Tim, the Roman Catholic catechism is a very lengthy compilation of double-speak and contradiction. You can't get 10 priests in a room that will agree on what the statements mean. Much like the Jewish Mishnah, the catechism represents traditions that change and over rule scripture so that looking only at the catechism you will likely have an obstacle placed before Christ, which obstructs your view of Christ.
We read God's word. We hold to what God says. We test every word of man (this includes the Roman Church catechism) against scripture. When a catechism contradicts God's word, we toss it out and/or correct it.
And what do you test every word of man against, your own passions? Instead let’s look for an objective truth, an immutable truth, an infallible truth. We know that God and Truth are convertible; St. Thomas says, “Whence it follows not only that truth is in Him, but that He is truth itself, and the sovereign and first truth. [Summa Theologica, Prima, 15, a5] Consequently there is an absolute infallible truth. If we hold that Truth is absolute then there can be only ONE absolute TRUTH. True?
Consequently, we cannot simply hold what ‘feels’ good, or what supports our life style, as truth. There can be no commonality in the various Christian faiths; in any two competing faiths, one must be True and the other must be false or they both must be wrong. There is a fourth outcome but it is inconsequential, both truths are real, thus they are the same reality. The reason should be obvious; truth resides in God, and what resides in God has definitive meaning. Since the Holy Scriptures are inspired by God then for each individual there can be only One Truth, One Word. It’s an obscenity to believe Scripture can have ‘different meaning for different folks’. The Holy Spirit inspires men to One True faith, else the spirit inspiring is not the Holy Spirit.
O soul pressed down by the corruptible body, and weighed down by earthly thoughts, many disingenuous and various; behold and see, if thou canst, that God is truth. For it is written that "God is light;" not in such way as these eyes see, but in such way as the heart sees, when it is said, He is truth [reality]. [St. Augustine, On the Trinity, 8,2]
Therefore, to have a ‘Standard’ of competing faiths with which to measure the same Truth, the same Revelation, is self-contradictory. Pope Benedict XVI spoke directly to this issue in Truth and Tolerance, and specifically to the multiplicity of 'one faith':
The dominant impression of most people today is that all religions, with a varied multiplicity of forms and manifestations, in the end are and mean one and the same thing; which is something everyone can see, except for them. The man of today will for the most part scarcely respond with an abrupt No to a particular religion's claim to be true; he will simply relativize that claim by saying "There are many religions." And behind his response will probably be the opinion, in some form or another, that beneath varying forms they are in essence all the same; each person has his own. [Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance, Christian Belief and World Religions, p 22]
A society of like religions is tolerance expressed as 'orthopraxy' (correct action), In architecture this would be akin to a structure where function follows the form [the true art is where form follows function]. The outcome of actions in this kind of society looks toward our desired outcome instead of God’s will. We experience self-serving acts in our technocratic socialist societies that replace a redemptive utopia found in Christ with the science of socialism. Ideologies of socialism replace faith with an enlightenment [hint, think French revolution which was a blood bath visited on Catholics], hope with progress, and charity with entitlements. God becomes an uber-Santa Claus, a good dude with a long white beard who takes delight in answering our prayers. Herein lies one of the sins of Protestantism, secularism, and naturalism, God simply becomes irrelevant.
What the True Church of Jesus Christ is not:
- Church is not something whose unique differences between other various Christian religions are deemed inconsequential. “Based on incorrect theological perspectives and is characterized by a religious relativism which leads to the belief that ‘one religion is as good as another.’“ Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris mission, December 7, 1990
- Christ's Church is not reformable
- Church is not a company of like minded believers joined together by some vague vibe of Christ's Divinity and Christ's humanity
- Church is not a democracy subject to the will of men. Instead it is a rule of faith, subject to the will of God
- Church is not constituted and commissioned by man
- The Church is not Scripture is not a BOOK, i.e. Scripture Alone.
- The Church is not body of believers, rather a body of faithful.
- The Church is not solely the body of physical beings. Rather Church is the body of all the faithful, those living in this world, those in purgatory, and those in heaven.
From this list we see that you must hold Catholicism equal to your own religion, but your rhetoric doesn’t seem to relay that message.
I've found that the Church of Jesus Christ cannot participate in any such definition; primarily because Divine Truth is not an amalgamation of partial Divine Truths. Since faith resides in the intellect, this type of faith is "one's own invention and milieu" and will not "bring us into the company of believers", i.e. it is a dead faith. [Pope Benedict XVI, Principles of Catholic theology: building stones for a fundamental theology, 1987]. Thus, the Church is not a company of like minded believers joined together by some vague vibe of Christ's Divinity and Christ's humanity. God's word is immutable, never changing, and incorruptible; recall, "God is Truth" (Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas). There is only one True Word of Christ that resides in only one teaching authority, the Catholic Church. In commissioning the Apostles to teach, Christ created a Divine college, made sufficient by God to teach a divine Word. Any other is false. Thus we see that only a Divine College can infallibly teach disciplines of an irreformable Truth. Only the Divine can receive and bind others to immutable Truth with the authority to oblige. This Divinity resides only in the Catholic Church with Christ as her head.
The Catholic Church is constituted for the salvation of the faithful; explicit in the doors opened in baptism she is necessary for redemption, the faithful souls given an indelible mark, the new circumcision. She is a corporate family of adopted ‘sons of God’ redeemed through God's merciful graces given freely. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved: he that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark 16:16). The Church is the Divine Motherhood of our salvation; consequently we find our devotion to the Blessed Virgin a gift from heaven. Nevertheless, the Church is simplistically defined as the "Body of Christ". The totality of sacramental life is the Sacrament of Christ in which she becomes a type of sacrament. As the Church affirms our faith, our faith affirms the Church; it is only within her that eternal life exists. The Catholic Church becomes life in Christ. The sacraments are an outward signs of inward grace of sanctification. As a type of sacrament the Church herself is a visible and outward expression of her corporate priesthood signifying the graces bestowed through her.
"If Christ is the sacrament of God, the Church is for us the sacrament of Christ; she represents him, in the full and ancient meaning of the term; she really makes him present. She not only carries on his work but she is his very continuation, in a sense far more real than that in which it can be said that any human institution is its founder's continuation." Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the common destiny of man, English edition 1988 , French original, 1947, p 76
"The highly developed exterior organization that wins our admiration is but an expression, in accordance with the needs of this present life, of the interior unity of a living entity, so that the Catholic is not only subject to a power but is a member of a body as well, and his legal dependence on the this power is to the end that he may have part in the life of that body. His submission in consequence is not an abdication; his orthodoxy is not mere conformity, but fidelity. It is his duty not merely to obey her orders or show deference to her counsels, but to share in a life, to enjoy a spiritual union. [Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: Christ and the common destiny of man, English edition 1988, French original, 1947, p 76]
Therefore, we can say that salvation comes only through Church, but as faith is bound to 'Church', Church is synergistically tied to faith. Only when the 'Catholic Church' and 'faith' are together, are they both alive. We commune in Christ as He abides in us (John 6:57). The importance of a dead faith is the emptiness of revolt, schism, i.e. an abandoned Church is those disciples who "went back; and walked no more with him." (John 6:67).
The Holy Spirit animates the Mystical Body of Christ the same way the soul animates the body of man. A man separated from his soul is dead; likewise a man separated from the Catholic Church is spiritually dead. St. Origen (185-232) once said “Let no man deceive himself. Outside this house, i.e. outside the Church, none is saved".
JoeT
