Wrong. Christ did not give us a church. Christ BUILT His church, and believers ARE His church.
No, God gave us Scripture. Why do you insist on glorifying man for what God has done?
Could you post for me, all the Scripture your church has infallibly interpreted?
it is a visible Church and it is the Catholic church. And he built it on Peter, the first leader of the Catholic Church, with an unbroken apostolic succession down to today with Pope Benedict. And the fullness of the teaching of the Truth of Christ is located in the Catholic Church, nowhere else. If your interpretations on scripture and doctrine are at odds to those of the Catholic Church, you are in error.
I think that it is important to note that Matters of Dogma require our acceptance, not necessarily our full understanding and “signing off on them” so to speak.
There are a couple of ways to look at problematic issues.
One is that one cannot accept something unless they fully understand it. By this measure none of us could even be Christian for we cannot fully understand the mysteries of Christ’s salvic mission, how grace works, the Trinity or a whole host of other issues.
The other is to recognize that, even though we may not fully understand an issue we can accept it on the authority of the Church to “bind and loose”. By this we can recognize that no dogmatic declaration is ever made lightly or without considerable study and prayer. ***We also know that Christ established a Church specifically to deal with such issues and to settle such disagreements. ***
The first method requires that a person render judgment on a matter of faith. This requires that said person fully investigate all of the relevant documents, declarations, history etc. In essence it requires the individual to fully re-investigate the matter and then, they must feel confident enough in their own infallibility to render a judgment contrary to that which the Church has set forth.
The Second method only requires that an individual assent to the possibility that the Church, with all of her history and resourses, might know a bit more about a given issue than the individual does. So while the individual might be able to say, “I’m not sure about this dogma”, they can also say, “I accept the teaching on faith in Christ, His promises and His Church”.
In reality I doubt that their are many catholics out there who fully understand and accept EVERY teaching of the Church. There ARE many who accept the teachings on faith.
I certainly fall into the second category.
