Since the Catechism of the Catholic Church was written for the express purpose of grounding and fostering catechisms based on it for local needs and ordinary readers, Kreeft does just that, offering a thorough summary of Catholic doctrine, morality, and worship in a popular format with less technical language. He presents a systematic, organic synthesis of the essential and fundamental Catholic teachings in the light of the Second Vatican Council and the whole of the Church's Tradition.
This book is the most thorough, complete and popular catechetical summary of Catholic belief in print that is based on the universal Catechism. Providing helpful insights on how to read and study the Catechism, this book includes a prehistory of the Catechism, an overview of its structure and contents, the major themes and methods in it, a special introduction to the four parts of the Catechism, and specific advice on how to use the Catechism.
Ratzinger and Schonborn illuminate theCatechism's teaching on faith, morals, prayer and sacraments, and how a Catholic lives those teachings in today's world. This new edition brings Father McBride's beloved classic up-to-date. This gave the local Churches the chance to study it in depth. It is the authoritative summary of Catholic belief regarding the Church creeds, sacraments, commandments, and prayers. The book is exceptionally well organized, with line-by-line explanations of every conceivable aspect of orthodox Catholic belief.
Even the layout of information on the page is easy on the eyes, with wide margins for readers who wish to make notes. Furthermore, the back cover features a true rarity in the annals of world literature: a blurb by the Pope. Doctrines are placed into a historical framework by tracing their origins to the Old and New Testaments and placing their development within the context of persons, places, and times. His story like the stories at the start of each chapter in the United States Catholic Catechism for Adults give us a glimpse into the lives of Catholics who lived out their faith throughout our country's history.
Each chapter in the Catechism for Adults includes stories, doctrine, reflection, quotations, discussion questions, and prayer to lead the reader to a deepening faith. The Catechism for Adults is an excellent resource for preparation of catechumens in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults and for ongoing catechesis of adults.
Here is a collection of 11 essays by distinguished theologians, educators and linguists that introduces the catechism to American readers and assesses its function. Since the close of the Second Vatican Council, there has been such an accumulation of ecclesiastical constitutions and decrees and so many changes they introduced in Catholic practice that few people have been able to keep up with all that has happened A parallel purpose of this volume is to offer those who use it a handy guidebook of the Catholic tradition, whether formally documented in ecclesiastical sources or implicitly accepted by the faithful under the aegis of the Church's hierarchial leaders.
Doctrines are placed into a historical framework by tracing their origins to the Old and New Testaments and placing their development within the context of persons, places, and times. The doctrine thus becomes more intelligible because it is viewed in the setting of its vital growth over the centuries. Hardon, S. Popular Books. The Almighty Of all the divine attributes, only God's omnipotence is named in the Creed: to confess this power has great bearing on our lives.
We believe that his might is universal, for God who created everything also rules everything and can do everything.
God's power is loving, for he is our Father, and mysterious, for only faith can discern it when it "is made perfect in weakness". If God is almighty "in heaven and on earth", it is because he made them.
He is master of history, governing hearts and events in keeping with his will: "It is always in your power to show great strength, and who can withstand the strength of your arm?
Nothing therefore can be in God's power which could not be in his just will or his wise intellect. God can sometimes seem to be absent and incapable of stopping evil.
But in the most mysterious way God the Father has revealed his almighty power in the voluntary humiliation and Resurrection of his Son, by which he conquered evil. Christ crucified is thus "the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. This faith glories in its weaknesses in order to draw to itself Christ's power. Once our reason has grasped the idea of God's almighty power, it will easily and without any hesitation admit everything that [the Creed] will afterwards propose for us to believe - even if they be great and marvelous things, far above the ordinary laws of nature.
Gen ; Jn ; Mt ; 2 Cor ; cf. Jer ; ; Lk Esth b; Prov ; Tob The Creator "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The profession of faith takes them up when it confesses that God the Father almighty is "Creator of heaven and earth" Apostles' Creed , "of all that is, seen and unseen" Nicene Creed. We shall speak first of the Creator, then of creation and finally of the fall into sin from which Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came to raise us up again. Conversely, the mystery of Christ casts conclusive light on the mystery of creation and reveals the end for which "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth": from the beginning, God envisaged the glory of the new creation in Christ.
According to ancient witnesses the instruction of catechumens for Baptism followed the same itinerary. It concerns the very foundations of human and Christian life: for it makes explicit the response of the Christian faith to the basic question that men of all times have asked themselves "Where do we come from?
They are decisive for the meaning and orientation of our life and actions. These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator, prompting us to give him thanks for all his works and for the understanding and wisdom he gives to scholars and researchers. With Solomon they can say: "It is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements.
It is not only a question of knowing when and how the universe arose physically, or when man appeared, but rather of discovering the meaning of such an origin: is the universe governed by chance, blind fate, anonymous necessity, or by a transcendent, intelligent and good Being called "God"?
And if the world does come from God's wisdom and goodness, why is there evil? Where does it come from? Who is responsible for it? Is there any liberation from it? Ancient religions and cultures produced many myths concerning origins. Some philosophers have said that everything is God, that the world is God, or that the development of the world is the development of God Pantheism.
Others have said that the world is a necessary emanation arising from God and returning to him. Still others have affirmed the existence of two eternal principles, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, locked, in permanent conflict Dualism, Manichaeism. According to some of these conceptions, the world at least the physical world is evil, the product of a fall, and is thus to be rejected or left behind Gnosticism. Some admit that the world was made by God, but as by a watch-maker who, once he has made a watch, abandons it to itself Deism.
Finally, others reject any transcendent origin for the world, but see it as merely the interplay of matter that has always existed Materialism. All these attempts bear witness to the permanence and universality of the question of origins. This inquiry is distinctively human. The existence of God the Creator can be known with certainty through his works, by the light of human reason, even if this knowledge is often obscured and disfigured by error.
This is why faith comes to confirm and enlighten reason in the correct understanding of this truth: "By faith we understand that the world was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was made out of things which do not appear.
Beyond the natural knowledge that every man can have of the Creator, God progressively revealed to Israel the mystery of creation. Creation is revealed as the first step towards this covenant, the first and universal witness to God's all- powerful love. From a literary standpoint these texts may have had diverse sources. The inspired authors have placed them at the beginning of Scripture to express in their solemn language the truths of creation - its origin and its end in God, its order and goodness, the vocation of man, and finally the drama of sin and the hope of salvation.
Read in the light of Christ, within the unity of Sacred Scripture and in the living Tradition of the Church, these texts remain the principal source for catechesis on the mysteries of the "beginning": creation, fall, and promise of salvation. The totality of what exists expressed by the formula "the heavens and the earth" depends on the One who gives it being.
In him "all things were created, in heaven and on earth.. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. This creative co-operation is clearly affirmed in the Church's rule of faith: "There exists but one God. He made all things by himself, that is, by his Word and by his Wisdom", "by the Son and the Spirit" who, so to speak, are "his hands". Bonaventure explains that God created all things "not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it", for God has no other reason for creating than his love and goodness: "Creatures came into existence when the key of love opened his hand.
God made us "to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace", for "the glory of God is man fully alive; moreover man's life is the vision of God: if God's revelation through creation has already obtained life for all the beings that dwell on earth, how much more will the Word's manifestation of the Father obtain life for those who see God.
We believe that it proceeds from God's free will; he wanted to make his creatures share in his being, wisdom and goodness: "For you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.
In wisdom you have made them all"; and "The LORD is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made. A human artisan makes from a given material whatever he wants, while God shows his power by starting from nothing to make all he wants. Thus the mother of seven sons encourages them for martyrdom: I do not know how you came into being in my womb.
It was not I who gave you life and breath, nor I who set in order the elements within each of you. Therefore the Creator of the world, who shaped the beginning of man and devised the origin of all things, will in his mercy give life and breath back to you again, since you now forget yourselves for the sake of his laws.
Look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed. Thus also mankind comes into being. God "gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. On many occasions the Church has had to defend the goodness of creation, including that of the physical world. Augustine, God is "higher than my highest and more inward than my innermost self".
He not only gives them being and existence, but also, and at every moment, upholds and sustains them in being, enables them to act and brings them to their final end. Recognizing this utter dependence with respect to the Creator is a source of wisdom and freedom, of joy and confidence: For you love all things that exist, and detest none of the things that you have made; for you would not have made anything if you had hated it.
How would anything have endured, if you had not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by you have been preserved? You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lord, you who love the living. The universe was created "in a state of journeying" in statu viae toward an ultimate perfection yet to be attained, to which God has destined it.
We call "divine providence" the dispositions by which God guides his creation toward this perfection: By his providence God protects and governs all things which he has made, "reaching mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and ordering all things well".
For "all are open and laid bare to his eyes", even those things which are yet to come into existence through the free action of creatures.
The sacred books powerfully affirm God's absolute sovereignty over the course of events: "Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases. This is not a "primitive mode of speech", but a profound way of recalling God's primacy and absolute Lordship over history and the world, and so of educating his people to trust in him. The prayer of the Psalms is the great school of this trust.
Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well. But to carry it out he also makes use of his creatures' co-operation. This use is not a sign of weakness, but rather a token of almighty God's greatness and goodness. Though often unconscious collaborators with God's will, they can also enter deliberately into the divine plan by their actions, their prayers and their sufferings.
God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes: "For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Drawn from nothingness by God's power, wisdom and goodness, it can do nothing if it is cut off from its origin, for "without a Creator the creature vanishes. To this question, as pressing as it is unavoidable and as painful as it is mysterious, no quick answer will suffice.
Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question: the goodness of creation, the drama of sin and the patient love of God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of his Son, his gift of the Spirit, his gathering of the Church, the power of the sacraments and his call to a blessed life to which free creatures are invited to consent in advance, but from which, by a terrible mystery, they can also turn away in advance.
There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil. With infinite power God could always create something better. In God's plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature.
With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection. They can therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. Thus hasmoral evil, incommensurably more harmful than physical evil, entered the world.
God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil. You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive. But for all that, evil never becomes a good. Catherine of Siena said to "those who are scandalized and rebel against what happens to them": "Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind. Thomas More, shortly before his martyrdom, consoled his daughter: "Nothing can come but that that God wills.
And I make me very sure that whatsoever that be, seem it never so bad in sight, it shall indeed be the best. But the ways of his providence are often unknown to us. Only at the end, when our partial knowledge ceases, when we see God "face to face", will we fully know the ways by which - even through the dramas of evil and sin - God has guided his creation to that definitive sabbath rest for which he created heaven and earth. IN BRIEF In the creation of the world and of man, God gave the first and universal witness to his almighty love and his wisdom, the first proclamation of the "plan of his loving goodness", which finds its goal in the new creation in Christ.
That his creatures should share in his truth, goodness and beauty - this is the glory for which God created them. Mt , and St. Peter the apostle repeats: "Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you" I Pt ; cf. To human beings God grants the ability to cooperate freely with his plans. Faith gives us the certainty that God would not permit an evil if he did not cause a good to come from that very evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in eternal life.
Augustine, De catechizantis rudibus 3,5: PL 40, Acts ; Rom Isa ; Ps ; ; Gen ; Jer Isa ; Ps ; Prov Ps ; ; Gen Bonaventure, In II Sent.
Thomas Aquinas, Sent. II, Prol. Dei Filius, can. Gen ; 2 Cor Ps ; Job DS ; ; ; ; Sir Wis ; Heb Isa ; ; Deut ; Sir Ps 22; 32; 35; ; ; et al.
Mt ; Jn ; Cf. Thomas Aquinas, STh I,25,6. Augustine, De libero arbitrio 1,1,2: PL 32,; St. Augustine, Enchiridion 3, PL 40, Tob Vulg.
Catherine of Siena, Dialogue On Providence, ch. IV, Elizabeth F. Rogers Princeton: Princeton University Press, , letter , lines James Walshe SJ London: , ch. The Nicene Creed makes it explicit that this profession includes "all that is, seen and unseen". It also indicates the bond, deep within creation, that both unites heaven and earth and distinguishes the one from the other: "the earth" is the world of men, while "heaven" or "the heavens" can designate both the firmament and God's own "place" - "our Father in heaven" and consequently the "heaven" too which is eschatological glory.
Finally, "heaven" refers to the saints and the "place" of the spiritual creatures, the angels, who surround God. The witness of Scripture is as clear as the unanimity of Tradition. Who are they? Augustine says: "'Angel' is the name of their office, not of their nature.
If you seek the name of their nature, it is 'spirit'; if you seek the name of their office, it is 'angel': from what they are, 'spirit', from what they do, 'angel. Because they "always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven" they are the "mighty ones who do his word, hearkening to the voice of his word". They are his angels: "When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him.
When God "brings the firstborn into the world, he says: 'Let all God's angels worship him. She invokes their assistance in the funeral liturgy's In Paradisum deducant te angeli. Moreover, in the "Cherubic Hymn" of the Byzantine Liturgy, she celebrates the memory of certain angels more particularly St. Michael, St. Gabriel, St. Raphael, and the guardian angels. Scripture presents the work of the Creator symbolically as a succession of six days of divine "work", concluded by the "rest" of the seventh day.
The world began when God's word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history are rooted in this primordial event, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time begun. For each one of the works of the "six days" it is said: "And God saw that it was good.
Man must therefore respect the particular goodness of every creature, to avoid any disordered use of things which would be in contempt of the Creator and would bring disastrous consequences for human beings and their environment. The sun and the moon, the cedar and the little flower, the eagle and the sparrow: the spectacle of their countless diversities and inequalities tells us that no creature is self-sufficient.
Creatures exist only in dependence on each other, to complete each other, in the service of each other. Man discovers them progressively as the laws of nature.
They call forth the admiration of scholars. The beauty of creation reflects the infinite beauty of the Creator and ought to inspire the respect and submission of man's intellect and will.
God loves all his creatures and takes care of each one, even the sparrow. Nevertheless, Jesus said: "You are of more value than many sparrows", or again: "Of how much more value is a man than a sheep! May you be praised, my Lord, for sister water, who is very useful and humble, precious and chaste. May you be praised, my Lord, for sister earth, our mother, who bears and feeds us, and produces the variety of fruits and dappled flowers and grasses.
Praise and bless my Lord, give thanks and serve him in all humility. The sacred text says that "on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done", that the "heavens and the earth were finished", and that God "rested" on this day and sanctified and blessed it. Worship is inscribed in the order of creation. Benedict says, nothing should take precedence over "the work of God", that is, solemn worship.
To keep the commandments is to correspond to the wisdom and the will of God as expressed in his work of creation. But for us a new day has dawned: the day of Christ's Resurrection. The seventh day completes the first creation. The eighth day begins the new creation. Thus, the work of creation culminates in the greater work of redemption. The first creation finds its meaning and its summit in the new creation in Christ, the splendor of which surpasses that of the first creation.
Thomas Aquinas, STh I, , 3, ad 3. They serve him especially in the accomplishment of his saving mission to men. He destined all material creatures for the good of the human race. Man, and through him all creation, is destined for the glory of God.
Job where angels are called "sons of God" ; Gen ; 19; ; ; Acts ; Ex ; Judg 13; ; Isa ; 1 Kings Mt ; ,19; ; ; Mk ; Lk ; 2 Macc ; Lk ; Mk Acts ; Mt ; ; Lk Acts ; ; ; ; Basil, Adv. Augustine, De Genesi adv. Francis of Assisi, Canticle of the Creatures. Heb ; Jer ; Benedict, Regula 43,3: PL 66, Roman Missal, Easter Vigil 24, prayer after the first reading. Man "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.
It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity: What made you establish man in so great a dignity? Certainly the incalculable love by which you have looked on your creature in yourself! You are taken with love for her; for by love indeed you created her, by love you have given her a being capable of tasting your eternal Good. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons.
And he is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead. It is man that great and wonderful living creature, more precious in the eyes of God than all other creatures! For him the heavens and the earth, the sea and all the rest of creation exist. God attached so much importance to his salvation that he did not spare his own Son for the sake of man. Nor does he ever cease to work, trying every possible means, until he has raised man up to himself and made him sit at his right hand.
Paul tells us that the human race takes its origin from two men: Adam and Christ. The first man, Adam, he says, became a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit. The first Adam was made by the last Adam, from whom he also received his soul, to give him life. The second Adam stamped his image on the first Adam when he created him. That is why he took on himself the role and the name of the first Adam, in order that he might not lose what he had made in his own image.
The first Adam, the last Adam: the first had a beginning, the last knows no end. The last Adam is indeed the first; as he himself says: "I am the first and the last. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that "then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world.
Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life.
Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day. Paul for instance prays that God may sanctify his people "wholly", with "spirit and soul and body" kept sound and blameless at the Lord's coming.
In their "being-man" and "being-woman", they reflect the Creator's wisdom and goodness. He is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between the sexes. But the respective "perfections" of man and woman reflect something of the infinite perfection of God: those of a mother and those of a father and husband. The Word of God gives us to understand this through various features of the sacred text. I will make him a helper fit for him.
In marriage God unites them in such a way that, by forming "one flesh", they can transmit human life: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. This sovereignty is not to be an arbitrary and destructive domination. God calls man and woman, made in the image of the Creator "who loves everything that exists", to share in his providence toward other creatures; hence their responsibility for the world God has entrusted to them.
As long as he remained in the divine intimacy, man would not have to suffer or die. The first man was unimpaired and ordered in his whole being because he was free from the triple concupiscence that subjugates him to the pleasures of the senses, covetousness for earthly goods, and self- assertion, contrary to the dictates of reason. Work is not yet a burden, but rather the collaboration of man and woman with God in perfecting the visible creation. Eph ; Rom The doctrine of the faith affirms that the spiritual and immortal soul is created immediately by God.
From the beginning, "male and female he created them" Gen John Chrysostom, In Gen. Sermo 2,1: PG 54,DA. Peter Chrysologus, Sermo PL 52, Tob Summi Pontificatus 3; cf.
Mt ; Jn ; Acts Mt ; ; Jn ; 2 Macc Dan Council of Vienne : DS Gen ,
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