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40 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Faith and the Church are connected. Faith and the Church should not be treated as two independent things. Christian faith and participating in the Church cannot be separated because where the Church is, God is.
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How and why are faith and the Church connected?
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Catholic faith is rooted in God who became incarnate in history in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. In Jesus, people were able to touch, listen to, and speak to God directly. In Jesus people came to know God’s healing and forgiveness in an immediate way. In Jesus, God’s offer of salvation and fullness of life became a tangible reality.
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How is Catholic faith rooted in God?
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Jesus breathed his Spirit into the Church so that the Church could become his body on earth. Because of the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Church is able to be God’s continuing physical presence in the world.
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How and why is the Church Jesus's body on earth?
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The Greek word for Church used in the N.T., is “ekklesia” means “to call out of.” In Scriptures, it referred to the community called out of the world by God to live and act in a way that was different from others. God’s call to faith is a call to be Church.
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What does "ekklesia" mean?
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Faith is a human act. We need faith to enable us to accept and live out our role as the body of Christ on earth. Faith is “contact with the mystery of God” according to Pope John Paul II. Faith is a free gift from god, and without God’s help we could not believe. Faith is an authentically human act. It is our response to God’s gift, a surrendering of ourselves to God.
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What is faith?
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To believe in Christ means “to abandon ourselves to Christ,” that is, to allow ourselves to be shaped by Christ and to let go of those things which keep us from listening to and following him.
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How do we respond to God's gift of faith?
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Faith may begin with a single life-changing event or it may begin with the commitment of parents to raise their children in a way that is shaped by Jesus. Faith may come in a moment or it may be part of a longer process in which the person gradually takes ownership of all that has been taught to him or her.
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How does faith begin?
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Believing is not something that happens once and for all time. Since God never takes away our freedom, we are always free to stop allowing Christ to shape our lives. We can separate ourselves from the body of Christ either through a deliberate decision, or by gradually developing habits that move us further and further from Christ.
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Why is believing something that a person chooses each day?
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Faith needs to be sustained by prayer, study, reflection, and regular reception of the sacraments. Faith needs to be exercised in loving action.
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How can people nourish and sustain their faith?
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No one acting alone can be the body of Christ. A true disciple of Christ must join with others. Our faith must be communal as well as personal. The groups we form and the ways those groups function must be shaped by Christ if we are really going to answer God’s call.
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How are faith and community connected?
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It is not easy to surrender our lives to Christ as individuals; it is even more difficult to do so as members of communities in which the many different individuals have different concepts of what it means to surrender. It is only in the context of a community that we can really come to know and understand the God who “is love.”
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How does community help us come to know and understand God as love?
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We believe in a God who acts through (or is mediated by) the created world. Our belief is rooted in the ancient Israelites’ belief that anyone who looked upon the face of God would die. God is so much beyond human comprehension that we cannot cope with a direct encounter with the divine.
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What did the Israelites believe about contact with God?
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Even in the moments of deepest prayer and personal communion, we are only able to see God indistinctly as if in a dull mirror. In order to know, understand, and experience God better without being overwhelmed, God has chosen to be mediated to us through that which is familiar and understandable. God has chosen to make his love and fidelity known to us through one another when we gather in God’s name.
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How is God made known to us?
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Our faith is deepened and fortified by the community’s faith. Our community’s faith also makes it possible for us to do what God calls us to do: to know and love God more fully. –to live as members of the one body of Christ. The faith of the community exists wherever two or more people gather to share the faith, to pray, or to support and encourage one another out of love rooted in love for God.
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How is our faith affected by the community's?
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Faith is supported by formal structures. The church is made up of sinful individuals, thus the Church can easily fall into sin. Just as individual Christians can be blinded to and caught up in the secular culture of their day, so too the Church. Christian communities often accept and adopt the methods of operation and patterns of group interaction of the culture around them.
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Is the Church perfect?
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Some of those patterns and standards may be so common that Christians do not notice that they are contrary to the gospel. This is why the Church needs to develop formal structures that help preserve essential truths.
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Why are formal structures needed to preserve essential truths?
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These formal structures take the form of creeds, doctrine, and rituals.
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What forms do the formal structures of the Church support take to support faith?
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The formal aspects of Catholicism have ensured that the faith given by Jesus Christ has survived even when the Church itself has sinned. The formal structures help both individuals and communities establish, express, and maintain their identities as believers. The formal structures make our communal relationship with God visible and tangible.
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How do these formal structures help both individuals and communities?
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Magisterium refers to the bishops in communion with the pope who is the successor of St. Peter.
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What does magisterium mean?
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The Church’s magisterium has the task of defining and interpreting these formal structures of faith.
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What is a major task of the magisterium?
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Ecumenism: The movement and activities which seek to promote religious unity within the Christian Church and among all the people of the world.
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What is ecumenism?
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The Marks of the Church are: —one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.
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What are the four marks of the Church?
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A statement of the Church’s beliefs issued at the first ecumenical council at Nicaea in 325 and later confirmed at the Council of Constantinople in 381. It taught that Jesus is of the same substance as God and thus divine. The first Council of Constantinople officially added the words “we believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church,” to the creed. The Council of Nicaea pointed out that one could not separate faith from a belief that the Church is “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.
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What is the Nicene Creed, and what did it point out?
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Throughout Church history, the Church has been marked by a great diversity stemming from both the variety of God’s gifts and the diversity of those who receive them. The diversity of the Church is not opposed to its unity. Sin and its consequences have threatened the gift of unity.
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How does the diversity of God's gifts and those who receive them promote unity in the Church?
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Catholics are united by a profession of faith received from the Apostles, common celebration of divine worship, especially the sacraments, and apostolic succession through the sacraments of Holy Orders.
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What three actions unite Catholics?
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The Armenian, Byzantine, Coptic, Ethiopian, East Syrian (or Chaldean), west Syrian, and Maronite rites are all part of the one Catholic Church.
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What are the seven non-Roman ecclesial traditions, which are in union with Rome?
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The Church is the bride of Christ, his partner in bringing to birth the kingdom of God.
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How is the image of the Church as the bride of Christ connected with the kingdom of God?
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The Church can never be the kingdom of God. When the kingdom of God comes into its fullness, the Church as we know it will pass away.
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What will happen when the kingdom of God comes into its fullness?
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The Church has been chosen by Christ to be his spouse. The Church is Christ’s partner in giving birth to the kingdom. The Church is the sign and reality of the kingdom of God, even as a pregnant woman is the sign and reality of a new life. The Church is not the same as the kingdom, any more than the pregnant woman is the same as the new baby.
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How is the Church like a pregnant woman?
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Three aspects of Catholic faith and practice are particularly important in giving form to holiness. These are: the moral teachings of the Church; the evangelical counsels and the witness of those who live by them; and the sacraments
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What are the three ways or aspects of Catholic faith and practice that supports holiness?
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Evangelical Counsels are: poverty, chastity, and obedience. The aim of the evangelical counsels is to help a person remove everything from his/her life which might hinder the ability to love as Christ loved. They are vows taken by sisters, brothers, and religious priests, but they are also recommended for all the faithful.
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What are the three evangelical counsels?
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The evangelical counsels call Catholics to stand apart temptation and to give witness to the love and justice of the kingdom of God. A commitment to poverty frees one from the temptation to sin for the sake of material wealth. A commitment to chastity frees one from the temptation to sin for the sake of physical pleasure. A commitment to obedience frees one from the temptation to sin for the sake of power.
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How does each evangelical counsel help a person who lives by them?
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Sacraments are the greatest witness to and support for holiness within the Church. The Sacraments all give us the grace which we need to give holiness concrete form in our lives.
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How do the sacraments witness to and support holiness in the Church?
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It is from God’s love for humanity and God’s desire that all are saved and come to knowledge of the truth that the Church gets its missionary motivation. Salvation is found in the truth. Those who obey the truth through the prompting of the Holy Spirit are on the path of salvation. It is the missionary mandate to go out and meet those on the way to truth and to bring them to the truth.
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What is the missionary mandate of the Church?
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What the Church teaches is based on the whole of Revelation: all of the scripture, the teachings of all the apostles, and the understanding and witness of Christians from all times and all places.
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What is the whole of Revelation?
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The Church remains faithful to its apostolic nature in three ways: -The Church remains faithful by recognizing that it is built upon the foundation of the apostles who were appointed by Jesus. –The Church remains faithful to its apostolic nature by following the guidance of the Holy Spirit; adhering to the foundation laid by the apostles and written down in the scriptures; and teaching what the apostles taught.
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What are the three ways in which the Church remains faithful to its apostolic nature?
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Every member of the Church bears witness to the apostolic nature of the Church by teaching and modeling the faith of the apostles in situations where no one else can. The Church remains faithfully apostolic by accepting the continued guidance of the apostles through their successors, and in particular, by accepting the guidance of Peter’s successor-the pope.
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How do members fo the Church bear witness to the apostolic nature of the Church?
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As the successor of St. Peter and the head of the college of bishops, the pope is the pastor who watches over the whole Church and each of its members throughout the world. Each diocese or “local church” is led by its own bishop, who has also been established by the Holy Spirit. This bishop has primary responsibility for interpreting and handing on the apostolic tradition within his own diocese and also for keeping his diocese untied to the universal Church.
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Who is the pop and what are his responsibilities?
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Each bishop must adapt the Church’s teachings to the particular culture and particular needs of the diocese. When necessary and lawful adaptations are made, it is important that the unity of the Church be maintained. The pope also has the task of giving voice to the universal mission and vocation of the Church.
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What are the bishops' responsibilities?
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The pope calls Catholics everywhere to remember their responsibility to all of God’s people and not just those in their immediate vicinity. He calls Catholics to remember that there are certain Church teachings which cannot be adapted to suit the local culture. There are issues—such as the protection of the rights of the most defenseless—that are fundamental to the universal vocation of the Church; they must not be ignored or denied by any who wish to call themselves Catholics.
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What does the pope ask Catholics to remember?
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