Our Catholic Faith - Living What We Believe
The Church is:
Chapter 4 The Church: The Body of Christ
Where Christ Is, there is the Church
“Basin Theology”: Pilate vs. Jesus
• challenges the followers of Jesus to choose
what their role will be in the Church
The Church
• is Christ’s presence in the world
• is our mother – nurturing and sustaining us
through life
“Jesus’ presence in the Church by the power of the Holy
Spirit guarantees her ultimate success”
Ways of understanding the word church:
• “Family of the Lord”
• “Those called out, convocation, assembly”
• God’s Chosen People in the Old Testament
• the community of Catholics that assemble to
worship
• the local gathering of Catholics in a particular
neighborhood
• the worldwide gathering of those who have
faith in Jesus Christ
The Church as a Mystery of God’s Love
III.
• The Church is both a means and a goal of the
great mystery of God’s love for us
• Each Person of the Blessed Trinity had a role in
the planning of the Church:
1. God the Father
o created the world which
IV.
foreshadowed the Church
2. Jesus Christ
o Established the Church on Peter
and the Twelve Apostles
3. The Holy Spirit
o came on Pentecost to make the
Church holy and lead her in its
mission of preaching the Good
News to all
What is Church?
1. pilgrim
2. Christ’s vineyard
3. Our mother
4. the Bride of Christ
5. the flock of Christ
6. God’s building and farm
7. God’s family
8. Organized hierarchically and the mystical body
of Christ
9. a visible society and spiritual community
10. an earthly community blessed with heavenly
riches
Four Images of the Church from the CCC
I. Body of Christ
• A communion of people with God
• The unity is achieved especially in the holy
Eucharist
• Because of Christ we are linked in a special way
to the poor, persecuted, and suffering
• Each Catholic is important to the health of the
Body of Christ
II. Temple of the Holy Spirit
• The Holy Spirit dwells in the Church to give it
life
• The Holy Spirit is the soul of the Church
• The Church is “the sacrament of the Holy
Trinity’s communion” with us (CCC; 747)
• The Holy Spirit works through its members to
continue the work of Salvation
Sacrament
• Jesus and his Holy Spirit are present
• A visible sign of Christ in our world
• Unites people from all over the world
• Is a sign of the unity of all humankind
• Is an instrument to bring about Salvation
The People of God
• It is of God
• Membership is by baptism
• Has Jesus as its head
• Has dignity and freedom as children of God
• Obliged to follow the law of love
• Is to be salt of the earth and light to the world
• God’s Kingdom is its destiny
Membership and Ministries in the Church
What makes a person a member of the Church?
1. Members of the Catholic Church are baptized
Christians who:
• accept Jesus as Lord and Savior
• accept the entire system of Salvation Christ left
the Church
• continue Christ’s work of Salvation
2. Catholics minister God in the Church in different
ways:
• the hierarchy
• the laity
• the consecrated life
3. Baptism into the Church makes each Catholic a child
of God with equal dignity
Three categories of membership in the Church
1. Hierarchy
• the order of ministry established by Christ on
the Apostles and their successors
2. laity
• any baptized Catholics who have not received
Holy Orders nor belong to a religious state
3. consecrated or religious life
• can be members of the hierarchy or laypeople
and include hermits, consecrated virgins,
secular institutes, different apostolic societies,
and men and women in religious orders
Catholics share in the three ministries of Christ
BAPTISM
• PRIESTLY (sanctifying)
o Offering yourself with Christ in his
sacrifice to the Father
• PROPHETIC (teaching)
o Becoming witnesses of Christ’s truth to
the world
• KINGLY (governing)
o Serving those in need
Ways the Pope and bishops exercise their prophetic role:
1. Magisterial teaching – the task of the Magisterium is
to proclaim the Gospel, build up Christian love and
service, and see the proper administration of the
sacraments
2. Ecumenical councils – such councils bring the Pope
and bishops together to offer unified teachings
3. Infallibility – when it comes to essential matters of
faith and morals, the Church is free from error
Marks of the Church
I. ONE
• The profession of one faith which goes back to
the time of the Apostles
• Divine worship celebrated in common,
especially in the Seven Sacraments
• The succession of bishops from the time of the
Apostles to today
II. HOLY
• Christ is the model for her holiness
• The Holy Spirit lives in her
• God uses her to bring his life and light into the
world, to sanctify her
• She has “the fullness of the means of Salvation”
III. CATHOLIC
• Christ’s presence gives her the fullness of the
means of Salvation
• She follows Jesus’ command to go out to all
people
• She teaches everything that Christ taught
• Each local diocese is in union with the Holy
Father
IV. APOSTOLIC
• She is the Church Christ founded on the
Apostles
• She continues to hand on the teachings of the
Apostles
• She is taught, made holy, sanctified, and led by
the College of Bishops, whom Christ appointed
as successors of the Apostles
Ecumenism: The Church and Other Religions
Ecumenism
• Unity among Christians is rooted in Baptism,
even among those who are not professed
Catholics
Means of holiness outside the Catholic Church:
(1) Scripture
(2) the life of grace
(3) faith, hope, and charity
• The Holy Spirit is working among all Christians
today helping them to achieve a closer unity to
our Lord and Savior
Ways to foster ecumenism:
1. pray with our Christian brothers and sisters
2. study the truths of the Church so they can share
with others
3. learn about other Christian denominations
4. work with other Christians in service and social
justice
Naming Grace 2. Michael D. Langford
o Increasing number of diversity in our beliefs
What is Grace? has lead people to create a general set of
• God’s divine outreach to humanity denominators that are common to each
• A relationship between Man and God religion, creating MTD, which endorses
• God’s gift of Himself and His divine will beliefs best suited to maintain the society
3. Jana Marguerite Bennett
Other misconceptions about Grace o Due to many moralistic traits being
• God is absent when unnecessary integrated into a pluralistic society with
• God is static and distant many beliefs, an environment was created
• God only helps when offerings are given in which MTD and SBNR (spiritual but not
Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD) religious) beliefs make more sense
compared to faith (Especially when
• Proponent:
Christian beliefs may seem outlandish to
o Sociologist Christian Smith (1999, Soul
Searching, The Religious and Spiritual the youth!).
Lives of American Teenagers)
MTD in the Philippines
• A worldview that characterizes the youth’s
Sociologist Jayeel Cornelio (2011, Religious Identity and
understanding of God
the Isolated Generation: What Being Catholic Means to
Qualities:
Religiously Involved Filipino Students Today)
1. Moralistic
• Filipino youth view God as a personal god (as in
o Religion is meant to provide a moral
framework. God belongs to that person, i.e. “my friend”,
2. Therapeutic “my father”)
o Religion is meant to provide an inward • God has become possession / private property
sense of fulfillment. • “Reflexive spirituality” (self-directed
3. Deism (Deistic) reinterpretation of spirituality)
o God created the world but remains absent
from it (allows his creation to govern itself).

Key Notions of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

• A god exists who created and orders the world
and watches over human life on Earth.
• God wants people to be good, nice and fair to
each other, as taught in the Bible and most
world religions.
• The central goal of life is to be happy and feel
good about one’s self.
• God is uninvolved in one’s life except when He
is needed to resolve problems.
• Good people go to heaven when they die

Why is MTD so prevalent in the youth?

According to:
1. Christian Smith
o young people turn to new authoritative
classes of moral authority and guidance
(psychologists, advice givers, counselors,
etc.), which create misconceptions
regarding Christian faith
NAMING GRACE IN OUR LIVES
• Suggestions for honing the practice of "naming
grace" in order to form a sacramental
awareness and imagination, as believers able to
recognize the presence of God in us and among
us.
Naming Grace In Our Lives
• Recognizing the Sacred in Arts
• Daily Mystagogy
• Experiencing God Through Narrative
A. Recognizing the Sacred in Arts
• The Problem with the inability to recognize
grace is our lives draws roots from the
supposed "disenchantment of the world"
experience by modern people.
• Disenchantment
o is characteristics of the world that has
since moved toward a more and more
modernized bureaucratic and
Secularized society
“The first order is a reclamation of enchantment
with the world, and its ability to become avenue
for grace for all people”
“To love our fellow human beings is to love
God”
“God and the Enchantment of Place”
• by David Brown
• God can come sacramentally close to his world
and vouchsafe experiences of himself through
the material
The arts
• are capable of engaging one’s emotions and
stimulating religious experience, they may be
useful in helping students to encounter God and
to understand the Bible at a deeper, more”
• are not only a fascinating lure into the spiritual
realm of human existence but also an evocative
language expressing universal human
experiences.
➢ “Everything we consider beautiful is an art.”
➢ "The attribute of God under which we see Him” -
Simone Weil
➢ “Tender smile for us coming through matter” -
Simone Weil
➢ “My questioning was my attentive spirit, and their
reply was beauty” – Agustine
Music
• can become a sacramental way in which God
reaches out to us, and in a similar manner a way
for us to reach back to God. We listen to music
during times of joy and celebration. However,
music is just a powerful in times of difficulty, in
times when we feel grace is nowhere to be
found.
• Saint Agustine
o was at first quite hesitant to
acknowledge the power of music within
religious experience, and even refused
to sing in church. At some point
however, he will recognize this power
drawing from his own experiences.
o mention in his Confessions: “the tears
flowed from me when I heard your
hymns and canticles, for the sweet
singing of your church moved me
deeply. The music surged in my ears,
truth seeped into my heart, and my
feelings of devotion overflowed, so that
the tears streamed down. But they were
tears of gladness.”
Philippines rich history of Catholicism remains
preserved in its Church architecture.
1. San Agustine Church in Intramuros
2. Manila Cathedral
3. San Pedro Cathedral
4. Paoay Church in Ilocos
Not all experiences with the arts will lead us to
the sacred.
• The sacramental principle reminds us that all
things bear the potential for the divine, but
depending on the situation and the piece of art
we are encountering, encounter with God may
not come as easily or readily.
B. Daily Mystagogy
• The capacity of naming grace is a honed
practice that must be done habitually in order
to strengthen it within the believe
• The experience of daily mystagogy can itself
become an experience of grace in learning to
believe that God will speak and reflect with us.
Mystagogy
• Learning about the mysteries of the faith,
pondering such mysteries such as liturgy, the
sacraments, and most importantly, the mystery
of grace
• A daily practice of learning about this mystery
of grace will hone the naming of such grace in
our lives.
• Agustine
o says, but "return to within yourself:
truth dwells in the inner man; and if you
find that your nature is changeable,
transcend yourself. But remember,
when you transcend yourself, you are
transcending a soul that reasons.
Reach, therefore, to where the light of
reason is lit”
o Agustine's grace-aware view of the
world gave mystagogical nature to
much of his work. In preaching he gave
deep attention to the transforming
effect of the sacraments, the formative
nature of ritual gestures and words, and
sacramental ‘overflow’ into the life of
Christians”
o “But the sky and the earth too, and
everything in them all these things
around me are telling me that I should
love you”
• Pope John Paul ll (in his apostolic letter on the
occasion of the 16th centenary of the conversion
of Agustine)
o “Man's interiority, where the
inexhaustible riches of truth and love
are stored, is "a great abyss," which St.
Agustine never ceases to investigate
with unfailing wonder. Here we must
add that, for one who reflects on
himself and on history, the human
person appears as a "great question."
Too many enigmas surround him: the
enigma of death of the profound
division that he suffers in himself, of the
incurable imbalance between what he is
and what he desires”
“Being able to appreciate small things is always leave
a big impact.”
C. Experiencing God Through Narrative
• Biblical Stories,
• Historical accounts,
• Contemporary examples
• and Fictional tales
Narrative
• contribute substantially to communicating and
expressing what one’s faith means. People tell
stories to understand the world they inhabit
and to show themselves and other ways of
navigating in that world. Creeds tend to be
abstraction- they have a timeless quality.
“Grace is not some distant reality. Rather, God dwells
in the particular, meeting people wherever they are”
• And this is exactly What believers need within
the context of our world today.
o People are losing sight of a greater
narrative at work in their lives. They do
not see themselves as part of a story
greater than themselves. This loss of
collective, transcendental narrative has
led many people to a “collective
depression”
The story comes first, and the creed follows:
Three events dominated the Christian story:
1. God’s creating act
2. His redeeming act in Jesus Christ,
3. His sanctifying presence in all in the Holy Spirit
• From these narrative elements grew the
Trinitarian pattern of the classic Creeds. First
the father as Creator, then Son who became
man, died and rose from the dead for our
redemption, and third, the Holy Spirit uniting us
in Christ’s Church. But this Trinity is seen
through a Christocentric focus, for it is through
with, and in Christ that we learn and experience
the Father and Holy Spirit.
“Reclaim a master narrative that situates the present
life in the ongoing story of God’s Grace and human
history”