One might think, anyway. It’s old as shit—goes all the way back to Peter according to the lore. Chronologically, it makes sense, but I am so far finding the sheer expanse of doctrine, history, and general shenanigans just terribly intimidating. So…where can I start? Where should I stop? With any religion, you could devote a lifetime of study and fail to truly plumb its depths.
So let’s scope this project out, shall we?
- Doctrine. I want to be pretty exhaustive here, but we’ll start with the Catechism and see where that takes us.
- History. I would love to be exhaustive about the history, but there is just so much.
- Major criticisms. Where the first two bullets should be mainly from a faithful perspective, I want this piece to revisit key points of contention from the apostate point of view. These will be doctrinal and historical, maybe in that order. I hope I get that far, because this is really where the sauce is.
I am not a blogging man. I am barely a literate man. I don’t know how this shit will be organized later, but I know I would prefer for there to be some kind of organization. We’ll figure it out as we go along, won’t we, self? With that, let’s get into it.
Catechism of the Catholic Church – Prologue
The very basics put forward here match the premise of broader Christianity. We quote some bible verses to assert (1) there is only one true god, (2) God does actually want to save all men, and (3) the name of Jesus matters for some reason.
I. The life of man – to know and love God.
Some more basic claims here:
- God is perfect (infinitely so, as if that were different)
- We get a motivation for Creation here, too: he “created man to make him share in his own blessed life.” I read this as “man, this is existence thing is dope—someone else should experience this dopeness…or else”
- There’s an implication that Jesus is a necessary part of the equation because men are “scattered and divided by sin.” Jesus was sent for the purpose of calling together all these shitty, scattered, sinful men. The Father is not the one sending the big invite. It’s Jesus. It happened at the “fullness of time,” which term is not well defined yet.
- The Jesus Invitation is for men to become his adopted children and therefore heirs to God’s blessed life. Interesting that we aren’t considered his children by default.
- Jesus sent the apostles on some missionary work to convert the whole world. That…didn’t happen. Well, they sure did some missionary work, but I’m not so sure about the “making disciples of all nations” bit.
- There is some emphasis on the signs that attended the apostles’ message. I’ve not heard this really brought up in mormonism, but mormonism didn’t care as much about the OG apostles except that they were there.
- Evangelism is central. If you are a real Christian, the love of Christ compels you to evangelize. Gotta spread the Good News, which is actually capitalized that way in the text.
The parts of this that feel specifically catholic to me are the idea that we aren’t God’s children yet, the notion that Jesus is the one sending the Invite and God helps you accept it (a very specific, mechanistic approach to deity I think), and the importance of the apostles.
II. Handing on the Faith: Catechesis
Some vocab:
- Catechesis—making disciples, but also making disciples better. Characterized as organic and systematic. Because catholicism seems to love itemizing the gospel, the catechetical elements of the church are listed. These are things the Church does as an organization: “the initial proclamation of the Gospel or missionary preaching to arouse faith; examination of the reasons for belief; experience of Christian living; celebration of the sacraments; integration into the ecclesial community; and apostolic and missionary witness.”
- Body of Christ—is built up by making disciples, implying that the body of Christ is the whole group of believers.
- the great era of the Fathers of the Church—not defined, just mentioned. Google defines it as like somewhere between 100 and 650 AD.
- Synod Fathers—what is a Synod? Some manner of assembly. A Synod of Bishops, for example. So Synod Fathers would be Fathers in a Synod. There are 3 types, according to google, but in this document they just throw the word at you.
The council of Trent is brought up here, which occured between 1545 and 1563 in response to Protestantism. It was the 19th ecumenical council of the church. There are also references to the Catechesi tradendae, a 1979 catechesis thing. There have been catechetical works since like way back. Cyril of Jerusalem is called out, who was doing shit around 350 AD. The current, Big Catechism is more closely related to the Big Catechetical Hubbub in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
III. The Aim and Intended Readership of the Catechism
It is meant to present and “organic synthesis” of the doctrine, which I take to mean “living” or “growing” or “look dude it’s not comprehensive or perfect.” Not much else of interest here for me.
IV. Structure of this Catechism
Besides the outline, we get a few definitions here. “The Creed” is specifically the baptismal profession of faith, which google helps clarify as being just baptism. The public baptism is the profession of faith…which, if I have my churches straight, is something Catholics do as an infant? Can infants really profess their faith? We’ll want to revisit that because something isn’t lining up here.
There are seven sacraments, which google helps us identify as Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance and Reconciliation, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders, and Matrimony. The purpose of the sacraments is to make God’s salvation present (figuratively, I assume) in the actions of the Church’s liturgy. Liturgy here is a body of rites for public worship. The sacraments are, as far as I can tell, just Special Little Reminders of salvation, or rites meant to bring you closer to God.
Beatitude is something specific—the “final end of man created in the image of God,” but what actually is that? In mormonism, that would be ascension to godhood, becoming like the Father. Google suggests it’s more like plain old blessedness and happiness, “enduring possession of perfect good.”
There is also a whole section just on the Lord’s Prayer. I did not think the Lord’s Prayer was that important.
Finally, there is section V of the prologue, “Practical Directions for Using this Catechism.” What stands out to me here, doctrinally, is that we have “patristic, liturgical, magisterial, or hagiographical sources” which makes this feel like an over-engineered religion.
- Patristics are from early church writers who are designated Church Fathers, which designation also needs a definition. This is ridiculous.
- Liturgical sources would be official books or Rites of the church. The Roman Missal or the Lectionary, for example.
- Magisterial sources would be teachings of a Pope or bishops in union with a Pope.
- Hagiographical sources have to do with saints. Saints are a big deal, I suppose. Because this is catholicism, there are four steps to becoming a saint. Step 1 is an investigation on their life by an expert. At step 2, the report is sent to a bishop and later the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints of the Holy See (the jurisdiction of the Pope as the bishop of Rome), and if they like you, you can become Venerable. At step 3, if they really like you, you might become Blessed. Step 4 happens if the Pope likes you enough to canonize you as a Saint for veneration.
This is just a little acknowledgement that doctrine should be presented in a way best suited for the listener. A sweet idea, but reads to me like a reminder to not be so forward with the problematic parts of the doctrine. That’s how this idea was used in mormonism, anyway. “Milk before meat” really meant “dude don’t talk about polygamy in front of the investigators it’s embarrassing.” A more charitable reading might go more like “cool it with your whack-ass catholic jargon and just make it about jesus sometimes dude you’re scaring the hoes.”
Above all – Charity is a really sweet sentiment. All Christian actions should be motivated by love. Love is the starting point, the destination and the ultimate goal of this whole Christianity thing. Don’t do something that would obscure the love of the lord. This idea is (or should be) present in every Christian faith (probably every faith period?), but I rarely see it in practice. Funnily enough, my experience has been that the churches that do this the best are the goofy little non-denominational churches that the Catholic church sometimes denounces as dangerous cults and heresies.
Summary
Catholicism is dense. Seems like a church that gets lost in its own sauce from time to time, despite the above admonition to not let the sauce get in the way of God’s love. But…the sauce is part of the fun. I know there is some genuinely well-thought-out philosophy floating around somewhere in the 2000 year history of this organization, too. It’s a church that likes to have the Answers, and likes to have them codified. Take the really, really specific definition of the trinity, for example. That is classic Catholicism to me.