If you are Catholic, this is post-Vatican II wrap-up and short
catechism, and an invitation to deeper faith. If you are a
no-longer-practicing Catholic, this is an invitation to take a
fresh look at your old family. If you come from a different
religious tradition, welcome to this overview of what Catholics
stand for. If you have no religion, we hope this will be a new
opening to God.
Human beings do something very
natural—even essential—when they join together to form
families, cities, nations. We need others. To be human is to
be with. It is impossible to be a non-related human
being, and it is sick to try to be. Now if this is already
natural, it is even more a characteristic of Jesus' Mystical
Body. At the Last Supper, Jesus prayed intensely that his
followers would be one, not a multitude of isolationists. In
fact, their visible love for each other would be the proof
they were his.
So there is visible organization. For
leadership, Jesus chose 12 apostles ("those sent"). "Whoever
listens to you [plural], listens to me," he told them.
"Whoever rejects you, rejects me" (Luke 10:16). He chose
Peter, as we have seen, to be the "rock." Catholics honor
the pope as the successor of Peter, to whom Jesus said: "I
will entrust to you [singular] the keys of the kingdom of
heaven. Whatever you declare bound on earth shall be bound
in heaven; whatever you declare loosed on earth shall be
loosed in heaven" (Matthew 16:19).
Where does the Church get its teaching?
From the apostles, ultimately from Jesus. Through various
writers, it expressed its faith in the Gospels and Letters
of the New Testament. Note that the Church existed before
they wrote this part of the Bible, just as the Jewish people
existed before they wrote the Old Testament. The Church
stands under the judgment of the faith it expressed through
the Bible, but the Church's consciousness is wider than that
of the Bible: It has living memory, experience in the Spirit
over the ages, a growing and deepening awareness of what the
Spirit says. This is Tradition, capital T.
As successor of Peter, the pope is the
first teacher in the Church. His job is to guard and pass on
the authentic faith, to illumine modern questions with the
light of Scripture. Catholics need not follow the pope's
private opinions: He can write a book about them and be
right or wrong, like anyone. But Catholics are called to
follow his ordinary official teaching—that is, what he
proposes as the authentic implications of the Gospel.
There are some teachings, however,
whereby incontrovertible revealed truth is expressed (for
example, the divinity of Jesus, the truth of the body and
blood of Jesus at Mass). When the pope "defines" such
things, either by himself or in union with the bishops,
declaring them to be God's revelation, and declaring that he
is using his teaching authority at its highest level, then
and only then is the pope held by Catholics to be
infallible. For any decision, of course, the pope is bound,
like anyone else, to seek all input necessary for a prudent
judgment.
Bishops, as successors of the apostles,
are heads of individual churches called dioceses; for
example, the Diocese of Orlando. In union with the pope, a
bishop is the official teacher and spiritual ruler in his
diocese. Within a diocese, individual congregations are
called parishes. A priest is usually designated as pastor,
sometimes helped by a deacon. Today, with a shortage of
priests, non-ordained laypersons are sometimes appointed to
administer the parish, although they cannot exercise the
ministerial priesthood in Mass or the Sacrament of Penance.
The Church, like any organization, has
laws. These bind the consciences of Catholics in varying
degrees of seriousness, according to the matter legislated.
This "outside" of the Church obviously can be imperfect—and
has been, through history. There have been times when it
seemed that Jesus was asleep in the boat (see Matthew 8:25)
and the boat going down. There have been "bad" popes, though
relatively few. There have been autocratic bishops and
scandalous priests and parishes almost without faith. But
this must not obscure the fact that there have been millions
of holy people, generous love, heroic work for the sick and
poor, the oppressed and abandoned—even martyrdom for Christ.