Introduction
"You access the Abbey in the way of reason, you access it in the ablaze of the Spirit." John Henry Cardinal Newman.
"There are not a hundred humans in the apple who abhorrence the Catholic Church, but there are bags who abhorrence what they afield acquire the Catholic Abbey to be." Bishop Fulton Sheen.
Pop quiz:
1) Does the Catholic Abbey advise that God wishes the conservancy of all? Yes
2) Does the Catholic Abbey advise that conservancy was fabricated accessible for the apple through the cantankerous of Jesus Christ? Yes
3) Does the Catholic Abbey acquire that there is conservancy for those who do not apperceive Jesus Christ? Yes
4) Does the Catholic Abbey acquire that the conservancy of those who do not apperceive Christ is somehow fabricated accessible by Christ, whether or not those adored acquire anytime heard of him? Yes
5) Does the Catholic Abbey acquire that this puts all those adored in some accord to the Catholic Church? Yes
So, why be Catholic?
- The Roman Catholic Abbey has remained focused and affiliated on the ascendancy of Jesus Christ aback it was founded by Christ about 2000 years ago. She entails the acumen of the Apostles; She encompasses the article of the Early Abbey Fathers; and She wraps herself about the Scriptures-which She handed to the world.
This is area it all began. All-powerful Incarnation. All-powerful Salvation. All-powerful Love. The Trinity. These Christian verities originated in the Church. Jesus founded the Abbey on St. Peter, and the Roman Catholic Abbey is still the abbey of St. Peter.
Catholicism is not abandoned a account of rules. Catholicism is Christianity. Catholicism is His-tory. Catholicism seeks to accompany all to salvation. Catholicism strives to advise and ability all souls. For in the end, Jesus is the point area time and aeon meet. It is the Church's mission to see that the Kingdom of God is fostered, encouraged, and nurtured.
"To be abysmal in history is to cease to be Protestant." Cardinal Newman
- The Catholic actualization is a apple view. "Catholics reside in an bugged world, a apple of statutes and angelic water, decrepit bottle and votive candles, saints and religious medals, chaplet chaplet and angelic pictures. But these Catholic accouterments are simple hints of a added and added common religious affection which inclines Catholics to see the Angelic ambuscade in creation. As Catholics, we acquisition our houses and our apple apparitional by a faculty that the objects, events, and bodies of circadian activity are revelations of grace." Andrew Greeley.
- The Catholic actualization is communitarian-not individualistic. It is not "me and Jesus", but rather it is "Jesus and our community".
- Catholics are optimists. Catholics do not acquire that man is evil. Catholics acquire that men sin, and that we are sinful, but that we were fabricated in the angel of God and appropriately we are absorbed to the Good which is by analogue God. We cannot be Good afterwards God's grace, but we acquire the free-will to readily acquire or adios his action of Grace. This spills over into how we see everything. Catholics see God in all; in attributes and in man, God is in all. "Man is God, is the accepted approach of speech; God is man, is the Catholic." Cardinal Newman
- The Catholic Abbey is a all-powerful church. Its expresses its adoration and accord to God through God's creations: bread, wine, water, oil, incense, bells, and gestures. It expresses the mysterious, the unknown, and the abstruse through the absoluteness of nature. Additionally, there altered sacraments at assertive important times in our lives. Flannery O'Connor, the abundant Southern author, if asked to avert the Catholic acceptance that Christ is absolutely present in the aliment and wine during the Eucharist, and not just a attribute as a lot of Protestants (and lamentably some Catholics) believe, said the following: '"Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it.' That was all the aegis I was able of but I apprehend now that this is all I will anytime be able to say about it, alfresco a story, except that it is the centermost of actuality for me; all the blow of activity is expendable." "The sacraments absolve through themselves, and not through men." St. Augustine
- The Abbey expresses itself through Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture. The Bible was accounting by the Abbey for the Church. The Abbey existed afore the Bible; she fabricated the Bible; she called its books, and she preserved it. "I would not acquire the Gospel, did not the ascendancy of the Abbey move me." St. Augustine The Catholic does not appear to Christ through scripture abandoned (sola scriptura), but through both his/her all-powerful and claimed assimilation in the active Abbey and through the abstraction of Sacred Scripture.
- The Abbey is a doctrinal church. She has a set of beliefs. You apperceive area She stands. She is proudly dogmatic-She stands adamant by Her orthodoxy. She believes-as She consistently has-- that there have to be a final ascendancy on the Word fabricated flesh. While acknowledging that God loves all humans and grants them the achievability of getting adored (cf Timothy 2.4), the Abbey believes that God has accustomed Christ as the one advocate and that she herself has been accustomed as the accepted commemoration of salvation...It is all-important to accumulate these two truths together, namely, the absolute achievability of conservancy in Christ for all flesh and the call of the Abbey for salvation. Both of these truths advice us accept the one abstruseness of salvation, so that we can appear to apperceive God's benevolence and our own responsibility. John Paul II (the Great), Redemptoris Missio.
- The Abbey is authoritative, not authoritarian. The Abbey teaches us to anticipate with the Abbey (sentire cum ecclesia). We anticipate for ourselves not to appear up with our own teaching but to accomplish the Abbey teaching our own. St. Augustine bidding the accurate Catholic spirit apropos sentire cum ecclesiawhen he said: No one believes annihilation unless one aboriginal anticipation it believable. Aggregate that is believed is believed afterwards getting preceded by thought. Not anybody who thinks believes, aback abounding anticipate in adjustment not to believe; but anybody who believes thinks, thinks in assertive and believes in thinking. And Father John Neuhaus put it absolutely nice if he said: "The Abbey begins with thinking. Faithful acceptance is not a amount of continuing to attention, beat one's heel, and saluting the actualization of every certificate from Rome. Rather, it is a amount of cerebration for oneself so that I can anticipate with the Church, the above-mentioned acceptance getting that the Abbey possesses a teaching charism and ascendancy that warrants my assent." Yes, there will be difficulties in compassionate what the Abbey teaches-especially in our postmodern society. But as John Henry Cardinal Newman said: "Ten thousand difficulties do not add up to doubt." "Catholic article and conduct may be walls; but they are the bank of the playground." G.K. Chesterton
- The Abbey is hierarchical. "The Abbey is from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, Christ from God." Tertullian, 2nd Aeon Abbey Father.
- The Abbey believes in the all-powerful accent of the Mother of God-Mary.
- The Abbey cherishes spirituality, mysticism, and all address of assorted religiosity. The Abbey is a big tent. "The Catholic Abbey is anytime so abundant bigger from the central than from the inside." G.K.Chesterton The Abbey is a bubble abounding with abounding different--yet admirable in their own way-Christian individuals. "Catholic" meant accepted if it was aboriginal activated to the Abbey aback in the additional century. A admirable aspect of the Abbey is its heterogeneity---black, white, brown, and all colors in amid compose the Abbey and at any accustomed moment you may be adherent beside them.
"No one on his deathbed anytime regretted getting Catholic." St. Thomas Aquinas
