COMPETENTES. — These were the catechumens who, after a period of probation, put forward their names to receive Baptism on Holy Saturday. They were subjected to more rigorous ascetical exercises: prayers, scrutinies, exorcisms, humiliations, and instructions; the handing over and return of the Creed, the Our Father, the Gospels, psalms, etc. They were distinguished from other catechumens by graver obligations and greater rights. They were “competentes de simul petendo atque unum aliquid appetendo” (St. Augustine, Serm., 216); “ex eo, quod accepto Symbolo iam petit gratiam Dei (i.e. Baptismum), competens vocatur” (Ildefonso of Toledo, De cognitione Baptismi, 1).
BIBL.: P. De Puniet, s.V. in DACL, II, cols. 2579–2621; Ph. Oppenheim, Sacramentum regenerationis Christianae, Rome 1947, pp. 46–55; id., Commentationes ad ritum baptismalem, II, Turin 1949, pp. 49–58.