A Catechism for a Religion Without a God

Comte structured the Catechism of Positive Religion as a series of thirteen conversations between a Positivist priest and a woman enquirer, a form directly modelled on the Catholic catechisms Comte had grown up with in France, even as its content set out to replace Catholic doctrine entirely. The dialogue explains the Religion of Humanity's central claim, that the proper object of worship is not a supernatural god but the Great Being, Comte's term for Humanity considered as a continuous whole spanning everyone whose work still benefits the living, the dead who built the civilisation the present inherits, and those not yet born who will inherit it in turn.

Around that claim the Catechism lays out the religion's calendar, its nine sacraments marking the stages of a positivist life from presentation to incorporation after death, and its motto of love as the principle, order as the foundation, and progress as the goal, the last of these entering Brazilian public life directly through the words Ordem e Progresso on that country's flag.