So there’s something about the Catholic Church that interests you but you’re not sure about the whole picture. And let’s be honest, it’s a big, complicated, sometimes controversial picture. Before you jump into an intensive 9 month course at your parish, you might want a bird’s eye view of everything involved.
What do Catholics believe and what does it mean to be Catholic? This is everything you need to know in 10 minutes. — Catholics are Christians.
While this may be a contested point among certain types of fundamentalist Protestants, the fact of the matter is that our entire faith is about living and professing the Gospel. Something we’ve been doing for… 2000 years. If you’re already a Christian, all of the normal things apply—belief in the Trinity; the Incarnation; the death and resurrection of Jesus.
These are things that we all have in common and so you can probably skip to the next section. If you’re not yet a Christian, we believe in a God that is one essence but three persons, called a Trinity. The second person of the Trinity was born of a woman, being fully God and fully human.
He preached about forgiveness and sacrifice, and then showed what that looked like by dying himself, but after a few days he rose from the dead, conquering death and taking away our sins, ascended to heaven, and gave us the Holy Spirit so that we would always have God with us. Which, is a way too fast way of describing any one of those concepts, but with each section I’ll link a video for a deeper dive here. While all Christians agree on these basic points, we do not always agree on the significance of these events or what we’re supposed to do with them.
One big difference is how we approach worship. For Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and some Protestants, there is a strong sacramental theology. Basically, God does not only speak to us from on high and our worship is more than intellectual or moral.
God is intimately and consistently present in and through all of creation, transforming physical things so that his presence can be seen and felt. These events are called sacraments, and there are seven of them. The sacraments of initiation consist of baptism, confirmation, and eucharist, three events that draw us closer to God.
In baptism, water is used to wash away our sins and we are marked with the sign of Christ, incorporating us into his community. In confirmation, our baptism is sealed with an anointing of oil, confirming in us the gifts of the Holy Spirit. And in Eucharist, through a process called Transubstantiation, the Holy Spirit transforms ordinary bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ so that we may consume him and become one with him.
This last one is the height of our worship because we do not believe that it is a mere symbol, nor do we believe that we are re-sacrificing Christ again. We participate in the once for all sacrifice he made on calvary. We know that life often involves pain and suffering, and so there are the sacraments of healing—reconciliation and anointing of the sick.
Jesus gave his disciples the ability to forgive sins, and so Catholics confess their sins to priests who have the ability to offer absolution. Similarly, in the letter of St. James, the apostle exhorts the faithful to bring the sick to the priests who will pray over them and forgive their sins.
We could do both of these thing alone, but Jesus wanted us to have visible signs of the grace we were receiving. Finally, there are the sacraments at the service of communion, namely, marriage and holy orders. Often called vocational sacraments, they both effect a formal covenant with God, committing one’s life to a particular mission, whether that be marriage or ordination, providing the grace to fulfill the responsibilities of each.
What connects each of these rituals is the idea that God’s presence is tangible and transformative, and that we are to worship in communion with others. Communion here on earth, of course, but also communion with those who have gone before us and now live in heaven. As Catholics, we look to the saints, holy men and women in heaven, to offer us examples to follow but also to intercede for us.
We ask the living Church on earth to pray for us, why wouldn’t we ask the living Church in heaven to do the same? Chief among these saints for Catholics is the mother of Jesus herself, Mary. We believe that she was conceived without sin, lived a sinless life of faith, and so never died but was assumed into heaven.
She is a part of the created order in need of God’s redemption, just like any of us, so we do not worship her, but we do honor her for all that she has done. Of course, we are not in heaven yet, so while they can intercede for us, there must still be an organized authority here on earth, which is why we have the Church. Unlike some Christians that insist on the Bible alone, the Catholic Church is guided by three sources: Tradition, the Bible, and the living magisterium.
The reason for this, and why Tradition come first, is because there was a long time before the Bible was written. What guided the Church in the first decades and centuries was not a book but the living authority, passed down from generation to generation, of witnesses who had seen God. Tradition, in this sense, is a foundational spirit that defines who we are and what we do.
You can think of it like the United States—we have a foundational Tradition of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These will never change and everything we do is interpreted through this lens. It is this Tradition, this legitimate authority, that helped the early Church decide what should even be in the Bible.
And it is this Tradition, this legitimate authority, that handed down Christ’s authority to the magisterium, allowing the Church to make decisions today. Jesus said to Peter, “You are Peter and upon this Rock I will build my Church. ” He breathed his Spirit into the disciples in the upper room and gave them authority to bind on earth and in heaven.
The ministers of the Catholic Church—bishop, priest, and deacon—find their origins in Tradition and the Bible itself, not simply as temporary jobs among the faithful, but as people who are specially called and blessed with God’s spirit to lead the Church in prayer and mission. For this reason, the Church is not merely a human institution that never changes, but one with a living authority to grow and adapt with the world. What it proclaims it does so, not from opinion, but from the authority of God that guides it.
There are various levels of authority with the Church, from dogmas, which are divinely revealed and do not change, Definitive Doctrines, that explain and safeguard the faith, Authoritative Doctrines, reflections on scripture in light of the contemporary world, and Disciplines, fitting ways to live out the faith. These teachings may come from the pope himself or an ecumenical council, of which there have been 21 in our history. Despite the popular misunderstanding, the pope is not infallible, but under certain circumstances, just like the writers of Scripture, may be kept from error.
Ultimately the goal of every Christian is to be saved from sin and death, living forever in heaven. For Catholics, this is a twofold process. We are justified by Christ alone.
As sinners, we deserve death and so cannot merit our justification. It is through the faith of Christ and his sacrifice on the cross, freely given gifts, that we are saved. For this reason, all we need to be justified is to confess our faith in him.
But justification is only part of the process. If we want to be fitting enough for heaven, we must also grow in sanctification, a process of becoming more like God. This requires that we put faith into practice, grow in virtue, and participate in the grace of God in such a way that we become one with it.
Jesus pays the insurmountable price for the ticket, but we still have to show up to the station and get on the train ourselves. We do this by living a moral life, both privately and communally, as Christ showed us. For Catholics there are a number of important principles that guide us.
Such as, the inherent dignity of every person. We believe that everyone is created in the image and likeness of God and so bears undeniable worth. We protect life from conception to natural death and stand against undue pain and suffering in the world.
This may involve works of charity—feeding the hungry and caring for the sick—but also works of justice—ensuring fair labor laws and standing against racism. Catholic Social teaching requires that we care not only for our own life and dignity but that of the whole world. And not just the bodies of the whole world, but their souls as well.
As Catholics, we take to heart Jesus’ words to make disciples of all nations, that we do not live on bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Spreading the Good News is imperative to our faith. Phew.
That’s a lot already and we’re running out of time. Let’s finish with a rapid round. For those justified but not yet fully sanctified, there is purgatory, a place for the elect that are not purified to enter heaven.
All sexual activity must be oriented towards two purposes—covenantal union and procreation. Anything that separates the act from its intended purpose—things like masturbation, pornography, contraception, homosexual acts, bestiality, sterilization, rape, lust, in vitro fertilization, or surrogacy—are inadmissible. Marriage is a covenant for life which no one can separate, so divorce and remarriage is not possible.
Either the marriage is declared defective from the start, or couples can legally separate, but they may only marry once. The priesthood is for men only because Jesus chose men as his apostles and the tradition has stood too long to be changed. And I guess finally, the name Catholic itself.
First used by Ignatius of Antioch in about 110 AD, it is a word that means universal, meaning that it is beyond language, culture, nationality, or ethnicity. The truths of our faith are true to all people. The way we may describe things may be different and even need to be adapted, but the foundational truths remain the same.
Which is why I cannot encourage you enough to look deeper into the faith that has stood for 2000 years, that has been handed on to us for generations back to Jesus himself and which is guided by the Holy Spirit. A 10 minute video is nowhere close to enough to capture all that we have to offer the world, but maybe there was something here that piqued your interest, that makes you want to learn more, to get some clarification, even to challenge with your own experience. Give us the opportunity to share what we’ve found over all these years, and I promise you, you won’t be disappointed.
