Catholic Beliefs

3 Key excerpts on "Catholic Beliefs"

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  eBook - ePub

  Dynamics of World History

  • Christopher Dawson(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Intercollegiate Studies Institute

    (Publisher)

  Hence the opposition between liberalism and Catholicism is not due, as the vulgar simplification would have it, to the “reactionary” tendencies of the latter but to the necessity of safeguarding the absolute Christian values, both in the theological and the historical spheres. For if Christianity is the religion of the Incarnation, and if the Christian interpretation of history depends on the continuation and extension of the Incarnation in the life of the church, Catholicism differs from other forms of Christianity in representing this incarnational principle in a fuller, more concrete, and more organic sense. As the Christian faith in Christ is faith in a real historical person, not an abstract ideal, so the Catholic faith in the church is faith in a real historical society, not an invisible communion of saints or a spiritual union of Christians who are divided into a number of religious groups and sects. And this historic society is not merely the custodian of the sacred Scriptures and a teacher of Christian morality. It is the bearer of a living tradition which unites the present and the past, the living and the dead, in one great spiritual community which transcends all the limited communities of race and nation and state. Hence, it is not enough for the Catholic to believe in the Word as contained in the sacred Scriptures, it is not even enough to accept the historic faith as embodied in the creeds and interpreted by Catholic theology, it is necessary for him to be incorporated as a cell in the living organism of the divine society and to enter into communion with the historic reality of the sacred tradition. Thus to the student who considers Catholicism as an intellectual system embodied in theological treatises, Catholicism may seem far more legalist and intellectualist than Protestantism, which emphasizes so strongly the personal and moral-emotional sides of religion, but the sociologist who studies it in its historical and social reality will soon understand the incomparable importance for Catholicism of tradition, which makes the individual a member of a historic society and a spiritual civilization and which influences his life and thought consciously and unconsciously in a thousand different ways.

  Now the recognition of this tradition as the organ of the Spirit of God in the world and the living witness to the supernatural action of God on humanity is central to the Catholic understanding and interpretation of history. But so tremendous a claim involves a challenge to the whole secular view of history which is tending to become the faith of the modern world. In spite of the differences and contradictions between the progressive idealism of liberalism and the catastrophic materialism of communism all of them agree in their insistence on the immanence and autonomy of human civilization and on the secular community as the ultimate social reality. Alike to the liberal and to the communist the Catholic tradition stands condemned as “reactionary” not merely for the accidental reason that it has been associated with the political and social order of the past, but because it sets the divine values of divine faith and charity and eternal life above the human values—political liberty, social order, economic prosperity, scientific truth—and orientates human life and history towards a supernatural and super-historical end. And since the modern society is everywhere tending towards ideological uniformity which will leave no room for the private worlds of the old bourgeois culture, the contradiction between secularism and Catholicism is likely to express itself in open conflict and persecution.

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  Catholicism Today

  An Introduction to the Contemporary Catholic Church

  • Evyatar Marienberg(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Catholic Belief

  Catholic Christianity, like many religions, combines a way of life with principles of faith. While baptism in the Church is what normally defines someone as Catholic, there are certainly those who are Catholic “in name only”: those who were baptized in the Catholic Church but do not embrace even the most basic of Catholicism’s principles of faith. This chapter deals with the principles of faith that those who are more than just “nominal” Catholics are supposed to hold as true.

  Belief in Christ and in the Holy Scriptures

  Like several other religions, not only is the basic belief that God may be revealed to humans fundamental to Christian faith, but also that such a revelation has already happened, clearly and explicitly, in precise moments in history. Christian belief espouses the revelation of God as described in the Hebrew Bible: to the Patriarchs, to the Israelites in the desert through Moses and on Mount Sinai, and to their descendents, the Jews, through the prophets. Subsequently, God revealed himself in a new and bold manner through materialization in the flesh: the Son of God, Jesus, appeared. The Word of God, the Logos, was made now flesh: it became Incarnated.1

  Belief in Jesus and his role as savior is the central pillar of Christian faith. Except for those who see themselves as part of what is often referred to as “Liberal Christianity,” most Christians would say that in order to be counted a true Christian, one must believe that there is a fundamental and essential difference between Jesus and the rest of humankind. To say that Jesus was an especially moral person, or a brilliant philosopher, or a prophet possessing great courage, or a person of pure faith, or a social rebel, is not enough. To be counted as true Christian, they would claim, one must have faith in Jesus’ divinity and his abiding presence, ideas we will return to later.

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  Retrieving Apologetics

  • Glenn B. Siniscalchi(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Pickwick Publications

    (Publisher)

  482 The transformation of so many people in different cultures across the ages requires an explanation.

  Prospects for Developing the Via Empirica

  Observations from history strongly suggest that Christianity has led to an improvement in the physical, scientific, artistic, social, and political lives of countless individuals. The Church’s beliefs and practices are distinctive in the sense that they form the worldviews of individuals to perceive reality in a certain way, inaugurating the Kingdom of God “on earth as it is in heaven.”

  Only someone who has faith will recognize the mystery of the four marks, but reason can apprehend the change that Christianity has had on a civilization. The Catechism of the Catholic Church remarks:

  Only faith can recognize that the Church possesses these properties [that is to say, the four marks] from her divine source. But their historical manifestations are signs that also speak clearly to human reason. As the First Vatican Council noted, the “Church herself, with her marvelous propagation, eminent holiness, and inexhaustible fruitfulness in everything good, her catholic unity and invincible stability, is a great and perpetual motive of credibility and an irrefutable witness of her divine mission.”483

  Some detractors might note that historical effects are usually accounted for by multiple causes, not just one. They might point out that Catholic Beliefs cannot be exclusively responsible for any particular effect. Now, it is true that historical effects usually have more than one cause, but this does not mean that historians cannot point to specifically Christian beliefs that are widespread as a necessary cause for certain effects. Different causes have different values and contribute to forming various phenomena in history. Thus historians rarely affirm that entire movements and institutions can be accounted for by a single cause. Many necessary causes, however, might contribute to the ongoing influence of historical effects. Christianity is thought to be a major contributor to the positive differences made in different cultures.

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