Christianity needs the Catholic Church

Christianity needs the Catholic Church to be the "Anchor" that connects Christianity to the original teachings passed down by Jesus Christ.

I am a Catholic, which means that I am a Christian, contrary to what other Christians may believe. I believe that I am a member of the Church that Jesus Christ instituted 2000 years ago. Since then, Christianity has been splintered into thousands of churches/denominations that all claim to teach what Jesus taught. I think of these groups as "incomplete Christians." This is not meant to be a derogatory statement. It just means that these other Christian groups do not have the fullness of the faith. They don't take advantage of everything that Jesus offered to his believers (like all seven Sacraments, 2000 years of Tradition, and a Magisterium that faithfully and infallibly interprets Scripture). Any faith formation that I had prior to becoming Catholic was Protestant.

That being said, the Holy Spirit is not confined only to Catholics, or even Christians in general. "[God] makes his sun rise on the good and the bad, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust (Mt 5:45)."  Bishop Robert Barron recently commented, "One of the chief marks of the Holy Spirit is the prompting to bold speech. From the Apostles through the great evangelists and theologians, up to Billy Graham and John Paul II, the Spirit prompts people to confess the lordship of Jesus." I was surprised that Bishop Barron mentioned Billy Graham and John Paul II in the same sentence. In the Acts of the Apostles it states, "While Peter was still speaking these things, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who were listening to the word. The circumcised believers who had accompanied Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit should have been poured out on the Gentiles also, for they could hear them speaking in tongues and glorifying God. Then Peter responded, 'Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit even as we have?' He ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 10:44-48)." I watch Bishop Barron's Sunday morning homily before going to Mass. He, along with Fr. Mike Schmitz, Dr. David Anders, Fr Mitch Pacwa, and Dr. Scott Hahn are my go-to guys for Catholic catechesis.

Recently, I finished reading New Scientific Evidence for the Existence of God by Jose Carlos Gonzalez-Hurtado (a Catholic). The book is filled with stories about scientists that were theists, atheist scientists who became theists, and atheists. It provides scientific evidence of an ordered universe (evidence that may not prove the existence of God but certainly justifies belief in a Creator). I followed Dr. Hugh Ross, the founder of Reasons to Believe, for several years. He is an astrophysicist and a Christian who, like J.C. Gonzalez-Hurtado, writes and speaks about the scientific evidence for God. He did a podcast with Glenn Beck recently (imagine that; a Christian astrophysicist and a Mormon having a conversation about God and Creation) that was very informative. Dr. Ross and J.C. Gonzalez-Hurtado are both reaching out to people who have difficulty reconciling Faith and Science. J.C. Gonzalez-Hurtado and Dr. Hugh Ross are doing a good job of convincing people to believe in the existence in God. But this is just the beginning. Once a person believes that God exits that person then needs to decide what that means to him/her. There is smorgasbord of beliefs and organizations to choose from as to how one relates to God, even within Christianity. It would make sense that one would want to follow the Church that Jesus Christ himself began and left us.

Simon Peter said in reply, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Mt 16:16-18 

This is the passage from the Bible where Jesus instituted the Universal or Catholic Church. The Church that he began. But, as I stated above, the Holy Spirit is not confined to only Catholics.

The last two Sundays, after Bishop Barron's homily I watched a program on the Real America's Voice channel called Table Talk hosted by Joni Lamb, a Pentacostal Christian. I see the faith and the good works of the people on her program and think, "That is evidence of the Holy Spirit operating in their lives."

So, what is the value in being a Catholic Christian as opposed to being a Protestant Christian? Here are three Protestant doctrines that limit them from having the fullness of faith: sola fidei, sola scriptura, and penal substitution. Not all Protestant Christians have the same doctrines (that is one reason why there are so many divisions), but most Protestant Christians believe they are saved by faith alone, that the ultimate authority is the Bible, and that Jesus was punished for our sins by God. For example, when I look at the Reason to Believe (RTB) Webpage, they list their beliefs as follows:

Scripture is our supreme and final authority on all matters; [the Bible] includes all 66 books of the Old and New Testaments; He [God] sent his Son to bear the full penalty for humanity’s sin ... Jesus Christ suffered and died in the place of sinners, thus satisfying the Father’s just wrath against human sin; We believe justification is a judicial act of God’s grace wherein he acquits a person of all sin and accepts that person as righteous in his sight because of the imputed righteousness of Christ. Justification is strictly a work of God’s grace, apprehended through faith alone and solely on the account of Christ.

I admit that I have not included parts of these statements where atonement is mentioned. But Jesus was not punished for our sins. He gave himself freely as an atonement for our sins like a sacrificial lamb. There is a big difference. RTB does mention atonement, but only after stating that Jesus was punished. I use RTB as an example of most Protestant thought. We are saved by faith through by God's grace., but not by faith alone. How do we receive God's grace? Jesus gave us Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist, Confession, Anointing of the Sick, Matrimony, and Holy Orders.

Just like the Holy Spirit, anyone can receive God's grace, but the Sacraments are efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us through the work of the Holy Spirit. They bear fruit in those who receive them with the required dispositions (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1134). For example, I can ask Jesus Christ to forgive me, and he might, if I have contrition. But if I go to Confession with the appropriate disposition/contrition and the priest absolves me of my sins, then I know that I have been forgiven.

[Jesus] said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” Jn20:21-23

By the way, my Catholic Bible contains 73 books. Martin Luther conveniently left out the books with which he disagreed. Also, who was responsible for creating the original Canon of the Bible? The Catholic Church in the 4th Century after Christ.

Worship is at the heart of religion, and sacrifice is at the heart of worship. When Catholics attend Mass and receive Communion, they are participating in the sacrifice of Christ and receiving Christ's body and blood. The closest thing Protestants have to this is an altar call.

Does the Holy Spirit operate outside the Catholic Church? Of course! Does God offer his grace to Protestants as well as Catholics? Of course! However, Catholics have access to the fullness of Faith, and the original Church that was instituted by Jesus Christ. We have a Priesthood, a Vicar of Christ (the Pope), a 2000-year-old Tradition, a Magisterium, and Scripture! We get the whole enchilada! 

Christianity needs the Catholic Church to be the "Anchor" that connects Christianity to the original teachings passed down by Jesus Christ. Should a person not you want to have access to all that Christ has to offer and know that you are part of the Church that Christ himself instituted? Even if you are not Catholic, you can still tap into what the Catholic Church has taught for centuries and anchor yourself to the original Christian Church. It's all still there.  

    

Dictator or Tyrant?

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision blocking President Biden's 1st student loan debt relief plan made me think about tyrants and dictators. Biden's 1st plan was essentially unconstitutional. He was using his Executive authority to dictate to taxpayers to pay off student loan debt. As Nancy Pelosi said, those kinds of decisions have to be approved by Congress. That seems a little bit like the behavior of a dictator.

When Joe Biden was elected President, this was my thought:

This what I think now:

One can apply accusations of tyranny to a variety of types of government:

• to government by one individual (in an autocracy)
• to government by a minority (in an oligarchy, tyranny of the minority)
• to government by a majority (in a democracy, tyranny of the majority

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrant

I think we might have a mixture of the 2nd and 3rd forms of tyranny going on in the U.S. at this time. The Democrats have a majority of government, and a minority of that majority is dictating policy to President Biden. His decision to unilaterally decide to payoff student loan debt is evidence of the phenomenon mentioned here.  

What if...?

I was reading the first part of the Declaration of Independence recently. A thought came to me when I read this part:

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

What if the "Leftists" in the United States have determined that they no longer want the government that our founders created and have decided that they want a new form of government? What if they believe that they would prefer a socialist form of government; that they would be better off under Socialism?

What is missing in the U.S. Constitution?

 

The Preamble

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

What is missing in the Preamble? After the words "We the People of the United States" there should be the phrase "Under God." It should read, "We the People of the United States, Under God, ..." or "We the People of the United States, under the guidance of our Creator, ..." We refer to God in the Pledge of Allegiance." The Declaration of Independence contains the words "God" and "Creator" at the beginning of the document. "In God We Trust" is printed on our money. Why did the framers of the Constitution leave the word "God" out of the Constitution?

How could the Founding Fathers create a "more perfect Union" without the help of the Creator? This question could be answered in a couple ways. one answer could be "They didn't." Some folks think we need to abolish the Constitution and reform the country into a Socialist institution. Another possible answer could be "They did!" But as George Washington stated, "It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible"

Most, if not all, of the Founders believed in God, but they failed to mention God in the Constitution. They all understood the importance of a Creator and God-given Rights, so they didn't see the need to reiterate those in the Constitution. They had already made that clear in the Declaration of Independence. Those ideas were understood by most, if not all, people living in the new nation at the time. Either that, or they had to leave reference to God/Creator out of the document to get it ratified, just like political BS that happens today.

"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world..."

W.B. Yeats

Original Sin

I have been trying to understand Original Sin. Here are some passages from the book of Genesis:

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth.

Genesis 1:26-27 Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame animals, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth. God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

Genesis 2:7-9 ...then the LORD God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. The LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and placed there the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground the LORD God made grow every tree that was delightful to look at and good for food, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Genesis 2:16-17 The LORD God gave the man this order: You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From that tree you shall not eat; when you eat from it you shall die.

Genesis 2:21-22 So the LORD God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The LORD God then built the rib that he had taken from the man into a woman.

Genesis 3:6 The woman saw that the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eyes, and the tree was desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

This was the Original Sin according to the book of Genesis. If you don't believe in God, then none of this matters to you. I do believe in God, so I want to understand Original Sin because that is why Christ's dying and rising were necessary.

I know that the book of Genesis is not a "literal history" and has to be interpreted using many exegetical tools. What I have been trying to do is reconcile the statements above with scientific information. In the book Faith, Science, and Reason: Theology on the Cutting Edge, Christopher Bagwell writes the following:

There is no doubt among experts that we [human beings] originated in Africa. According to most experts, the fully developed form of the human being bearing all the [homo sapien] characteristics emerged in one population in Africa before we began to spread out of Africa across the globe, around 120000 to 70,000 years ago. Genetic studies have revealed that the original ancestral population from whom all today's human beings descended seems to have numbered only a few thousand, maybe even a few hundred individuals. In fact, geneticists have even discovered that all human beings alive today can be traced back to a single male and a single female. These two individuals are often referred to as "mitochondrial Eve" and "Y chromosomal Adam,"

Bishop Robert Barron, in one of his Sunday homilies, said this:

We are prohibited from becoming ourselves the criterion of good and evil. God alone, as the supreme good, and goodness itself, is the criterion of good and evil. What is in accord with God's nature, that's good. What is repugnant to God's will, that's evil. God is the criterion. The problem is when we make ourselves the criterion of good and evil. We say, "No! My will!! My mind! I will determine what's right or wrong!" When that happens, everything falls apart. 

St. Thomas Acquinas said, "No human authority may declare what God reveals as morally evil to be morally good.":

These are the Dogmas of the Catholic Church that I must accept if I claim to be Catholic that relate to Original Sin:

1. The first man was created by God.
2. Man consists of two essential parts - a material body and a spiritual soul.
3. The rational soul per se is the essential form of the body.
4. Every human being possesses an individual soul.
5. God has conferred on man a supernatural destiny.
6. Our first parents, before the fall, were endowed with sanctifying grace.
7. In addition to sanctifying grace, our first parents were endowed with the preternatural gift of bodily immortality.
8. Our first parents in Paradise sinned grievously through transgression of the Divine probationary commandment.
9. Through sin our first parents lost sanctifying grace and provoked the anger and the indignation of God.
10. Our first parents became subject to death and to the dominion of the devil.
11. Adam's sin is transmitted to his posterity, not by imitation but by descent.
12. Original sin is transmitted by natural generation.
13. In the state of original sin man is deprived of sanctifying grace and all that this implies, as well as of the preternatural gifts of integrity.
14. Souls who depart this life in the state of original sin are excluded from the Beatific Vision of God.

Here is what I think:

I used to hold a belief that our sinful nature is a holdover of our animal instincts, and that might be part of why we sin. However, we do have intellect, the ability to reason, and free will. Those are what make us different than animals. We can choose to do good, and we can choose to do evil.

God allowed human beings to evolve. He could have chosen two of them and infused them with souls.

The book of Genesis was inspired by God and written by men so that people of that time could understand. However, Genesis contains moral truths for all times. Man sinned. God told him not to eat of the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil." The "fruit of the Tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil" here represents God's morality. It is His jurisdiction. We don't have the right to make up our own morality. When we do, that could be the Original Sin; that could be what is meant by eating from the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil." When we choose to make our own morality, we make ourselves gods.

We fall for the serpent's trick in Genesis 3:4-5: But the snake said to the woman: “You certainly will not die! God knows well that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, who know good and evil.”

Only God has the right to decide what is good and what is evil.   

Divide and Conquer

 I ran into a couple of quotes about what I believe is happening in the good ol' U.S.A.

I believe the course of events is dictated by a Leninist and Stalinist political culture which has grown out of the precedents of czarism and Bolshevism, involving a bag of tricks in which six elements are used to achieve political and economic results: (1) provocation; (2) divide and conquer; (3) infiltration of the enemy camp; (4) disinformation; (5) controlled opposition; (6) and strategic deception. Various special formations and ideological sub-weapons have been developed by Moscow to amplify the working power of these six elements, including organized crime, drug trafficking, international terrorism, national liberation movements, revolutionary Islam, free trade, global warming, feminism, the homosexual movement, gun control and multiculturalism.

J.R.Nyquist

People who are divided are easier to control.

David Draiman

What is a Woman? and January 6 Investigations

Watched Matt Walsh's documentary What is a Woman? and Walsh's interview with Will Cain. Cain asked Walsh why do you think the Left/LBGTQ+ is pushing so hard to influence the culture and institutions to accept the gender identity agenda. Walsh answered, "It makes them easier to manipulate." My thought is, "What are they trying to manipulate those people to do?" The answer: VOTE FOR DEMOCRATS! Matt Walsh's wife nailed the question at the end of the documentary. When he asked her the question, "What is a woman?' she responded playfully with, "(An adult female human --- who needs help opening this [a jar of pickles]!"

I have two thoughts regarding the January 6th investigations:

• The Democrats are trying to prevent Donald Trump from becoming President again.
• The Democrats are trying to distract the public from the dismal performance of the Biden administration. Lights! Camera! Distract! 

Trump/Biden/Pope Francis

 The only thing that you can "reasonably" blame on Donald Trump is losing the 2020 Presidential election.

Other than that, almost everything else that is going wrong in our country is the fault of Joe Biden.

Quote of the day, "Biden is an overachiever when it comes to doing damage to his own country."

Chris Salcedo 11/4/21

You might think that I am one of a few that thinks this way, but I am part of a large majority of Americans:

I'm praying for both of these men:

I was very confused when Pres.Biden met with Pope Francis. Biden said that Pope Francis called him a good Catholic and that he should continue to receive Communion. The day after their meeting, Pres. Biden received Communion at St. Patrick's in Rome. If you are not a Catholic, you are probably asking yourself, "What's the big deal?" It means that one or both of these men are not following the teaching of the Catholic Church! Not sure about what's going on.