Disciplina Arcani

Disciplina Arcani (Lat. = discipline of the secret), a name given by seventeenth-century theologians to a rule in the early Christian Church by which unbaptised persons or catechumens were excluded from admission to the more solemn mysteries of the faith. Some catechumens, according to St. Chrysostom, were even forbidden to use the Lord's Prayer, and were only allowed to read select parts of Scripture. This "discipline" reached its extreme in the fourth century A.D., and afterwards disappeared. The idea was doubtless borrowed from Paganism.