CATTANEO, CARLO AMBROGIO. - Jesuit, preacher, b. in Milan on 7 Dec. 1645, d. there on 19 Dec. 1705. He devoted most of his life to preaching the Spiritual Exercises and to discourses for the meetings of the Congregation of the Good Death, heard by every class of listeners with applause and affection; but he became famous above all through his Sunday lectures, in which he explained certain texts of Holy Scripture to a very large and cultured audience.
His works were all published posthumously, gathered from the papers he left behind; they therefore lack the author's final touch; but they are no less welcome for that: Esercizi spirituali (Venice 1711); Esercizio della buona morte (Milan 1713); Lezioni sacre, (2 vols., ibid. 1713-14); Panegistici, orazioni funebri e discorsi varii (ibid. 1714). The last three works were arranged and edited by the man of letters Fr. Tommaso Ceva. The subsequent editions were numerous, even rapid ones; the last in 4 vols., Milan 1903; the translations are also noteworthy.
Cattaneo's preaching, always witty, incisive, rich in facts, in apologues, in applications of every kind to the most common situations of life, closely attuned to the needs and defects of the times, seasoned with a fine humor, especially in the sacred lectures, makes its author one of the most effective models of moral and didactic preaching. One of his assertions (Lezioni sacre, 1st lecture, 44) on the lawfulness, under certain conditions, of mental reservation provoked a bitter controversy, offensive and defensive (cf. Sommervogel, II, coll. 892-94), which, however, did no harm to the cause defended.
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