Sacraments and outreach in the Catholic Church

[SuzyLaidlaw]

In your religion, what reason is given - why did Jesus need to come and be incarnated on the earth, teach the Disciples His ways, establish the Church for us, die for our sins, and then be resurrected from the dead to ascend bodily into Glory - if not to open the gates of Heaven for the human race?

If everyone could just go to Heaven anyway, then why should He have bothered with all of that?

The simple answer to your question above is that while people could always chose to go to heaven, the evils (the hells) had become so powerful that the Lord had to come on earth and fight them through temptations. The hells had become so powerful because of the human abillity to chose (free will) bad over good.

Jesus’s life is was a full fillment of the prophesies of the Old Testament and He often said “as it was written” when something happened. He is the Redeemer and Savior as He said, if He had not come when He did, we believe human life on earth would have ceased to be possible.

The sins of the human race did condemn us. Humans could have read His Word and done what He taught, we could have treated Him with respect - both as to His Divinely Human body and to His Divine Word the Bible, but instead we continually turned from His truth and good.

By coming on earth the Lord was able to incarnate His truths into His actual actions. He demonstrated, in the flesh so to speak, how to live a good life. He taught His truths to His disciples to spread to all the world that would listen so that humans would know how to stop chosing evil. (Stop doing evil, learn to do good.) He died to fulfull the prophesy, to show that humans had fallen to such a horrible low point that they would crucify an innocent good “Man”. (I personally think the Easter story is still the most overwhelming story of all time, surely.)

Why did He ascend with His Divinely Human body - to show His promise was true. We all have eternal life from Him. We can all chose life, chose to follow Him, live according to His teachings, love His truths and have eternal happiness with Him in heaven.

 

[Todd_Easton]

Catholics believe that outreach and evangelization are important to carry out because “there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church”.
I would like to go on and interpret this statement - and this is where I really need help. Do you think this is dogma (I would appreciate a good Catholic definition of “dogma” too!) because according to your religion carrying out the sacraments is key. And, if you don’t do the sacraments, you can not be saved?

For a proper interpretation of the expression, “Outside the Church there is no salvation,” see the , paragraphs 846-848,Catechism of the Catholic Church which specifically address this teaching.

 

[Todd_Easton]

But as far as babies who pass to the next life, I thought the Pope recently said they will go to heaven whether they are baptised or not? Did I get that wrong? (My religion teaches that baptism is a good thing but not a necessary step towards heaven.)

The Church’s teaching on the necessity of Baptism and the issue of unbaptized children is discussed in the paragraphs 1257-1261*Catechism of the Catholic Church, *.