Just
as many of you have shared your faith with me, I’d like to share with you the
teachings of the Catholic Church, which, as you might have guessed, I believe
would have to have been founded by Jesus Christ.
I
hope that for now, you will forget everything you’ve heard our Church teaches,
and just sit back and pretend you are starting from scratch, trying to see
things through our eyes. No matter how silly a teaching rings in your ears, I
hope you will be curious to get a peek at the full reasons and evidence the
Church offers for holding to them. We do have reasons, and we think they are
pretty good.
I know I speak for hundreds of millions of us when I say we believe that our Church, though now much bigger than the mustard seed it grew from, is the same Church that the apostles built up, starting in Rome…..the same visible, bishop-led Church that our Church Fathers claimed to be members of….the same authoritative Church they took for granted to be the indivisible Body of Christ….the same Rome-centered Church that was built on St. Peter and led by all his successors up to Pope Benedict XVI….the same living organism in which the early Christians were shepherded by bishops who were apostles, or who were in a direct line of succession from an apostle…the same Church that delivered to Christans the exact contents of our Holy Bible in the late 4th century.
When we visit your Bible studies and churches, we see your great faith and love. We hope you find the same when you come to our Bible studies and Masses.
As
Catholics, we believe that so much more unites us with other Christian
denominations than divides us, and we continue to work hand in hand on so many
goals, furthering the work of Christ. We continue to pray for the unity in the
Church that Jesus prayed for while hanging on the cross.
-Claire
"There
are not over a hundred people...who hate the Roman Catholic Church. There are
millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic
Church"
-Bishop Fulton J. Sheen
“Catholicism is a deep matter.
You cannot take it up in a teacup.”
– John
Cardinal Newman
“I would not believe in the Gospels were it not for the authority of
the Catholic Church.”
-St. Augustine
(Against the Letter of Mani Called "The Foundation" 5:6).
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