if nothing obstructs, in the time of Lent, so instruct children that they may holily take for the first time the Holy Things from the altar.

Besides the instruction of children of which in can. 1330, the pastor is not to omit cultivating more richly and more perfectly by catechism the children who have recently received first communion.

On Sundays and other feasts of precept, at that hour which in his judgment is more suitable for the attendance of the people, the pastor must moreover explain the catechism to the adult faithful, in speech accommodated to their capacity.

§ 1. In the religious instruction of children, the pastor can, indeed, if he is legitimately impeded, must employ the assistance of clerics living in the territory of the parish, or even, if necessary, of pious lay persons, especially those who have been enrolled in a pious sodality of Christian doctrine or another similar one erected in the parish.

§ 2. Let priests and other clerics, detained by no legitimate impediment, be helpers to their own pastor in this most holy work, even under penalties to be inflicted by the Ordinary.

If, in the judgment of the local Ordinary, the help of religious is necessary for the catechetical instruction of the people, religious Superiors, even exempt ones, requested by the same Ordinary, are held, personally or through their religious subjects, without detriment however to regular discipline, to hand that instruction on to the people, especially in their own churches.

Not only parents and others who hold the place of parents, but masters also and sponsors are bound by the obligation of taking care that all subject or entrusted to them be educated in catechetical instruction.

It belongs to the local Ordinary to issue in his diocese all things which pertain to instructing the people in Christian doctrine; and even exempt religious, whenever they teach non-exempt persons, are held to observe the same things.