Build your own memory mansion (1)
The power of memorisation is something which has been woefully neglected in modern education, but which forms the core both of the education of antiquity and of the perennial catechetical discipline of the Church. In the ancient world, the importance of memory was extolled by Simonides, Aristotle and Cicero; and in the Christian world, by St Augustine, St Albert the Great and St Thomas Aquinas. St Thomas goes as far as to associate memory with the practice of virtue — specifically the virtue of prudence.
It is also an admirable and longstanding discipline in the Church to have children and catechumens commit the whole catechism to memory. Catechisms designed for this purpose are ordered into short, unambiguously phrased questions and concise answers, not only as an important aid for memorisation, but in order to convey the truths of the faith as simply and precisely as possible — building up a strong spiritual edifice, as it were, brick by brick.
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