The Council of Trent by Pasquale Cati (1588)
Posted on 07/07/2013 1:01:18 PM PDT by NYer
“I believe what the Church teaches.” To utter this sentence sparks surprise, laughter, horror, or even disdain from non-Catholics – and not a few Catholics. A number of replies may follow. “You can disagree if you wish.” “The Church cannot tell you what to do, especially in the bedroom.” “Don’t you want to think for yourself?”
There are assumptions underlying these glib responses. First, the teachings of the Church are burdensome, archaic, or irrelevant. Second, these teachings do not need to be obeyed; the individual can disagree, if he/she desires. Third, to believe these teachings is a denial of freedom; the individual should decide what to believe and how to act without being compelled by the Church.
These assumptions have become so widespread that for Catholic teenagers and adults they have become part of the contemporary religious landscape, unwittingly and insidiously absorbed from the individualistic and relativist culture. They have helped loosen the bonds that Catholics have with the Church from the grace of baptism, replacing filial devotion with tension or angst. In a tragic irony, the Church that was founded by Christ to lead us to the ultimate fulfillment is perceived by some Catholics as a barrier to self-fulfillment.
To explain why we ought to believe what the Church teaches therefore requires upfront quite a bit of apologetic work – belief, freedom, and the Church all have to be liberated from the shackles of the dictatorship of relativism. Once these are free, we learn that those who willingly believe what the Church teaches are the ones who are truly free.
To believe is to accept as true what someone else knows and has seen for himself. The believer, not having access to what the witness knows, relies entirely on the witness’s account; he fully assents to its truth because he trusts the witness. To believe, therefore, is an act of freedom, since immediate reality does not compel his assent, as does, say, the acts of addition or subtraction. The believer wills his belief, not because he has seen the evidence, but because, in the words of Josef Pieper, he wants “to participate in the knowledge of the knower.”
Belief is a major source of our knowledge. Many of our ideas about the world, the economy, politics, religion, and more come from the trust we place in others who report what they have seen from their own firsthand perspective.
Religious belief is similar in structure, but has a crucial difference: it relies upon the testimony of God, who cannot be met and cross-examined like a human witness. God’s testimony is what we call revelation – the content of the Church’s teachings that has been passed on in Scripture and Tradition to the present day.
The Council of Trent by Pasquale Cati (1588)
But how can we trust the testimony of an invisible and unassailable witness? More still, why should we obey his testimony? There are several ways to approach these questions, but let us choose just one. Catholics believe that God revealed himself to human beings gradually over the centuries until he became human himself. “For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” (John 18:37)
Jesus Christ is the witness par excellence to the reality of God. Many heard what Jesus said and saw what he did, and they freely chose to believe in him. They became witnesses of God’s testimony given through the God-man, and because they spread this testimony to others in hostile territory, they became a new kind of witness – they became martyrs, men and women who died because they also bore witness to the reality of God.
For twenty-one centuries men and women of all walks of life have died for God as martyrs. Invariably, the accounts of the martyrs portray their lucid minds and inspiring devotion in the face of the cruelest tortures. They did not oppose death because they were certain from their complete trust in God that all of what God has revealed and passed on through his Church was true and worth dying for.
The heroism of the martyrs presents a bold challenge to the dictatorship of relativism and its doctrine of self-fulfillment. True freedom is not the ability to self-indulge, but to self-surrender. In surrendering themselves to their executioners’ hands, the martyrs achieve true freedom and its joy from their prior surrender to God, the ultimate truth, who has willed that he be made known to the world through his Church.
To believe what the Church teaches is ultimately to believe that God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, has truly spoken to us, and that his testimony of life with him – both now and in eternity – is worth giving up everything this side of paradise. To believe in this way, to commit fully to God whom we cannot see, is admittedly difficult and risky. And this belief cannot be coerced, since the rewards it promises transcend the limits of physical gratification.
Hence to believe what the Church teaches is to be truly free. The Church was endowed by God with his grace and with his laws for traveling the path to him. Countless witnesses have attested to the authenticity of the Church’s testimony with their lives and with their blood. If we wish to be free as they are, we must have the will to believe the Church.
Ping!
As long as it doesn’t conflict with the Bible, I believe it too.
When it comes to the bedroom the Church doesn’t teach much.
Of course it teaches that sex is between a man and a woman. It teaches that pre-marital sex is not the proper thing to do, and it teaches fidelity to one.
Not bad teaching at all for a successful marriage.
They don’t try to inhibit what a man and woman do if they wish to experiment with each other , they pretty much leave that to the consenting adult married couple.
Practicing what the Church teaches will keep you free from STD’s, adultery, and getting shot by a jealous husband.
As Christians
We put ourselves under the Authority of Christ
It does not matter how I feel about an issue
What emotions I might experience
What rationalizations I might come up with
What the Laws of Caesar might be
I Must Submit Myself to Christ
The Body of Christ, on this Earth
Is still trying to understand what this means
And has become... Fractured in Vision
I live in Hope that this will not always be true, and
Continue to remember the 2 Great Laws
Love The Lord Thy God
Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself
All the Laws and the Covenants are Based Upon This
I believe what God teaches.........
Song of Solomon is not about the love of God for his children. It’s mostly about sexual love between a husband and wife.
“I believe what the Church Bible teaches.”
The reason for my distinction is that there are churches that do not properly teach the New Testament scriptures. Such a church often demand good deeds as a path to God and a growing list of works and rules to follow to achieve that goal.
The scriptures teach that people who are born again in faith and grace after accepting the offer of salvation observe Christianity. God hates the sin but according to scripture, God loves the sinner.
Church is not a rest home for Saints; church is a hospital for sinners.
Experimenting is fine as long as the man finishes in the appropriate place. ;-)
So, no, just because you are married doesn’t mean “anything goes”.
Every sexual act must be both unitive and ordered towards procreation.
You got that right.
Hence to believe what the Church teaches is to be truly free.
__________________________
AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!
;-)
I believe this thread will require an ample supply of popcorn.
Believe in God as a start.
I believe what most Churches teach as long as it is backed up by scripture, which means that i believe the Gospel of Jesus.
Churches are for the purpose of spreading the gospel, not adding to it.
People here just say whatever pops into their pretty little heads about the Church. It sounds so dumb And often hateful and truly ignorant. It sounds like repetition of something some silly boyfriend said once and is taken as truth.
Pope John Paul II wrote extensively on ordered sex in his Theology of the Body
I suggest being at least aware before writing further
I know many go by the hateful teachings of the anti catholic bigotry fpund in certain circles in this country. As the late archbishop fulton j sheen said, soething like: if i thought true what many think is true about the church. I wouldnt be catholic either
The church is the fpremost protector of not deviating from the Bible
And it guides extensively in the way of marital relations
Tell us what institution is better. But dont waste pur time with un citable statements
References
This is a catholic publication you are commenting to. What drives you to comment self righteously on its content?
Do you do this just to detract?
Do you have a better path for those seeking the way?
You are saying your thinking is better than a 2000 year old institution which has guided and helped many
Do you think that all billion + catholics and all who have gone before including the twelve apostles plus st paul whose lives and teachings about Jesus Catholics adhere to without embellishment nor excuse are wrong?
If so, please read some of the catechism and history and tell us exactly where the catholics are wrong. Where exactly do they deviate from the teachings of Jesus?
Beware, many biblical scholars who have attempted this seriously have become catholics and catholicisms greatest defenders
Scott hahn for one
This is a catholic publication you are commenting to. What drives you to comment self righteously on its content?
I believe what most Churches teach as long as it is backed up by scripture, which means that i believe the Gospel of Jesus.
Churches are for the purpose of spreading the gospel, not adding to it.
No offense but you must be trying to defend what you think is wrong with your Church.
Great, so you interpret the required practice of your religion, but at the same time deny others the right to do it for themselves. Or disdain them for exercising it.
What most churches teach as long as they are backed up by scripture?
My only question was what is your point?
And what is your intent in the question that there is a question anput the veracity of the catholic church in its being scripturally based
The Catholic church was founded by Jesus
If you dont like the chirch then dont read catholic pulications
Amd reading catholic publications then detracting from the church begs the advice fond a hobby
I will not respond to anything else you have to say pther than a sane and logical answer to the question what is your intent in detracting against a catholic argument written for catholics in a catholic publication
What is the intent?
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